The Week

■ Aswegoto press, Congress is on the verge of discovering its constitutional prerogative. It only took it five months. Maybe the Supreme Court should update the Miranda ruling by requiring that every congressman, at his swearing in, be apprised of his rights.

■ The decision to put Agriculture Secretary Clayton Yeutter in Lee Atwater’s vacant seat at the Republican National Committee is winning kudos all around. Yeutter is not a professional Machiavellian, like Atwater, nor yet a bare-knuckle philosopher, like William Bennett. But he has been in politics and government since the Nixon years. He is a conservative without being also a prickly pear, and he has few enemies—an important point, given the ill feeling that has festered ever since President Bush broke the tax pledge. Finally, as someone who has worked in the Agriculture Department (under Nixon and Bush) and the U.S. Trade Representative’s office (under Ford and Reagan), he has cut his teeth on farmers and protectionists. Republicans and Democrats should be a relief.

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William F. Buckley Jr.

■ Aswegoto press, Congress is on the verge of discovering its constitutional prerogative. It only took it five months. Maybe the Supreme Court should update the Miranda ruling by requiring that every congressman, at his swearing in, be apprised of his rights.

■ The decision to put Agriculture Secretary Clayton Yeutter in Lee Atwater’s vacant seat at the Republican National Committee is winning kudos all around. Yeutter is not a professional Machiavellian, like Atwater, nor yet a bare-knuckle philosopher, like William Bennett. But he has been in politics and government since the Nixon years. He is a conservative without being also a prickly pear, and he has few enemies—an important point, given the ill feeling that has festered ever since President Bush broke the tax pledge. Finally, as someone who has worked in the Agriculture Department (under Nixon and Bush) and the U.S. Trade Representative’s office (under Ford and Reagan), he has cut his teeth on farmers and protectionists. Republicans and Democrats should be a relief.