ORDER OF BATTLE.(anticipating the war in Iraq, possibly followed by another in North Korea)

One of the dramatic moments in Robert Caro's "Master of the Senate"--a book in which few moments aren't dramatic--involves a bit of intrigue with an official called the Reading Clerk of the House of Representatives. After the House passes a bill, it is the duty of the Reading Clerk to carry it across the Capitol Building and formally present it to the Senate. In Caro's book, a feckless liberal senator attempts to waylay the Reading Clerk so that a civil-rights bill from the House doesn't get into the hands of the arch-conservative Senate Judiciary Committee, but the masterly Lyndon Johnson somehow maneuvers the clerk across the jam-packed Capitol Building unnoticed, so ...