Our government in action:

Yahoo! News - Judiciary chairman relents on medals for Sept. 11 heroes

WASHINGTON - Senate Judiciary Committee (news - web sites) Chairman Patrick Leahy is backing off plans to kill legislation awarding the Presidential Medal of Valor to New York City firefighters and police officers who died Sept. 11.


"We have been in touch with Senator Leahy's office and have been assured that the door is not closed on this legislation and we remain hopeful that something can pass," Jim Kennedy, spokesman for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (news - web sites), D-N.Y., said Friday.

The Presidential Medal of Valor was created in June 2000 as a way to honor public safety officers. No one has received it yet.

Legislation bestowing the award on the nearly 400 firefighters and police officers who died when the World Trade Center collapsed passed the House 409-0.

But Leahy, D-Vt., told the New York Post on Thursday that he would not bring the bill to the full committee, effectively killing it.

Well at least some tiny sliver of common sense came into the debate. Imagine, 409 congresscritters vote for the medals, and one ego-maniacal senator stops the entire process.

And people mutter that the president has too much power....