No Blackout for Washington

Jennings Randolph, 39, Democrat, of Elkins, W.Va., is chairman of the House District Committee, source of all House legislation affecting the voteless District of Columbia. Last week he laid before the House a bill authorizing experimental blackouts for the Capital.

Democrats promptly joined with Republicans and Isolationists in ripping his bill to shreds. Missouri's Short wanted to know who would "assume the responsibility for the robbery and the rape and murder that might be committed." New York's Isolationist Ham Fish offered an amendment (defeated) to provide "dugouts, tin helmets, asbestos suits and gas masks for the members of Congress, the Chief Executive, and the Justices of the Supreme Court . . . air-raid sirens on all public buildings except the Department of Labor. ..." Well over a third of the chamber kept out of the discussion and the voting--not knowing what to say or how to vote.

Down went the bill to defeat, 171-to-117. Not voting: 143. Growled Jennings Randolph: "The issue ... is not dead."

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