Noncontiguity

Hawaiian statehood was the next item on Majority Leader Robert A. Taft's neatly drafted Senate agenda. And then, quicker than an humuhumunukunukuapuaa goes swimming by, the bill was set back for weeks and possibly months.

To the astonishment of almost everyone on Capitol Hill, the Senate's Interior

Committee voted, 8-7, to tack Alaskan statehood on to the Hawaii statehood bill and to hold time-consuming hearings on both questions. This move to delay the action on Hawaii was sponsored by New Mexico's Democratic Senator Clinton Anderson, who is on record for Hawaiian statehood but who wants Democratic Alaska considered at the same time. The man who made Anderson's move successful was Nevada's Republican Senator George W. ("Molly") Malone. who doesn't want statehood for either Alaska or Hawaii. His switch turned a Democratic minority of the Interior committee into a majority.

Malone objects to the proposed new states because of what he calls their "non-contiguity." Said he: "If we were to accept Hawaii, I am sure that less than 1% of the entire population would ever be able to visit the United States to observe life and conditions on the mainland."

Last week the Senate also: P:Passed and sent to the White House a bill to change the name of the Government-chartered Roosevelt Memorial Association to the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Association, a move calculated to "avoid confusion."

P:Received from its Judiciary Committee a bill to prohibit the display of the United Nations flag in a position equal to or above the U.S. flag, except at the U.N. building in Manhattan.

The House:

P: Rushed through and sent to the Senate a second "tidelands" bill, giving the Federal Government control of the underwater land on the continental shelf outside the historic state boundaries.

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