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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 16, 1987)
Page 2/The Battalion/Wednesday, September 16,1987 Opinion The Battalion (USPS 045 360) Member of Texas Press Association Southwest Journalism Conference The Battalion Editorial Board Sondra Pickard, Editor John Jarvis, Managing Editor Sue Krenek, Opinion Page Editor Rodney Rather, City Editor Robbyn Lister, News Editor Loyd Brumfield, Sports Editor Tracy Staton, Photo Editor Editorial Policy The Battalion is a non-profit, self-supporting newspaper oper ated as a community service to Texas A&M and Bryan-ColleRC Sta- Opinions expressed in The Battalion are those of the editorial board or the author, and do not necessarily represent the opinions of Texas A&M administrators, faculty or the Board of Regents. The Battalion also serves as a laboratory newspaper for students in reporting, editing and photography classes within the Depart ment of Journalism. The Battalion is published Monday through Friday during Texas A&M regular semesters, except for holiday and examination periods. Mail subscriptions are SI7.44 per semester, $34.62 per school ‘ averusing rates furnished year and $36.44 per full year. Advertising rates furnished on re quest. Our address: The Battalion, 216 Reed McDonald, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-4111. Second class postage paid at College Station, TX 77843. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Battalion, 216 Reed McDonald, Texas A&M University, College Station TX 77843-4111. Ideological idiocy The Senate confirmation hearings on Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork bring to a head months of debate on whether the conservative judge should replace Lewis F. Powell Jr., the court’s “swing vote.” opponents fear he could provide the vote needed to he landmark abortion ruling Roe v. Wade. His views Bork’s overturn the landmark abortion ruling on civil rights, women’s rights and law enforcement have prompted such groups as the National Organization for Women and the American Civil Liberties Union to oppose him. His supporters point to Bork’s impeccable legal credentials and say he represents a much-needed return to judicial restraint. All this debate is normal and necessary. What is unreasonable is the assertion — coming from many Bork supporters — that the Senate should consider only Bork’s competence as a judge. Such holier-than-thou posturing, which urges Bork’s opponents to put aside the nominee’s stand on the issues and consider only his judicial ability, is ridiculous. Competence as a judge is certainly a criterion for appointment to the court, but if issues are not, why do presidents appoint judges whose views mirror their own? As a former Reagan administration lawyer told Newsweek, “On the cutting issues — abortion, affirmative action, free speech, church-state — Bob Bork’s presence and vote on the court will make a difference, and this is exactly the reason the Justice Department selected him.” The president has the power to select nominees to the Supreme Court — but so should the Senate, and the nation, have the opportunity for free and unobstructed argument over their qualifications and beliefs. Let the debate begin. The law needs Bork The debate over the nomination of Judge Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court is of more than idle interest to the Karl Spence Guest Columnist readers of this newspaper. Our Democratic senator, Lloyd Bentsen, is among those who are undecided; letters from home may influence his vote. I have followed this debate with great interest, but I have yet to see a piece that focuses on the main reason why I am anxious to see Bork confirmed. Bork proposes to interpret the Constitution the way Madison, Washington, Hamilton, and Jefferson insisted it must be interpreted: according to its original meaning. That approach is controversial because much of today’s constitutional law is not based on the original meaning at all. Beneficiaries of those rulings, fearing the worst, have accused President Reagan of “seeking to impose by judicial fiat what he has failed to win in the legislative arena.” But that is nonsense. A Bork court would not ban abortion or censor pornography or promote school prayer. It would simply stop interfering with legislatures and communities that choose to do those things. The American people would be in control again. Similarly, no strict-construction ruling can impose racial segregation, because no American community today would enact Jim Crow laws even if it had constitutional permission to do so. And if any did, an amendment banning such things would easily be adopted and ratified by the American people. But with regard to criminal law — my special concern — a Bork confirmation would definitely put existing doctrines at risk. Take away the spurious constitutional authority of the exclusionary rule, and no legislature in the land would resurrect it. Nor would lawmakers hesitate to make the death penalty mandatory for most kinds of murder, once the court admitted that under the original meaning of the Eighth Amendment, it has absolutely no authority to forbid their doing so. This may give the American Civil Liberties Union a reason to oppose Bork, but it should prompt the rest of us to write Sen. Bentsen and urge Bork’s confirmation. Too many of us know from experience that our country is suffering a disastrous wave of violent crime. Crime has gotten far worse than any theory of poverty, racism, or “baby boom” demographics can explain. In the two decades since Earl Warren rescued us from the Police State, murder in America has doubled and robbery has quadrupled. America’s crime problem is shocking, demoralizing, sickening —and yet it is rarely mentioned by progressive, enlightened people. But perhaps our progressive thinkers might listen to a truly enlightened voice from an earlier time: that of the English novelist and jurist, Henry Fielding. Fielding wrote these words in the midst of an 18th-century London crime wave no worse than our own: The great increase of robberies within these few years is an evil which to me appears to deserve some attention; and it seems not yet to have arrived to that height of which it is capable, and which it is likely to attain. For diseases in the political, as in the natural body, seldom fail going on to their crisis, especially when nourished and encouraged by faults in the constitution . . . For my own part, I cannot help regarding these depredations in a most serious light; nor can I help wondering that a nation so jealous of her liberties, that from the slightest cause, and often without any cause at all, we are always murmuring at our superiors, should tamely and quietly support the invasion of her properties by a few of the lowest and vilest among us. Doth not this situation in reality level us with the most enslaved countries? If I am to be assaulted, and pillaged, and plundered; if I can neither sleep in my own house, nor walk the streets, nor travel in safety; is not my condition almost equally bad whether a licensed or unlicensed roque, a dragon or a robber, be the person who assaults and plunders me? The only difference which I can perceive is that the latter evil appears to be more easy to remove . . . Here likewise is the life of a man concerned, but of what man? Why of one . . . by whom the innocent are put in terror, affronted and alarmed by threats and execrations, endangered with loaded pistols, beat with bludgeons, and hacked with cutlasses, of which the loss of health, of limbs, and often of life, is the consequence; and all this without any respect to age, or dignity, or sex. Let the good-natured man, who hath any understanding, place this picture before his eyes, and then see what figure in it will be the object of his compassion. I urge everyone who has compassion for today’s and tomorrow’s crime victims to work for the confirmation of Robert Bork. Our Supreme Court must be put back into its place. Only then will we be free to use every means at our disposal in fighting crime. Karl Spence is a 1985 Texas A&M graduate and a copy editor for the Bryan-College Station Eagle. A woman in the White House? Just keep ’em off the golf cours Some of the guys were talking politics over a few beers the other night, and I brought up the fact that I believe we will, one day, have a woman president. They got in the Kiwanis Club, didn’t they? There was a lot of comment. Lewis Grizzard Earl said, “Long as they stay off the golf course, women can do whatever they please.” Harold asked, “What would we call her husband, First Man?” Bubba belched and said, “Gimme another beer, Leon. This fool is crazy to be talkin’ about something like that.” As I said to Bubba, “No, I ain’t, either.” It’s coming. As sure as Gloria Steinem is a Democrat, we’re going to have a woman president, and I don’t think it will be that far into the future. We’ve already got women mayors, women governors and I got my gas pumped by a woman at a service station the other day. Her name was Mildred, and it was written right there on her shirt, and she asked, “Check under the hood?” — the same as any man would. Look at other countries who have or once did have women in the top spot. There was Indira Gandhi of India and Golda Meir of Israel, who gave the Arabs all the hell they could take, and then there’s Margaret Thatcher of England. Our own mother country has a woman as its leader, and if you don’t think she can be a hard case, ask the Argentinians. What we men have to ask ourselves is, whether there is anything about a woman that would make her unfit for the presidency? • Toughness? See above. • Intelligence? I asked a woman for her phone number recently, and I’ve been trying to call her for weeks. The number is 555-1212. Who’s the dummy here? • Cunning? Don’t waste my dme. • Economically astute? I’ve had three wives, all of whom have forgotten more about money than Alan Greenspan will ever know. • Character? How many women do Calcium si i i hi Liu' be the answe \<>w know who swill beer,bdchui cieil( K . s ot n public, bet on football gamesand a&m nutritic in the woods and shoot harmless “it would defenseless deer? How many me: the public b you know who do that? through its c _ , , ,,, , sey, a nutrith Diplomatic tec hinquesMoiu. Ai ricu j ture very well that w'hen your wifekisst says. in the morning and says, “Don'tt.- A myth exi tobrushvour teeth,” she is real? :< thife proper diplomatic and means, “YourbrE one s diet, smells like t he ( hinese army bivoti sorm . , . .. as calcium ca' 111 " las ' n ‘8 hl - tate and calc, • Ability to adapt to any situat sist in the pn She’s put up w ith vou all thesey some supplei hasn’t she? ^'nle’cdcu • l oyah\ t<> hei c uumvv kale: m eal dolomh was a woman, wasn’t she? So waste nated with to: Ross, Dolly Madison and Private senic, mercu Benjamin | ust be< ause |aneFor; !n ^V m ’ w ^‘ c rotten doesn’t make the whole hr *1' ou ,^ ■ con: that wav from illness tc ik A further I said to Bubba, “Ti these suppler d, as ms of calc tc, w hich Bubba replied,“Oh, Then tell her to do the windows•.c she leaves.” So, it’s going to i a woman in the ( h-. absorbe as sure as vou’i e sitting on theta: I guess Bubba has a right tobe His wife fired him last weekdowi plant. Copy rig hi 1987, Cow let Syndicile Opu o IS THE POPE'S VISIT TOO COMMERCIAL ? Enclose $1 with each vote. I mail to I Margulies | MAfiSUUK &rfg>7 Houston fwr >uston Post Boa: 474? I Houston, Tx. 77210 j jJFot a copy of results, Send another AUSTIN (A ng horse- and aunched their aroposal on th< ng the sports 1 rial cruelty. “For every n ike Secretarial imount of mor royally treated ire thousands lure a miserab he race track,” Koros, of th :ion Network, c iuffer abuses. “Very few g four, since eve: r Mail Call The danger of health care EDITOR: On Sept. 6, a friend of ours complained of severe stomach pains and missed his classes. That afternoon he went to the A.P. Beutel Health Center. After three hours of tests, he was released and told that his blood sugar was a little high, but that was all. By the next evening, his condition had worsened and he was taken to St. Joseph Hospital. About an hour later, he entered emergency surgery with a ruptured appendix. He is fine now, but how could the “trained professionals” at our health center miss such a serious ailment? Apparently Beutel is fine for dispensing cold tablets and birth control pills but not for anything serious like appendicitis. We pay fees to maintain a health center and are tired of hearing horror stories about the treatment received there. Free medical care on campus is a great thing to have, but if you can’t trust them to be accurate, why risk it? appointment of Robert Bork to the Supreme CourtfT Battalion, Sept. 1), I offer a few observations: Hickman’s attempt to portray Bork as a “right-winl ideologue” rather than as a conservative is curious for several reasons: William Streidl ’89 accompanied by 12 signatures • The most salient element of Bork’s jurisprudeno his willingness to defer to the popular majority unless! Constitution forbids it. Since this is precisely what our founding fathers thought they were establishing,oner 2 only wonder why Hickman regards this understandinc “right-wing” rather than as either conservative or, nto rf appropriately, simply correct. • Hickman’s statement that “anyone who is nota'' 1 Protestant or a Catholic male” (sic) ought to be afraid® Bork sounds almost as hyperbolic as Ted Kennedy’s mindless tirade against the appointment. Is it a retrogression of our liberties for Supreme Courtjustitf stick to the actual text of the Constitution when theytd the majority’s representatives what they may notded® One would hope that partisans of republican democra 1 would think otherwise. Curious logic EDITOR: Donald J. Erler Jr. (Ph.D.) Former constitutional law professor TE 81 Regarding Larry Hickman’s comments on the Letters to the editor should not exceed 300 words in length. The edilond serves the right to edit letters for style and length, but will make even maintain the author's intent. Each letter must be signed and must inchiit^l sification, address and telephone number of the writer. I BLOOM COUNTY by Berke Breat MeaNWHiLg, omewHBRe £f\5T OF VebPlS, OUR. HBRO'5 STORY TAKBS A DRAMATIC AM PA NOB ROUS TURN / 1* oo u otve cove A BAP WMB...MA IW80A WUBAA ■■. 00NP-THPT r 00MP- THPT / feu, ^ Vc