AUSTIN — As devout subscribers to the never-miss-an-opportunity-to-rejoice theory of government (we don't get that many chances, so we can't afford to pass them up), we now give thanks and hallelujah to the 52 members of the United States Senate who really voted to increase the minimum wage Tuesday. OK, so it's not exactly bliss-it-was-in-that-dawn-to-be-alive, but it's still the first raise in six years for the poorest workers in America, and it sure beats having in-laws on the honeymoon.

Special thanks are due Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who did all the heavy lifting on this one. As a C-SPAN junkie, I cherish fond memories of Kennedy, who is truly a master legislator, trying to tack his little-bitty let's-vote-on-the-minimum-wage amendment onto every piece of Republican garbage that has come sliding through Congress for months. He was especially fond of adding it to awful bills by Sen. Jesse Helms, who always obligingly became apoplectic. I suppose we should also thank the election year — nothing like an election year to make pols do what's both popular and right.

We could even thank Sen. Christopher Bond of Missouri for providing us with a perfect working definition of the phrase "a gutting amendment." Bond's "friendly" amendment in support of "raising" the minimum wage would, of course, have nullified the raise for the majority of minimum-wage workers, thus gutting the bill.

And here's why most voting guides, especially those put out by politicians, aren't worth the paper they're printed on. The record will show 74 senators voting in favor of raising the minimum wage this year, but only 52 voted to kill Bond's amendment. The Republican crossovers were Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, Ben Nighthorse Campbell of Colorado, Mark Hatfield of Oregon, James Jeffords of Vermont and Al D'Amato of New York. D'Amato, though, waited to cast his vote until the good guys had already won and then joined — a most D'Amato-like thing to do.

In other political news, former Gov. Dick Lamm of Colorado has announced for Ross Perot's Reform Party nomination. I will admit in front of God and everybody that I am soft on Lamm — have been ever since I covered him for The New York Times in the late 1970s. I thought he was, as they say, presidential timber even then.

Lamm has the most delightful habit of just thumping out with God's honest truth, especially the kind that other pols avoid because it's so unpopular. Although I disagree with him on many issues (most notably immigration — there are a lot of folks higher on the list of suspects for screwing up this country than immigrants), I genuinely respect him.

OK, OK, so he, like, misspoke himself in the now-infamous speech about prolonging the lives of the terminally ill. What he meant is that terminally ill folks don't necessarily need all kinds of expensive treatment to keep them alive long past the point when God intended for them to float out peacefully, preferably on a cloud of morphine. OK?

Lamm is dead right about the Social Security entitlement; there's no reason to extend it to rich old folks. Just to name names, Ross Perot dudn't need Social Security — get real.

He also has a sense of humor. In years past, the small miners of Colorado used to hold a rowdy annual shivaree and hoorah at Idaho Springs called the Sowbelly Dinner (for all I know, they still do). Now, these are some of the most right-wing folks on Earth, and they have as much use for environmentalists as they do for the human immunodeficiency virus. They not only hated Lamm for advocating a severance tax on mining, but Lamm's environmental czar, Harris Sherman, who is as green as the beer on St. Paddy's Day, was driving them nuts with regulations. Sherman was bugging them about polluting creeks, cleaning up waste and otherwise getting in the way of a man's God-given right to create an unholy mess for all eternity in an effort to get rich.

In the late 1970s, after the daylong blowout, two miners covered with helmets, goggles and coal dust appeared at the dinner and spent 45 minutes telling some of the funniest, meanest, raunchiest Lamm-and-Sherman jokes even the miners had ever heard. The audience howled. The two miners were Lamm and Sherman, and when they took off their helmets, Lamm had a bunch of new friends.

Lamm himself says his chances of getting elected president, even if he wins the Reform nomination, are 1 in 10. Make that 1 in 100. Even so, he may be able to do even more than Perot did four years ago in terms of (A) making the race more interesting and (B) changing the focus to something a bit more relevant than Bob Dole's age or President Clinton's appetite. Just the fact that Lamm is already focused on campaign finance reform makes him an invaluable player.

With the R's and D's poised to slide through this election year without ever talking about the Elephant in the Living Room — income distribution in this country — Dick Lamm can make a real difference. As it said in our old Dick-and-Jane readers, "Run, Dick, run."

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Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.