A Hold Is Broken

A Hold is Broken In the Senate cloakrooms last week, the Vice President of the U.S. was jovially hailed by buoyant liberals and flailed by moody Southerners as "Judge Nixon." The reason: by one thunderstriking interpretation from the chair, Richard Nixon had tagged the discomfiting word "unconstitutional" to the much-debated, filibuster-protecting Senate Rule XXII (TIME, Jan. 14). But he had done something else as well: he had raised an emotional floodgate for a piece of vital legislation that has been dammed too long by Senate rules and procedure. Before Congress adjourns, everyone agreed, there will be a sizzling Senate filibuster. But when the filibuster is broken, there will be passed the civil-rights legislation that President Eisenhower asked unsuccessfully last year, has sought again this session.

Guaranteed Rights. The debate on Rule XXII not only produced Nixon's unequivocal and unexpected opinion. It also showed, when the vote came, a stronger block of liberal votes (55 to 38) than Southern Senators had anticipated. Banking on that liberal strength and on additional recruits drummed off the fence by the Nixon decision, Illinois' Everett Dirksen, the Republican whip, last week introduced the Administration's civil-rights measure. Little different from last year's bill, the Dirksen measure involved guaranteed minority voting rights, a presidential civil-rights commission, a civil-rights division within the Department of Justice.

When the Middle East debate ends, and the Senate turns to other legislation, there should be enough sympathetic votes to force the bill out of the Judiciary Committee, lorded over by Chairman James 0. Eastland of Mississippi. And when some 20 diehard Southern Senators attempt to talk the bill to death on the floor, there should be enough votes even under present cloture rules (64) to cut off the filibuster and bring the measure to a vote. In the House, which passed a civil-rights bill last year, the measure should have far less trouble.

Impending Defeat. Beyond civil rights and its reefs, there waits the prospect of a second losing battle for the South. Stung by "Judge" Nixon's interpretation. Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson and Minority Leader William Knowland last week co-sponsored a bill to 1) amend the provision of Rule XXII that requires a vote of two-thirds of all Senators (64 votes) to close debate, so that cloture can be applied by two-thirds of the Senators present; 2) abolish the provision of XXII that guarantees the right of unlimited debate (i.e., nonstop filibuster privileges) on proposals to change the rules themselves. With half the members already signed on as cosponsors, the rules amendment should pass with little difficulty. With both measures through, a tiny band of Southerners who over the years have combined seniority and archaic rules to strangle legislation that displeased them will have suffered momentous defeat.

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