Word: celler
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Finally and somewhat unexpectedly, the House voted to kill the amendment, largely because of the skilled opposition of New York's ancient Emanuel Celler, 83, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. A majority of 240 to 162 favored it but that was 28 votes short of the required two-thirds. Remarkably, a considerable lobby of churchmen opposed the idea. They argued that children -and their parents-can pray at home and, more substantively, that the churches in America have flourished under the First Amendment, which would have been weakened by the proposed change...
...year tenure, until his retirement in 1968 at the age of 91. Sometimes, too, a good chairman, secure in his fortress of seniority, can use his position to kill or modify a popular but unwise measure that colleagues support. Over the years, New York's Emanuel Celler, 82, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has quietly smothered several injudicious anti-subversive and anti-crime bills...
...least two generations earlier; the idea of sexual equality under the law is hardly novel in the U.S. Every year since 1923, some form of the amendment has been introduced in the House. For the past 22 years, however, the House Judiciary Committee, headed by New York Democrat Emanuel Celler, has bottled up the amendment without even bothering to hold hearings...
Prying the resolution loose from the normally indomitable Celler, a 48-year veteran of the House, was primarily the achievement of Michigan's Martha Griffiths (see box). The job took her 15 years-Mrs. Griffiths began working for the amendment as a freshman in 1955. She won ultimately by persuading the House to support a rarely used parliamentary device, the discharge petition, which forces a measure out of committee onto the House floor...
Politics was doubtless as persuasive as the merits of the bill. Somewhat ingenuously, Celler declared: "I don't know exactly why Congress acted so precipitously on this. Of course we are on the eve of an election." "In 1968," Mrs. Griffiths pointed out, "2,000.000 more women than men voted. In 1970, it is estimated that 3,000,000 more women than men will vote...