physiological responses to different stimuli. reporter: the marshalls can see they never knowingly stopped a terrorist but train for the ultimate connen confrontation every day. at 35,000 feet marksmanship has to be fairly accurate. we don t have a lot of options. reporter: the hope is this never becomes necessary, but before a suspect ever boards a plane or even makes it through a tsa checkpoint he or she is identified and pulled aside. at the rarely scene air marshall center in virginia, a constant juggling act of assigning marshalls in the u.s. and overseas to the right seats on the highest-risk flights. we can t be all places at all times to all people. so we have to use the latest intelligence to inform our judgments and inform or decisions. reporter: the typical air marshall flies more than 1,000 flights over 200 days each year. no napping, no frequent flier
the newly emboldened conservative base in the republican party and the tea partiers and others had railed against earmarks. it really became awkward when you see senator connen come out and attack the bill and then get challenged because he has his own earmarks in it. it just became untenable. they couldn t vote against it. and still have any credibility. and so they just had to tank the bill all together. and this is just a touch of flavor of the kind of fights, many fights that we re going to be in for next year. i can almost see why the republicans would have preferred to have a long-term omnibus spending bill that would get them into next year before these kinds of clashes would begin happening. because now in all likelihood they could start almost as soon as the next congress begins. that is exactly what we re going to see in the next congress. elections have consequences and these is the result of exactly what we saw happen in november.