Senate

California, with a population and budget bigger than most nations, has a disproportionate thirst for cheap government water, and other states resent it. Within California, the dispute over federally supplied water divides north from south, farm from city, but lawmakers who represent the state at large are politically bound to defend the costly status quo against cuts by outsiders.Thus the disappearing clout of California's U.S. senators is a serious liability as Congress considers dozens of bills aimed at either boosting drought relief or slicing water subsidies for the state.

Washington. -- The Senate was part of the Founders' plan to provide republican remedies for problems to which republics are prey. In a republic, the people are sovereign, but the immediate desires of the people can conflict with the long-term interests of the republic.The Senate was designed to facilitate the reconciliation of those desires and interests. Thus it reflects the Founders' distrust of unmediated majority rule. But today the Senate is a far cry from what the Founders intended, and what some liberals suddenly want it to be.Since last November's elections the House has acted with the sort of dispatch the Senate disdains.

ANNAPOLIS -- Senate Bill 575, the Rockfish Preservation Act of 1991, has received a favorable vote from the Economic and Environmental Affairs Committee.The vote on the bill, which has not been released by the committee, was six for, four against and one abstention. The bill is expected to be released by the committee and voted on by the Senate within the next two days.If the bill passes the Senate, it will move on to the House of Delegates for discussion and another vote."We're ecstatic," Rich Novotny, executive director of the Maryland Saltwater Sportfishermen's Association, said yesterday.

ANNAPOLIS -- Longer trucks may be coming to Maryland's highways as a result of the Senate's approval, 37-10, yesterday of a bill extending the allowable length of trucks from 48 feet to 53 feet.Debate on the bill was heated as Sens. Ida G. Ruben, D-Montgomery, and Julian L. Lapides, D-Baltimore, railed against the proposal, calling it a threat to the safety of Maryland drivers."I urge you, for the sake of your constituents, for the sake of safety on the highways, don't put more weight on the road," Senator Ruben told the Senate.

Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., the guest speaker last night at a $250-a-ticket fund-raiser for Rep. Helen Delich Bentley, urged her not to play it safe and to make a run for the Senate next year.Lott said that in 1988, he gave up the safe House seat he had held for 16 years and risked his career in what turned out to be a successful run for the Senate."Maryland needs a tough, aggressive . . . member of Congress looking to the Senate," he told about 350 people at a dinner at the Sheraton Hotel in Towson.

Washington -- The most worrisome thing coming out of the Congress this week had nothing to do with bounced checks. It was word that Senate special counsel Peter E. Fleming Jr. had subpoenaed telephone records of the two reporters who first told the nation that Anita Hill was charging Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas with sexual harassment.Mr. Fleming has harassed the two reporters, Nina Totenberg of National Public Radio and Timothy M. Phelps of Newsday, forcing both to secure attorneys and attend hearings during which each asserted a constitutional right not to identify their sources.

James Madison, often lauded as "father of the Constitution," once prescribed two main missions for the United States Senate: "First, to protect the people against their rulers; secondly, to protect the people against the transient impressions into which they might be led."How true his words ring today. Millions of Americans, especially the poor and the vulnerable, need protection against the efforts of House Republicans to slash and terminate social programs at the same time they are devising tax cuts for the wealthy.

WASHINGTON --The Senate brushed aside a bid to block renewal of the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act yesterday, voting 96-3 against changes urged by Sen. Russell D. Feingold, the act's most persistent critic. Feingold, a Wisconsin Democrat, said he wants to make the Senate debate several more days on the bill, and under the Senate's rules he can do so. But yesterday's vote signaled that, once Feingold has exhausted his moves, the act will be renewed by the Senate before its scheduled expiration March 10. In explaining his continued resistance, Feingold borrowed a quote from Sen. Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is head of the Judiciary Committee and is the bill's sponsor: "Sometimes cosmetics will make a beauty out of a beast and provide enough cover for senators to change their vote."

WASHINGTON -- In a lopsided defeat for conservatives led by Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., the Senate has resoundingly voted down attempts to impose harsh new restrictions on the content of creative work funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.The Senate yesterday also approved by a margin of more than 2-to-1 a bipartisan compromise offered by 14 senators, led by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, to relax NEA restrictions enacted by Congress last year that have resulted in more than two dozen grant rejections and three lawsuits by artists and arts institutions.

The Maryland Senate last night followed the House of Delegates in approving $100 million for expansion of Baltimore's Convention Center, but the deal could be derailed because Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke is threatening to withhold the city's portion of the financing.Last-minute changes in the Convention Center bill made by the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee on Tuesday, which would make the state part owner of the building for at least 99 years, triggered Mr. Schmoke's threat to withhold the city's $50 million contribution.