THE CONGRESS: Sideshows

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Other investigations—monopoly, petroleum, tax revision, banking, forestry, fisheries, wild animal life—will play to smaller houses. Biggest show of all would have been the proposed investigation into the alleged Mexican oil dealings of Pennsylvania's onetime oilman, Senator Joe Guffey. In announcing the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee's decision to quash the investigation, Senator Connally of Texas wisecracked: "We've just dry-cleaned Joe." == Call for this inquiry arose from stories written by top-flight Reporter Marquis Childs in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and by pretty Ruth Sheldon in the Saturday Evening Post. Mr. Guffey told the Senate he was "sure" Childs had "received other compensation for sending that story out than that which he receives from his regular employer," added that the same was "no doubt" true of Miss Sheldon. For these remarks Senator Guffey could not be sued, because of Congressional immunity for remarks on the floor. But seven days later Newshawk Childs sued Guffey for $100,000 slander, charging that the Senator had made similar statements "in the presence of others."

In far-off Oslo, New York's ham-handed Representative Ham Fish, four Senators and 24 Representatives were last week spending $10,000 in the only big Congressional junket of the year, the annual trip to the meeting of the Interparliamentary Union. Still happily present in Mr. Fish's memory was his coup of last January, when he and 50 Republicans outsmarted bumbling Leader Alben Barkley, ousted him from his plushy post as head junketeer to the Union sessions (TIME, Jan. 30). But Mr. Fish also found a little sour milk in his junket. Before he sailed for Oslo, he confidently left in the hands of the House Foreign Affairs Committee a bill proposing a $50,000 appropriation for a 1940 session of the Union in the U. S. In choosing his fellow junketeers, happy Mr. Fish overlooked Massachusetts' bush-bearded George Tinkham, a power on the House committee and inordinately fond of travel. As Congress adjourned, Mr. Tinkham was able to cable Mr. Fish: "We have thrown your invitation in the wastebasket."