WASHINGTON REPORT: Progress and Paralysis:

...Without clues, police turned to the Mafia for information, but apparently didn't ask CIA Director Colby for help...

...The Senate unexpectedly defeated a compromise $31 billion military procurement bill on grounds the military departments, as well as the civilian departments of the federal governments, should learn to live within our means of financing them...

...It's doubtful...

...WASHINGTON REPORT PROGRESS AND PARALYSIS The Congress is now standing in its customary recess this month of August...

...It may be necessary to light all the candles in Notre Dame Cathedral to save the Red Sox (and solve the other problems described herein...

...An ice-cream manufacturer was indicted on grounds of knowingly selling tainted Good Humors and transplanted Bostonians joined the ones in-place to light candles as the Red Sox ball club showed hauntingly familiar signs of blowing a big lead in the American League's Eastern Division...

...The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court re-instated Alger Hiss to the practice of law-certainly heartening news to the gaggle of Nixon-administration lawyers disbarred, or about to be, or who withdrew from the bar, as did Nixon, now beginning to show signs of restlessness at his St...

...But, politically, this need not apply...

...Not, of course, that the world has stopped while Washington gets off during the month of August: • The CIA was fingered as a motivating force in plots to kill off Cuban Premier Fidel Castro...

...sisyphusunchallenged...

...Evolutionists believe that the door to the past swings really in one direction-that man can not "pass back...

...The Ford administration is a right-wing manifestation...

...During the week immediately preceding the recess, the Congress approved a seven-year extension of the Voting Rights Act-with improvements...

...Helena in California...

...For one thing, Robert Altaian, producer-director, insists on an imbalance by not including a scene at a location symbolizing some of the healthier aspects of American democracy-at Andrew Jackson's home, The Hermitage, only 12 miles east of Nashville...

...Strange compromises are in the air as big economic interests sense new directions and seek to adjust...

...This long, long motion picture, in a format reminiscent of Grand Hotel, is a story of events arising out of an effort of several days to organize a musical political rally at the "Parthenon" in Nashville, the country/western capital, for a Wallace-type presidential candidate of the "Replacement party...

...This disposition would be enhanced, if, as is being rumored, someone along the lines of Carla Hills, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, were nominated to replace Douglas...

...In addition to the Congress and, for the most part, the President, the Supreme Court is in recess and tens of thousands of federal employes of all ranks have also left town on vacation...

...The Gang, that occasionally is showing it can shoot straight, is variously embarked on familial and official excursions...

...sisyphus...

...And, consequently, as changes percolate within and without Washington, one worries: Will the Tories, in company with the members of the "Replacement party," born of the Americanization of George Wallace, re-design America unchallenged...

...Some newly elected liberals seem to be throw-backs to an earlier period when liberals were strong in defense of the Bill of Rights, but laissez faire in respect to economics...

...The Agriculture Department appeared to have not come clean (again) as to just how much grain the Soviet Union plans to buy in the United States this year-it may exceed the troublesome 19-million tons purchased on the sly three years ago...

...How do you do it...

...Offsetting this, the Senate conceded its prolonged failure under its Constitutional power to decide whether John Durkin or Louis Wyman had won the disputed senatorial election in New Hampshire nine months ago...

...The Supreme Court, should the ailing, elderly Justice Douglas choose or be forced to resign, would not be an impediment to realignments...

...You take notes...

...President Ford's campaign manager was trying to maneuver Vice President Rockefeller into position so a political trap door could be sprung under him in order to satisfy the Reaganite primitives in the Republican party...

...On the other hand, it is not, as strict-construc-tionists insist, an up-dated Ziegfeld Follies movie that displays again the shabbiness of show business-promoters, financiers and players...

...The House of Representatives, "The Other Body" showing it also could shoot straight, dealt President Ford a constructive setback just prior to the recess when a bi-partisan majority voted that raising oil prices, even gradually, is not a fair way of dealing with whatever "shortages" of petroleum products are said to exist currently or next Winter...

...There he, among appropriate officials from approximately three-dozen nations, signed a declaration, one of whose principle articles, in effect, accepts admissibility of acquisition of territory by force-that is, if it is done by a Grand Bear, such as the Soviet Union, and not by a harassed Cub, such as Israel...

...No, sir...

...These days, moderates and liberals in the Congress seem to drift-distracted, unorganized, in disarray, even confused...

...Agitprop attorneys seemed more intent on making a martyr of Joan Little rather than in creating a climate in Raleigh, N.C., within which a jury could acquit her of causing the death of her molester, a jailer, when he visited her cell...

...No, Nashville has something larger than that to say...

...Just cash," Roselli replied...

...Or, perhaps if we run out of cathedrals and candles, the month of August will be "the pause that refreshes...

...It may be a misjudgment, but organized labor appears to be almost held in disrespect, or, at a minimum, held at arm's length among front-benchers and back-benchers customarily friendly...

...It deserves attention, even if one doesn't (1) accept Pauline Kael's description-"the finest motion picture ever made in this country"-or (2) that it is an accurately pessimistic definition of the country on the eve of its Bicentennial observance...

...On many social issues, it is now only one vote from being hospitable (juridically, of course) to rightward changes...

...However, the Congress has devised no sensible alternatives and the federal energy administrator, Frank Zarb, was left for awhile to consult with Adam Smith's shades as to what to do next, because President Ford had already left the country on a circuitous journey into Europe that ultimately took him to Helsinki, meeting place of something called the European Conference on Security and Cooperation...

...Alumni of the CIA were revealed to be employed at the federal budget office, where they determine how much money the CIA should be allocated each year...

...Senator Church of Idaho commented to a Mafia-type witness, John Roselli, who had demonstrated a remarkable memory about attempts by the CIA to bring about the assassination of Castro...

...There is a strong tendency both in the presidency and the Congress to sing along with Henry Gibson, the bantam-rooster king of country and western music in the movie Nashville-we must have done something right to last two hundred years...

...In addition, the Senate unsatisfactorily dealt with an exciting military embargo against Turkey by prolonging it-an action susceptible of causing us difficulties with other nations which have allowed us to maintain military bases on their territories...

...Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance was unresolved into mid-August...

...Around the country, federal judges were issuing public-school desegregation orders to take effect next month and local police departments, in response, were readying their riot guns...

...Naturally, President Ford would seek to distract from her severely conservative views by "pointing with pride" to her's being the first nomination of a woman...