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Tuesday, September 30, 1975
University Daily Kansan
Flesh-pressing deadly
This open season on President Ford is sickening.
It makes no sense to blame the whole country for the actions of a few lunatics, but it doesn't.
First, let's encourage President Ford to take back his dare to continue mingling with crowds. His refusal to back down to the lunatic fringe is admirable, but his statements after the Sarah Moore incident might make him a more desirable target to those who would take his dare.
If the President continues to dare the law, books will continue take shots, take hits at him.
We don't have to have a hermetically sealed President, whose glimpses we can catch only on television. On the other hand, during this cycle of madness, President Ford should be more reluctant to mix with crowds. One of these incidents seems unfortunately to lead to others.
Second, we can encourage our congressmen to enact some form of gun control. We should also against gun control, even to the point of overkill. But we may suffer another
form of overkill unless we regulate the use of handguins.
Gun control legislation might never be
won't have much imprecise effect on
Registration of handguns wouldn't mean confiscation, but it might enable us to keep a closer check on who has guns. Such a move could stem the continual swapping of, and shopping for, Saturday night specials.
We've gone through a skyjacking phase; now we must hope this shooting-thePresident phase will pass before another disaster occurs.
Of course, any action we take won't remove the possibility that another lunatic will try to kill the President. But the president at least retract his dare to the kooks.
At least it would be a step toward
dangerous unregulate
weapon float out around you.
By cutting down on mingling with crowds and trying to press less flesh, the President won't be acting cowardly. He will be acting sensibly.
Ward Harkavy
Contributing Writer
Retaliation saves lives
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is an ancient and often repeated concept of justice, but the question of its constitutionality is still hanging in the
In 1972, the Supreme Court ruled by a 5-4 decision that the death penalty was a form of cruel and unusual punishment, in cases involving premeditated murder.
The Court is about to take another look at that stand, however. And in Missouri, the death penalty was reinstated in cases involving premeditated murder.
Opponents of the death penalty argue that it isn't effective as a crime deterrent, that no one has the right to sentence another person to death and that the purpose of the American penal system is to rehabilitate criminals, not to execute them. Perhaps the death penalty isn't an effective deterrent to crime. The thought of death simply doesn't bother some criminals. During the 1969 trial of Charles Manson, one of his codefendants, Susan Atkins, expressed her willingness to go to the gas chamber if Manson was freed.
In one sense, however, the death penalty could be a deterrent to future crime. Countless studies have shown that the death penalty is ineffective in rehabilitation programs and in fact,
often alienate criminals from society even more.
When a mass murderer such as Manson, who has spent more than half of his life in prison, is sent to jail with a chance for parole, society might once again be subjected to his heinous crimes.
It's true that the constitution forbids cruel and unusual punishment, but "cruel and unusual punishment" isn't clearly defined. A fast, painless death in the chamber doesn't seem nearly so crual as a brutal and fatal stabbing or shooting.
The constitution also states that no
the one can be deprived of his life or
no one can be deprived of his successes of law.
When someone is given the death penalty after he has had a trial by jury and the option to appeal if he thinks his conviction is unfair, then he is obviously not being deprived of his life without due process of law.
In some cases, where criminals are so hardened or crimes are so hideous that rehabilitation seems impossible, perhaps the "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" doctrine is the best one. There are instances where only by taking a life for a life can society protect itself from violent crime.
Jain Penner Contributing Writer
Kansan Forum / from old cars to modern English Manual steering thing of the past/
My car is a 3-year-old Buck.
It has power steering, a padded
steering wheel about a foot in
diameter with two stylish
buttons that sound little
button that sound the horn at
the more hint of pressure.
As I went to pick up groceries yesterday, I noticed a 57 Dodge parked next to my car. It was the color of Pepto Bismol, a chalky pink with an off-white top. I paid no attention to it at first, but the sort of my car, I noticed the Dodge's steering wheel. It was a magnificent wheel with three spokes and concentric rings of chrome and smooth white plastic. It must have been about twenty years old when the center was a cataviometer-sized button for the horn, the kind you could pound with the butt of your fist.
For a moment as I stared at the Dodge, I would have swapped my car for it in an even trade.
It stirred memories of my uncle Jess, who used to take me with him in his DX gas truck as he delivered gas to farmers in Missouri and Missouri. He really had to work to steer that heavy truck. I used
to watch him work up a sweat backing out of some farmer's narrow, crooked driveway. That was his job and it was heavy work. I respected him for it.
After work, in the evenings,
he would take my sister and me
to the local Dairy Queen in his
57 Chevrolet. It also had a big
a steering wheel. And on
Saturday afternoons, when Jess
would take us uptown to the
laboratory liquor store, we both sat in
backseat as he as spun the
wheel powerfully in an effort to
horse the car out of a tight parallel parking spot.
On the other hand, there was my uncle Jimmy. Jimmy retired in 1956. He was relatively young and prosperous and the first thing he做了 in retirement was new '56 Buick Century, one of the first models with power steering.
Jimmy often gibed Jess about the tough parking situations he had been in and out of, spaces that no man with conventional sense could reach. Jess paid little attention. Years behind the wheel of a truck had
given Jess the arms and shoulders of a light disc thrower. Jimmy had the arms and shoulders of an anemic 12-year-old. In fact, he used to squeeze a rubber ball as he played with his hands to keep up the strength in his writing hand.
And then there was my own father. In 1963, after years of anticipation and saving, he ordered a new Buick Invicta station wagon with every option except power windows, which he didn't trust. Of course, the car had included a pair of steering. I remember the first day he picked me up from school in the new wagon. I had been as excited as anyone about the new car. But it was odd, after 10 years of watching my old man wrestle with the grand piano. And so he saw him bamyin fingers clamped around a dainy steward wheel that could have fit in a lady's handbag.
A few weeks later, he was driving with only three fingers. Soon after that, he gave up quail hunting in the fall and took up rock climbing. He kept it back in summer. Now he's contemplating retirement.
This all brings to mind the Ukrainian farmer who on his 163rd birthday decided to retire. Four days later he died. I would venture to say that if his tractor had had power steering, he wouldn't have made it past his 158th birthday.
And while Congress considers taxing, high horsepower engine is the only thing I consider heavier耳扇 steering. Few people would opt for a 472-cubic-inch Cadillac if they had to maneuver all that power.
As for that Pepto Bismol 157 Dodge, I might have gotten the better part of the deal.
Nuclear warning signs unheeded/
America just can't seem to take a hint. Many times in the past there have been ample warning signs of some coming problem that the United States misread or ignored. While most people favored the Vietnam war at its outset, Gen. Douglas Bentley was against such a conflict and the news reports said we were losing years before any leader would admit it.
Richard Nixon was looking for a way to conduct his war in peace and Huston was the man with the plan.
Similarly, our government and industries have ignored both ecologists and geologists who said in the early '80s that
He was one of the "youths"
Richard Nixon never tired of
"killing us abounded in the White
America's energy supplies were rufous to the environment and their industries are now advocating nuclear energy as the answer to our fossil fuel fires, but they warn of attention to the warning signs.
An indicator that "the peaceful atom" won't bail us out of our energy problems came recently when a photograph announced it might not be harboured in the delivery of uranium after 1978. It has been estimated that Westinghouse will fall 70 million
Mary McGrory
WASHINGTON — Tom Charles Hushen brought a little touch of Watergate to the CIA and Mr. Hidalman strode back on into the Caucus Room with the fond, fearful phrase: "Bob didn't spend much time explaining to a junior staff member."
CIA bearings sound familiar
Huston was 29 at the time he composed the Huston Plan, which was a modest proposal to rob, tap, burgle or open the mail of anyone the Nixon administration didn't like.
House, but he seems to have been born old, and he illustrates new Nixon's fatal predilection second-second and the half-baked.
Huston was brought in as an "expert" on the anti-war movement, he have been given by Young Americans for Freedom contemp to the law—in which he is license—must have further recommended him to his masters. It was perhaps one of Richard Nixon's little jokes to destroving the Constitution.
His calm—he was eternally filling or cleaning his pipe—plainly unnerved the committee. Speaking in his grainy voice, which faded like a poor recording, he apparently struck
One after another attempted to lecture in the fashion of Watergate Committee Chairman, Sam Evin, whose power on the Constitution entralled the country two years ago.
them as the reincarnation of some famous Watergate penitents like Jeb Stuart Magruder, and the senators, except for Walter Mondale, D. Minna, who is displaying contempt or form as a tough prosecutor, succumbed to Ervinits.
The trouble was that Huston's contrition, like everything else about him, was half-baked. He was a fan of R-A-T-I-Z, his recommendations had been illegal and led down "dangerous roads," but when Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-A-T-I-Z, offered relief to Huston, his old paranoid flared.
They quoted Brandeis to him. They read him the Fourth Amendment, Sen. Charles McC. Mathias, R-Md., gave way to Nixon nostalgia and wished about that the President had in
the long ago "Operation Candor" confided in them as Huston had.
He even asked Huston, "Where do we go from here?" It was like asking an arsonist for fire-prevention tips.
"I think there are people who want to destroy this country and will go to any lengths to destroy it," he said, clinging "revolutionary violen-
to 90 million pounds behind its delivery schedule by 1990. Uranium prices that have more than tripled since the oil empires of Iran and Saudi Arabia finance sufficient uranium exploration and development.
ce," the Nixon euphemism for the anti-war movement.
It was it left to Mondale to unravel Huston's snarled thought processes. If it was true, the man who opened his mail, why did Huston justify it in 1970 on the basis that all those exercises were allowable under the pressure of security powers? Which was it!
Huston said that everyone knew that "black-bag jobs" had been common under previous administrations.
But even if we could find enough uranium, and even if we could use it to tinue on their current upward spiral, should our energy policy continue to include reliance on the new nuclear power plants?
Mandale reminded him that "if criminals could be excused on the grounds that what they did had been done before, there would not be much population in the prisons."
destructive. What is at issue is the chance of such a disaster taking place.
Several studies commissioned by the AEC and various nuclear industry groups analyzed the chances as too small to work about-anywhere from a million-to-one up to 100 billion-to-one. The problem with these studies is that the probabilities are low, so safety devices that safety devices designed to cool down the fuel core will operate properly. However, these devices, in years of use have yet to perform properly in simulated emergencies.
Greg Hack
A more realistic estimate is that such an accident will happen about once in every 10,000 reactor-years of operation. This was the finding of a study known as WASH-740, conducted by the University press. However, after years of hiding these findings from the public, a court forceed the AEC to release the report.
We have almost 50 nuclear reactors now and three times that number either under construction or on the drawing desk at Burlington, Kan. Do we really realize what we are doing?
The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) estimated that an accident could kill up to five million people, cause $17 billion of property damage, and increase the size of Maryland. Few dispute that a nuclear accident would be almost unbelievable.
The safety of nuclear power plants has never been proved. The explosion like a bomb, its fuel could melt together and escape from the plant, spreading to activity in deadly amounts.
are to have 1,000 reactors by the year 2000,2004 in-10,one-hundron translates into one catastrophe every 10 years.
Energy development in the past has unleashed choking air pollution, oil spills and the ravages of strip mining. Now we are told, 'This time power. We are told, "This time be safe."
As in the old Watergate hearings, we went through the familiar and still startling story of the conspiracy that our liberties. Huston said tonelessly that he thought the old watchdog had resisted the scheme for territorial imminence rather than principles.
Government deception and industry negligence in the past have cost us many lives and industry keeps building nuclear facilities, doesn't know whether they are safe or whether they will have the fuel for them in a few years. The government has willfully suppressed information concerning the safety of reactors.
But this time, it's for keeps.
Huston never had a chance to tell the President that. Haldenman never admitted him to the Oval Office. The committee might have been better employed asking Huston why that was so important, and baseboard for constitutional rhetoric. Nobody cared about the Fourth Amendment, Huston said.
Huston's real regret, it seems, is that Richard Nixon never called the old man in and ordered him to shape up.
"They never gave a thought to it," said Huston, telling us something we already knew. c) 1975 Washington Star Syndicate, Inc.
Why couldn't that administrator, faculty member or teacher be effective, college teaching must be evaluated regularly? There is a linguistic fad these days to combining and the clear abstruse.
Babble tower hides ideas
A sportscaster says that a basketball player forecourted the ball. Too bad he couldn't have driven in and basketed it. There is a class at the University of Kansas in intra- and inter-personal relations. That's gobbledygook.
Writers, and especially speakers, use the words 'basis', 'level' and 'biennium' where they superfluous. Capital jargon shows one is fashionable; redundancy is substituted for emphasis. Nouns are used as verbs. A string of adjectives indicates a noun; it indicates the adverb of a noun—used as a noun this time.
Any day now someone will say, "In order to be effective, the teaching situation at the school must be evaluated on a regular basis."
Thus one hears: If the input programming is truncated, regrettably, output can't be correlated for feedback analysis. One receives advance knowledge and tells the author that it is in contrast to warning not given in advance and planning behind.
Continual use of overstatement by advertisers and others has devalued many words. A terrific new soap incries no terror, and a stain in the skin is horrified. The horrify. "Weird" no longer carries images of witches and the supernatural.
Threats to the language today are more pervasive. Written and spoken English are becoming polluted and diluted. Words that once conveved ideas has been broken and housed in the readers now pass over them without comprehension.
Slang and slap words have always been part of the English language, and their use today isn't alarming. "Groovy," "tup tight" and "far-out" once served as a form of purpose, they served no enduring purpose, and consequently, they disappeared.
Some pessimists say the
John Hickey
decline of language is a sure sign of the end of a civilization. Yet, one doubts that the recent attacks on civilians “hopefully” to mean “I hope,” or “it is hoped” will lead to the fall of the West. Although clear evidence suggests not “guarantee clear thinking, they are conductive to it.
Neither should esthetic considerations be forgotten. The brutal cacophony of today's English often drives one to seek respite in the literature of the past—if only precision and clarity were as contagious as inexactness and obfuscation.
As Edwin Newman says in "Strictly Speaking," "If we were more careful about what we say, and how, we might be wrong. If they didn't know those for whom words have lost their value are likely to find that ideas have also lost their value."
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