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Show Washington Comment The tame opening of the seventy-sixth congress on Tuesday was forgotten in the official and sartorial sar-torial blaze of glory accompanying accompany-ing the president's personally delivered de-livered address on the following; day. Everybody who could wexel a card was there; orchids on all the lady lawmakers; morning coats and spats on such beau brummels as Senators Tydings, Barkley, Guffey and Bridges. The new amplifying system, designed to make even the faintest-voiced congressman audible, was on for I the first time; members have dubbed dub-bed it the "flying coffin". For years such a system has been (Continued on last pag'e) M Washington Comment (Continued from first page) needed, but congress shied away j from it, under the misapprehension that it meant speeches would be j publicly broadcast, with the re- 1 suit that the silver-tongued would try to "hog the mike", and the shrinking violets would never venture ven-ture a word lest back-home constituents con-stituents be too, too disillusioned Frank Murphy, new attorney general, made his first public appearance ap-pearance among the the row of notables in front of Mr. Roosevelt, Roose-velt, his red head flaming (John Hamilton now has a rival on that score). Later Mr. Murphy made his first social appearance on the Washington official scene at the White House reception to the judiciaryand judi-ciaryand was ten minutes late, coasting in breathless after having held up the cabinet procession, which precedes the president and Mrs. Roosevelt into the blue room on such occasions. Mr. Murphy, apparently a precedent breaker, like his chief, also startled the press by holding his first press conference after the fashion of the old red schoolhouse ranged the scribes 'behind small desks in a circle and himself sat at a big desk on a rostrum. Seems the late rluey L,ong would nave cnosen Mr. Murphy as his attorney general if he had been president; or so he wrote in his book, "My First Days in the White House", which was published not long before his assassination as-sassination and forecasted his election elec-tion to the presidency in 1936. Apropos of presidential appointees appoin-tees to federal vacancies, the newest, new-est, Felix Frankfurter of the Harvard Har-vard law school, named to the supreme su-preme court, will swim in on the full tide of popularity hereabouts; everybody is pleased excet some western hopefuls. Professor Frankfurter Frank-furter is a predigious worker almost inhumanly energetic Ibut he IS human . He is said to loathe carrying an uribrella and wearing overshoes thereby giving Mrs. Frankfurter many anxious moments. mo-ments. Returning briefly to congress: Was the impression of the listener-over-the-radio that Mr. Roosevelt was in a more tender mood than formerly when he delivered his message. That's the way it sounded sound-ed at close range. The old spirit of "this-isn'tJasWing-'em, this-is-telling-'em" was strangely missing. However, plenty was "asked". The budget that Mr. Roosevelt sent to congress calls for the spending of $17,113 a minute for the next fiscal fis-cal year! . . . The No. 1 bill introducer intro-ducer in congress is Representative Representa-tive Patman of Texas. Always he gets one of his bills listed first; for years it was the soldiers' bonus bill, but that got passed eventually; eventu-ally; this year he .beat all his colleagues col-leagues to the bill hopper with his chain-store tax measure . . . The Congressional Record has had its face lifted; it now appears in a I new layout with the Great Seal of the United States resting on its brow. Its type form is still Ionic, ji . however, and it is still guaranteed to cure any reader of insomnia! Last week, with the Christmas turkey and mince pie not yet a memory, we should have hesitated to tell you this: but perhaps appetite appe-tite has now returned sufficiently to risk sketching lightly the $100-anplate $100-anplate menu with which the Democrats Demo-crats hoped to eat themselves out of the "red" at the Jackson day dinner. After anchovy, deviled eggs, celery, olives and pecans, they started in earnest on broiled rock bass with grilled tomato and eggiplant, filet mignon, fresh mushrooms, mush-rooms, new peas, new potatoes, fresh vegetable salad, nougat ice cream, and chocolate cakes all washed down with beakers of Graves Rosechatel, 1929, and St. Julian, 1933! |