The Senate: Nothing But the Facts

On the Senate floor, a clutch of colleagues surrounded Edward Vaughan Long, pounding his back, shaking his hand, offering effusive congratulations. Had the Missouri Democrat cast a courageous vote, delivered a coruscating speech, proposed a pioneering law?

Not exactly. Ed Long’s rare, felicific moment on center stage resulted from a decision of the Senate Select Committee on Standards and Conduct that it could see nothing wrong with his acceptance of $160,000 in legal fees since 1961. While many Senators moonlight,* there were dark hints that Long had profited from his chairmanship of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Administrative Practice and Procedure by accepting fees to help Teamsters Boss Jimmy Hoffa. Investigating a LIFE article on Long’s finances, the ethics committee, made up of three Democrats and three Republicans, reported that its staff had questioned 33 witnesses, made four out-of-town trips, and had failed to find any connection between Long’s Senate actions and Hoffa.

“This lifts a great burden off my shoulders,” sighed Long, 59, after Mississippi Democrat John Stennis, chairman of the committee, delivered the unanimous report on the Senate floor. “I am grateful to this committee.” Replied Stennis: “We didn’t give you anything—only the facts.”

Stennis said: “We want to return to our primary assignment of recommending a standard of conduct.” In fact, there is scant likelihood that either house will pass anything resembling a workable code of ethics this session. Despite all the demands for a tough code, Congress has dawdled too long to agree on anything so sensitive. Thus, for yet another year, it perpetuates a moral vacuum in which standards of conduct are a matter for the independent judgment of the legislator.

*Currently, 70 Senators have law degrees, but since the Senate has no income-disclosure rule, and some Senators have been known to be less than candid, there is no accurate record of how many still practice law.