I Swear By [Fill In the Dewey Decimal System Number]

This week's political cleverness award, the first for the new Congress, has to go to Keith Ellison.

The Minnesota Muslim, elected to Congress in November, will take the oath of office like every other member of Congress -- then he'll use a Koran for his ceremonial personal oath administered by his party boss, Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Aagh! The Koran! Yes -- but the Koran he'll be using once belonged to Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson even put his initials in it -- maybe some of his fellow Founding Fathers were the kind who borrowed books and ''forgot'' to return them.

Still, it's hard to outwit the witless. Ellison's future colleague Virgil Goode, a Virginia Republican, warned against more Ellisons in Congress in a letter: "If American citizens don't take up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration, there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran."

It's the Constitution that members of Congress swear to uphold -- not anybody's religious book.

But for those personal oaths, what other books might be regarded as sacred enough for swearing in -- secular in scope, maybe, but such immense power and influence as to deserve reverence? Shakespeare? William Blake? ``Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''? How about Newton's ``Principia,'' or Darwin's ``The Origin of Species'' and ''The Descent of Man''? Or Action Comics #1, the debut of Superman?

All right, then, let's play Fantasy Congress -- what book would you choose?

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