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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 30, 1992)
Opinion Page 6 The Battalion Friday, October 30, IM&VUBS Editorial Unreasonable seizure Rights denied in name of drug war Forfeiture laws, a serious in fringement on the most basic rights of Americans, are running amuck. These laws allow the government to seize property allegedly used to "fa cilitate" a crime. In the last seven years, the total assets from federal seizures swelled to $2.4 billion — an increase of over 1,500 percent. The perversion of modern forfi- eture laws lies in the fact that they are applied indiscriminately regard less of the guilt or innocence of the owners. Property need only be al legedly involved in a crime for seizure. Proof of innocence is shift ed to owners before entitlement of their property is returned. For instance, a family residence would be at risk of seizure if a rela tive or friend of the owner were to use a phone at the home to pick up drugs. A few states including Texas ap ply forfeiture law to any kind of criminal activity, drug-related or not, on the sole basis of probable cause by anyone present to use property unlawfully. Since informants usually receive a percentage of the seized goods netted in this manner, they have an incentive to "create" crimes in which property was employed to fa cilitate a crime.The burden of proof needs to be shifted back onto the state and the presumption of inno cence shifted to the defendants. While forfeiture laws create a de terrent to crime, there is a crying need to balance this by penalizing only those found guilty by a court of law — and not those who may only be circumstantially involved. Vice President missed a stop on A&M visit; also missed the point I hope you are pleased with your visit to Texas A&M last week. As you now know, we like to give peo ple a good wel come. I wish, how ever, you had had the time to visit our history faculty coffee room to chat with a few of us. Admittedly our oratory skills cannot compare with a few thousand Aggies, but I think we all GUEST COLUMN DR. JONATHAN COOPERSMITH Ity lounges, oll< screaming Aggies, would have benefited. You do remember facult of course. In your June 9 follow-up to the famous May 19 "Murphy Brown" speech, you claimed "to appeal to our country's enduring, basic moral val ues is to invite the scorn and laughter of the elite culture." One bastion of that "elite culture," according to you, was the faculty lounge. I cannot speak for my colleagues in agricultural economics or physics, but I can assure you that we have never met in the history coffee room — lounge is too kind a word — to "sneer at the simple but hard virtues — mod esty, fidelity, integrity." Indeed, we often mourn how seldom we en counter them in our professional and private lives. Our conversations do not revolve around practicing witchcraft, destroying "family val ues," or engaging in other activities deemed un-American by the Republi can National Convention in August. Faculty family concerns are more pro saic: How are our parents doing? Can the car last another year? Will there be enough summer school teaching for everyone? Fortunately, unlike some 37 million other citizens, we do not personally have to worry about health insurance. Our coffee room, contrary to the implications of your sr hes, is filled with discussions about our children. The exception is Monday, when the televised sports of the weekend usual ly dominate. We are proud, but hon est and worried parents. Two major concerns are day care and education. Unlike your wife, none of us have staffs to assist, so professors and spouses, like millions of other citi zens, juggle schedules daily to ensure parental availability. Of great concern to us are our stu dents. We worry where our graduate students will find work after they re ceive their doctorates. We try to lo cate funding to keep them alive while completing their education. We may be part of the "cultural elite," but that certainly does not imply wealth; per haps we should have become corpo rate lawyers. We also worry about undergradu ates. Hiring freezes have increased class size and prevented us from of fering some courses and may have forced some students to take longer than four years to complete their de grees. Most of all, we try to give all our students the best education possi ble. Teaching history has several pur poses, the most important of which is to give students a sense of where they and their societies belong. Another goal is to familiarize students with other cultures across time and geogra phy, which also creates greater under standing of their own society. One joy of history is showing students how interpretations and analyses evolve over time together with soci ety. A good historian teaches his or her students to think independently. This means, unlike many a campaign, looking at issues in all their actual complexity and uncertainty. Ideally, thinking independently means not prejudging ideas by their origin or au tomatically assuming that foreign equals bad. Thinking independently also means a tolerance and respect for dissenting views. We try to defuse student intoler ance and replace it, if not with under standing, at least with comprehension and knowledge. Some student im pressions about varieties of Christian ity, let alone other religions, would scare you with the vehemence of their ignorance and bigotry. They certainly scare us. Change, as you noted, is a perma nent part of life, but it has ever been so. Change has many components — ideological, political, economic, social, technical, and ultimately, personal. I teach history of technology. I like to think that my students leave the class room not only with a solid under standing of how technology and soci ety affect each other, but also as better citizens who realize the importance of individuals. I am sorry you did not visit our fac ulty coffee room. The coffee is good, the conversation stimulating, and my colleagues and our staff very proud to help educate a future generation. Dr. Coopersmith is an assistant professor of history Libertarians: third party in limbo Party platform can make sense; it isn't making wave S ome of you reading this are liber tarians; you just don't think you are. It's not because you necessarily dis agree with their platform. How many of you college students agree that rais ing the drinking age to 21 was a mis take? Don't you conservatives feel that government has grown too much and has taxed us too heavily to pay for programs we don't need? Do any lib erals out there share the Libertarian Party's belief that federal government seizures of homes and cars in drug-re lated cases — before defendants are given any due process — is terribly unjust? JASON LOUGHMAN Opinion editor quire that the government coerce its citizens into payment ids' Come on, admit it — many of you have been thinking >r you nave Deen tninking libertarian thoughts, perhaps witnout even realizing it. The Libertarian platform is in many ways an amalgam of con servative and liberal principles. Not only do many voters agree with at least some of the libertarian agenda, but the American public is disgusted with the scandal-plagued and often inept leaders mat the two ruling parties have offered us of late. What, then, can explain the spectacular failure of the Lib ertarian Party, third largest political party in the United States, to attract voters, increase membership, raise money, and gain media attention? One factor, the only one over which the Libertarians had no control, was the popularity of Ross Perot. Perot attract ed the disenchantment vote, more of which might have found an alternative in the Libertarian Party had Perot nev er appeared. However, the Libertarians have far more fundamental problems, problems which, left unaddressed, will prevent them from ever becoming a serious force in American poli tics. The first of these, and the most serious, is their extreme idealism. It is represented best by the statement prospective members of the party must sign to the effect that they do not support the the initiation of force in order to achieve policy aims. In fact, this test is applied to all questions of government and legislation to determine Libertarian Party positions. Thus, in the libertarian view, income taxes, which re- are wrong and should be abolished. Apprehending mur derers and rapists is not wrong, because it is the criminal who initiated the use of force; and the police, asanagentoi the government, would be second to use force. The rule, as far as 1 have seen, is inflexible. A Libertarian representative once explained that one can support the party to the extent that one wants without subscribing to pure libertarian thought. Thepointhe missed is that nobody wants to be a nalf-Libertariai^ora half-Democrat or half-Republican for that matter. Most voters are far too pragmatic to support the outrigh abolition of the income tax. Many, however, would sup port its reduction. The initiation of force test used by the Libertarians thus prevents the full support of those who feel that they are! ertarians, but at the same time, realists. The last thing the Libertarian Party can afford is to oust prospective members to feel alienated. The party must,itit wishes to grow, temper its ideals with at least a measureot realism — they must make their statement about forcea guide instead of a test. The next most serious problem for the Libertarian Part is the lack of media attention given them. It's hard tofaul the media here. More coverage of the Libertarians, wita the 30-minute infomercials Perot was able to afford,woi have amounted to editorializing by agenda settine. AM ing them coverage disproportionate to their actualimpact on the campaign would have been unprofessional. The insidious thing here is that witnout money,theLils ertarian Party will remain unable to attract such attenM Without the attention, they 7 will remain unable to attract money. Catch-22. Why discuss them then? America needs a viable third party. Democrats and Re publicans have demonstrated that their main interestis staying in power, and though Perot at one timewasa strong challenger to them both, he has no political part),m organization that will last beyond this election. It is ironic that the idealism of the Libertarian Party,the idealism missing from the dominant parties, istheirtatal weakness. For those of us who are part Republican and part Democrat, who feel that government long ago over stepped its bounds, the irony is also a shame. Loughman is a senior jounalismmjm Investigation kills melting frog myth Did The Battalion do something right? I'll admit it. I'm a Mail Call junkie. I 1 J' pick up my Battalion every afternoon, skim the headlines, check out our #5 football rating if it's Monday, and then I turn to the back page to read the letters to the editor. So you can imagine my delight on Tuesday when I found a page and a half of letters just waiting to entertain me. I found letters on everything from dry ice looking like a melted frog to yet another complaint on Feducia to an Ag turned t-sip giving our Greek sy 7 stem a friendly warning. It's always entertaining, and sometimes informative to get my Mail Call fix for the day. Thanks, Batt staff, for giving us Mail Call junkies a large dose of entertainment on Tuesday, and please keep it up! Andi Davis Class of '94 As a chemistry graduate student, I like to think that I do my part to broaden the public's awareness of chemistry through teaching my freshman labs. Imagine my surprise when I read in the Oct. 22 Battalion that, in fact, I was promoting animal torture by using a lab manual that features a frog being dissolved in acid on its front cover. Just what we need, I thought. Animal rights activists firebombing my office. Lawsuits. Disgrace. But wait — am I not jumping to conclusions? Why not utilize that most powerful of logic weapons, the scientific method! It has four steps: observe, hypothesize, test, and explain. Having thus observed that our freshman chemistry laboratory program was being accused of cruelty to animals, I hypothesized that Newman was, at worst, on serious drugs; at best, misinformed. 1 decided to test the latter theory by contacting the lab manual's author. Dr. M. Larry Peck. He said that to the best of his knowledge, the beaker on the cover contained no such frog and no such acid. After I insinuated that he might be part of some evil subliminal plot to warp the minds of freshmen, the publisher confirmed his story and stated that the picture was meiel)’* yellow light behind a beaker of waP water into which some dry ice dropped. When I first read Newman's laughed, but then I was upset becau* not everyone thinks highly off chosen field and his letter mi] " of the rare things that remember. "When I was an undergrad atA^' the fish chem lab manual had a pictf* of a frog being dissolved in ad alive! — and you could see thef hanging out and the little eyes: everything!" A college myth in the making. Th un, la: so of gets c believ W1 A ggi opinii I u uniqi prouc He gielai with to co 40,001 At what and I cent, own 1 Ev non-( Repu r Julie LC TM Graduate S0 Editorials appearing in The Battalion reflect views of the opinion page staff and editorinrtf only. They do not represent, in anyway,the opinions of reporters, staff, or editors of olhei sections of the newspaper. Columns, guest columns, and Mail Callitens express the opinions of the authors only. The Battalion encourages letters to theed'o =' will print as many as space allows mtheMaiiCf section Letters must be 300 words or less a* include the author's name. We reserve the right to edit letters for tengh style, and accuracy. Letters should be addressed to: The Battalion - Mail Call 013 Reed McDonald /Mail stop 1111 Texas A&M University College Station. TX 77843 V.