THE CONGRESS: Farewells & Fumbling Blocks

At 4:11 a.m. Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson moved for adjournment; Vice President Nixon, presiding, brought down his gavel—and the jangling of the Senate call bells noisily marked the end of the 85th Congress. But before the bells clanged, there had been the usual maddening, last-minute fumbling blocks. Nevada's neolithic "Molly" Malone numbed Senate floor and galleries with a wandering diatribe against foreign aid that included lengthy quotations from George Washington, Karl Marx, Andrew Jackson and Molly Malone ("The Nevada air corps can lick any European nation"). While an early-finishing House sang Home on the Range, Wisconsin's freshman Democrat William...