Senator takes aim with an olive branch

Only a few weeks ago two of our former Democratic U.S. senators, John Breaux and Bennett Johnston, were bemoaning the loss of civility in Washington.

Once upon a time members of Congress could "disagree without being personally disagreeable with each other," Breaux wistfully observed.

The collegial spirit is nowhere more lacking than in the interaction between Louisiana's current Democratic U.S. senator, Mary Landrieu, and her Republican junior, David Vitter. A dyspeptic exchange between them is hardly worth noting anymore.

In her most recent letter to Vitter, however, Landrieu breaks new ground with a gratuitous dig at Shreveport demographer Elliott Stonecipher. She emerged looking not just nasty but foolish, for the Stonecipher numbers she pooh-poohed were soon verified independently.

Landrieu wrote in response to Vitter's request that she would not join him in holding up a spending bill to force a vote on an amendment requiring that respondents to next year's Census be asked whether they are American citizens. Right now aliens, legal and otherwise, are included in the count for purposes of congressional reapportionment, and Vitter believes seats should be allocated according to the number of American citizens in each state.

Landrieu refused to play along and delivered a sideswipe at Stonecipher, whose offense had been to provide statistics showing that the inclusion of aliens meant that, after next year's Census, such immigrant magnets as Texas and California would gain seats at the expense of Louisiana and several other states. No demographer "worth his salt (which would not be Elliott Stonecipher)" believed that Louisiana could avoid losing a congressman "even if there was not one illegal immigrant in the United States," Landrieu wrote.

Had Landrieu waited a day before dispatching her letter, she would have known that demographers at Queen's College, City University of New York, had arrived at the same conclusion as Stonecipher. Maybe Landrieu will insult them in a future missive.

Vitter is clearly not going to win this one, however, because Landrieu, the White House and Democratic leaders in Congress accept the Census Bureau's claim that adding a citizenship question would be ruinously expensive and blow the April 1 deadline.

Even if Vitter should succeed with his amendment, it would likely be impossible to resolve constitutional questions in time anyway. The 14th Amendment stipulates that "Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States, according to their respective numbers counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed."

Landrieu belongs to the camp that believes "whole number of persons" is a phrase free of ambiguity and means everybody, citizen or not. Therefore the reapportionment system could not be changed without a constitutional amendment.

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