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Wednesday, June 20, 1990 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Court decisions
Rulings uphold drunk-driving checkpoints and fines of polluters even without air standards
The U.S. Supreme Court had its high points
and its low points as far as some of therulings it banded down last week.
Among the rulings was a case in which the high court voted 6-3 that sobriety checkpoints do not violate drivers' privacy. Pointing to the fact that drunk drivers kill thousands of people each year, the justices decided that it was less trouble to motorists to have these random checks than to have drunk drivers on the road.
Fine. But what about psychotic killers who also kill many people each year? Or crack dealers and users? Not that these thousands of lives should be taken lightly, but shouldn't we have random mental checkpoints . . . or random crack checkpoints?
These are clear violations of privacy, so what is the difference between them and sobriety checkpoints?
The court last week also announced its decision in the case of General Motors vs. U.S. This was one of the high points the court reached in the rulings it handed down. The justices unanimously voted against the automotive giant and for the Environmental Protection Agency with regard to a Massachusetts GM plant that emitted pollution from car paint.
The Supreme Court ruled the EPA could collect daily fines of up to $25,000 from GM for the pollution. It further ruled the government could impose severe fines against air polluters even if government officials had not decided on guidelines for cleaning the air.
The editorial board
It's time for U.S. corporations to have an incentive to take the EPA seriously. With slow action by the government in planning air cleaning and with controversy over the federal Clean Air Act, what the EPA says should hold. We have to take the problem of air pollution seriously and work for cleaner air, not letting corporations get away with using chemicals that may be cheaper or easier to use while polluting the atmosphere.
When faced with the question of whether the first priority should be clean air or big business, we should all choose clean air. It's the only way big business and all of us can continue to thrive and survive.
Hunger strike went to pot for jailed Mark Creamer
Since it now looks as if Creamer will survive until August, one wonders what would happen if he actually won the Democratic primary against Rep. Jim Slattery, D-Kan. Could this former plumber make the Congress of the United States a groovy place?
After more than three weeks, Mark Creamer finally gave in. The tantalizing sight of an orange brought to an end the hunger strike for marjana legalization. The strike was an astounding feat for anyone, much less a man who suffered from the munchies.
What sort of legislation would he propose besides legalization of marijuana? Would the Statue of Liberty hold a lava lamp? Would "The Star-Spangled Banner" be replaced by Pink Floyd's "The Wall"? Would his presence give life to the ERA (excellent reef amendment)? Could "Old Glory" be replaced by a black light-illuminated Grateful dead poster?
The dope smoker/candidate for Congress gave up his hunger strike, an act in defense of the right to grow a weed and for some folks 'desire to
The whole demeanor on Capitol Hill could change. I can just hear the noblemen of the Senate now.
"We used to be so uplight," Sen Jesse Helms might say. "Now every thing's totally cool."
David Weidner
Guest columnist
"I think doobie is really excellent," Sen, Bob Dole, might say.
With Creemer leading the fight for marijuana emancipation, things might not be that bad. Proponents of marijuana legalization point out several advantages legalization would bring, such as no one ever would get glaucoma, and Cheech and Chong might get back together.
But wait, before we jump ahead to the notion of Creamer getting sent to Washington by the masses of hemp freedom fighters, let's imagine if Creamer had not succumbed to temptation and instead had fallen prey to a much more serious fate. Portage is the only place after All, after death, isn't silly. At least not as silly as Mark Creamer's cause.
After all, we must be fair to a man who is dead serious about marijuana and was mutilating himself to prove it.
Calling for the release of this prisoner of war in the war against drugs, a candlelight vigil was held for Creamer recently and was
attended by few more than a dozen supporters. Not very many for a man who was conducting such a drastic measure.
Let's be honest. Mark Creamer does not exactly conjure visions of Bobby Sands. Creamer makes Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" sound like "I have a hallucination."
In fact, by taking such a serious action over such a ridiculous cause, Creamer mocks those who have ever threatened his life and threatens forces of oppression.
Creamer only has managed to point out what a waste it is to punish those already punishing themselves. Kids drop out of school to smoke pot and adults get fired from jobs over its use. Creamer would have the money spent prosecuting the people put in charge of the pot, usually rehabilitating those who suffer from drug addiction, including marijuana addiction.
Creamer's harmless hemp gets people severely stoned and severely stoned people do seriously stupid things.
in the end it doesn't seem funny anymore.
A man who found it so heroic to want to die for pot does not seem to accept that a lot of people die from it.
David Weidner is a St. Louis senior majoring in English and Journalism.
Student irritated by red tape
thank God for bureaucracy
It all started when, following my discovery of one particular tape's uselessness, I took it back to the language lab. That, in itself, seemed as if it would be a fairly simple task. And yet it wasn't.
You see, I didn't have my KUID with me at the time, and some intellectual giant in administration seems to have decreed that no tapes can be checked out from or returned to the language lab without a valid KUID.
As tempting as it is to pursue it, I'll skip the potential double meaning of that remark and plunge right into the topic. Let me put it this way: thank KU for bureaucracy. That pushes KU into a suspicious analogy with divinity, while at the same time expressing my appreciation for the type of extracurricular learning which has been forced upon me at this wonderful institution.
By "extracurricular learning," I mean the kind of education one just doesn't encounter in the classroom. You know: getting along with people
. developing good study habits .
learning to provide for yourself .
and dealing with stipulations that
just don't make sense.
You may or may not have had the pleasure of visiting the language laboratory in Wescoe Hall. It supplies students with cassette tapes that supposedly aid in the development of foreign language speaking and listening skills. I won't even go into what I mean by "supposedly." My non-productive use of them may be attributed to my own lack of skill in the use of a recorder, or the in use of the tape that I received could have simply been below the norm. At any rate, that's between the Russian department and me. My real quarrel is with the policies of the laboratory itself.
M. Bennett Cohn Staff columnist
Now the first part I can understand. After all, a library does the same thing — proof of your identification guarantees that if you decide not to bring back the book you checked out, librarians will check it and, if necessary, take legal action that will even more helpfully remind you.
And then there is bringing the book back. A library doesn't care if the book in question is returned by a blue angel, a Doberman pinscher, or your baby sister. They just want it back.
Such standards, however, are far too loose for the language lab. This was explained to me by a charming youth who happened to be working at the lab on this particular day. If I could remember his name, I could second thought. Unfortunately, though, it escapes me. Oh well.
"But why?" I asked innocently,
"Why would anyone want to return a tape under a false name?"
"We've got to be sure you are who you say you are," he told me.
"I don't know," he said brilliantly. "You never know what someone might do."
"Sure I do," I said. "The only reason someone would do that is if they were returning the tape on behalf of a friend. Maybe the friend is out of town. Maybe he graduated. Hell, maybe he died. If so someone just unmourns our courting middle of the street? Are you going to refuse to accept it unless he proves that he is the person who checked it out? WHAT IS THE
POINT?"
Our sharp friend, astounded that someone would care about this subject enough to make an argument about it, instead of simply producing a valid KUID, looked at me as if I were from another planet. I didn't want to pay a late-return fee, so I decided to pursue the minuscule chance that I might get through to this guy.
"All right," I said. "Let's take it a little further. Suppose that someone ruins a language tape because of intercultural incompatibility or something, and schemes to return it under someone else's name. True, you've caught him, but even if you hadn't, he would have been under his own name, and the late fees he would end up having to pay would far exceed what it would have cost him to replace the tape he originally checked out."
the clerk, either unable or unwilling to follow me (my guess is a combination of the two), recited a variation of the same moving speech I had already heard.
"You just never know, you know?" he asked rhetorically.
"No," I said, "I don't know. Because even if the cultured man to switch his damaged tape with someone else's, thus allowing himself to turn in a good tape and causing the 'someone else' to turn in the tape the cultured damaged, then the cultured man, because you don't keep track of who you loan specific tapes to. So WHAT'S THE POINT?"
"Do you have a valid KUID?" the clerk asked me.
Oh well. I had to try. Otherwise, as that well-chosen representative of the language department staff so eloquently put it, "You just never know, you know?"
LETTERS to the EDITOR
M. Bennett Cohn is a Prairie Village freshman.
Joint candidate
Presenting:
Mark Creamer in his bid for U.S. Rep. from the 2nd District. A farce in three acts.
Act One: The Instigation
Ace!
Our main character announces his candidacy with a unique gesture. In his own display of sincerity and respect for the law, he marches to the courthouse, lights up a joint, and blows smoke in the face of an officer. Suck, plead. This week, his friends have a good laugh.
Our main character is arrested and jailed. Now, in an interesting
Act Two; The Result
twist to the plot, Creamer, falling back to an old, reliable childhood tactic he used when his mother wouldn't give him his way, decides to stop eating. Creamer's friends gasp in horror.
It has not yet been written. Will our main character simply be released and return to his former lifestyle, or once released will he commit yet another obnoxious act, thus providing us with a neguest?
This is a unique play where we, the audience, can determine the outcome with a show of support for what we believe is right. Don't be an apathetic audience. Creamer's supporters, a radical, vocal minority, shouldn't be the only ones heard.
Act Three: The Outcome
David Benintendl KU graduate
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Flag burning may spark hot debates
W when there is a candidate to sell and 30 seconds to do it, the emotional case for a constitutional amendment against flag burning fits the format. That's likely to make it a high-intensity issue, at least until the fireworks season is over.
Still, the issue is back after the high court last week struck down a federal flag burning statute. It could be significant in a close race in which an incumbent House member or senator votes against the flag amendment. The political risk is on that side of the issue; nobody ever lost an election by waving the American flag.
It may turn out to be too hot to cool down the Nov. 6 congressional and state elections. This is the second time around, and the fervor doesn't seem quite so intense as a year ago, when the Supreme Court's decision to overrule state laws against flag burning took the political establishment by surprise.
And the flag burning vote is made to order for 30-second campaign ads on television, the sheerhand in which candidates make their case nowadays. That side of the issue can be depicted visually, with pictures planting the idea that a candidate opposed to amending the Constitution sides with the demonstrators who burn flags.
The other side of the argument is a matter of words and explanation. It takes some time to tell.
That's why candidates are nervous.
When Sen, Bob Dole, R-Kan., the minority leader, was asked
Walter R.
Mears
Syndicated
columnist
whether he would try to make the amendment vote a question of patriotism, he said no. "But I might make it a 20-second spot."
Nobody in Congress favors flag burning. But a Republican campaign official demonstrated the threat to be cast that way in a campaign.
President Bush, pushing the amendment he has advocated for a year, said it was an American, not a parison, issue. "I hope it will be out of the way by the time of the election," he said as he urged approval of the amendment before the Fourth of July.
"If your opponent is for flag burning, he's got to go through a very sophisticated explanation of what he is," said E Rollins of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee.
And he's had ample practice with the flag issue. He used it adroitly against Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis in the 1989 presidential campaign over the governor's veto of a bill requiring that teachers lead the pledge of
But Republican campaigners will be using the roll call votes on the flag amendment against Democrats who vote no. Bush will be campaigning for Republican candidates this summer and fall.
'I think most Americans, the real people out there, are on our side. We might lose with some of the academicians and maybe some of the constitutional lawyers and some of the liberal politicians. . . .'
— Bob Dole
U.S. Senator, R-Kan.
"We're going to go out and tell the American people this is how people voted on this issue," Dole said. He also explained explanations of a recent election that he felt better at bar association meetings than with real people.
allegiance in their classrooms
ments, and they take time to express. The argument for the amendment is short and simple, almost a slogan: protect the flag.
It is not a party-line issue, but Bush and the Republicans are the main force for an amendment, while Democratic leaders of the Senate and House are opposed. There are dissenters on both sides.
There are concerns.
Sen. George J. Mitchell, D-Maine, the majority leader, said the flag is not the flag, but whether the Bill of Rights should be amended. House Speaker Thomas S. Foley of Washington said there should be no tampering with the First Amendment, the free-speech guarantee that was the basis of both court decisions against laws that banned flag burning.
These are intellectual argu
"I think most Americans, the real people out there, are on our side," Dole said. "We might lose with some of the people we have in the constitutional lawyers and some of the liberal politicians. . . ."
The early House and Senate head counts are said to point to close votes, because it will take the approval of two-thirds of those voting in each branch to vote on a bill. It is on the state legislatures. Three-fourths of the states would have to ratify the flag-burning ban.
After the first court ruling, on June 21, 1989, the estimates were that an amendment would have cleared Congress easy. Democratic leaders contained the issue, and the political anger behind it, by drafting a statute to ban flag desecration. That put a flag vote on the record without a constitutional amendment.
There's no such option now that the Supreme Court has overturned that law.
Opponents of a constitutional amendment are proposing a resolution condemning flag burning and declaring support for the Bill of Rights. While it has no binding effect, it would offer a way to vote for the flag but not the amendment.
But that's not much political shelter.
> Walter R. Meares is a vice president and columnist for the Associated Press.
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