A contest. national review offers a modest prize to the first reader who can find a substantial newspaper or TV report about any proposed cut in federal social spending that does not dwell upon, interview, or sympathize with its poor, aged, crippled, blind, minority, starving, homeless victims. We’ll double the prize if the report even hints at the plight of taxpayers. (Reports only, please; columns and commentary are not eligible.)
By a 57 to 37 vote, the Senate has passed two measures which for all practical purposes would put an end to racial busing. One of them bars the Justice Department from using the funds appropriated for busing litigation. The other forbids the federal courts to order children bused more than five miles or 15 minutes from home. The anti-busing majority was even larger than the vote indicates, some opponents of busing— for example, Senators Gordon Humphrey (R., N.H.) and Barry Goldwater (R., Ariz.)—voting with the minority on grounds of the separation of powers. The legislation now goes before the House, where probusing representatives threaten to use every possible parliamentary tactic to block it. Opinion in America, black and white, has long been overwhelmingly opposed to racial busing, which has wreaked serious educational and civic damage. That it has taken so long to achieve even this first-step Senate victory is testimony to the power of entrenched ideology.
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