Capital briefs

* YUCCA NUCLEAR WASTE STORAGE APPROVED:

In a significant victory for President Bush, the Republicans on Capitol Hill and the nuclear power industry, the Senate on July 6 voted 60 to 39 in favor of consolidating the storage of much of the nation's nuclear waste underneath Yucca Mountain in Nevada. (See HUMAN EVENTs rollcall next week.) In so doing, the Senate followed the House in overriding Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn's veto of the project.

Forty-five Republicans and 15 Democrats voted in favor of the measure, underlining bipartisan concerns about the possibly dire consequences of leaving the waste in its current facilities, spread over 131 sites in 39 states. Proponents of the Yucca Mountain plan also argued that moving the waste from above-ground facilities to underground storage will reduce the threat of its being used as part of a terrorist attack. Terrorists can "go through customs without a hitch because they possess not plutonium, but knowledge," said Sen. James Inhofe (R.-Okla.) before the rollcall. "Terrorists want to use that knowledge to threaten our way of life. A vote for Yucca Mountain will make that hard for them."

* GUNS FOR PILOTS: Despite objections from Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta, the House last week by a lopsided 310-to-113 vote approved a bill allowing more than 70,000 pilots to be armed after they receive special training. (See HUMAN EVENTS roll call next week.) A number of opponents wanted to limit the number of armed pilots to about 2%, or 1400 pilots.

A similar bill (S 2254) is scheduled to be taken up soon in the Senate, where its prospects are considered good. Even well-known anti-gun Sen. Barbara Boxer (D.-Calif.) has announced.her support for the measure. "I have decided that until I am satisfied with the number of air marshals on commercial flights, this bill is a necessity-indeed, it is a matter of life and death," said Boxer. Citing the post-September 11 policy that allows fighter jets to shoot down planes that are hijacked, Boxer said that were the military to actually carry out such drastic action, "[i]magine how the survivors of all those passengers and crew will feel if we failed to allow pilots to have guns to defend the plane and an American flight was brought down by the American military."

* NUREMBERG FOR G.I. JOE? To the great disappointment of conservatives, the Bush Administration backed down from its threat to veto continued U.S. participation in the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Bosnia unless American military personnel who are part of the operation are exempted from jurisdiction by the International Criminal Court (ICC). Instead, the administration is asking the UN Security Council to delay investigating U.S. soldiers for one year while it tries to figure out what to do next. Conservatives oppose the ICC because it erodes U.S. sovereignty, does not afford defendants the same protections as American courts, has vague charges such as undefined "war crimes" in its list of prosecutable offenses, and will certainly be run by anti-American jurists from the European Union and Third World dictatorships.

* MARY RYAN OUT: Mary Ryan, long a target of those who want the State Department's visa issuance process reformed, is out. State announced July 10 that she will retire this fall. Ryan, appointed assistant secretary of state for consular affairs by Bill Clinton, caved in to pressure last week after it was revealed that 71 U.S. visas were sold for $10,000 apiece at the Doha, Qatar, consulate in the latest scandal involving foreigners' entry into the United States.

* FARRAKHAN IN IRAQ: Louis Farrakhan, Nation of Islam leader, recently met with senior Iraqi officials in Baghdad. According to Farrakhan, representatives from Iraq should be invited to Washington to speak before Congress before the United States proceeds with any plans for military intervention in the dictatorship. If another war does commence between Iraq and the United States, it seems that Farrakhan will be pulling for the Iraqis. The official Iraqi news agency (INA) quoted the Nation of Islam leader as saying that "the Muslim-American people are praying to the almighty God to grant victory to Iraq.".

BIAS IN THE NAACP: Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), spoke at the group's 93rd annual national convention July 7, claiming that a "right-wing conspiracy" is working in the Department of Justice and the office of the White House Counsel. Apparently unconcerned about indicating that the NAACP is not really in favor of advancement for all colored people, Bond called black conservatives "ventriloquist dummies." In particular, Bond singled out Ward Connerly-the California crusader against quotas and government racial classifications--calling him "con man Connerly." Not all insults levied at public figures at this NAACP convention were quite that sharp, however: The Rev. Jesse Jackson questioned the President's intelligence-and then labeled Bush "unliterate."