Editorials
IRS set-back seen
It is one of his toughest cases—the criminals are really tricky and must be apprehended soon.
Dick Tracy has some new leads on the Matty Square case. The atomic-powered television camera has flickered on and off several times showing a pair of feet and a few other clues. Watching closely, Tracy is able to see the Go Starch Company. Now, maybe he'll have a chance to find Square and his boss.
With guns ready and nerves tense, Tracy and Sam board their magnetic air cars and go whirring away to the starch factory. Once the location of the portable TV camera is pinpointed, they check their two-way wrist TV to see if the pictures are identical. Everything checks. With caution they go into what could be a trap. Instead they find Matty Square's body well cooked in a tub of boiling water.
TRACY'S A PRETTY clever guy. With the aid of many electronic devices—some shipped directly from the moon—criminal napping becomes a highly scientific job. But for Tracy's cousins, of the Internal Revenue Service, the job might become a lot harder very soon.
The federal government is now collecting material for possible legislative action to stop the use of electronic devices in eavesdropping and what some people term snooping. Two weeks ago a three-day hearing was held in Kansas City by a Senate subcommittee to gather information and "make the public aware of the danger individual privacy faces," Senator Edward V. Long, committee chairman, said.
The investigations are concentrating on the Internal Revenue Service and the Post Office. More hearings will be held for at least another year in various cities over the country.
As the hearings continue, the Justice Department maintains that organized crime convictions have increased tenfold over the last four years. The Internal Revenue Service has developed 60 per cent of the cases.
To combat organized crime is not quite as simple as soaring off in your magnetic air cars to the Go Starch Company. Catching tax evaders is a tough job. Sheldon S. Cohen, commissioner
of Internal Revenue, says furtive, underground activities go hand in hand with organized crime and can be uncovered only by special techniques and equipment.
IN ORDER TO BE effective, the IRS has trained its agents to use special electronic and miniature equipment. Yes, some mistakes have been made, as Cohen admits, and departure from the IRS policy on such equipment must be avoided.
Yet to pass legislation prohibiting the use of such devices in the fight against organized crime would be a major setback in the IRS effectiveness.
In Kansas City last year an average of 15 men investigated organized crime. Twelve are investigating this year. In two years 27 convictions have been obtained. Nine persons were jailed and the others were fined or put on probation. This type of crime detection must be continued.
In the fight against organized crime and the little people who are perhaps the outlets for larger syndicates, the IRS and other such agencies must respect the rights of an individual. Privacy is one of these rights. A reasonable balance must be reached between the rights of citizens and the rights of society to protest itself.
TO RESPECT THE rights of the individual the IRS has prohibited the use of illegal wiretaps or unreasonable searches or seizures. Oneway mirrors and permanently installed recording machines in IRS offices have been removed. Mail covers—a method of checking where the letter is mailed—can be used only in fugitive criminal cases and in integrity investigations of IRS employees.
With the electronic devices, well controlled to protect the right of privacy, the IRS can continue an effective war against organized crime. If the federal government prohibits the use of these devices, the IRS agents will become Fearless Fosdicks—underpaid policemen who have nothing but their guns to fight the ultra-scientific criminals evading the law and pilfering the nation's tax dollars.
- Suzy Black
Today's fiction light
Light fiction fills the shelves these days. Take Don Robertson's A Flag Full of Stars (Crest, 95 cents)—a big book that takes one day in history, that November day in 1948 when Harry Truman scored an upset victory over President Dewey, and shows what everybody was doing. There are both sex and entertaining social comment, and the book will be forgotten a year from now. And Agatha Christie's The Mouse-trap (Dell, 45 cents) — short stories that go back to 1925, with such folks around as Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple.
Plus Mary Stewart's This Rough Magic (Crest, 75 cents), which gives up another damsel in distress in exotic and highly Gethic holiday country. This time the troubled heroine is an actress, come to Corfu, involved in various assorted violence and terror. Louis Anchincloss' The House of Five Talents (Dell, 75 cents) is a quiet and evocative story about a big family living in a big house in a kind of Edith Wharton setting. We
We were thinking...
Order and simplification are the first steps toward the mastery of a subject—the actual enemy is the unknown.
—Thomes Mann
start with the Gilded Age and move up to modern times. And Elizabeth Goudge's The Scent of Water (Crest, 60 cents) is a fragile and charming story, woman's magazine stuff, always well written, about a woman in
an English village and her search for the meaning of life.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
2 Daily Kansan Thursday, November 4,1965
by Dick Bibler
On the side
KU Kigmys kick back
There's been an awfully lot of talking and analyzing going on as to why our fighting Jayhawks haven't been fighting.
After careful consideration and weighing of some outside factors, I feel I have the problem solved. (Just in time too, for the Nebraska game)
Sports authorities have said that Kansas is simply not big enough to supply a first rate football team for its state universities. Hogwash.
The team has been plagued by injuries, Eric Johnson others have said. Palency.
OUR CHEERLEADERS are ugly and there simply isn't enough school spirit to encourage the team to do its best. Simply not true.
The truth is that opposing team coaches have hit on a new football philosophy. A philosophy so simple it almost evades detection.
Toward the beginning of the football season, newspapers throughout the land started carrying stories about a newly discovered tribe of people with a code of social standards vastly different from ours.
Yes, the Kigmys were a sad bunch (much like our fighting first string) who were roly-poly in build, slow on their feet, and most of all, mild mannered.
Opposing coaches simply hit upon the idea of transferring the tribe's philosophy of life to the game of football and it worked.
NATURALLY ENDOWED with a bullseye on their posterior, they delighted in being kicked as hard as possible as often as possible.
Although missing the bullseye, our KU team has born a definite resemblance to the kigmys.
When legislation was passed outlawing the kicking of kignys on grounds of cruelty, the tribe protested, finally being granted the right to be kicked.
Opposing coaches, being stute judges of human nature and also the low mentality of their teams, his upon the idea of representing the KU football squad as a tribe of Kigmys.
Oh how interesting those pep talks must have been.
The coaches simply told their not-so-bright teams that the Jayhawks were really an 11 man tribe of Midwestern Kigmys. "Kigmys aren't happy unless they are being booted around, boys. So I want you to get out their and make them happy. Give them what they want."
"My dear boys, these KU kigmys are really nice guys, but believe me, they really liked to be kicked.
"AND WHAT'S EVEN better, you can imagine that the KU Kigmys are some relative or administrator here at the school. So let's really show 'em this weekend.
This incentive from their coaches, plus the added incentive of being able to represent anyone they didn't like as a bigym, really must have fired up the teams before games here at Lawrence.
Well, the rest is probably old hat. I revealed my discovery two weeks ago to our beloved coach Jack Mitchell. Coach Mitchell agreed to do a little digging and see if he couldn't come up with some way to counteract the despicable brainwashing by opposing coaches.
As you have probably noticed, the Kigmys have found it is more fun to do unto others what others had previously been doing to them. They started kicking back.
With this newly revealed information, coupled with the fighting spirit of our team (who I guess could be told they really are Kigmys and should start kieking back like their comic counterparts) is there any reason why we shouldn't score a dazzling victory over the dull-witted Cornhuskers next weekend at Lincoln?
I don't know whether Al Capp is a mind reader, an alumni or what, but he has certainly saved the day for the Jayhawks.
CONFRONTED WITH this new image of Kigmys, that 250 pound Nebraska line should melt away in feat as soon as the ball is snapped next week.
They have probably realized by now (I'll admit they had to be slow-witted to swallow the thing at first) that they were being used by their coach. This will of course lead to a definite loss of rapport between the Nebraska team and the man that pays their salaries. (OOPS, I mean the man that calls the plays, or something.)
Eric Johnson
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