The Week

■ The gun-control votes in the House presented a rare spectacle in Washington: The GOP outflanked Democrats on one of their pet issues. Majority whip Tom DeLay effectively muddied the Democrats’ message by tapping the fearsome John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat, to sponsor an NRA-backed provision on background checks for gun-show purchases. The Dingell amendment passed, with the support of 20 percent of the Democrats, but the larger gun-control bill failed, too weak for liberals, too strong for conservatives. This left minority leader Richard Gephardt grousing about the GOP’s legislative maneuvering: “They can’t run a one-car funeral.” But Republicans did preside over a bipartisan burial of the gun-control issue. Gephardt acknowledged as much by eschewing the term “gun control” and instead lamenting the defeat of “gun safety” measures. As in the case of “reproductive choice,” Democrats have an allegedly winning issue that dare not speak its name.

■ Meanwhile, the House passed an amendment to the juvenile-crime bill that would allow states to decide whether to display the Ten Commandments in public schools and other public places. President Clinton, traveling in Germany, warned there would be “constitutional questions,” but conceded that students ought to receive “character education.” He might better have said “judicial questions”: In 1980, the Supreme Court struck down a Kentucky law that required the posting of the Commandments in public schools. Prayers and Bible reading began in the public schools in the 1840s, when the public-school movement got going. Justices have lately been operating from the mistaken belief that the Constitution was interpreted correctly only in this generation, when the “wall of separation” between church and state was raised to the height of the Rockies. And too many legal scholars and pundits share the president’s view that “character education” occurs only in an ahistorical void. All civilizations have a specific language of basic dos and don’ts. The Ten Commandments are ours. In Gulliver’s Travels, Swift made the talking horses speak in disembodied ethical terms. But they are a fantasy. The Ten Commandments are Square One for American bipeds. Atheist kids can read Bertrand Russell during study hall.

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■ The gun-control votes in the House presented a rare spectacle in Washington: The GOP outflanked Democrats on one of their pet issues. Majority whip Tom DeLay effectively muddied the Democrats’ message by tapping the fearsome John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat, to sponsor an NRA-backed provision on background checks for gun-show purchases. The Dingell amendment passed, with the support of 20 percent of the Democrats, but the larger gun-control bill failed, too weak for liberals, too strong for conservatives. This left minority leader Richard Gephardt grousing about the GOP’s legislative maneuvering: “They can’t run a one-car funeral.” But Republicans did preside over a bipartisan burial of the gun-control issue. Gephardt acknowledged as much by eschewing the term “gun control” and instead lamenting the defeat of “gun safety” measures. As in the case of “reproductive choice,” Democrats have an allegedly winning issue that dare not speak its name.

■ Meanwhile, the House passed an amendment to the juvenile-crime bill that would allow states to decide whether to display the Ten Commandments in public schools and other public places. President Clinton, traveling in Germany, warned there would be “constitutional questions,” but conceded that students ought to receive “character education.” He might better have said “judicial questions”: In 1980, the Supreme Court struck down a Kentucky law that required the posting of the Commandments in public schools. Prayers and Bible reading began in the public schools in the 1840s, when the public-school movement got going. Justices have lately been operating from the mistaken belief that the Constitution was interpreted correctly only in this generation, when the “wall of separation” between church and state was raised to the height of the Rockies. And too many legal scholars and pundits share the president’s view that “character education” occurs only in an ahistorical void. All civilizations have a specific language of basic dos and don’ts. The Ten Commandments are ours. In Gulliver’s Travels, Swift made the talking horses speak in disembodied ethical terms. But they are a fantasy. The Ten Commandments are Square One for American bipeds. Atheist kids can read Bertrand Russell during study hall.