Joe Cunningham: “What I was trying to say earlier in the evening was that had this amendment been crafted so that we were talking about…”

“What I was trying to say earlier in the evening was that had this amendment been crafted so that we were talking about sexual crime, a rape crime against a woman, or whatever, that was a Federal crime for the second crime, just as Mr. Frost's is a Federal crime that we are dealing with. Although an underlying predicate crime was a State crime, the second crime had to be a Federal crime, and that is not the case with Ms. Slaughter's, then I would be much happier, let us put it that way, with what we are doing tonight because I feel that the nexus would be there; there would not be any question of even a doubt about the constitutionality, and so forth. That is not what we are doing.”