Work Done

Last week the Congress also:

P: Got set, in the Senate, to take final action on the President's long-stalled nomination of Solicitor General Simon E. Sobeloff to the Fourth Circuit, U.S. Court of Appeals. The nomination, first submitted last July, had been stuck in the Judiciary Committee by determined Southern opposition to Sobeloff because of his "unsympathetic" racial views (before the Supreme Court he argued the Government's 1955 case on implementing the school desegregation decision). The breakthrough, after a month-long filibuster by South Carolina's Olin D. Johnston, came in an 8-2 committee vote to report the nomination out.

P: Blasted out of the House Rules Committee for House consideration the Administration's civil-rights bill to: 1) set up a Civil Rights Division in the Justice Department; 2) establish a bipartisan commission to investigate civil-rights violations; 3) permit the Attorney General to take civil action to protect voting rights. The bill, after weeks of delaying tactics by Southern Democrats, was forced out of committee by a group of Republicans and Northern Democrats led by Missouri's Dick Boiling in an 8-3 vote.

P: Learned, by an action of the House Interior Committee, that the Democrats are hell-bent on using Hell's Canyon to dramatize charges of an Administration natural-resources "giveaway" in the fall campaigns. The committee, following a similar move by its Senate sister, voted 15-13 to clear for House action a bill to build a $600 million federal high dam in Hell's Canyon on the Snake River between Idaho and Oregon. The Idaho Power Co., which the Federal Power Commission licensed last August to build three small dams in the area for an estimated $250 million, has already begun large-scale construction.

P: Reconciled, in a Senate-House conference, conflicting measures on stiffer penalties for narcotics pushers. Most important agreements: to permit juries to direct a death sentence for dopesters convicted of selling heroin to minors, raise the top sentence for hardened dope passers (three or more violations) from 20 to 40 years. The bill now goes back to both houses for final approval before being sent to the President.

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