When asked what impact this rule had on newsletters, Barbara Dahlke, press secretary to Ethics Committee Chairman Sen. Howard Cannon (D-Nev.), said a number of offices simply stopped producing them. "I'll bet some offices are having a tough time changing their style," she said. As for Cannon's newsletters, Dahlke said only "minor changes" were needed to comply with the rule.

Enforcement of Senate rules regarding franked newsletters supposedly rests with the Ethics Committee. But when asked if committee staff would screen every newsletter, a committee counsel said it was "impossible" and "too much to expect." The attorney said employees of the Senate Service Department--the printing and mailing wing of the Senate bureaucracy--would have to police violations. Connie Sullivan, one of three typists in the Senate composing room, said she already has sent back to some offices newsletter drafts that clearly violated the five-references-per-page rule. But she refused to accept responsibility for the enforcement of the newsletter rules.

"We're not going to read every line and police every newsletter," she said. "It's up to the press secretaries to keep in line. That's not our job."

Common Cause attorney Guido said the Senate's self-initiated restraints on newsletter content were "improvements," but "do not solve the fundamental problem of unfair privilege" in the use of the frank. Scott in his floor speech remarked that the lobby group's suit "seeks to stop completely and entirely this type of communication with constituents under the frank, although it is clearly part of our official duties under the Constitution as elected representatives of the people."

"We have no choice but to oppose as vigorously as we can an attempt, in effect, by Common Cause to amend the Constitution, and make us something less than representatives of the American people," Scott said. In later response, Guido asked, "Why should the taxpayer bear the burden of all this propaganda?"

Richard H.P. Sta '75, a former Crimson editor, is press assistant to Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii).