The 70th Congress convenes on Capitol Hill with immediate political fireworks. The big battle dominating the first day is the Smith-Vare election dispute—two competing Senate candidates whose contested seats threaten to consume the entire session. Senator Frank Smith of Illinois, a gray-haired former Illinois Commerce Commission chairman, was literally stopped at the Senate dais by a resolution from Senator George Norris (R-Nebraska) declaring him ineligible. Meanwhile, William Vare of Pennsylvania didn't even attempt to take his seat. In the House, fresh partisan combat erupted when Republican James M. Beck of Pennsylvania—chief counsel for Vare in the Senate fight—was allowed to take the oath only after a 243-157 vote, with his eligibility immediately referred to an elections committee. Nicholas Longworth of Ohio was re-elected Speaker, but the warm organizational glow faded fast. President Coolidge's annual message awaits tomorrow. The real legislative work sits idle while Congress feuds.

December 1926 marks a rare moment when party machinery grinds loudly enough for everyone to hear it. The Smith-Vare dispute exemplifies the 1920s collision between old-guard Republican control and mounting questions about electoral legitimacy—both candidates claimed victory in contested elections, and the Senate faced real constitutional questions about seating authority. Meanwhile, Alabama's Senator Tom Heflin's quote about Al Smith's inevitable defeat captures Democrats' internal anxiety about their own front-runner heading toward 1928. The era's prosperity masked deep partisan wounds that would widen considerably in the coming year.

• Vice President Dawes opened the Senate session 'with a vigorous bang of the historic ivory gavel'—suggesting the Senate's ceremonial mallet was genuinely made of ivory, a detail that speaks volumes about 1920s attitudes toward endangered wildlife.
• The Rev. Z. B. Phillips, rector of Epiphany Episcopal Church in Washington, was elected Senate chaplain to succeed the late Rev. J. J. Muir—the chaplaincy was apparently considered important enough to fill on day one, yet no one anticipated the Smith-Vare chaos enough to schedule him for actual prayers.
• Only 417 of 435 House members were present on opening day—three absent senators (Du Pont, Jones, Walsh) were noted as 'detained by illness,' yet the newspaper gives no detail on what ailments kept them away during such crucial votes.
• Charles H. Elston, co-counsel for George Remus (the bootlegger on trial for murdering his wife), took public responsibility for Remus's refusal to testify, claiming it would 'only waste time'—a bold legal strategy that appears to have backfired spectacularly.
• The Advertiser's front page devotes enormous space to congratulatory letters to publisher Frank P. Glass, including messages from U.S. Congressman O. W. Underwood and the New York Herald-Tribune's Howard Davis—suggesting Glass's return to Alabama was a major media event treated with unusual prominence for what would normally be a local business story.

• The Smith-Vare dispute mentioned here would ultimately consume the Senate for months. William Vare was finally denied his seat in December 1927 after the Senate concluded his 1926 election involved excessive spending—a decision that set precedent for modern campaign finance concerns nearly a century before Citizens United.
• James M. Beck, the House member caught up in the eligibility fight, was a genuinely distinguished figure: former Solicitor General of the United States. Yet he faced party-line voting suggesting even prominent Republicans weren't safe from electoral challenges in this era of machine politics.
• Senator Heflin's quote dismissing Al Smith's viability proved prophetic—Smith would indeed lose the 1928 election to Herbert Hoover in a landslide. But Heflin's comment also hints at something darker: Smith was Catholic and from New York, and Heflin (an Alabama Democrat known for fiery oratory) represented the regional and religious tensions fracturing the Democratic Party.
• George Remus, the bootlegger on trial for murdering his wife, had an estimated interest in nine distilleries worth approximately $1.8 million—approximately $30 million in today's dollars. His willingness to let his wife 'go' during her affair with federal agent Franklin Dodge speaks to the Prohibition era's bizarre entanglement of law enforcement, organized crime, and federal power.
• The newspaper's masthead proudly announces itself as 'Constructive, Fearless, Independent'—the very same qualities Frank P. Glass's return supposedly guaranteed. Yet within a few years, The Advertiser would become a lightning rod for controversy, and by the 1960s would be central to Alabama's Civil Rights struggles.