Believe it or not, Congress actually needs more people like Sen. Trent Lott, who announced his retirement Monday.

The glib Lott, R-Miss., is a seersucker-loving Southerner whose conservative political views couldn't get him elected in Philadelphia to a seat on Traffic Court. But he brought a quality to Congress that more lawmakers need: He got things done.

Few elected officials in the last 35 years have shown more flexibility than Lott to work with the opposing party.

He brokered a balanced-budget deal in 1997 with the Clinton White House. He sponsored legislation with Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., to boost Amtrak funding and improve inner-city rail service. He set up an abbreviated impeachment trial of President Clinton in 1999 that spared the country a more drawn-out spectacle, despite intense criticism from Lott's party. He took heat from his conservative allies for supporting a sensible, bipartisan compromise on immigration reform with Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.

Not all of these efforts were successful. But if there was an important deal being hashed out in Congress, Lott, 66, was usually involved. That spirit of seeking out compromise increasingly is missing on Capitol Hill.

Some people prefer to remember the Trent Lott whose racially insensitive comment five years ago seemed to express nostalgia for segregation. He apologized and paid a political price — he was forced to step down as Senate majority leader. Then he showed his character by working his way back to become the Senate's second-ranking Republican. That ugly episode should not define his career.

Lott had other flaws. He was excessively effective at bringing home federal pork for Mississippi's shipbuilding industry. But more than most in Congress, Lott was the face of negotiation.

The GOP probably won't lose Lott's seat. Republican Gov. Haley Barbour must appoint a successor to serve through the 2008 election. But Lott's retirement is another sign of the trouble facing Republicans. He is the sixth GOP senator to announce retirement this year; at least 17 House Republicans also are retiring. Life in the minority is taking its toll on the GOP, which badly needs new leaders.

— The Philadelphia Inquirer

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."That's what the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment says. Last week the Supreme Court agreed to decide what it means. It could be the most far-reaching decision on guns in almost 70 years.That's when the high court rejected the notion of an individual right to possess guns for purposes unrelated to state militias. That 1939 decision allowed room for the federal government, the states and the District of Columbia to regulate and restrict gun ownership, and that has frustrated gun-rights advocates ever since. The case the court agreed to hear next March challenges D.C.'s 31-year-old handgun ban.The Supreme Court shouldn't reverse this settled law.A ruling that establishes a precedent for an individual's constitutional right to possess guns would open the floodgates and drown the courts in challenges of the existing, rational restrictions on gun ownership. And a sweeping decision could mean that the nation would soon be awash in ever more firearms.With an estimated 192 million privately owned guns already in the country, that we don't need.<B><I>— Newsday, Melville, N.Y.</I></B>