National Affairs: Joe & the Senate

Emerging from a meeting of Senate Republican leaders, G.O.P. Policy Committee Chairman Homer Ferguson dispelled some foggy talk—including his own—about how to restrain Senator McCarthy by changing committee rules. The Republican leadership might recommend changes, but after that, said Ferguson, it is "up to the committees, each one of them." Added Ferguson: "I suppose each chairman thinks he already has all the rules he needs, otherwise he would have done something about it before this."

Said Vermont's canny Republican Senator George Aiken: "If you have unethical committee and subcommittee chairmen —and I'm not saying we do have them—you're not going to make them ethical by changing the rules." Evidence for this is found in an odd fact: of all the Senate committees, Joe McCarthy's has the most extensive and detailed set of rules.