For the Record

It’s jockeying time in Washington, and in the Senate Adlai Stevenson III is in hot water. A committee he heads has recommended that the standing committees be reduced from 31 to 15 with the attendant loss of a) committee chairmanships and b) staff jobs. . . . Sen. Ernest Hollings (D., S.C.) has let it be known that Democratic Whip Robert Byrd won’t get Mike Mansfield’s Majority Leadership job for the asking. Hollings, making a nose count, came up with the fact that Byrd had lost three of his ardent Senate backers in Sens. McGee (Wyo.), Montoya (N.M.), and Hartke (Ind.). . . . Gale McGee’s loss came as sad news to the Pentagon: he was the hawkiest Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. . . . He hasn’t been asked yet, but Sen. Frank Church volunteers that he won’t accept a job with the Carter Administration. “I can render a better service to my country,” he says, “by remaining in the Senate.” . . . On the Republican side, GOP conservatives are maneuvering to get Strom Thurmond (S.C.) named “ranking” Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Liberal Charles Mathias (Md.) is in line for the slot but if Thurmond drops his “ranking” status on Armed Services (in favor of Goldwater), he could pull rank on Mathias in Judiciary. . . . There’s a move to get Robert Dole to succeed Hugh Scott as Minority Leader in the Senate, but Robert Griffin (Mich.) could have a lock on that job. Also in the race: Howard Baker of Tennessee.

Here it comes: Congressman Edward Koch (D., N.Y.) has appealed to Jimmy Carter for amnesty not only for the draft dodgers of the Vietnam War but for all deserters as well. Clergy and Laity Concerned (CLC) goes Koch one better. It wants Carter also to upgrade the “less than honorable” discharges that CLC spokesman Ron Freud says nearly 800,000 U.S. servicemen received during the eight years of the Vietnam War. . . . And Antoinette Slovik, the widow of Private Eddie Stovik, the only U.S. GI to have been executed for desertion during World War II, wants Slovik amnestied. That way she could claim his $10,000 government life-insurance policy. . . . The National Council of Churches is slipping. In its last pronunciamento on Vietnam’s admission to the UN, U.S. war reparations for Vietnam, cum calls for the protection and restoration of human rights in South Korea, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and the Transkei; it forgot all about Chile.

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It’s jockeying time in Washington, and in the Senate Adlai Stevenson III is in hot water. A committee he heads has recommended that the standing committees be reduced from 31 to 15 with the attendant loss of a) committee chairmanships and b) staff jobs. . . . Sen. Ernest Hollings (D., S.C.) has let it be known that Democratic Whip Robert Byrd won’t get Mike Mansfield’s Majority Leadership job for the asking. Hollings, making a nose count, came up with the fact that Byrd had lost three of his ardent Senate backers in Sens. McGee (Wyo.), Montoya (N.M.), and Hartke (Ind.). . . . Gale McGee’s loss came as sad news to the Pentagon: he was the hawkiest Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. . . . He hasn’t been asked yet, but Sen. Frank Church volunteers that he won’t accept a job with the Carter Administration. “I can render a better service to my country,” he says, “by remaining in the Senate.” . . . On the Republican side, GOP conservatives are maneuvering to get Strom Thurmond (S.C.) named “ranking” Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Liberal Charles Mathias (Md.) is in line for the slot but if Thurmond drops his “ranking” status on Armed Services (in favor of Goldwater), he could pull rank on Mathias in Judiciary. . . . There’s a move to get Robert Dole to succeed Hugh Scott as Minority Leader in the Senate, but Robert Griffin (Mich.) could have a lock on that job. Also in the race: Howard Baker of Tennessee.

Here it comes: Congressman Edward Koch (D., N.Y.) has appealed to Jimmy Carter for amnesty not only for the draft dodgers of the Vietnam War but for all deserters as well. Clergy and Laity Concerned (CLC) goes Koch one better. It wants Carter also to upgrade the “less than honorable” discharges that CLC spokesman Ron Freud says nearly 800,000 U.S. servicemen received during the eight years of the Vietnam War. . . . And Antoinette Slovik, the widow of Private Eddie Stovik, the only U.S. GI to have been executed for desertion during World War II, wants Slovik amnestied. That way she could claim his $10,000 government life-insurance policy. . . . The National Council of Churches is slipping. In its last pronunciamento on Vietnam’s admission to the UN, U.S. war reparations for Vietnam, cum calls for the protection and restoration of human rights in South Korea, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and the Transkei; it forgot all about Chile.