Tame Talkathon

"Mr. President, Mr. President!" Mississippi Democrat John Stennis, chairman of the Senate Preparedness Subcommittee, was on his feet, demanding the floor. For a speech on Viet Nam? A ringing call for action to avenge the seizure of Pueblo? Nothing of the kind. Stennis was merely taking his turn in a lackluster mini-filibuster that has almost totally preoccupied the U.S. Senate since it reconvened three weeks ago.

The tame talkathon is directed against a civil rights bill that would make it a federal crime to commit violence--including murder--against members of racial and religious minorities trying to exercise their civil rights. The bill, already approved by the House, was the Senate's "pending business" when the current session opened. With teams of Southern Senators sharing the speaking, rarely heard by more than one or two colleagues, the bill is still pending.

To break the impasse, Majority Leader Mike Mansfield and Minority Leader Everett Dirksen conferred with Attorney General Ramsey Clark on a possible compromise measure. Before they could even produce one, Southern Democrats swore they would talk it to death, and Northern liberals began speaking darkly of a "cave-in."

The talk is expected to drone on until midweek, when the Senate begins a seven-day recess to permit Republican orators to scatter for Lincoln's Birthday addresses. Soon thereafter, the Democrats take their turn with a Jefferson-Jackson Day recess. Thus far, the Senate's torpor has mattered little, since its calendar is empty of business. Incredibly, with crises pressing in from all sides, the world's greatest deliberative body simply has nothing else to deliberate about.

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