UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorials
unsigned editors represent the opinion of the Kansan
staff. Stated columns represent the views of
only the wife.
December 3
Dole too ambivalent
Sen. Robert Dole is running for the U.S. presidency. He's also running for the U.S. Senate again, and the GOP's offshore is casting tax-payers $1 million.
The $1 million is coming from the matching funds for the first $1 million in campaign contributions raised for Dole's presidential campaign. The problem is that Dole's own staff admits he has hardly any chance to win a nomination, almost because he is going to spend a lot more just to make a point.
THE POINT, according to his staff,
is that Dole has something to offer the
American public that the other presidential candidates don't have—a decent image. As one staff member absurdly put it, "When you start analyzing the other candidates, you find that they either have been indicted for something or that their wife is in some institution."
That clean-cut image, however, is forgotten when the pages of recent history are flipped back to the 1974 Senate race against Bill Roy, a campaign that both camps admitted was full of dirty politics.
Dole has never been indicted, and his
wife is not in an institution, but the question is not one of his wife's stability. Rather, the question is what does Bob Dole have to offer the people of Kansas by running for both renewal of his Senate seat and for an unlikely opportunity to take up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
THE ANSWER is growing more visible each day—not much. Dole is not expected to stay in the race past the April 1 Kansas primary, at which point he will probably switch his effort toward the Senate race.
So what Kansans get is Dole presidential publicity paid for with matching federal funds, even though it wasn't expected to make a run at that office.
As a result, by November, Kansans will have been inundated with Dole publicity, working to the disadvantage of the other candidates. More serious is the possibility of the indebtedness Dole will have to those interest groups who have found it worth the risk to pump money into both campaigns.
Dole could save Kansans, and untold thousands of dollars, from the duplicity of his campaigning by now showing which office he wants to win.
Donating organs, blood not equal to abortion
To the Editor:
In a recent letter by Mary Davidson, there is an argument which is based upon a comparison made between the choice of a human being and a nature-stance," such as an organ or blood, and the choice one has of whether or not to abort a fetus. As a result of this faulty comparison,
The reason her comparison does not hold can be seen by reflecting upon her statement that 'the dependence for life of the fetus in a woman's body requires the mother'
Just what does this mean? I can understand and agree with someone who says that the event of conception should require a mother's consent to have her timed dependence of a fetus' life requires the mother's consent sounds strange. I think it means that the mother has kind of negative consent—that is, its consent of continued life given to a fetus is consent by way of not consenting to ter-
TO SAY THAT the woman's consent is a positive consent sounds strange because a woman really has no choice in giving consent. This allows her only can be consent take life in. All normal cases a woman need only take care of herself and nature will take care of the child. A woman who gives her fetus requires the woman's consent in this negative way, the comparison between this choice and the choice whether or not one will donate a "vital substance" does not
As a result of this mistaken identity between these two kinds of choices, Mary argues that if the law is allowed to regulate one's choice concerning abortion, what is to prevent it from regulating one's choice in matters of organ donation. Also implied is that wrong to regulate one's choice in the latter is wrong to regulate one's choice in the former's choice in the former.
YET, AS has been pointed out, the choice involved in the donation of a "vital substance" is a choice of whether or not one
will give up that which will contribute to the well-being of another, whereas the choice of abortion is a choice as to whether or not one wishes it will result in the destruction of another.
There is no inconsistency in saying that one should have a choice as to whether or not they will help someone in a positive manner and yet say at the same time that if they were to make an error, they will result in harm. In fact, many of our criminal laws assume such a distinction.
Alan J. Hicks
Lawrence graduate student
Letters Policy
The University Daily Kanzen welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typewritten, double-spaced and include a subject line. You should include the writer's name, address and telephone number. If the writer is affirmed by the editors, should include the writer's class and home town or faculty or staff position. The Kanzen reserves the right to edit the letter if you are satisfied that it has delivered personally or mailed to the Kanzen newsroom, 112 Flint Hall. Because of space limitations, the right to edit letters for publication.
After a two-year barrage of complaints from Vietnam veterans, the federal bureaucracy is finally lumbering into motion on the subject of Agent Orange.
Action on Agent Orange long overdue
Since 1977, veterans' organizations have demanded financial compensation for the wives who were exposed to Agent Orange, the poison used on the Vietnam immer from 1965 to 1971.
Veterans have claimed that exposure to the deadly chemical dioxin, which is an ingredient of Agent Orange, has caused skin cancer and birth defects in children's
SO FAR, the Veterans Administration has scouted at their crimes. Of 675 claimed cases, only 38 had been treated for dislodged payments. And that 20, only two cases—both skin diseases—have been officially attributed to Agent Orange exposure, the rest, according to the VA, insurance data.
While the VA has kept itself busy dosing any health effects from Agent Orange, the Defense Department has contended that few trousers were even exposed to the deulfent.
out, finally, at the vocal insistence of thousands of veterans. Congress has begun to look for the truth in the controversy.
LAST WEEK, the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative arm, released the results of a study of troop contact with Agent Orange.
The study contradicted, in no uncertain terms, the Pentagon's claims that troop exposure was limited.
Almost 6,000 Marines were headquartered at 600 yards of spares area on the island of Samoa and were throughout the war, the study found. Furthermore, 16,000 additional Marines were stationed that close within four weeks of spraying—while the chemical was still
Information about Army troops was more sketchy, but still showed extensive exposure to Arent Orange.
WHAT VIETNAM veterans have known all along has been documented by Congress. Now what?
The Veterans Administration and Defense Department continue to study health effects of pesticides in the environment that the Environmental Protection Agency has found it too hazardous and has banned it.
But the government is in no hurry with those studies.
A VA "Advisory Committee on Health-
Related Effects of *Hericides* has promised to make its report in two years. The advisory committee was formed only after a "steering committee" failed to quiet the outrage of veterans who are worried about their health and fearful of having children.
TWO MEMBERS of Congress, Sen. John McCain and Senator Bob McCain, didn't want to wait for the official, final acquiescence that Agent Orange has served with the health of the men who served in Vietnam.
They have sponsored a comprehensive Veteran veterans bill that would compromise the requirement of the defoliant. The bill would establish a "presumption" of a connection to the veteran.
All 2.4 million vets who served in Vietnam would be eligible for benefits. And the children of those vets who have certain problems also would be covered.
or will has some VA officials worried,
"I don't know where we'd draw the line," said Charles Peckarsky, the VA's compensation director.
IT WOULD mean "at least 600,000 claims," he said.
That's a great deal of money, especially since the Heinz-Donor bill would increase disability payments by 9.9 percent.
And there is bound to be some fraud. As one veteran's representative at the Topeka animal hospital, he was anxious to establish the connection of service-related disabilities in case VA hospitals become too crowded to handle those who were not disabled while serving in the argyrean region.
Even with those hazards, the bill is a necessary and long overdue action. It is necessary, but not because a few hundred dollars is meant to pay for the pain of cancer chemotherapy, nor because it is essential to treating it by reaching a child struggle with a deformed hand.
Rather, it is an important bill because maybe, in its expense, it would stand as a reminder of just how costly our in-use materials are. If we used chemicals may one day prove to be.
Paraphernalia laws threaten rights
By MICHAEL ANTONOFF
BY MICHAEL ANTONOFF
N.Y. Times Special Features
The law was drafted at the request of the White House by the Drug Enforcement Administration in the hope of destroying the visible signs of a culture with an appetite for marijuana, hashish and cocaine.
NEW YORK-Federal officials have begun disseminating a model law that would prohibit the sale, display and advertising of pipes, clips, containers, scales, spoons, sifters, bowls, blenders and envelopes. Property rights would cease and sellers could be jailed and fined if the manufacturer deemed suchwares intended for use with a newly donated submarine.
The House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control on Nov. 1 summoned to Washington people in the business of drug paraphernalia to answer for their involvement, with Matias Jr. of Maryland has assumed significant hearings.
INDIANA, GEORGIA, North Dakota and Oyster Bay, N.Y., have already enacted paraphernalia prohibitions. A similar bill awaits the governor's signature in New Jersey. The state legislature has vetoed his state's version as "clearly unconstitutional."
While penalties for marijuana possession have softened, a whole new form of prescription is erupting around its accoutrements. The law is so looped that in places like Brookings, Ore. (the first state to decimalize pot taxes) there are laws against the presence of marijuana and a packet of ZiqZag cigarette papers, he can be forced for the pot but jailed for the paper.
THE LAWS become even more absurd when a mirror is perfectly legal until the word "ecocarro" is imposed. The law states that if a woman is impaired until it is attached to a plastic marijuana leaf and thereby, according to the model law, becomes an illegal "roach
Obviously in these cases, the lawmakers, the intent has been given away. They don't seem to care that the most basic of American institutions—free speech—has been swept away.
The problem with laws directed against intentions is that it is really being legislated against anyone. In thought, as Mr. McDonnell said in his op-ed "communism"; the witch hunt is "Who does drugs in high places?" Drug laws, as always, are a potent political
THE NEW McCarthyism is where a scale manufacturer issues a blacklist of dealers its distributors should avoid because they allegedly sell to "head shops." A Long Island store offers the same service, and that drill devices so it can "print the list for all to see."
The new book burners are Rep. Henry Hyley, R-III, who said in the Committee that if he had read a booklet about fire safety, it would have cited it cited the National Organization to Reform Marijuana Laws as a source of information about pot. "I would have
The new right has in the last two years successfully shifted the public spotlight away from decriminalization to
the plea of "save our children." No one wants children smoking pot, but to scapegoat by stigmatizing legitimate business makes as much sense as banning swizzle sticks to prevent alcoholism.
MANTIME, THE flow of illicit drugs has not been reduced one lot. Instead of being used to go after drug dealers, limited law-enforcement funds and personnel are diverted to persecuting shopkeepers. Atlanta-area retailers that sold paraphernalia have all but been wiped out because seizures of merchandise and arrests of clerks and owner-
What about their customers? Some have stocked up. The vast majority don't seem to care that a right they have taken for granted is being taken away. They can always go back and buy it now. Don't put off cardboard. People don't need paraphernalia to get high.
ON THE ISLAND OF Jamaica, where cigarette bags are illegal, users roll their herb in torn brown bags. The smoke is blackened. In America during the 1920s, cost-conscious men would use a small packet of cotton-based customers ready to pull a bag over their heads again? It seems they already have. A generation to whom杖 was the pincushion contained is wake up in the 1980s to discover it is the cigarette pack.
Those of us who came of age in the last two decades assumed that the country was becoming more attuned to civil liberties now, but it's time to look again. Instead of the pot dealers going toail, the pine salesmen are.
Michael Antonoff is editor of Accessories Digest.
By JOHN PEPPER
BY JOHN LEIPER
Y Times Special Features
AN NAN FRANCISCO "Sometimes I think," a deaf Irish lady of long acquaintance occasioned to me over a drop of the good staff, said he was stunned and screamed on. But I'll tell you for a fact," she
added, dabbing at her eye, "if I live to be a hundred, I'll never forget the night the gossy kissed me."
It took a heavy-handed portions of the poten to wheelie the story from her, but it was apparent that neither 40-year old boys nor teenagers had recollection of a summer night in Ireland when a 18-year-old lass and a peripatetic tinker's lad had waited under a rainstorm under a bridge. "I live only to close my eyes and listen," she said, real enough to take my breath away. "It did.
Maude's TRYST with her nomenic lover pipped into my head the other day while I was at work (formerly the British Leyland Motor Company) would discontinue production of my toy car. And so until I too closed my eyes and experienced my recollection of a gypsy's kiss under
It was no moss-covered cover沪 over an enchanted stream in Erin's emerald hills. it was, in fact, the Erie Railroad treatle in proxas Paterson, N.J., under which I took a picture there once in 1984; no matter, no model M1 first saw her a -red TC model M1
I had never before (nor very little since) cared a fig about automobiles, having concluded at an early age that such things are not worth the rewarding and the pursuit of more animate partners, but the longings that stirred in Maude's breast could not have been greater than mine. My wonderment must have been the mistake of驾驶, ride, and I made the mistake of尝食.
THE SHOO ME to her boom, did the MG, and I was lost forever to Detroit's Ruben-seque road hegs. Nubile and nimble, lilean, that leax can car cast her spell on me
as we singed the night air. We were made for each other; no fat-hipped, puffy miniature like the subcompacts of today, she was. . . sufficient.
Paraphrasing a well-known limerick there was room for your lass and 10 gallons of gas. Who could want more? Maude was enraphed by a gold earring; for me, it was those 19-inch wire-spoked wheels. She left the bridge—bride—and under a spell I want her still.
said Maude with sigh. "Being sensible, of course. I never did. But I often wonder..."
"He asked me to run away with him,"
Ggypsy lovers have no need for sensitivity to the jacket once, and then move on. Maudie will keep it on her waist, but you should keep an eye out, while passing under a ladder, the Irishwoman and a queer chap with a driver.
John Peter now lives in California where he has a platonic relationship with his wife's 14-year old Nova.
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