Sampling Showdown
With Monday's federal court ruling against census sampling, Republicans should redouble their efforts to fund the Census Bureau for only six months, rather than for an entire year. GOP strategy has called for the limited appropriation because that would create an opportunity to debate the issue of census sampling on its own terms next spring, when this fall's budget battles are history. Democrats had been intending to force Republicans to capitulate by threatening a federal shut-down.

If Clinton tries that ploy right now, however, he'll be defending a policy that a federal court has ruled illegal. Clinton may not have much respect for the law, but he must know that this is a fight he wouldn't win.

By next spring, the Supreme Court will almost certainly have heard an appeal to Monday's ruling. So Republicans should still fund the Census Bureau for only half a year. Clinton may still try to close the government, but now he'll have to pick a different issue.

Time Marches On
Richard Stengel in Time's August 31 special issue: "Inside the Beltway, the scandal is not the lie but the unvarnished truth. George Bush's campaign barb about Reaganism being voodoo economics raised far more hackles than his claim that Clarence Thomas was the most qualified man in America to be on the Supreme Court." Two examples of liberal bias in one sentence - a new land speed record.

Book Note
Displayed in the window of Trover Book Shop on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington D.C.: The Federal Impeachment Process: A Constitutional and Historical Analysis, by Michael J. Gerhardt.