■ It’s storm signals for Jimmy Carter. For the first time since Inauguration he has slipped under 50 per cent in the “we approve of the President’s performance” polls. . . . His energy program was made mincemeat of in the Senate, suggests Kevin Phillips, not only because he hasn’t figured out how to handle Majority Leader Robert Byrd, but because the polls show the energy program has lost popularity with the people since it breezed through the House in August. . . . The only Democratic senator on the Finance Committee to support the President on energy, says the Washington Post, was Pat Moynihan, and he confessed “that he didn’t understand it very well.” . . . Now Chairman AI Ullman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee says he will personally try to kill any Administration proposal to cut taxes unless “there is overwhelming evidence that the economy has to have it.” . . . And he’s not even very persuasive. When Carter called in a number of important senators to urge their approval of the Panama Canal treaties, none of the unconverted emerged a convert. Barry Goldwater commented on leaving the Oval Office that he thought the American people would reject the treaties: “Don’t ask me why. It’s like the American flag. They’re wrapped up in it.”
■ For the record: The three Republican senators who voted against deregulation of natural gas on that close 50 to 46 vote were Eastern liberals Jacob Javits (N.Y.), Clifford Case (N.J.), and Edward Brooke (Mass.). . . . An oil man’s nightmare in the making. If Sens. James Eastland and John McClellan decide not to run for re-election next year, which seems probable given their ages, that will leave Edward Kennedy in line for chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Kennedy is on record as favoring the breakup of the Majors. . . . Heading the fight against a five- year extension of the tax-supported Legal Services Corp.—which was set up to provide legal services to the poor but is more often found to be lobbying for social reform—are three conservatives, Jesse Helms (N.C.), Orrin Hatch (Utah), and S. I. Hayakawa (Calif.). Hayakawa gives as an example of what the Legal Services Corp, does, which it shouldn’t, its amicus curiae brief against Bakke in the Supreme Court case. . . . Merritt Weisinger, the lawyer for Rita Clancy who was admitted to the UC Davis medical school on a judge’s order in a case paralleling Bakke’s, suggests that Justice Thurgood Marshall disqualify himself on Bakke since he was onetime head of the NAACP which is pressing the UC Regents case. . . . Uproar on the West Coast when Huey Newton, and his Black Panther Party came out against the Regents and for Bakke. Newton called the quota system “regressive and divisive” and said any such program should aid “disadvantaged whites” as well as blacks.
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