■ More complaints all the time about how Jimmy Carter goes about running his Administration. One example: his heavy-handed choosing of a liberal pro-labor Republican, Sam Zagoria, to be a GOP member of the Federal Election Commission, turning down—without even investigating their qualifications—the nominees of House and Senate Minority Leaders John Rhodes and Howard Baker. Result: 125 of the 146 House Republicans have signed a letter urging the Senate not to approve Zagoria, and the leadership, fearing a fight, has put off the nomination until after the New Year. . . . Doubly gauche was Carter on this one, since one man he must win over ifheisto get his Panama Treaty confirmed is Minority Leader Baker. . . . According to Edward Walsh of the Washington Post, Carter runs a closed White House, with only five men having ready access to the Oval Office: Hamilton Jordan, Jody Powell, Frank Moore (congressional liaison), Stuart Eizenstat (domestic policy advisor), and Zbigniew Brzezinski—and Brzezinski is the only non-Georgian.
■ Here we go again: The National Council of Churches has called on its thirty affiliates to withdraw all church funds from South Africa. . . . This, to the surprise of many, is displeasing to UN Ambassador Andrew Young, who opposes wholesale withdrawal of U.S. business from southern Africa. He is hopeful, says Young, that “enlightened practices by American companies there will encourage change.” … A UN General Assembly committee mean-while has called on member countries to discontinue sports relations with those countries that practice apartheid (Rhodesia and South Africa). . . . An Agence France Presse story reports that Ignati Novikov, head of the Soviet Olympic organization committee, says neither South Africa nor Rhodesia will be allowed to compete in the 1980 Moscow event. . . . On the positive side international-organization-wise, the ILO —with the U.S. no longer a member— has been forced to cut 21.7 per cent, or $36.6 million, from its annual budget.
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