status, as is so frequently done by Vice President Nixon in connection with the Negro? Why is there such discrimination practiced in the treatment of these two groups? Could this be because the Indian is not allowed to vote? We are opposed to amendment of rule 22, and respectfully ask that you, in the interest of the American people, withdraw your support of Senator Knowland's resolution. Very truly yours, F. A. LYDY, President, United Neighbors, Inc. RESOLUTION UNANIMOUSLY ADOPTED BY THE ASSEMBLY OF THE UNITED MOTHERS OF AMERICA, INC., AT AN EXECUTIVE SESSION HELD WEDNESDAY, MAY 15, 1957, AT CLEVELAND, OHIO Whereas a proposal is before the United States Senate to abolish the timehonored Senate rule 22, which grants Members of the United States Senate the right to unlimited debate, subject to cloture action by a two-thirds majority of the Senate membership; and Whereas history and experience with many dangerous measures considered by the Senate in the past confirm the wisdom and necessity of permitting Senators ample opportunity to debate and consider issues vital to our Nation's survival and security; and Whereas filibustering, criticized by opponents thereof, is not only justifiable but vital to the defense and preservation of American institutions and liberties, especially when too many Senators yield to subversive pressures on dangerous measures without understanding the consequence of their vote; and Whereas the two-thirds vote requirement in Senate rule 22 to close off debate is in harmony with the prerogative of the Senate for ratification of treaties by a two-thirds vote majority; and Whereas, in this age of worldwide political treachery and diplomatic conquest of nations, it is of even greater importance to retain and exercise the restraining safeguards available to the Senate; and Whereas it is common knowledge to patriots that the voiding of Senate rule 22 is principally sought by leftwing and international subversives who seek the destruction of the United States so as to further their scheme for establishing a socialistic world government: Therefore be it Resolved, That we petition the United States Senate to retain Senate rule 22 as vital to our Republic's survival, and that an investigation of our Republic's subverters be undertaken forthwith. UNITED MOTHERS OF AMERICA, INC., THE UNITED STATES FLAG COMMITTEE, Hon. HERMAN TALMADGE, Senate Office Building, Washington, D. C. DEAR SENATOR TALMADGE: We wish to have this statement read and placed on record in the printed copy of the hearings you are conducting relative to changing the Senate rules. This committee is definitely opposed to the proposed scheme (and we believe it to be just that) for changing the rules to limit debate. We believe there should be far more debate on important issues, rather than less. American citizens should have ample opportunity for expressing their views on important matters pertaining to our National Government and sovereignty. We think this has already been limited and not altoge her true. Hearings have frequently been held on vitally important matters, with few. except those who desired to put something over, actually knowing anything about them. This should not be in a government for and of and by the people, which, unfortunately, seems to be rapidly disappearing. If individuals cannot be present at these hearings, they must depend upon their elected Representatives in Congress to represent them in such debate. Certainly, unless we are already a totalitarian government, our Congressmen should not be limited. To limit debate is a dictatorial, totalitarian, socialistic idea, whereby a few decide and rule, and the people lose their rights and their freedom granted them by our Bill of Rights. We stand firm for our constitutional form of government and our National Republic-free from limitations and dictatorship. The excuse that there is not time to discuss all matters is no excuse. No more issues should be taken up in one session of Congress than can be given sufficient time and proper consideration. To decide anything without proper time and debate would be national suicide. Therefore, this idea of changing the Senate rules to limit free expression of the people, we believe to be contrary to our form of constitutional government which our wise and illustrious forefathers established here, and which we desire to have continued. Respectfully submitted. HELEN P. LASELL. VIGILANT WOMEN FOR THE BRICKER AMENDMENT IN IOWA, Re Senate rule XXII. Senator HERMAN E. TALMADGE, Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, DEAR SENATOR TALMADGE: Free debate in the Senate is an essential of our constitutional government. If free debate were to be limited, in direct proportion would our freedom be limited. We oppose any change in Senate rule XXII which would result in limitation of debate. Very sincerely yours, GWEN PATTON INMAN, Mrs. Gerald O. Inman, Iowa Chairman. At a meeting of the executive committee of the Western Tax Council, Inc., held in the offices of the council, room 617, 38 South Dearborn Street, Chicago, Ill., on Friday, May 24, 1957, Frank E. Packard, executive vice president, offered the following resolution on the proposed change in Senate rule XXII: If history teaches anything, it is that human freedom goes hand in hand with the freedom of speech under proper parliamentarian restrictions. Freedom of speech does not mean that mobs may assemble and, amidst confusion, attempt to transact business. Whenever a single individual is prevented from expressing his convictions, liberty is in danger. The committee members unanimously approved that Senate rule XXII should not be changed so as to impair the right of a member of the Senate to freely and completely express himself at any and all times. However, Mr. George_Taft, chairman, called attention to the fact that the council was an incorporated nonprofit, nonpartisan, nonpolitical, one-purpose educational organization and suggested that Mr. Frank E. Packard and/or Mrs. Fern Martin, whose names are well known to our organization and membership, communicate with them all as individuals fully outlining the situation and suggesting they write both their Senators and Congressmen and the Committee on Rules and Administration; and, it was further suggested that Mr. Frank E. Packard attend any and all hearings before the committee after considerable discussion and upon advice of the council. The committee unanimously approved Mr. George Taft's suggestions. Whereas United States Senate rule XXII now provides for the imposition of cloture through a vote of two-thirds of the Senate membership; and Whereas proposed amendments aim to eliminate the precious requirement of two-thirds of the entire roll of the elected Senators to close debate; and Whereas the right to continue debate is most valuable to free citizens and their representatives in Congress assembled; and Whereas it is undemocratic and un-American to cut off or to severely limit debate on vital American issues; it is now 93635-57--22 Resolved, That the present rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate must be continued in effect to protect the best interests of the citizens of the United States of America. The foregoing resolution was unanimously carried at a meeting of the board of directors of the American Education Association held on June 14, 1957, in New York, N. Y. AMERICAN EDUCATION ASSOCIATION, Executive Director. NEW YORK, N. Y., June 15, 1957. AMERICAN VETERANS COMMITTEE, Hon. HERMAN E. TALMADGE, Committee on Rules and Administration, United States Senate, Washington, D. C. DEAR SENATOR TALMADGE: We have received your letter regarding the hearings and study being made of rule XXII in the Senate. We are glad to express the views of the American Veterans Committee on this important matter, and we respectfully request that this communication be made a part of the record. The American Veterans Committee, of course, favors full discussion of all matters which come before the Congress since we realize that Members of Congress should not have to legislate in a vacuum. Nonetheless, we are equally convinced that there should be a means whereby when the majority of the Members want to get a vote on a particular issue, they ought not to be hamstrung by a majority. We support the Douglas bill, Senate Resolution 17, cosponsored by Senator Javits and others. AVC feels that this measure provides adequate time for bringing out all of the facts of any measure which might come before the Senate. At the same time, this bill gives to a majority in the Senate the right to ask for and to obtain a vote on any matter which may be before it. At the 10th national convention held in Washington, D. C., in April, AVC adopted a national affairs platform which calls for "changes in the rules of the House and Senate of the United States which will make it impossible for a willful minority to delay a vote on legislation after a reasonable period of debate has taken place." Sincerely yours, KENNETH M. BIRKHEAD, STATEMENT BY JOHN K. CRIPPEN, PARK RIDGE, ILL., PREPARED TO BE READ JULY 2, 1957, ON PROPOSED CHANGES IN SENATE RULE XXII The undersigned, executive secretary of the Anti-Communist League of America, an organization devoted to helping in the fight to preserve the basic freedoms of our beloved country, and to fight against the insidious encroachments of communism and its twin brother, socialism, has been asked by the Honorable Herman E. Talmadge, United States Senator, to appear before this committee and to present either my personal views or those of the league on the proposed changes in Senate rule XXII, on limitations upon debate in the Senate. Time has not permitted the taking of a poll of members and affiliates of the league, but I have discussed with and corresponded with a number of our key members and directors, including our president, Mr. Theodore W. Miller, of Chicago, and general counsel, John Unger, a probate judge residing in Danville, Ill. In addition, prior knowledge of the earnest beliefs and convictions of affiliates of the league, voluminous correspondence and reports, leads me to believe that I am truthfully expressing herein the feelings of those individuals and, in most cases, of the organizations or publications of which they are a part. Without attempting to go into a detailed analysis of the proposed changes in Senate rule XXII, many of which are obviously intended to lighten or mollify the more drastic changes proposed, such as that which would enable 18 Senators, in a motion, to almost immediately cut off further debate upon any bill upon which those 18 members so moved. I can say unreservedly, speaking for myself as an individual, and I believe accurately presenting the similar views of the great majority of the league's members, that we would unalterably oppose any method or effort to drastically limit debate in the United States Senate or House, such as is proposed in portions of the proposed amendments, particularly as proposed in section 2, where a small minority of Senators can, with a single motion, shut off all further argument, discussion, consideration, exploration, or factfinding in the Senate; and which would further have the effect of calling up a bill, however controversial, for passage before some Senators, who may not have been too well informed upon a given measure, have had an opportunity of scrutinizing the measure in question. For a drastic limitation upon debate would accomplish precisely these things. I have been cautioned by Senator Talmadge, a great Senator, in my opinion, and a man dedicated to preserving our matchless Constitution, to confine my remarks to matters pertinent to the proposed Senate rule. This I have tried to do. However, one cannot discuss or editorialize upon so important a matter as a change in a standing rule such as Senate rule XXII, without touching upon the matter of free speech. Many members of the league, including myself, have had some definite experiences relating with efforts to curb free speech, and we can speak with some authority on the subject. There have been suppressions of information with respect to legal information involving the communistic National Lawyers' Guild in the Chicago area, as an example, and efforts to suppress such information when collated and presented in newspaper articles and letters-one of these involving a trial in a Federal court, where an all-American jury promptly acquitted Mr. Theodore W. Miller and myself, in a brilliant defense by our general counsel, the Honorable John Unger. There have been many, many other cases in all parts of our land brought to our attention. It is not my intent to discuss them here. I mention the matter in passing merely to indicate that the efforts to resrict a free and untrammeled discussion of facts do not begin and end in the United States Senate. They are everywhere about us. The preservation of our Union requires that people may bave access to information and facts. Thus, I view, speaking here only for myself and as an individual, the efforts to restrict debate in the Senate through some of the provisions of the proposed amendments as a move to restrict free speech, where it is so urgently and desperately needed. Where, if not in our great legislative bodies, is an honest, open, untrammeled debate of basic issues needed? There has been, through other means, far too much limitations already placed upon debate. How many "plans" have been laid before the American public, only in glossy public-relations ways, and without detailed discussions of their ramifications. How many secret treaties, agreements, Executive agreements, or discussions have taken place, often between foreign and even enemy powers, without an adequate presentation of their true imports before the American people. Shall the Senate then, through drastic limitations on debate, be deprived also of the right to explore these matters about which, often, the American people have been told but little? Shall these matters, in a flowery-worded, legalistic measure, be formulated into a bill for consideration by our highest legislative body without due consideration? Shall the last resort of free debate, in the very body where debate is the breath of our national existence, be stripped from us? Is our Senate to be finally reduced to a rubberstamp Kremlin-type organization, whose only function will be to place their blessing upon some latest plan or scheme which might easily become the law when there is not "free and untrammeled discussion," even though that plan might easily become another device for wrecking our Constitution? I should like to depart, for a brief moment, from the strict consideration of this matter of drastic limitation of debate in the Senate, to a plan which this observer personally believes a very dangerous plan. The statements are made to indicate that we need more, not less, debate upon vital matters. I am referring to the "Atoms for Peace" proposal, which our late great Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, warned us about, almost with his dying breath. If you will examine the cover of the document which outlines the setting up of an international agency for the exchange of atomic materials and know-how, you will note that this document was placed before the United Nations 5 months prior to the time it was placed before the American people, and, in the words on the face of the document, the limitations of secrecy were removed. The point I am making here is that there have been some open discussions about this proposal, and its dangers brought out. Perhaps the bill will pass (though I personally believe it to be a very dangerous, very treacherous bill per se). The proposed limitations on debate could very easily do away with such debate-although the very security of America may be in the balance. Another example, which we cannot help but ponder, and which I mention briefly here because of its possible application, is the so-called civil-rights bill. Leftwing newspapers and columnists try to identify opposition to this measure strictly to southern Senators, and-more basically speaking-to southerners, whereas such is not the case. In the enormous number of publications, clippings, and so on, which we have seen from the rightwing of America, we can find almost as much opposition to the presently proposed civil-rights bill in the North, East, and West, as in the South itself. The civil-rights bill inherently holds a threat to our liberties of incalculable possibilities. In its effort to strip some of our people (those charged with a crime of discrimination, as it is defined) of the basic right of trial by jury, we must face squarely all the implications thereof. Stripping of any citizens of rights of trial by jury would be the rankest sort of discrimination-discrimination at its very worst. While the Communists loudly cry for passage of the civilrights bill, we must surely have left to us, in the United States Senate, the “right to be heard" by opponents, as well as proponents of the bill. Regardless of how this bill may be later voted upon, the fact remains that all of the pros and cons should be heard-and not just the cons. In these closing days of Congress-with both good and bad bills to be considered, voted upon, and accepted and rejected--our elected representatives must not yield to the impulse to "vote it through and go home." This would imply that all bills which contain elements of badness, or implications of further loss of our constitutional system (as some of them, in my opinion, do) if they have been sold by vast public relations and propaganda effort, would go through— without those changes or amendments necessary to purify and clarify them. If debate the one element for bringing to the light inherently dangerous implications of a given bill-is shut off, I repeat, the United States Senate would then become merely a rubberstamping organization. If the people themselves are uninformed about all the elements of a proposed piece of legislation, and if informed men in the Senate are unable to counter that widespread misinformation and propaganda which sometimes precede the launching of any controversial measure, then all avenues of information have been shut off to the general public. As an American who loves his country, and our matchless and often-attacked United States Constitution, I unalterably oppose any serious or drastic limitations in debate in the United States Senate. I will go further, and state that I oppose, both individually, and as an executive officer of the Anti-Communist League of America, Inc., its affiliates, and many friends and coworkers and organizations whom we support to the fullest of our individual and collective abilities, are undoubtedly equally and cojointly opposed to any such drastic limitations of debate in the United States Senate or House. I personally favor retention of Senate rule XXII as now constituted, without any amendments, but particularly without any such amendment as would permit a small minority bloc of Senators to place a ban on free speech upon all other Senators. A RESOLUTION OF THE ASSOCIATION OF CITIZEN'S COUNCILS OF SOUTH CAROLINA, SUMTER, S. C. Whereas there are seven Senate resolutions now pending before a subcommittee of the Committee on Rules and Administration of the United States that propose changes in Senate rule XXII, which rule now permits free and open debate of all legislation on the floor of the Senate; and Whereas the excesses of an unrestrained majority can be as ruthless, dangerous, and destructive to the rights of a people as are the excesses of totalitarianism; and Whereas through the medium of free and open debate the Senate provides the only practical means whereby, the American people can be informed of all measures affecting their lives and fortunes; and Whereas this privilege of free and open debate provides the only means whereby measures of overriding importance can be put to the critical test of deliberate and unhurried examination by the collective intellect of the people and of the members of the Senate, a body explicitly created as one of our governmental checks and balances; and |