The Week

■ Severe weather last week forced the cancellation of thousands of flights, most of them Hazel O’Leary’s.

■ Even the arcane election laws of New York State have not prevented Steve Forbes and Pat Buchanan from collecting enough petition signatures to get on the presidential primary ballot. Provided they surmount one last hurdle: the efforts of the state party machine, which backs Bob Dole, to disqualify them. New York’s laws give gimlet-eyed regulars so many opportunities to challenge signatures that petitioners are advised to collect twice as many as the already extravagantly high legal requirement. Dole knows these rules well, for they were used to keep him out of the New York primary in 1988, when the Bush forces ran the state GOP. But this is playground justice, not justice. New York Republicans should be able to vote their preference. And wouldn’t it be fun to watch Forbes and Buchanan returning each other’s serves in a New York match-up? (Dole could take the role of the net.)

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Presidential Election

William F. Buckley Jr.

National Review

■ Severe weather last week forced the cancellation of thousands of flights, most of them Hazel O’Leary’s.

■ Even the arcane election laws of New York State have not prevented Steve Forbes and Pat Buchanan from collecting enough petition signatures to get on the presidential primary ballot. Provided they surmount one last hurdle: the efforts of the state party machine, which backs Bob Dole, to disqualify them. New York’s laws give gimlet-eyed regulars so many opportunities to challenge signatures that petitioners are advised to collect twice as many as the already extravagantly high legal requirement. Dole knows these rules well, for they were used to keep him out of the New York primary in 1988, when the Bush forces ran the state GOP. But this is playground justice, not justice. New York Republicans should be able to vote their preference. And wouldn’t it be fun to watch Forbes and Buchanan returning each other’s serves in a New York match-up? (Dole could take the role of the net.)