
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, April 3, 1994                   TAG: 9404050139
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: B-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

JESSE HELMS

IT IS somehow typical of our national myopia and penchant for distractions that, to become law, "Goals 2000'' did not merely have to pass muster on its merits.

The education bill also had to get past a filibuster by the perennial candidate for America's worst senator, Jesse Helms of North Carolina.

To heck with the Constitution and courts, not to mention the purpose of the legislation at hand; Helms attached an amendment to deny federal money to any public schools that don't allow prayer.

When the Goals 2000 bill came back from a House-Senate conference with a less rigid version of his prayer provision, Helms balked, and blocked. The revised provision restricted the use of federal funds to adopt policies preventing voluntary prayer. But that didn't, to Helms' liking, sufficiently threaten church-state separation. He wanted more mandatory language.

The senator's other complaint with Goals 2000? It constitutes undue interference with local schools.

by CNB