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Wednesday, November 18, 1987 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Pride and prejudice
The Palestine Liberation Organization is not a group the United States cares to deal with.
With little respect for human life, its members terrorize countries simply to gain recognition it considers deserved.
But it recently made an offer the United States cannot refuse. With apparently no strings attached, the PLO has offered to arrange the release of the eight U.S. hostages held in Lebanon — if only the U.S. will ask.
His Wendell a Catch, what is the U.S. waiting for?
Certainly we should not have too much pride to ask for the PLO's help, nor should we heed objections from Israel for dealing with the PLO.
A spokesman for the PLO said it would not even require the U.S. to appease its demand for full diplomatic recognition.
Understandably, the U.S. may be a little leery of such an offer because it seems too good to be true. Yet this may be the only chance the U.S. has to gain release of the hostages. Their well-being should be more important than Israel's whining and our arrogance.
Of course, the U.S. should make sure the PLO doesn't change the rules. As it stands we have little, if nothing, to lose. But if we don't accept the offer, we have eight innocent lives to lose.
Flunked test
Something is rotten in Washington.
And this time it is drug testing.
Since 1985, police there have been testing women recruits for pregnancy under the premise of testing for drugs. Washington law prohibits the discrimination of women because of pregnancy, but secretly testing women for pregnancy obviously affects their job placement. Police administrators would likely hesitate before hiring a pregnant recruit.
Although there is a need for drug testing in certain cases, the practice violates our right to privacy. Airline pilots, for example, need to be tested because they hold the lives of hundreds of people in their hands.
But when the testing goes further than for drugs, a safety precaution becomes hazardous. Rights violated blatantly opens the public to even more injustices. When will employers draw the line in what they test for?
Because such a wide variety of information can be learned from urine samples, drug testing must be done in only pertinent cases and with much supervision. When our privacy is no longer guarded, all else is superfluous.
Detectable flaw
The United States Army has contracted with Red Eye Arms Inc. to develop plastic firearms.
But the National Rifle Association wants the plastic weapons to be available for civilian use also.
For gun owners, plastic firearms would be great. They would be cheaper, weigh less and be undetectable by security metal detectors.
The lower cost would promote higher gun sales. Now everyone could own a gun.
Since they weigh less, they would be easier to carry around, and you could carry more guns at a time. Instead of only being able to carry one bulky metal gun, you could now carry three plastic guns without any discomfort.
And best of all, you would be able to take your guns on airplanes. Even though the company developing the plastic firearms are working towards making them detectable, for the time being you are free to take them wherever you wish.
A gun could come in handy on a plane. If a flight attendant doesn't get your drink order right, just wave around the plastic gun; chances are, the order will be corrected. Of course, being able to take a gun on a plane makes the hijacker's job easier, too.
Obviously, permitting plastic guns for nonmilitary use is preposterous. Our country is in danger enough from metal guns.
Editorials in this column are the opinions of the editorial board.
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Paul Stephen Lim in the Nov. 10 Kansan stated that "a quick look at the names of those who advocate no union reveals them to be for the most part ex-administrators, ex-chairpersons and very senior faculty near retirement."
K·A·N·S·A·N
MAILBOX
Lim has had a quick look indeed; otherwise he would have seen that the published membership of the KU Independent Faculty includes persons of all ranks and ages in departments and schools throughout the University. Yes, there are some ex-administrators and ex-chairpersons. Some of us, like me, are senior faculty, although far from retirement. All of us are serious professional people who do not want to sacrifice our professional status for the promises of the union organizers.
Nominee 'faces the universe'
I am in sympathy with Lim's status as an underpaid, part-time employee. He is a gifted playwright and deserves better. I am sorry that he smokes and expects those who do not to pay equal premiums for health benefits. He says he will not vote for the group that calls itself "Independent Faculty." We have not asked him to vote for us. We are not another union. Rather, we have asked all of our colleagues to consider carefully the pros and cons of unionization and join us in voting "No Representative."
Marion E. Bickford, professor of geology
Vote 'No'
Press bludgeons willing soul with trite questions
"Welcome to another edition of 'Face the Universe.' Our guest today is Sen. Arnold Bland, who is a Democratic candidate for president. The questioning will begin with Jane Peeper, correspondent for National Public Radio."
"Thank you. Senator, I would like to ask whether you have ever used marijuana, and if so, on how many occasions?"
"Yes, I have. I used it once while I was in my third year of undergraduate studies."
"And where did this use take place and who provided the marijuana?"
friend, who also provided the substance." \
"Who. was this. friend and what. is he now
"No, you should perfume the substance.
"Who was this friend and what is he now doing?"
doug:
"Ernie Blidge. He is now a lawyer in Boston.
...
"That won't be necessary. Do you recall what type of manipulatives it was?"
"I believe it was described to me as being Maui Wowie."
"Could it have been Acapulco Gold?"
"Could it have been Acapulco Gold?"
could it have been Akapuco Gold?
"I don't believe so, although it is possible.
"And how much of this alleged Maui Wowie did you smoke?"
"Early in the evening, I had one joint by myself. I later shared another joint with my date and Ernie and his date."
"Thank you, senator. The next questions come from Bob Woodhead of the Washington Post. Bob?"
"Uh, senator, did you experience any kind of high from that marijuana use?"
"Yes, there was a noticeable high."
"Did it cause you to giggle?"
"Yes, there was a certain degree of giggling." Could you tell us how much giggling occurred?
"My giggles, or the others?"
Todd, S. sn.
"That would be difficult to meeu."
"That would be difficult to measure."
"Well, would you say it was continuous?"
"No, I would describe it as intermittent."
"And there was any upoarious laughter?"
"As I recall, I did laugh uproariously."
"How many times?"
"I would say about three times."
"What provoked this uproarious laughter?"
"On one occasion, it occurred to me that a lampshade looked exactly like my Aunt Thelma. And I laughed again when my friend Ernie counted his toes and determined that he had 11."
"Thank you, senator, and now for a question from Sam Slambam of ABC news."
"Senator, a moment ago you said you laughed uproariously three times. But you provided details of only two of those uproarious outbursts. Are you refusing to answer that question fully?"
bo, Sah; it was all bersign on my part.
"Then what was the reason for the third
action?"
"No, Sam, it was an oversight on my part."
"That was when I went to the washroom and entered a closet by mistake."
"Did you recognize my mistake in time to avert an embarrassing experience?"
"The next question will be from Jason Pompass, of the New York Times. Jason?"
"Uh, yes, senator, would you please outline your position on the reduction of nuclear weapons?"
"Very gladly. First, I would propose to the Soviet Union that they . . ."
"I’m sorry, senator, but we’re out of time. Thank you very much for being our guest."
Futile nomination based on revenge
Douglas Ginsburg, we hardly knew ye. It seems just the other day that Judge Ginsburg was being introduced as the president's next choice for the Supreme Court. Now, like Robert Bork, he is not so much a has been as a never-was. It took Judge Bork months to go from nominee to rejectee. Judge Ginsburg went from introduction to withdrawal in a matter of days; he always was a fast worker.
It was like watching a band of pygmies first encircle an enigma and then, against all probability, manage to trap it. When Ronald Reagan first introduced his second nominee for this same, still vacant seat on the court, reporters and researchers were sent scurrying to the files, where they found precious little under Ginsburg, Douglas. Then came more false leads than in a good Agatha Christie story:
First, it was said the nominee had written a brief for the Justice Department in favor of more freedom for cable television companies at a time when he had a considerable stake in one. As it turned out, he held about $140,000 worth of convertible bonds in a Canadian cable company when he was arguing against granting cable companies exclusive licenses. The case did not involve the Canadian company specifically. And its American subsidiary had warned potential buyers of its stock that, if cable monopolies were outlawed, just as Ginsburg was arguing that they should be, the value of its stock would decline, not rise.
Other arguments, rumors, suspicions and vague wisps succeeded one another in dizzying succession. Other than a very American tendency to engage in extracurricular ways to make money, nothing solid developed.
And the nominee was said to have smoked marijuana a few times in the '60s and '70s — a charge only a little more serious than having
taken a drink during Prohibition. Like many other members of the spaced-out generation, some of whom are now running for president of the United States, he had experimented in his younger years and had stopped. The process is called growing up.
It wasn't anything Judge Ginsburg had done that bothered serious court-watchers but what he hadn't. The president had nominated a 41-year-old appellate judge with about a year's experience on the bench, and no apparent distinction off it, for a seat on the nation's highest court. One waited for the Senate Judiciary Committee to plumb Judge Ginsburg's depths without any great confidence that he had any.
But such an act of simple fairness and relevance turned out to be unnecessary. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely, it was the dope charge that did him in. Whoever dug it up and ran with it to be credited with a certain political genius, or maybe just low cunning. The revelation didn't bother his natural opposition on the Left, where the general reaction was a sensible "So what?" But the news offended and alienated the base of the judge's support — the moralistic, which is not at all the same as moral. Right. There has seldom been such a display of sanctinity outside the pages of Dickens. God may forgive, but some of those who press to speak in his name won't.
It soon became evident that it was not Judge
Ginsburg's natural enemies that would do him in but his erstwhile friends. His nebulous jurisprudence, far from dooming his nomination, would not even be examined as his nomination went up in decades-old smoke.
It is hard not to share Orrin Hatch's judgment on the administration's performance in this case: "I think there are a certain number of people down there at the White House," said the senator from Utah, "who have no guts whatsoever." The president declined to tell his nominee to step down, but he didn't object to having his secretary of education pass the word. The official praise of Ginsburg as he withdrew was an unctuous and unconvincing as when he was first put forward. "I commended Judge Ginsburg for his record and qualifications when I announced his selection," Reagan said, "and I commend his selflessness and clear thinking now." But Ginsburg's record was brief and his qualifications tenuous when the nine-day circus started. And if the nominee really had been selfless and clear-thinking, he would have volunteered at least some of this potentially embarrassing information to the administration before he was nominated.
For that matter, the administration doesn't seem to have been thinking very clearly itself. From the first, the nomination of Ginsburg resembled an act of revenge for the rejection of Robert Bork. Here the Senate had gone and turned down a judge whose every opinion and change thereof had been duly recorded.
Very well, the White House seemed to be saying, if a known quantity is so unacceptable, here's an unknown one — unknown apparently even to the White House itself. It seemed as surprised as anyone else by the appearance of the parade of pdecadilles. Result: The administration wound up punishing itself. That's usually the result of seeking revenge.
BLOOM COUNTY
by Berke Breathea
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