When the Senate passed pensions for Congress by 42-10-24 (TIME, Feb. 2), the members didn't really mean it; they were thinking about a couple of other bills.
When a repealer came up last week, with an indignant citizenry looking on, 75 Senators rushed to get right; only five had the courage to plump for pensions again.
In the House, apparently nobody had been present when the pension bill passed without a recorded vote. Papers back home were flooded with honest-I-never-dunnit letters from Congressmen explaining that they had been ill, at the dentist's, out to lunch, writing a speech, carrying the burden of the...