THE CONGRESS: The Elephant Hunt

• Share

(2 of 2)

When Humphrey got up to speak, the Senate elders, one by one, led by Harry Byrd himself, quit the floor. -Angered by the pointed snub, Humphrey shouted defiantly: "The shrinking violet has not been clipped." He still thought that the Byrd committee was "a sort of political zombie," that it claimed credit for economies that the Administration had accomplished on its own hook. Cried Humphrey: "I would not say that was patting oneself on the back. I would say that is just twisting oneself up like a pretzel and spinning and announcing to the world the greatness of one's accomplishments." But Freshman Humphrey, decisively rebuked, was shouting to an all-but-empty room.

Last week the House: ¶After 34 years of thinking about it, voted (186 to 146) to make Alaska the 49th state in the union, then approved Hawaii's 30-year-old appeal for statehood (which it had approved and the Senate had rejected in the 80th Congress). ¶| Approved a bill establishing a National Science Foundation, after first insisting on an FBI check for all employees and scholarship holders.