Feeble Push

THE Senate rejected a motion to shut off a month-long debate on two crucial civil rights bills last Wednesday, seven votes short of the necessary two-thirds. In a 55-37 fight, the bill was defeated by the ever obstreperous group of Southern Democrats and Republicans who scotched so much worthwhile legislation in the last congressional session. The United States has not been so close to internal warfare in the last hundred years. It can little afford such chicanery.

The two proposals before the Senate are on open housing and the protection of civil rights workers (making it a federal crime to intimidate or injure Negroes or civil rights workers engaged in voting, registration, jury service, etc.). Both are measures President Johnson has been pressing on Congress for the last three years, albeit with damnable timidity.

On the eve of this latest debate, for the first time Johnson made a strong appeal to Congress, along with presidential hopeful George Romney who urged all Republicans to vote for cloture. But Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen (R-Ill.), true to form, rallied the opposition with the cry that the Senate should not "gag itself."

THE next act of this saddening spectacle will be played out on Monday when Senator Mansfield (D-Mont.) will again try to close the discussion. To get the open housing bill through, supporters will probably offer to exempt single-family homes. At present only owner-occupied homes of up to four units are exempt, the "Mrs. Murphy's boarding houses." On the civil rights bill, Dirksen himself has offered an amendment, suggesting that the states be allowed six months to act against the offenders. The federal government would interfere only after six months, if a state had failed to take action.

Although on Wednesday Dirksen committed himself to working out some sort of legislation ("I trust before this session concludes there will be a civil rights bill") Mansfield is not as optimistic.

It would be a standing shame if the bills were not passed, or, if they were so weakened so as to be totally useless.

True, even were the bills swiftly enacted in their present form, they would make little difference this summer. But here are pieces of vital legislation long overdue. President Johnson should push hard now, to make up for his inexcusably feeble efforts over the last three years, and override Dirksen's counter-forces.