POLITICAL NOTES: Headlong Week

The little eyes of Louisiana’s Senator Huey Pierce Long nearly popped out of his round face with excitement last week. By thundering majorities, his well-bossed electorate had just endorsed by referendumsome more of his “poor people” laws: to abolish poll taxes, to impose income taxes, to exempt from taxation homes assessed at less than $2,000.

In New Orleans Senator Long joyfully cried: “The only way for us to get out of this Depression is to secede from the United States. . . . We ain’t going to get any place until we get rid of all those damn bureaucrats, hobocrats, autocrats and all those other crats up there in Washington. . . . Oh, it’ll take us five or six years, I reckon, but we’ll set up a real Utopia in this State. We’ve got to run our own business and not have any of those dam fol-de-rols that’s going on up there.”

The Senator then rushed off to Baton Rouge to address a pep meeting in behalf of his political football team, Louisiana State University. The team was getting ready to trounce George Washington University in Washington, 6-to-0. In its absence, “Kingfish” Long proclaimed that the rally constituted a parish meeting, solemnly had Right Halfback Abe Mickal elected State Senator.

The point was raised that Mickal was a Syrian, under 21, and a resident of Mississippi, hence unable to qualify for the job. The “Kingfish” retorted that his Legislature would seat Senator-elect Mickal and that was all there was to it. “Mississippi has annexed itself to Louisiana,”he observed, “anyhow. Napoleon came ‘rom Corsica, didn’t he?”

Still under a full head of steam, Huey Long next announced that he was going to call another special session of the Legislature, empower the Public Service Commission to declare a moratorium on all debts within the State for two years.

Only setback to the headlong Long week came from the U. S. Supreme Court. After General Samuel Tilden Ansell had counseled a Senatorial investigation into the Long political machine in 1932, Senator Long broadcast by mail circulars declaring that the onetime Judge Advocate General had been “practically run out of the Army for fraud.” General Ansell started a $500,000 libel suit. Senator Long claimed Constitutional immunity. Last week the Supreme Court ruled that a Congressman’s remarks on the floor are privileged but he could not escape service of a civil summons.