KANSAN COMMENT
Time to move ahead on court nominee
President Nixon's nomination of Harry A. Blackmun to the U.S. Supreme Court hopefully will signal the end of the tempest that has surrounded the court for more than a decade.
Blackmun, described by some as a "law and order" man and a moderate on civil rights, is the best candidate that can be expected from Nixon, who has repeatedly promised to place a strict constructionist on the high court. And the judge may bear the only kind of philosophical temperament that could pass the Senate anyway.
The present controversy over the court's members began with the "Impeach Earl Warren" campaigns of the '50's and '60's, continued through President Johnson's disastrous nomination of Abe Fortas as Chief Justice, and mounted in furor when both Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell were rejected by the Senate.
The battle was a catharsis of sorts. Conservatives couldn't get the Southernner they wanted. Liberals couldn't get the judicial activist they wanted.
So both sides in Congress and President Nixon are faced with a compromise.
Johnson, had he known in 1968 what we know today about the extent of Senatorial emotions concerning court nominees, would have been smart to have selected a compromise, too. But Johnson couldn't see past his longtime political friendship with Fortas, just as Nixon couldn't see past the debt he owed Strom Thurmond.
The result was a persistent digging by unhappy Senators into the backgrounds of the nominees, which led to revelations of illicit feetaking that forced Fortas to resign, conflict-of-interest cases that greatly damaged Haynsworth's chances and career-long mediocrity
coupled with inadequately denied racism that brought down Carswell.
The spectacle of the Supreme Court continuing almost a year with only eight members evinces its recent role as a political plaything. As a branch of government equal under the constitution to the executive and the legislative, and especially as one whose prestige must be maintained for it to be effective, the last year has been nearly catastrophic for it.
The Senate properly exercised its authority in condemning the last three nominees; Blackmun, however appears to be acceptable to all sides, so the Senate's duty is to move quickly to fill the Court's ninth chair.
Only one matter—conservative cries to impeach Justice William O. Douglas—remains before the court can move ahead unhampered.
If the charges against Douglas are proved, then he should be impeached. But the timing of the conservative attack on him smacks of a ridiculous little game of tit-for-tat. Claims that Douglas has been connected with gambling and underworld figures were made during the Forcas controversy last year, yet his detractors waited until after the Carswell vote to push their case, thus casting doubt on the validity and the viability of their cause. Impeachment proceedings probably will never get past the House of Representatives.
The Supreme Court issue has embroiled the United States in a time-consuming and basically needless debate, caused mainly by Nixon's and Johnson's failure to fully investigate their nominees. Now that there is a qualified and apparently upright candidate for the court, it is time for the Senate to get on with the business of the Senate. Then the court can finally proceed with the business of the court.
—Monroe Dodd
Washington window
Black headway in the South
By LOUIS CASSELS UPI Senior Editor
WASHINGTON (UPI)—In some parts of the South, the Negro's drive for equality seems to be making more headway, with less friction, than it is in the urban communities of the North.
South Carolina still has rural backwaters in which white hostility toward integration can find expression in such acts as overturning school buses.
But it no longer is a predominantly agricultural state. And in its thriving industrial cities, such as Columbia, Greenville, Spartanburg, and Aiken, black people today enjoy a degree of economic opportunity and social acceptance that is astounding to one who remembers what things were like a few years ago.
The big industrial corporations such as DuPont, Allied Chemical, Owens-Corning and Kimberly-Clark, which are building new plants in South Carolina at a rate of nearly $1 billion a year, hire and promote Negroes on a basis of full equality. And the state has an extensive network of vocational schools to prepare Negroes as well as whites for skilled technological employment.
The result has been a dramatic upgrading of Negro economic status and the emergence of a rapidly growing Negro middle class.
In cities visited by this reporter, public
Negroes comprise more than a third of the state's registered voters and their growing political power is clearly reflected in public affairs. The South Carolina Democratic party, at its state convention last month, elected a Negro as its vice-chairman and rejected a platform plank which Negro delegates regarded as an indirect endorsement of separate school systems.
school integration has been accomplished with little trouble, and seems to be accepted matter-of-factly by most whites. And it is real, not token, integration. Columbia has a much more representative racial balance in its public schools than many northern cities where de facto segregation prevails.
A black couple now can go to any of Columbia's top restaurants without fear of being rebuffed or seated behind a pillar. Negro debutantes have their pictures published on the society page. A Negro boy was named winner of a DAR Citizenship Award.
The millenium hasn't arrived in South Carolina. Racism still exists there, as it does everywhere else in America. But even those Negro leaders who are most impatient for more rapid progress will acknowledge, in private conversation, that the past few years have brought remarkable changes.
$ \textcircled{C} $ David Sokoloff 1970
hearing voices—
(Editor's note: Joe Naas' Feb. 17 editorial, "Trigger Fingers," drew a number of heated letters from Jews and Arabs alike over his discussion of the Mideast War. As the semester progressed the letters became ever longer and ever narrower in their importance to the rest of the students. Lately, the letters have been reduced to attacks on previous letters. Therefore, the editorial editors of the Kansan request that no more letters of this type be submitted. If the disputants wish, they can hold a public debate which the Kansan will cover.-Monroe Dodd)
* *
The U.S. aid in grants and loans during the period 1946-68 is officially listed as follows in millions of dollars: Egypt (901), Israel (785), Morocco (588), Jordan (575), Tunisia (545), other Arab countries (800). In the above numbers repayment of loans has been taken into account. Thus, the U.S. aid to the Arab countries has been 4.4 times larger than that to Israel. In addition, until June 1969, the U.S. government put up 456 million dollars of the 667 million which UNRWA has raised to care for the Arab refugees. The aid statistics do not reflect the immense investments by the West to help the Arabs produce and market their oil.
To the editor:
The letter by M. J. Haddadin in the March 13 Daily Kansan presenting the Arab views was full of fiction and half-truths, a repetitive echo of the official propaganda line of the Arab Palestine Liberation Organization's (PLO) head office in New York. An industrial state like Israel does not require vast expanses of land to accommodate its labor force. Besides, the southern arid half of Israel is practically empty, and could be used for future industrial expansion and settlement of the new immigrants. The officially announced Arab States' policy of "NO peace with Israel and NO recognition of Israel," and a major war every ten years or so since the creation of Israel are hardly the ingredients to be used by the Arabs to tull the apprehensions of the Israelis about the security of their own state.
If the Arabs had accepted the 1947 UN resolution for the partition of Palestine, as the Jews did, there would not have been a single Arab refugee and the borders would be the same as originally planned. However, the Arabs refused to accept the UN resolution, and during 1947-49 Israeli cities, settlements and highways were under attack by Arab irregulars, volunteers, and the military forces of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon. At times it seemed as if the fate of Israel would be like the recent fate of Biafra.
During the 1947-49 war close to 600,000 Arab refugees left Israel and went to the Arab countries. About 500,000 Jewish immigrants left the Arab and Moslem countries and came to Israel and were resettled there. Thus, one could consider it as an unplanned exchange of population and all efforts should be directed towards the resettlement of the Arab refugees among their own people. There are several examples of such exchanges of population, like between Greece (1,150,000) and Turkey (350,000) after the First World War.
In all of the fifteen odd Arab States (except Lebanon) Islam is the state religion, and in most of them Islamic law is the basis for their laws. None of them is a secular state and none of them is a democracy. With this kind of batting average among the Arabs, it is highly unlikely that the citizens of the democracy of Israel would like to participate in the experiment suggested by Mr. Haddadin and become yet another Arab state with a Jewish minority. Besides, the terrible experience of the minorities among the Arabs, like the Kurds in Iraq, the Greeks and the Copts in Egypt, and the Negroes in Sudan is far from encouraging in this direction.
The Arabs in Israel enjoy full rights of Israeli citizens. They have the privilege of voting and there are seven Arab members in the Israeli parliament, and one of them is the Deputy Speaker. They have freedom of religion, get free education, join labor unions, go to universities, have welfare and legal rights, pay income taxes, and have one of the highest standards of living among the Arabs in the Middle East. When traveling abroad, the Arab citizen's Israeli passport does not have any indication whatsoever regarding the religion or the nationality of the owner, and it is just stated that he is an Israeli citizen. However, because of security reasons the nationality and religion of the owner are stated on the Israeli I.D., and because of moral reasons, the Arabs in Israel are not required to serve three years in the Army like all the other citizens, although some of them volunteer to do so.
In the "National Palestinian Covenant" which was revised by the Palestinian Council in Cairo during July 1968, it is indicated that in the future State of Palestine, only the Jews who had been in Palestine before 1917 would be recognized as citizens. The members of the Palestinian Council who approved this covenant included representatives of PLO, Al Fatah, and all the other major Palestinian Groups. Thus the "National Palestinian Covenant" excludes 2.4 million Jews (most of the citizens of Israel) from Mr. Haddadin's Palestinian state. It shows that his "solution" is nothing more than a misleading, empty propaganda shell, which is in contradiction with the basic covenant of Al Fatah and the other major Palestinian groups.
H. Unz
Professor of electrical engineering
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