Word: rankins
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Mississippi's rancorous old Dixiecrat John Rankin had been nursing his wounds and biding his time. He had been bent on revenge ever since House Democrats unceremoniously kicked him off the publicity-making Un-American Activities Committee. Last week, like an angry mosquito, he circled, swooped and stung Congress spang on one of its most sensitive political spots. Over the loud protests of his Veterans' Affairs Committee (seven members walked out on him), Chairman Rankin highhandedly rammed through a staggering pension bill which seemed designed as much to pay back his congressional enemies...
...bulk of World War II veterans will not reach retirement age until around 1990, and to many of them Demagogue Rankin's bill simply meant filling up the gravy boat again for World War I servicemen. Such veterans' groups as the V.F.W. and American Veterans Committee howled in dismay. Even the American Legion leadership, which has sometimes mistaken the public treasury for its own, remained guardedly silent...
...John Rankin just grinned. "If we can spend untold billions of dollars on other countries," he replied with sanctimonious calm, "feeding and clothing every lazy lout from Tokyo to Timbuctu-then we can take care of our aged veterans when they are unable to care for themselves...
...Chairman Rankin could afford to gloat. To make revenge doubly sweet, he had a ready-made way of forcing the House to go on record: a new rule (TIME, Jan. 10), aimed originally at obstructionists like John Rankin, which permits any committee chairman to bring out a bill after the Rules Committee has pigeonholed it for 21 days...
...Administration's achievements of the week was to kick Mississippi's ranting John Rankin off the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Administration leaders ruled him off because he was going to be chairman of another committee (Veterans' Affairs)-a technicality specially thought up to get rid of him. Rankin was not surprised. Fortnight ago he grumbled: "The word seems to have come down from Moscow to keep me off." On another technicality (that all committee members be lawyers), Louisiana's F. Edward Hebert, a fellow Dixiecrat of Rankin's, was also unseated. With...