Sam Nunn

WASHINGTON -- Key Senators warned the Bush administration yesterday not to hasten completion of a strategic arms pact with the Soviet Union for a July summit between President Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.A speeded-up pact would put pressure on treaty negotiators and would result in their "making some mistakes," predicted Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., on NBC's "Meet the Press."Mr. Nunn, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he would rather see the two leaders schedule the long-delayed Moscow summit "without rushing the negotiators."

It is a remarkable commentary on the enduring grip of the Cold War that in the very week in which the first arms-reduction treaty in the nuclear age was signed, the U.S. Senate will vote on a measure which amounts to a vast escalation of the arms race.Sen. Sam Nunn, the chief Democratic defense specialist in government, maintains deploying an immensely costly anti-ballistic missile system is necessary to protect against missiles which might be accidentally launched by the Soviet Union, or launched deliberately by some other country.

"The Libertarian Party has one thing going for it the Democrats do not -- two contenders for the [presidential] nomination." So wrote Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times. Sad but true. Just over five months till the first presidential preference primaries, the oldest political party in the world still has just one announced candidate, former Sen. Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts.Last month, there were some interesting announcements from Democrats. Sen. Albert Gore Jr. of Tennessee announced he would not run because of family concerns, and Robert Farmer, the treasurer of the Democratic National Committee, announced he was resigning to raise money for Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, should the governor, as is now widely assumed, decide to run.It is a sign of the Democrats' troubles that Mr. Farmer also announced that Mr. Clinton was his second choice for the nomination.

WASHINGTON -- Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Maryland will face a two-day hearing in September before a U.S. Senate subcommittee on a host of problems, including a "pattern of irregularities" in the Blues' handling of health benefits for federal employees.The state's largest insurer is already under subpoena by the Senate panel for a decade's worth of financial records in a widening Senate investigation into Blues health insurance plans nationwide.Beginning yesterday and continuing today, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations is detailing the 1990 downfall of the Blues of West Virginia, the first-ever collapse of a Blues plan, which stuck subscribers with paying their own medical bills.

WASHINGTON -- A Pentagon panel appointed to devise ways to allow homosexuals to serve in the military has proposed two plans, one of which would keep many parts of the current ban, senior Defense Department officials said yesterday.The second option presented by the panel, which is composed of 50 military officers and enlisted personnel, would allow declared homosexuals to serve in the armed forces but would ban homosexual conduct.The fact that the panel is considering preserving much of the ban indicates the difficulties the Clinton administration is having in carrying out its promise to end discrimination in the armed forces based on sexual orientation.

WATCHING SEN. Daniel P. Moynihan on center stage during the conference committee deliberations on the deficit reduction bill, listening to Sen. Edward Kennedy announce the compromise he worked out to save the National Service bill, noting Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell time and again describing where he was leading reminds me just how dramatically the Senate has changed since they all first came to Washington 30 years ago.In the early 1960s, Senator...

PRESIDENT CLINTON, newly re-elected but facing a formidable 10-vote Republican majority in the Senate, is putting together a brand new foreign policy team. Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Secretary of Defense William Perry are leaving. With the world in perpetual crisis or semi-crisis, Mr. Clinton can ill-afford protracted confirmation fights over his nominees to fill these two key posts. If he really wants to work with the GOP opposition, here is where he has to start.Would-be successors at Foggy Bottom and the Pentagon will face hearings before two crusty Republican southerners -- Sen. Jesse Helms, head of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Sen. Strom Thurmond, chairman of the Armed Services Committee.

President-elect Clinton and Democratic leaders on Capital Hill are saying all the right things as they prepare for a "new era" in which their party will control both the executive and legislative branches of government. They talk of the end of the "Cold War" between Congress and the White House and try to smooth away the rough edges of contentious issues that have arisen -- often gratuitously -- in the first fortnight after their Nov. 3 election victory.The American people, however, have every right to adopt a "show me" attitude.

WASHINGTON -- The Senate opened committee hearings yesterday on military service by gays and lesbians, with powerful Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., offering a compromise: The military would stop asking about sexual orientation but would continue to require homosexuals to keep their preferences secret.Mr. Nunn's offer appeared to be an opening bargaining stance on the highly contentious issue. It is far from any position gay rights groups and the White House are likely to consider acceptable.But the suggestion did quickly help frame debate over what has been the most explosive issue of Mr. Clinton's young presidency.

WASHINGTON -- Born of a volatile mix of clashing principles, political rivalries, missed cues, wounded pride and contested turf, the already explosive issue of gays in the military has now become a test of power as well: a struggle between President Clinton and one of the most prideful barons of Congress, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Georgia Democrat Sam Nunn.And even as White House aides scramble to find a compromise to diffuse the clash, the outcome almost certainly will shape that most crucial of presidential assets: the perception of power.