Actually I found some reason for optimism in that statement of his - I see an indication that maybe the administration is finally being forced to acknowledge that Congress isn't going to go along with W's "Kill Amtrak" plan, and that W no longer has the political power to force it, and hence Mineta's apparent intent to simply be the maximum possible annoyance and nitpicker to Amtrak once funding is assured. Perhaps they are seeing the handwriting on the wall (somebody must have read it to them) that Congress realizes the absolute necessity of intercity passenger rail as one of the legs of the national transportation stool AND that the voters overwhelmingly want Amtrak to continue, and so they maybe better start finding a way to say that they wanted Amtrak to be funded all along, to try to turn their actual defeat into a perceived (by the public) victory, on the well-proven theory that "If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bull$xxt."
If my garden was even half as well fertilized as this country's voters........