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Tuesday, February 27, 1990 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
Congress rehashing
Flag-burning issue resurfaces in Washington, and it is still a question of constitutional rights
Editors note: Unlike Congress, the Kansan editorial board does not have time to rehash the flag-burning issue which is now being debated in a Washington state court. Consequently, the board has decided to rerun the initial editorial, which appeared Sept. 15, 1989, that concerns flag-burning.
Here they go again. It's time for someone to blow out the flame before this flag-burning issue ignites further.
There should be better things to worry about. In a time of billion-dollar budget deficits and rampant drug use, is this the only thing Congress can find to do?
An educated public should get worried when our representatives jump on a bandwagon that promises to do little but ride straight over our constitutional rights to symbolic speech.
The representatives think that by voting for an anti-flag-mutation bill they will be gaining
votes when they run for re-election. If they think we want our rights to be restricted because of the recent flag-burning furor, so be it. But that kind of pandering to poorly thought-out public opinion deserves to be punished.
Granted, burning a flag may offend some people. That's the point of burning a flag. It may be immature, but it's symbolic speech and it's protected by the First Amendment.
A bunch of protesters may not have much better to do than to set fire to a flag, but we should hope that our people in Washington, D.C., have more to worry about than what those protesters are doing.
No representative who votes for a bill or amendment that would restrict our rights to any kind of speech should be re-elected. Period.
Maybe someday this issue will burn itself out.
Briefly stated
One would think that quality graduate teaching assistants would be important to the state. Not to the Legislature. The Senate Ways and Means Committee decided not to finance a 5 percent increase in tuition fee waivers. The Board of Regents recommended a 100 percent waiver and Gov. Mike Hayden recommended 80 percent. By not making it more attractive for GTAs to attend our schools, the Legislature is making it tougher for GTAs to choose Kansas over other state university systems.
The editorial board
GTAs deserve the full waiver in return for their contribution to the quality of education.
■ Another increase in student fees for renovation of the Kansas University is ludicrous. Students are crammed for space in classrooms, sitting on the floor and fighting for additional classes. It is difficult to justify another increase. Money should be allocated for buildings, classes or equipment, not perks that make the Union attractive to visitors or alumni. Even a $2 increase is too much to ask.
Abortion rights
Winter's new bill is a step toward compromise
An abortion bill that State Sen. Wint Winter Jr., introduced last week was a positive step in reaching a compromise between pro-choice and anti-abortion activists.
between pro choice and anti abortion activists. The bill, which has drawn support from both sides, would make abortions illegal if a physician judged the fetus to be viable outside the womb. However, a viability test is left to the discretion of the woman and her physician. The test is not required, but if a fetus were found to be viable outside the womb, an abortion would be illegal.
Marilyn Harp, president of Planned Parenthood of Kansas, said she supported the proposal because it limited government interference into the physician's medical practice and into a woman's right to have control over her own body.
The bill is important because it finally addresses the needs of both pro-choice and anti-abortion activists. It seems that the two sides have traditionally been so wrapped up in bickering that they have not had time to consider a compromise.
Although the proposal seems to be meeting approval more often from pro-choice activists than from anti-abortionists, it is at the very least a step toward a more middle-of-the-road resolution.
Though the bill is not expected to become law, it finally addresses the needs of both sides. Obviously the abortion debate will never be resolved if legislators continue to look at the issue in terms of black and white.
Camille Krehbiel for the editorial board
Stop contra aid
Nicargua is a Central American country approximately the size of the state of Wisconsin with a population of three million.
A month and a half ago, I left the United States to travel to Nicaragua to get to know the country, the people, and to observe the electoral process and the upcoming election.
From this, two things are very clear: The Nicaraguan government places enormous importance on the world's opinion of its electoral process, and the government feels confident enough of its fairness to invite in-depth scrutiny all over the country. So far, none of the official observers have found evidence of corruption, lack of freedom or systematic intimidation on the part of the government.
A large part of the reason for the government's opinion rests on the hope that if the world acknowledges the fairness of the electoral process, the U.S. government will be unable to continue financing the
More than 1,500 electoral observers from all over the world have poured into Nicaragua since March 1989 including groups from the United Nations, the Organization of American States and a delegation of freely elected heads of state led by former President Jimmy Carter. This is the first time in history a sovereign nation has invited a United Nations delegate to observe its elections.
contras. The contras have killed approximately 60,000 Nicaraguan men, women and children during the past eight years. The contra army, as well as the economic embargo imposed by the United States, has effectively destroyed the Nicaraguan economy and crippled any efforts on the part of the Sandinista government to improve the life of its people.
Maybe, just maybe, we could find better use for our money at home.
Let's let our Congressmen know that we don't want our tax money used to make war on malnourished people in Third World countries just because our government doesn't happen to agree with their policies.
I have traveled around the country, staying with families in hotels, farms and cooperatives. I have talked with people who support the government and those who support the opposition. Almost every person I have met have had friends or family killed in the contra war. From all of them I hear the same four words: "Stop the war — please."
Tanya Shaffer Oakland, Calif.
If we believe in democracy, we must let the Nicaraguan people choose their own government, whether we agree with the choice or not.
As U.S. citizens, we know we have the power to do this. Our tax money is financing the war that kills Nicaraguan children and drains the economy of the resources needed to provide food, shelter and clothing.
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Bar bill contradicts Fifth Amendment
W with the pressure on bar owners to catch underage drinkers and the hassles
▼ drummers and the masses that pressure causes for patrons, going to Lawrence bars is almost not worth the effort. Now State Swint Wint Winter Jr., R-Lawrence, wants to make things worse;
As a fifth year senior — an old man by some standards — I should have no trouble getting into bars. But last weekend it took me more than five minutes, two forms of photo ID and a recital, from memory, of every statistic on my driver's license just to gain entry to a downtown bar.
At another bar, two friends, each of legal drinking age, were turned away
because they didn't have a second photo ID. Another friend, who is 23 years old, was turned away from one North Lawrence bar because his ID wasn't "realistic enough." And if Winter's bill passes, the harassment will not only continue, it will worsen because the bill will give the police the right to skirt the Fifth Amendment.
Police have the right to check the ID's of patrons as they enter bars and taverns. The bill would allow those refusing to show identification to be charged with a misdemeanor. The problem is that by showing an ID that indicates that you are underage, or a falsified one, you are incriminating yourself.
The Fifth Amendment prohibits the forcing of people to produce self-incriminating evidence. What Winter wants to do is mandate that self-incrimination. It is simple. If you refuse to waive your Fifth Amendment rights and incriminate yourself, you are charged with the misdeed.
meanor. It's a Catch-22 and a blatant violation of the Fifth Amendment.
Winter's bill does provide a loophole. The charges would be dropped if proper identification were produced at the court hearing. But this loophole neither eliminates nor justifies the violation of the Fifth Amendment. If this bill were law, the right outlined in the Fifth Amendment would no longer be inherent. You would have to pay in order to make use of it.
Stan Diel is a Hutchinson senior majoring in journalism and economics.
Arkansas town will remember matriarch
First comes shock: Hortense Jones, civic leader, cateress, local institution, lady whom everybody seemed to know and half the town depended on, is found dead. Apparently murdered.
Then the anger: Is this what comes of a lifetime of good will, of good causes, of hard work? To be killed in the little house in which one has lived for 55 years peacefully, productively, harming no one, helping so many?
Only then does the grief lapse and gratitude set in. Who, after all, lived a richer life, or made more happiness from sorrow, or better times from pain? What happens when you shocked and angry as Newport, Ark. is, it is also grateful.
Jones was born in Newport, one of five children whose father died when he was 35, she was only 10. "Back then, there was no relief," she would recall in later life, "no help, no nothing. Just you. But we learned that we could do it if we tried."
Her mother took in washing and ironing. Hortense learned to cook. "My mama taught us, whatever we do, do our best. If it was washing dishes, have everybody looking for you to wash dishes." I've never heard a better, more concise summary of the work ethic, or of the
Paul
Greenberg
Syndicated
columnist
economic consequences of excellence. And no one who ever tasted her chicken croquette with cream sauce, or string potato nest with English peas, would gainsay the taste or elegance of her work.
Jones did her best, and word spread. Her kitchen in Pine Bluff, Ark., never lacked orders; she always seemed to be working. In the summer of 1979, the president's wife, Rosalynn Carter, came to town. Naturally, Jones was put in charge of the reception. She and 65 volunteers fed thousands. "We had the old train station looking like the country club," she would remember.
Jones had seen dramatic social changes. A whole racial caste system was overthrown in her lifetime. In other countries, such changes would be called a revolution and maybe require one. Here, they were only an extension of the original American Revolution — in large part because of people with the combination of grace
and fortitude of Hortense Jones.
Jones was associated with good times as a cateress, good works as a civic leader, and good will as a person. Who would feel threatened by Hortense Jones? She loved peace and made it. She was a bridge not on between the town's Black and whiteaments but between past and future.
Somebody ought to do an updated version of John Dollard's classic, "Caste and Class in a Southern Town," with due attention to the mediators as well as the reformers. They might find that, like Jones, many folks were both.
Dignity. Jones understood not only its signs but its substance — its foundation in effort, and how self-respect is rooted in self-reliance. Whenever new some cause was inaugurated — like Synergy Forum, the American Institute of Medicine — it had to have Jones on board, and Jones had to be on board.
"You can tell one of my girls now." Jones would say. "They are just different. They know how to hold their heads up and they can talk. I taught them to preside and I taught them dignity."
Jones' only child, Jordan, died at the age of six after a sudden illness in
1930. It was never formally diagnosed but she always believed it was polio. The loss of her son was still vivid almost 60 years later when Jones was interviewed by the local daily. Her memorial to Jordan was the care she showered on other children. In 1962, she would organize a polio vaccination program for the county's Black population.
Jones remembered and she worked; so did she restore meaning in a world that, the day she was killed, seemed to have none. On hearing the news, an old friend could hear it, and sigh, unbelieving: She was such a hard worker. It made no sense, no justice.
It's been a sad week in Pine Bluff. The town is grieved and angry because of the way Jones died. The town is also richer, safer and stronger in faith because of the way she lived. And we will not let the way she died rob us of all the good she so regularly and abundantly delivered year after year, like so many homemade hot rolls and special sugar cookies straight out of the oven.
Paul Greenberg is the editorial editor for the Pine Bluff, Ark. Commercial.
CAMP UHNEEILY
BY SCOTT PATTY
DUE TO THE KANSAS SENATE TRANSPORTATION COMMITTEE'S PROPOSAL TO REQUIRE SEVEN "DIRTY" WORDS ON BUMPER STICKERS TO BE SO TINY THAT PEOPLE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO READ THEM FROM ANY DISTANCE, CAMP UHNEELY HAS CREATED THIS STICKER FOR THEM
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