Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Herald and news. (Klamath Falls, Or.) 1942-current | View Entire Issue (July 12, 1963)
PAGE HERALD AND NEWS, Klamath Falli. Oregon Friday, July U, Wtt EPSON IN WASHINGTON . . . UN Hikes Efficiency "Junior!" .'S-y. Of Special Programs i, . American lawyers still may not be facing their great responsibilities in this period of racial strife and constitutional test. It is commendable, of course, that lead ers of the bar have agreed to establish a committee to work for eased tensions. But this could mean no more than that lawyers would offer their services as nego tiators and pacifiers in difficult situations, : Just as any civic-minded citizens might do. : What is needed from lawyers is some thing they can contribute uniquely: a bright er, clearer light on the broad range of con stitutional controversies which have been stirred as the racial struggle has sharpened. The lawyers could start at an elemental level, with profit to all of us. For example, what are "civil" rights? To what extent are they federal in character, whether or not spelled out in the United States Constitution? ;; Article Nine of the Constitution's Bill of Rights says "the enumeration in the Consti Stution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." : What does that mean? Lawyers ought to be able to tell us what the courts and the country's best legal minds think. Then, what are states' rights? The other day, Gov. Ross Barnett of Miss issippi said "a state that loses the right to On its second try, the Air Force has suc ceeded in dumping 400 million 3-4-inch cop per needles into space around the earth. The object of the experiment called West Ford n is to create an artificial iono sphere which could be used to bounce ex tremely short-length radio waves between two points on the earth. The project was almost universally op posed by the world scientific community. Apparently, however, fears that the needles would Interfere with radio astronomy obser vations of the universe have not been borne out, although one Soviet astronomer has charged that the layer of needles is seriously hampering the study of outer space. Evaluating the scientific effects of the needles is something that will have to be left HOLMES By HOLMES ALEXANDER WASHINGTON, D.C. - In 1787 the Founding Fathers innocently wrote into the Constitution that "Congress shall have power . . . to rcgulato commerce with for eign nations, and among the sev eral stales and with the Indian tribes." This, the famous "commerce clause," is now the chief peg upon which Ally. Gen. Robert Kennedy has hung his argument of the Public Accommodation Act to integrate "substantial" busi nesses which provide public serv ices of food, lodging and enter tainment. In the Attorney General's opin ion "interstate commerce" Is only limited by the late Justice Jackson's words: "If It is inter state commerce that feels the pinch, it does not matter how local Uie operation which applies the squeeze." Thus, a customer at a local hot dog stand becomes protected by the commerce clause if he asks for mustard that has been brought across the state line. ' Senator Lausche has tried to bring the Attorney General back to the classical delinition of inter state commerce. For years it was held by the courts that an Item was "interstate" from the time it left its place of origin unUl it reached its destination and as sumed a static condition. The At torney General offered a list of federal statutes based on the commerce clause. They re lated to: railroads, automobiles, atomic energy, monopoly, com munications minimum wage, falsa branding of goods, coal mine safety, transport of explo sives and firearms, labeling of poisons, electrical transmission, gambling devices, "hot oil," tlie stock market, labor relations, nar cotics, meat labeling, natural gas. plant quarantine, tobacco, cotton and grains inspection, "All of that list," replied Lausche, "relates to health, safe ty and prevention of fraud." The Public Accommodation Act is something different. AlUiougli Let The Experts Speak exercise exclusive jurisdiction over its own affairs loses its political soul and its citizens have lost their most valuable freedom." The Key there, obviously, is knowing what is meant by a state's "own affairs." If a federal "right" conflicts with a state "power," which takes precedence? U.S. lawyers have been painfully reticent on this vital subject, though it is tightly bound up in the present racial turmoil. Southerners dispute the validity of the powerful 14th amendment, whose "equal pro tection under the laws" clause is the founda tion of so many recent Supreme Court de cisions. What do the courts, the lawyers and the legal scholars say about the soundness of this amendment's status as law? Who is sovereign, the federal government or the states? It may surprise many to know that the word is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution or any of its 23 amendments. A line in the Constitution's main body says "the citizens of each state shall be en titled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several slates." Those words are seldom spoken these days. What do they mean? The Constitution, invested with more im mediacy in our lives than ever before, cannot be the plaything of the amateurs. Let's hear from the strangely silent experts. Poor Precedent to the scientists. But it should not be diffi cult for laymen to understand one aspect of the West Ford project. This is that the United States is setting what may be dangerous precedents by com mandeering outer space for its own pur poses. A similar occasion was the exploding of a nuclear bomb in space last year against the protests of world scientists to create an artificial radiation belt. With such precedents established by our selves, we will have slight leg to stand on should the Russians pull off an experiment we don't like. Our professed desire to extend the rule of international law into space carries little weight when slacked up against what we actually practice. ALEXANDER Commerce Clause it is aimed at giving "rights" to purchase lodgings, food and entertainment by any well behaved person, the bill actually is one that imposes "obligations" upon the merchant of such serv ices. Kennedy thinks the act is mild because It contains no crim inal penalty of fine or imprison ment for violation. But the viola tor would be subject to Injunc tion. The courts would undoubted ly enjoin him to cease and desist in rejecting customers or risk being cited and punished for con tempt. It Is conceivable that fed eral troops or federalized nation al guardsmen would be used to force the door of a recalcitrant innkeeper or the landlady of a "substantial" boarding house. "Whore it will all end." to quote a famous parody on Time style, "knows God." The stretch BERRY'S WORLD ". Ani I'm Jim Formal. Welcome to our tilth fartyl" Cloudy ing of the commerce clause has gone on so long that constitution minded Senators despair of halt ing the process. Back in 193(1 Justice Mclieynolds, dissenting in the Fainblatt case, denounced the stretching process. He said: "Of course, no such result was intended by those who framed the Constitution. If the possiblity of this had been declared, the Constitution could not have been adopted. So construed, the power to regulate interstate commerce . . . permits disruption of our federated system." Said Lausche to Kennedy: "To cure one wrong, we must not create another by taking Con stitutional rights away from oth er people." Many will think that Lausehc's cause is hopeless. We must wait and sec. Whose Rights Being (In The Oregon-Statesman, Salem) By CHARLES SPRAGIE On July 4 some prominent clergymen were arrested at Bal timore on a charge of trespassing when they joined with persons of w hite and black races to enter an amusement park at the edge of the city. The park is privately owned, and the proprietor ex cludes Negroes. Tlie purpose of the march was to induce tlie own er to remove his race barrier and open the park for persons of all races. Among those arrested were Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, chief executive officer (stated clerk) of the United Presbyterian Church: Rabbi Morris Lerman of Baltimore; Monsignor Austin J. Healy, with six other Catholic priests; the Rev. Michael Allen, rector of St. Marks-in-the Bow eric (Episcopal), New York City. This was clearly a planned pro test by representatives of the Protestant, Catholic and Jewish faiths. Their joint statement said: "Central to our religious com mitments is the common teaching of our faiths that human rights, given of God. arc inalienable take precedence over property and must be guaranteed by civil society. "So motivated, we reluctantly agreed to break the letter of the law in order to direct the at tention of tlie faithful to the tragic gap between ideal and practice in our democracy a century after the Emancipation Proclamation." The proprietor of the park then issued his statement, saying that ordering the arrest of the clergy men "was the most difficult thing 1 have ever had to do." lie went on to say: "But after much soul-searching on tlie manner in which to protect the equally God-given right of our citizens to their private property, wo felt we could not show less courage than the men of the cloth. "Without attempting to dehale the philosophic theories involved, we took the practical sound busi nessman's approach of meeting the conditions of the world around us as we find them to be. and not perhaps as we would like them to be." There you have clear statements of the conflict which arises over demands for desegregation of places of public accommodation. Selection of customers or clients has been regarded as one of the freedoms enjoyed by a merchant or professional man; and it is hard lor persons to yield that light. On the other hand where the basis of selection is color and is loutulod solely on prejudice against daik skinned persons, a grave injustice is done those of that color. Tlie right of petition and of peaceful assembly it guaranteed under the Constitution; and tlie clergymen had tlie right to denv onstnlc in that manner. 1 do not think the obligations of their faiths require them n violate lo cal laws however. The dividing line on conduct in this situation was set luith quite clearly In Sen. Abraham Kihiroff. of Con necticut, who. as a Jew. is aware of prejudice vented against mi nority groups. Here is a para graph from his speech: "When citizens pc.uv.ibly as semble to make their views known, when they hold mass meetings to call allpiition to their grievances, they exercising a fundamental right in the grc.it tradition ol our country. Hut wlK'ii liiey disregard the right of os 1 ' i !i m t j, crs, when they obstruct the peace ful activities of others, when they contribute to public disorder, they place themselves outside the law, and they forfeit their claim to achieving their own objective the law's protection." At the same time it is difficult to hold respect for those laws and ordinances which attempt to en force segregation; and it must be admitted that the sit-ins in Southern diners and parks have broken down many old barriers. There can be no doubt that the country is in the midst of a real revolution in which Negroes are resisting the discrimination they have long suffered. The demon strations breaking out in cities and towns where Negroes are numer ous challenge the old mores. There is danger though that the movement will get out of hand, to the hurt of the Negro cause. When members of his own race By SYDNEY J. HARRIS In a recent magazine ad, the company mentioned "the enormi ty of our effort" to obtain a cer tain product. What Uie company meant was "enormousness," and not wickedness, which "enormi ty" has always meant. Why complain about a minor error of this sort, ask Uie mod ernists in speech? As long as people, know what you moan, what difference does it make which word you use? Besides, words change their meanings from century to century some times, almost from generation to generation. There is some truth in Uieir Al manac By United Press International Today is Friday, July 12. the l'.Wrd day of 1963 with 172 to follow. The moon is approaching its last quarter. The morning stars are Venus, Jupiter and Saturn. The evening star is Mars. On this day in history: In 100 B.C., Julius Caesar was boin. In 1862, Congress authorized the Modal of Honor. In 1912, American movie fans viewed a foreign lilm for the first time in American motion picture history. In 19-11. the Nazis cracked the Stalin Line and marched toward Moscow at a crucial point in World War II. A thought (or the day Writer Henry Louis Mencken said: "In justice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice." they" SAY... This laid to migrant labor' leg islation is directed at tlx needs of men, women and children who dct.pcratcly need Itolp. The ques tion is whether Congress ieels those needs strom.h enough. Sen. Harrison A. Williams iD N.J.l, on six ol his bills now before the House. i . m VI . ill. II'.. Usurped? throw missiles at Dr. Martin Lu ther King Jr. and James Mere dith who dared to break the bar rier at "Ole Miss" is brought to tears by jeers from Negroes that he is too "moderate," it becomes clear Uiat extremists are moving in who will offend the great body of white Americans w ho pray and work for justice for the Negroes. While decrying the excesses of the radicals in this revolution those who are sympathetic with the objectives would not be dis suaded from support of the gen eral program for erasing unjust discrimination, such as the legis lation proposed by Fresident Ken nedy. They should not be chicken hearted and desert the battle be cause some Negroes go berserk or some whites in their zeal to show sympathy for Uie cause go "too far," as the trespassing clergymen at Baltimore may have done. This battle will not be won without some bruises. STRICTLY PERSONAL position, but not enough to out weigh the disadvantages of using words loosely and sloppily. If "enormity" ceases to mean a kind of large wickedness, and comes to mean the same as "enormousness," then we have lost a valuable word, and gained nothing. One tool of language has been dulled beyond repair. Consider another more preva lent example the modern use of "disinterested" to mean "unin terested." Properly speaking, a judge is "disinterested" in a case that is, he is interested in an objective and impartial manner. This is a most valuable word to describe the role of a "disinterest ed party." If, however, it is used interchangeably with "uninterest ed," we have simply given up something for nothing. I don't believe that words should be preserved merely for t heir antiquarian or traditional value; the only test should be whether they fill a verbal need. When they do. we should resist all efforts to eliminate them or modify their meaning. "Imply" and "infer" are also losing their distinction: I "imply" by what 1 say, and I "infer" from what you say. If these two are used interchangeably, then com munication becomes even more confused. Since semantic confu sion is already so great in our society, loosening Uie bonds of meaning even further can only create greater mischief. We cannot prevent language from changing, nor should we. But the changes should be gradu al, sensible and advantageous. Purists, for instance, object to "contact" as a verb ("I con tacted John yesterday"), and in deed it is an ugly construct; yet it avoids the cumbersome "got in touch with" and dots not mud dy the waters o.f meaning. The other owning, a friend men tioned the phrase "the lion's share." Everyone uses it today to mean the larger part, when actually it means the whole part, in Aesop's fable. By distorting tins phrase, we are loft with no expression to indicate the situ ation in which the lion grabs the whole part. We are continually whittling down the language in this way, ami it is up to teachers, writers and other guardians of speech to protect us from the con sequences of our verbal folly. By PETER EDSON Newspaper Enterprise Assn. WASHINGTON 1NEA1 In spite of all its difficulties, the United Nations is now said to be begin ning to find its way around. In the opinion of Harlan Cleveland, assistant secretary of state for in ternational organization affairs, this is particularly true of the U..N. specialized agency programs in the developing countries that need help the most. The popular impression of the U.N. is that it is as clumsy and unsure of itself as most teen-agers. It is badly financed. It is not as well staffed as it should be be cause the principle of a complete ly impartial, international civil service has not yet been estab lished. Also, the split between Communist and free nations makes complete cooperation im possible. It may take tlie rest of this century for all these flaws of organization to be worked out by meaningful charter revision and the slow evolution of what U.N. can and can't do. One of tlie encouraging signs, Cleveland believes, is found in the appointment of U.N. "Resi dent Representatives" to coordi nate programs in countries being given the world organization's specialized agency technical as sistance. There are now 61 of these U.N. resident representatives serving in tlie developing countries. They act as top advisers to govern ment officials in the countries to which they are assigned and over see tlie work of two or more aid programs. In some countries the resident representative is given diplomatic status and ranked as an important consultant. In other countries he is considered just a liaison offi cer or a technician with a special mission in his own field of com petence. There is no established protocol governing the rank of responsibil ity of a resident representative. None is a native of the country to which he is assigned. George Ivan Smith, an Australian, is men tioned by Cleveland as a typical resident representative doing an outstanding job in Tanganyika. Present practice is for the resi dent representative to be ap pointed by the head of the U.N. Expanded Program For Techni- THE GLOBAL VIEW. Russia, China Have Same Goal For West By LEON DENNEN Newspaper Enterprise Analyst WASHINGTON (NEA) - What can the West gain from the quar rel between Russia and Red Chi na? Nikita Khrushchev's and Mao Tuse-tung's negotiators in Moscow are men equally intent on destroy ing democratic society in order to create a universal Communist state. Mikhail Suslov, the tall, gaunt and austere Russian who repre sents Premier Khrushchev, is a fanatic supporter of Stalin's tough policies in the Soviet Communist Party. Mao's top delegate, the dwarf like and crippled Teng Hsiao ping, is secretary of tlie Chinese party and a seasoned veteran of the dispute between Moscow and Peiping. Suslov and Teng. like Khrush chev and Mao, differ on the proper Marxist-Leninist strategy on how to "bury" the West. But their dispute is about the time ele menthow soon the burial should take place and not about the final goal. Does Premier Khrushchev therefore represent a "lesser evil," as some of the State De partment's perennial optimists seem to think? Should the West "rescue" the Soviet premier by . offering him trade, long - term credits and concessions on points in dispute between NATO and the Soviet bloc? Such a policy is strongly urged by Harold Wilson, leader of the British Labor Party, who is likely to . succeed Harold Macmillan as prime minister. It is backed by powerful West German industrialists like Berthold Beitz, manager of the Krupp Works and close associate of Bonn's incoming chancellor Lud wig Erhard. Bcilz has recently engaged in secret negotiations with Premier Khrushchev in an effort to drum up business for West German in dustries. However, in the view of life lung students of the Red conspir acy, the West has nothing to gain from a policy that would pull Khrushchev's chestnuts out of the fire. Such a policy was tried hv the Free World in 1921 when Ixn m manufactured his "New Eov mimic Puhcy." It only strength ened Moscow without advancing the cause of freedom. Mao seems convinced that the I niled States, tlie strongest NATO cal Assitance now David Owen of the United Kingdom with the concurrence of tlie U.N. Special Fund director for preinvestment planning now Paul Hoffman of tlie United States. The idea is growing, however, that these resident representa tives should be appointed by the U.N. secretary general and that they will become, in effect, U.N. ambassadors. It is believed that such a de velopment would give the U.N. increased status in tlie countries to which it gives aid. It would also simplify operations for re ceiving governments. First step toward coordinat ing the work of the U.N. special ized agencies has just been made in a recommendation to the State Department from its Advisory Committee on International Or ganization, headed by Sol M. Lin owitz of the Xerox Corp., Roches ter, N.Y. Its plan is to put U.N. Tech nical Assistance and Special Fund Planning a $250 million opera tion last year into the program. This is one of three reorganiza tion plans being submitted to Uie U.N. by the United States. The first dealt with improving the staffing of U.N. agencies. Some of the reforms suggested last year to Secretary General U Thant are now being put into ef fect. The final report, still in preparation, will deal with U.N. financial and budgetary opera tions which are still in something of a mess. The six-week special session of the U.N. General Assembly just adjourned in New York failed to come up with any permanent sol utions to the problems of how to make member countries pay their assessments. As of May 31, 11 nations owed a total of $556,000 on 1961 assess ments and 30 nations owed a total of S5 million on 1962 assess ments. The special session finally adopt ed seven resolutions which will tide the U.N. over tlu'ough Dec. 31. This year's assessments are now $11 million in arrears. But the same problem for next year will be back on the agenda of the new General Assembly convening in mid-September. It is generally ad mitted that it will take a long time to put the U.N. on a sound working basis. nation, is merely a "paper tiger" which will continue to appease the Reds in the face of "revolutionary pressure." The Russians have a healthier respect (or America's atomic might and determination to fight for its life. Their strategy is thus to lull Ihe suspicions of American "liberals." They hope that the Free World will "dig its own grave" as Lenin predicted by helping to strengthen the econ omy and military machine of the Red world. Suslov said this plainly in an article in Kommunist, Russia's Marxist-Leninist "bible." He said that Lenin "stressed the significance of socialist construc tion that would make Soviet Rus sia invincible" in the struggle of the "oppressed and colonial coun tries." He therefore "attached great importance to the attraction Of foreign capital to Russia, because it would speed up considerably Ihe building of large-scale Soviet industry." Suslov's comments in Kommu nist give in a nutshell the true na ture of controversy between Khru shchev and Mao. They also throw light on Moscow's current efforts to obtain long-term credits from West Germany. Britain, France and other NATO nations. Khrushchev seeks to undermine democratic society through limit ed Castro-style wars of "national liberation" while he strengthens the Red world's economy and mil itary machine. Mao wants a policy of revolu tionary brinksmanship. In his view. Communists at this stage should devote all their efforts to a single aim: the defeat of the West, especially the United States. Why. then, should the West for feit diplomatic initiative bv back ing Khrushchev against Mao since both aim to destroy the Free World? QUESTIONS AMD ANSWERS Q How many known moons has the planet Neptune? Two. One revolves around it from east to west, the second from west to east. Q - What dale did Franklin Roosevelt raM th, itf whrn 'U live in Infamy"? A - December 7, ml iPiarl Harbori.
