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Wednesday, August 30, 1989 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN Ban on plastic foam a step in solving world problem
Saturday was a good day for environmentalists. And for Lawrence's little section of the Earth.
The decision this weekend by the University of Kansas Memorial Corporation to ban use of all plastic foam products on campus is not only commendable, but is a step that had to be taken.
Environs, a KU student environmental organization; the environmental studies department and the University itself are making headway on a problem that could have been ignored.
Our environment is in such a state of crisis that it would have been easy for the University to dismiss the problem, claiming that a campus ban wouldn't make a bit of difference.
The recycling bins installed on campus last semester began the fight against product waste. This beginning, however small, helped University officials and students realize that recycling isn't impossible.
In fact, with new recycling depots in Lawrence and Topeka giving aluminum cans, paper, plastic and glass new life is pretty easy.
Replacing the foam products in the Kansas and Burge unions and in Wescoe Terrace is going to take some time and some extra money, but it's good to know that KU isn't so caught up in making money that it can't see the long run.
Students might have to absorb some of that cost by paying 5 or 10 cents more for soft drinks, but it doesn't seem like a lot to ask. When we ask for change and get it, we should be willing to change as well.
And because the University was willing to bend some, students should be willing to use recycling bins for disposal when the new paper products arrive. Banning plastic foam won't solve all the problems. Students need to take some responsibility and walk a few extra feet to a recycling bin.
It's a small price to pay for a world that we should never take for granted.
Deb Gruver for the editorial board
Owen's questionable deals cause headaches for state
It appears former Lt. Gov. David Owen is at it again, making life uncomfortable for yet another Kansas politician. This time it is Gov. Mike Hayden who is in front of the cameras trying to explain Owen's financial transactions
The Kansas Bureau of Investigation launched an investigation last Wednesday into allegations that Owen violated the state's campaign finance laws by making excessive contributions to Hayden's 1986 gubernatorial campaign. The Kansas Public Disclosure Commission said last Tuesday that Owen made $32,000 in illegal contributions.
Hayden has returned the $32,000, even though he said that was unnecessary.
Off-camera, the controversy has delayed construction of a racetrack in Pittsburg because of Owen's involvement with the potential operator, Paul Bryant Jr. of Alabama.
A consent decree issued by the public disclosure commission found that Owen received a $100,000 consulting fee from Bryant in October 1986 and the next day Owen arranged for 11 contributions to Hayden's campaign.
Owen claims he did not violate the state campaign finance act, which limits contributions to $3,000 for gubernatorial campaigns.
This is the standard response from a man who seems to operate in an ethical gray area. In 1988, he was forced to resign as national finance chairman of Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole's presidential campaign because of questions raised about his involvement in Elizabeth Dole's blind trust and other financial dealings. Although no one accused Owen of wrongdoing, Sen. Dole said at the time, "If there's an appearance of bad judgment or misjudgment or somebody's got a problem, he just ought to step aside."
Owen's problem is that he can't seem to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. His dealings may not violate the law, but they raise the question of impropriety and create unnecessary headaches for those he presumably tries to help. Unfortunately, his problem has become Hayden's problem and delayed progress — not to mention revenue — on a racetrack approved by Kansas voters.
As Hayden tries to extricate himself from this controversy, Owen should take Dole's advice and step aside from further dealings with Kansas politicians. The state would be better off.
Daniel Niemi for the editorial board
News staff
David Stewart ... Editor
Ric Brack ... Managing editor
Daniel Niemi ... News editor
Candy Niemann ... Planning editor
Stan Diel ... Editorial editor
Jennifer Corser ... Campus editor
Elaine Sung ... Sports editor
Laure Husner ... Photo editor
Stephen Kline ... Graphics editor
Christine Winner ... Arisa/Features editor
Tom Eblen ... General manager, news adviser
Business staff
Linda Prokop ... Business manager
Debra Martin ... Local sales director
Jerre Medford ... National sales manager
Eric Hughes ... Marketing director
Jill Lowe ... Marketing director
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Carrie Slaninka ... Asst. production manager
Margaret Townsend ... Co-op sales manager
Christine Googan .. Classifier
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Flag-burning issue blinds Congress
As summer winds down, momentum is building to reverse the Supreme Court's decision giving First Amendment protection to those who deserate the U.S. flag.
Amid the posturing and blant attempt to make political currency of the issue, real legislative energy is being channeled into it. This is effort that otherwise could be spent addressing heavy-weight problems, such as the effective interdiction of smuggled, illegal drugs or patching the yawning crimes in the nation's health-care safety net.
This effort, in other words, proclaims that flag-descrifting has joined, or perhaps usurped, these forces.
For instance, there is little cry for a constitutional amendment to guarantee basic medical care for everyone. Yet that's the sort of measure being put in for response to the flag-desecration decision.
President Bush posed in front of the sculpture replicating the famous photograph of the flag-raising on two Jima and called for an amendment to the Constitution that would specifically ban flag-burning. Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole is sponsoring that amendment in Congress, and Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del, is sponsoring a federal statute prohibiting flag desecration.
What are the prospects for these proposals? They are cloudy at best for a federal statute. After all, the recent decision in Texas vs. Johnson narrowly affirmed flag-burning as a speech-related form of expression that enjoys First Amendment protection. In that case, the Supreme Court overruped a Texas statute forbidding the "desecration of a venerated object," in this case the U.S. flag. It's not clear how a federal statute might be tailored narrowly enough to weather the strict constitutional scrutiny applied in the Johnson case.
An amendment to the Constitution would avoid such pitfalls altogether. Francis Heller, a retired
Stuart Beals
Staff columnist
KU law professor and constitutional scholar, recently explained that a properly drafted and ratified amendment would become part of the Constitution and could not by definition be unconstitutional. Heller said that there was no intrinsic hierarchy among the amendments to the Constitution and that there was no reason to believe that the First Amendment would prevail over another amendment specifically prohibiting desecration of the flag.
This would be a remarkable development. So far, the Supreme Court has held that the government has failed to show a sufficiently 'compelling' evidence of the restraint of speech and speech-related actions.
Indeed, the counsel for the state of Texas in the Johnson case conceded that Gregory Lee Johnson's burning of the flag was a form of speech, but he has said that it is a compelling interest in restricting such activity.
So what is the government's interest that is so compelling that Heller thinks that the proposed amendment would "breeze through" the ratification process? This question was put to Dole, who spoke through his press secretary, Walt Riker. Specifically, he was asked, was it the symbol itself, the flag, or was it what the flag represented that the senator seeked to protect with this legislation?
"It's a close call, as close as 5-4," Riker said. "It's a very strong case on either side, but when it comes to crunch time, we're going to come down in favor of protecting the flag."
Asked whether he meant the physical flag, or the symbol of the flag such as may be found on candy wrappers and Mrs. Bush's scarf, Riker responded: "We're not protecting the fabric of the flag, we're protecting the fabric of the country."
There is the compelling interest. Apparently the sponsors of the amendment, and 71 percent of U.S. citizens cited by a recent Gallup poll as supporting it, fear that acts such as Johnson's threaten the welfare of the United States.
This is sobering indeed. We cannot see fit yet to prevent the entry into our country of cocaine and heroin, genuinely lethal threats to the stability of society.
We cannot yet see to fit ban the sale and private possession of automatic weapons.
We cannot bring ourselves to ban the advertisement of tobacco products, the addictive use of which causes more fatalities annually than alcohol and carbon monoxide accidents, homicide, suicide and AIDS combined.
Is there something so powerfully malign, so inimical to the existence of a democratic society in the burning of a flag that it presents the sort of substantive evil that Congress has been mandated by the Constitution to prevent?
Or is there something about the mette and
resilier of this society that makes especially
tightly connected?
These are the kind of soundings of the body politic that a nationwide debate about the proposed amendment will provide. The body could use such scrutiny now.
It's always healthy to air the submerged agenda of values and insecurses of a citizenry in a democracy, but it's certainly ironic that a form of discussion may become a casualty of the process.
▶ Stuart Beals is a Lawrence graduate student in journalism.
Democrats need renewed character
The problem with the Democrats — well, one problem — is they want to win by acting like Republicans. So they hold strategy sessions, take polls, search out the best Republican issues, try to put a Democratic sheen on them, hope that'll do the trick . . . and lose. They decode to go for moderation rather than principle and wind up short of both. They run somebody like Mike What's-His-Name for president, then wonder why they lost and why their presidential chances remain bleak.
The explanation is simple: If the American voters prefer Republicans, why should they accept an imitation when they can get the real thing? Democrats will continue to lose as long as they continue to run as unconvincing Republicans. If they want to be Republicans, they should join the Republican Party. (Occasionally a southern congressman does.) But most Democrats stick with the party; they want to win the way Republicans win while remaining Democrats, which is why they sound phony.
The Democrats may think they're a party in search of an image, issues or just better luck. In reality, they are a party in search of character. They used to have it. It came so naturally they didn't have to think about it, let alone study the polls like a witch examining entrals.
They had Harry Truman. They had Sam Rayburn. They had Scoop Jackson. Hubert Humphrey may have been the last of the Democratic candidates in that vanishing line.
Paul Greenberg
Syndicated columnist
Now the Democrats are fumbling the flag issue the same way they fumbled the fuss about the Pledge of Allegiance last year. Result: They're
managing to make a divisive issue out of what ought to be a simple, patriotic, bipartisan consensus. Again.
If there are any Democratic politicians who sincerely believe that burning the flag should be a constitutionally protected form of freedom of speech, they aren't the problem. Their stance might not make sense to many of us, but they would deserve respect for sticking with their principles. They would have demonstrated character even if they risked re-election.
More troubling are the masses of Democratic politicians who say they want to protect the flag but suggest the most indirect, ineffective means of doing so — like a federal statute or some wessekwordeed state law rather than a constitutional amendment. When they adopt such a stance, or rather such a straddle, they don't simply evade the issue; they play games with the supremacy of the Constitution and the rule of law. If a constitutional ruling by the Supreme Court could be overturned by congressional act, then the Constitution would no longer be the supreme law of the land. John Marshall made that point some time ago in Marbury vs. Madison. Besides, there is already a now useless federal statute against flag desca-
tion: Title 18, Section 700, U.S. Code. Why pass another one?
Democratic leaders surely know that. Yet they persist in looking for ways to protect the flag without protecting it, as if they were allergic to a simple solution to a simple problem. Why do
mocrats keep producing these not-very-con-
cusing objections to a concise, limited constitu-
tional amendment? It must be some kind of death
wish. Can you imagine Harry Truman hesitating
on this issue? Or Sam Rayburn? Or Scop Jackson?
Those opposed to a simple constitutional amendment can produce an infinitude of fanciful objections: Might not burning a photographic reproduction of the flag be a criminal offense under this new amendment? What about the flag that some newspapers carry on their mastheads, or publish with advertising? Could people still throw away their papers with impunity if it were illegal to dishonor the flag? If a guy has a flag tattooed on his arm and never takes a bath is he desecrating the flag?
Such oh-so-serious questions were no big deal before five-ninths of the Supreme Court ruled that flag-burning was a constitutional form of protest. Why should they loom large after We the People correct the court's misinterpretation? That correction should be made in the clearest, simplest, most proper, constitutional way — by using the amending process spelled out in the Constitution itself.
Paul Greenberg is a syndicated columnist.
MAILBOX
Cartoon degrading to KU
On Monday, I anxiously opened the University Daily Kansan to read what new events were happening around campus. After turning just two pages of the newspaper, I came across an editorial cartoon that was disgraced and demeaning to the University of Missouri in a condom covering the Campanile.
This memorial was built in remembrance of the 279 KU students and faculty who gave their lives for this country in World War II. Today, students and alumni still look upon the Campanile as a symbol of Jayhawk spirit.
Last year, there was a myriad of advertisements condoning the use of birth control devices on this
Mike Doyle
Mike Doyle Kansas City, Mo., senior
The Kansan is a great asset to our campus — try not to turn away faithful readers. Carefully consider the form that such cartoons may cause.
campus. The message is stated clearly by handouts that are given out on campus, condoms that are given away and numerous advertisements that appear in the Kumu library, and programs to degrade our own University?
Photo wasn't Oread block
The photo featured on page one of Section E (On The Town) of Wednesday's University Daily Kansan (On 23) is part of the 600 block of Tennessee Street. That neighborhood is part of Old West Lawrence, not Oreand. It makes me wonder if you couldn't find an attractive picture of an Oread block. Or was it just too much trouble to take the time?
Lisa Rasor Lawrence resident