The Charlotte News

Friday, October 5, 1951

THREE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via Nate Polowetzky, that Chinese front line defenses appeared to be crumbling in the western sector this date before a U.N. offensive of 100,000 troops. The enemy was retreating northward in some sectors and some hills had been completely abandoned after days of bitter fighting. Elsewhere, only rearguard delaying action was present. Troops of nine of the U.N. nations were moving forward cautiously and making limited gains. Late in the day, the Communists had launched counter-attacks in an effort to recapture some of the abandoned hills.

On the eastern front in the area of "Heartbreak Ridge", U.N. infantry advanced a thousand yards to the west of the ridge while a tank patrol shot up enemy troops on the east.

In air action over northwest Korea, three jet battles took place involving 220 planes, the greatest number of jets yet in a single day of action. One enemy jet had been shot down and two had been damaged, while all allied jets had returned safely in two of the battles, while no word had yet arrived on the third.

There had not yet been any response to General Matthew Ridgway's renewed invitation the previous day to resume immediately the ceasefire talks at a new site in no-man's-land, but North Korean political officers were quoted as saying that there would be no resumption of the truce talks in Korea in the near future.

Before the Senate Internal Security subcommittee, former Communist Louis Budenz testified that the Communist International in Moscow had been actively interested in the campaign to re-elect Vice-President Henry Wallace in 1944, following his mission to Asia and China in the spring of that year, the resulting recommendations of which, he claimed, made by the Vice-President to FDR following the mission, had helped the Communists.

He has still got the bridge which he would like to sell you if you are interested.

Mr. Budenz was appearing the second time, responding to the report on the mission made by former Vice-President Wallace to President Truman on September 23, which showed the exact opposite, that the recommendations made to FDR were in fact anti-Communist, recommending that General Joseph Stilwell, who favored the Chinese Communists over the Nationalist Government of Chiang Kai-shek, be replaced by General Albert Wedemeyer and that General Patrick Hurley be established as a liaison between the Administration and Chiang.

Secretary of State Acheson stated in a letter to the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee considering the confirmation of Ambassador-at-Large Philip Jessup as a delegate to the U.N., that the U.S. continued to oppose recognition of Communist China and its admission to the U.N., as well as turning Formosa over to the Communists. Mr. Jessup agreed with those views.

Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Gordon Dean, stated in Los Angeles at the Founders' Day celebration at the University of Southern California, that the U.S. had atomic weapons which could "cancel out" on the battlefield "any numerical advantage" which an enemy possessed and that the country should not hesitate or fear to use them. He said that any type of weapon should be subject to use as long as it was no more destructive than was necessary to meet a particular exigency. He did not specifically refer to the war in Korea.

The Senate Investigating subcommittee looking into RFC influence-peddling, concluded its investigation of RNC chairman Guy Gabrielson this date and was set to renew its investigation of DNC chairman William Boyle, with scheduled testimony during the afternoon from a former RFC official who had been on Mr. Boyle's personal payroll in 1948 and 1949 while still holding the RFC post. The witness, whose presence on the payroll had attracted the suspicion of subcommittee member Senator Richard Nixon, had told reporters that Mr. Boyle paid him for after-hours accounting jobs.

The final witness regarding Mr. Gabrielson had been a former RFC director who was touted for the presidency of the New York Stock Exchange by Mr. Gabrielson the previous year and testified that he had rejected Mr. Gabrielson's help until after he had left the RFC. He said at the time the Stock Exchange position had been discussed, in August or September, 1950, there had been no possibility of his helping Mr. Gabrielson's company with its three large loans obtained through the RFC or modification of the terms which had been sought by Mr. Gabrielson. He had also told Mr. Gabrielson that he was not particularly interested in the position at the Stock Exchange.

A House Ways & Means subcommittee looking into activities of a former St. Louis internal revenue collector who had quit under fire the previous April, heard from the former collector's partner in an insurance agency which allegedly paid the tax official over $6,000 during 1949 and 1950. The former collector had testified the previous day that he was never in the insurance business but had previously acknowledged receipt of $2,250 from firms or persons who had tax difficulties, claiming they were legal fees for outside work.

Meanwhile, Senator Homer Ferguson called for a full-scale investigation by the Senate's special investigating subcommittee regarding all major revenue offices in the country.

Senator Robert Taft said he was withholding any decision on whether he would run for the Republican nomination for the presidency in 1952 until a survey of national sentiment was completed by two of his associates. He expected that report to be completed by the following Wednesday. He said he was determined not to be a candidate unless it was clear that the majority of Republicans wanted him. He responded to Wisconsin Republican leaders who were urging him to enter the Wisconsin primary the following April 1.

It was reported from Elizabeth City, N.C., that a freighter carrying a crew of 24 broke in two without warning in the Atlantic hurricane and sank in heavy seas with the possible loss of 16. The Coast Guard had so far found five bodies and retrieved seven survivors, expected to find no more in the rough seas.

In Los Angeles, a young girl bent on suicide turned on the gas in her trailer the previous night, whereupon her boyfriend walked in smoking a cigarette, which ignited the gas and blew both of them through the side of the trailer, causing burns to both, albeit not life-threatening. She said that she had wanted to die because her parents objected to her friendship with her boyfriend. It was probably because he smoked.

In Hanford, California, a fetus which had cried at seven months while still in the womb was born normally the previous day as a healthy girl who cried no more than other newborns. Doctors had heard the crying fetus two months earlier and recorded the cries. Obstetricians said that certain membranes were presumably broken, permitting the fetus to receive air and thus cry through its lungs.

In the World Series, following a 5-1 victory the previous day by the New York Giants in game one, the New York Yankees had scored one run in each of the first two innings to take an early 2 to 0 lead in the second game this date. The Yankees had scored its first run in the first inning on bunted singles by both Mickey Mantle and Phil Rizzuto, followed by a single by Gil McDougald. In the second inning, with two out and nobody on, Joe Collins had hit a homerun into right field. The Yankees would go on to win 3 to 1, evening the Series at one game apiece.

On page 7-A, another Gallup poll is presented, which showed that Britons favored the Conservatives by a margin of 5 to 4 over Labor in the upcoming October 25 elections.

On the editorial page, "Don't Sneak Away, Mr. Truman" tells of the President having asked for assistance from the Citizens Committee for the Hoover Report in drawing up four reorganization plans after he had submitted to Congress plans which had failed to pass. The piece thinks it an attempt by the President to push the blame onto Congress for the responsibility in failing to pass the reorganization plans recommended by the Hoover Commission, finds that he was equally culpable for not having demonstrated enough leadership in getting the legislation passed. He could have gathered the leadership from Congress much earlier and worked out a strategy for putting across the programs. The Republicans would have had to go along or contradict their professed love of economy.

How would that, however, differ from well-established precedent of Republican hypocrisy, as apparently about to be established in bold again today with the vote in the Senate on the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court?

There is always impeachment, and so the Republicans might wish to stop, read the tea leaves on the upcoming midterm elections, and realize that your day of complete control of all three branches of the Government is coming fast to an end. Is it worth it, just to get an appointee on the Court, to pull every political shenanigan in the book for the past two and a half years?

As Judge Kavanaugh said, "What goes around, comes around." And we surely hope that it does, after his disgraceful performance in the hearings last week, his regular dissembling, on everything from stolen e-mails from Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2003 to his high school and college drinking habits during the mid-Eighties, as well as his advice back in the latter Nineties to Ringo K. Galaxy regarding the impeachment of President Clinton. Yes, what goes around comes around, Mr. Justice.

The real question becomes why, when the country is already broken in two with partisanship and political enmity as with few times in its history, the Moron in the White House would continue to put forward, insistently, such a controversial, politically swayed and divisive nominee as Judge Kavanaugh.

The issue is not the presumption of innocence, as this is not a criminal proceeding and that presumption does not apply in administrative and civil arenas. Millions of persons who have been adversely adjudicated in civil cases or administrative proceedings would very much like to avail themselves of notions of "presumption of innocence", not applied by those adjudicatory bodies in those proceedings. Nor is it a matter of burdens of proof or standards of proof, which ordinarily do apply in the latter contexts. Insofar as nominees of the Executive Branch subject to confirmation under the Constitution, the Senate is the sole judge and jury and arbiter of rules governing that process, along with the American people who elected them—the American people, the majority of whom have rejected this nominee and are not being heard today.

Nor is it really a matter of never-adjudicated instances of alleged misconduct in high school and college—though we do find it interesting that in the bar fight at Yale after a concert, young Mr. Kavanaugh had told the police, according to the police report, that he did not wish to say whether he had thrown ice from his drink in the face of the unknown patron who had taken umbrage at Mr. Kavanaugh and his two friends staring at him with undue interest, as that refusal to comment, while well within his Fifth Amendment Constitutional rights, suggests obfuscation of misconduct which follows a pattern through the use of the stolen e-mails while a full-fledged adult working in the George W. Bush White House on Federal Court nominee confirmations in 2002-03. That lack of candor, displayed in the Supreme Court confirmation hearings, is quite relevant and is most troubling, as is his complete abandon last week of any semblance of judicial equanimity in his disputatious, politically-charged diatribe in refutation of the charges of sexual misconduct some 36 years earlier. The innocent, it seems to us, would instead, especially regarding such allegedly old incidents, be untroubled and simply, in a dignified way, set forth his innocence of the charges and why that stood to reason—much as Professor Ford presented her affirmative facts forming the accusation to the Committee. By stark contrast, Justice Clarence Thomas, in 1991, remained dignified and poised in his defense against a charge of sexual harassment in the work place.

But overarching all of these issues, which the Republican Senators have overlooked, is the divisive nature of this nomination at a time when the country is already reeling from political division under a "President" "elected" by the long-outmoded electoral college while firmly rejected by a three-million popular vote majority in 2016, a year in which the Republican Senators held up the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court and never even afforded him a hearing, despite the undisputed fact of his considerable qualifications for the position. And, parenthetically, Senator Collins, we do not care whether Judge Kavanaugh shares precisely the judicial opinions of Judge Garland. The question is one which you have overlooked, along with your compadres, that is one of basic fairness to the American people as a whole, not just to Republican voters for political advantage on the Supreme Court, supposed to be divorced, by the very nature of its selection process for lifetime appointments, from politics.

But the Republican leadership, ignoring that history which has stood the country well for 229 years since the Founding, have shifted the ground twice in this process, once in 2016, with the unprecedented refusal to hold hearings on Judge Garland, and then again in 2017, when it unloaded the "nuclear option" to abandon the filibuster on Supreme Court nominees, which had effectively required supermajority support of 60 Senators for confirmation, reduced by the Republicans to a simple majority for the first time in living memory. While the filibuster was abused often in history, such as in the civil rights area, by Senators bent on obstructionism, it had its place in Supreme Court nominations, to preserve the right of a large Senate minority to object to a lifetime appointment of a would-be justice unacceptable to the American people as a whole, especially by a President, for valid reasons, not in good standing with the American people as a whole.

And that is the situation in which we are today. Judge Kavanaugh has been firmly rejected by the majority of the people and yet, if things hold this date as apparently the vote appears to be, 51 to 49, he will be confirmed.

Let us hope, not because he is evil or bad or even a bad jurist, but to preserve fairness and consistency and the concept that what goes around comes around, he will, if confirmed today, shortly be the subject of impeachment proceedings in the House, even if the Senate ultimately fails to convict and remove him from the Supreme Court next year. At least sunshine will come to the process, a very truncated process brought on by further Republican condescension to the collective wisdom and intelligence of the American people by failing to release 90 percent of the documents available anent Judge Kavanaugh, and even failing to authorize release publicly of the FBI report, even with appropriate redactions, compiled in the past week, itself truncated by both limitations of time and scope of the inquiry.

But unfortunately for the majority of the American people who have rejected him and who are not being heard, he appears bound for his seat on the Supreme Court.

The confirmation process for the Supreme Court, and the Federal courts in general, is not a football game with winners and losers and last-second field goals, and it is not designed by the Founders as a political contest. It is supposed to be a bipartisan effort to get the best, most qualified person with properly independent judicial temperament, untainted by political bias, to sit on the Supreme Court, to act as the final arbiter of decisions affecting masses of people in the country through time. For the most part, that has been the case with nominees, Judge Robert Bork's failed nomination in 1987 having been the most notable exception in recent decades, since the failed successive nominations by President Nixon of Judges Clement Haynsworth and Harold Carswell, in 1969 and 1970, respectively.

No one possessed of both common sense and a good sense of the history of the country would suggest that if Judge Kavanaugh were not confirmed, he ought be removed from the D.C. Court of Appeals, even for apparent falsehoods to the Judiciary Committee regarding the 2003 stolen e-mails and his drinking habits in high school and college, during the confirmation process to the Supreme Court. No one with any sense is suggesting, "Lock him up", or other such tawdry Trumpie tactics to achieve political victories through outrageous expressions of billingsgate, calculated to appeal to the callow and crass. The result of lack of confirmation would only enable Judge Kavanaugh to resume his role as a Judge on what is considered to be the most powerful Circuit Court in the nation because of its hearing of Government cases arising in the nation's capital. It would not deprive him of anything. And so when Senators on the Republican side of the aisle suggest criminal standards of presumption of innocence or even civil and administrative standards ordinarily attendant potential losses of property or position, including burdens of proof and standards of proof, they are engaged in obfuscation before the American people, shifting the ground and avoiding the overriding issue: Should a person who is under a substantial cloud with regard to his impartiality, truthfulness and candor, and obviously divisive of the American people, be confirmed to the highest court in the land, failure of which does not deprive him of anything?

There is no standard of proof or burden or presumption, precisely because of that history and the stance in which nominations to Federal courts or other offices in the Government arise. These positions, especially those in the Federal courts, are not prizes for political fealty or for being coach of a girls' ball team, showing civic responsibility or engaging in other such laudable activities. This is not a parole or clemency hearing. The hearings are to determine proper fitness to serve in a position of the highest responsibility for nominees whom the bulk of the citizenry ought, after those hearings, either accept or reject, and in the latter case, as here, the nominee refused politely and returned to whatever prior position held without penalty. The very fact of such controversy swirling around Judge Kavanaugh renders him unacceptable for a position on the highest court in the land.

Any President with any sense would have withdrawn the nomination weeks ago, just as President Reagan sensibly withdrew the nomination of Judge Douglas Ginsberg in 1987, as soon as a controversy arose over his admisssion of prior use of marijuana while in college, enabling him to return to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals—where he still serves as a Senior Judge, having served as Chief Judge from 2001 to 2008. There is no shame in being rejected for a position to the highest Court in the land. Most jurists and lawyers are never even considered for such a position.

Judge Kavanaugh's rejection for the nomination would be much better and more salutary for the country, and for Judge Kavanaugh, personally, than to impose him on an unwilling citizenry, forever thus to be controversial, even mocked openly, while on the High Court, and possibly to face impeachment in the House next year, should, as the polls strongly indicate, the Democrats return to control in that body which originates impeachment proceedings to be tried in the Senate.

Think it over, please, Republican Senators, before casting your votes this afternoon. There is still time to change the outcome, for everyone involved, including those horrible, terrible, "obstructionist" Democrats—who only form the majority of the electorate in the nation at large, set to vote next month.

But please, in the meantime, spare us the impassioned rhetoric about high principle. This process has been reduced to pure politics by the Republicans since 2016. And yes, Judge Kavanaugh, what goes around usually will, soon or late, come around. The boofer might become the boofee.

"Enough Is Enough" tells of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals having recently handed down a decision stating that the Virginia Electric Power Company should be permitted to go ahead immediately with the building of a 20 million dollar dam at Roanoke Rapids. But the Secretary of Interior Oscar Chapman had recommended to the Solicitor General that the case be appealed on behalf of the Government to the Supreme Court.

The piece thinks that if the Government had a leg to stand on, the move might be understandable. But the case had made it clear that it did not. The FPC, in 1950 had recommended that VEPCO build the dam. The FTC adopted that report and issued a license to VEPCO.

It concludes that with the Court of Appeals decision, the matter had gone far enough, especially with a power shortage threatened by further delays in construction of the dam which would serve 450,000 customers in North Carolina and Virginia. The Congress had been slow to appropriate the necessary Government funding to build the dam and to try to insist on the Government's right to build it only would occasion further delay.

"In the Right Direction" tells of a letter to the newspaper from State Highway Commission chairman Henry Jordan, in response to a recent editorial which favored having the Commission advise the smaller towns and cities on engineering problems posed by new municipal street projects, stating that at a recent meeting of the Commission, it had approved just such advice.

The piece finds that while on the right track, it would hope that the Commission would go further than providing general advisory and consulting services of regular engineers, and provide those with more specialized training and experience in municipal street planning.

"Shucks" tells of a formal FTC complaint against the developer of Hadacol that it was of no value in the treatment of "'cancer, tuberculosis, heart trouble, diabetes, paralysis, epileptic fits, delirium tremens, neuralgia, migraine, blood diseases, stomach ulcers, rheumatism, arthritis, high or low blood pressure, asthma, swelling of the waist, hands and legs, cataracts, sinus trouble and weakness, and rundown condition following colds.'"

It concludes: "Oh, well, we always suspected it was that 12 percent alcohol that sold the stuff."

A piece from the Louisville Courier-Journal, titled "A Thousand Times No", tells of a plaint having arisen from The New Yorker, after perusing the current issue of Vogue, against the coming new fashion of "the low middy line". The peace regards it as signaling the return of the "ultimate insult to male sensibilities, the knee-length feminine waistline of the Twenties."

It agrees with the New Yorker regarding the memory of a style which had provided "girls whose pelvis appeared to start just below the chin".

It concludes: "Give us back the bathtub gin, the musty speakeasy, even the agonizing bell-shaped hat in which girls concealed their heads in the Twenties, but not that waistline. Balenciaga, take it away."

Drew Pearson tells of Secretary of State Acheson having decided finally to stay on to the end of the term in office of President Truman, and had even volunteered to help in the campaign should the President run again, provided the Republican nominee was Senator Taft, whose policies Mr. Acheson felt would undermine American foreign policy, especially with regard to NATO. He had received great praise after his deft handling of the Japanese peace treaty conference at San Francisco in early September. But the past criticism was still fresh in his memory, as exhibited at the Ottawa conference of NATO, when someone had mentioned to him that he had the full support of Canadians even if he lacked popularity within the U.S., to which he had responded that sometimes he thought that all of his support came from outside the U.S.

A professor of religion at Oklahoma City University had preached a sermon at a Methodist church in Oklahoma City in which he urged sending missionaries abroad instead of U.S. soldiers, as Kagawa of Japan had urged to Americans. In response to the suggestion, a group of the congregation raised money, consulted with experts in New York, and incorporated World Assistance, Inc., with the goal of sending teachers, doctors, farmers, builders of bridges and other such persons with expertise as a new kind of "combat team" to battle Communism near Vellore and Madras in India. Mr. Pearson notes that Justice William O. Douglas, having just returned from Asia, had reported that it was this part of the drought-stricken India where Americans were disliked the most.

We note that if all else fails, they can always get them to start shirt companies for the American market in the 1960's.

Senator Ed Martin of Pennsylvania, one of the most conservative Republicans in Congress, liked President Truman and said that he only wished he were on the Republicans' side. They would get together occasionally and talk over days at the front during World War I.

The National Association of Manufacturers published an editorial praising Senator Joseph McCarthy.

The Senate sergeant-at-arms, Joe Duke, convinced, correctly, that the Republicans would win the Senate in 1952, had sought a new job through the White House on the International Boundary Water Commission.

That may come in handy by 1973.

What goes around, comes around.

Marquis Childs discusses the prospect that the British Prime Minister, no matter whether Clement Attlee or Winston Churchill after the October 25 elections, would visit the U.S. by early December to make a plea for easing of the financial burdens facing the British Government. During the first eight months of 1951, Britain's deficit was over 2.2 billion dollars, the result of an excess of imports over exports, and partly from the inflationary rising costs of raw materials since the beginning of the Korean War. Furthermore, a 32 million dollar payment would be due at the beginning of the year against the four billion dollar loan advanced to Britain in 1946 by the U.S.

It was likely, based on the British polls, that the new Prime Minister would be Winston Churchill, who would be able to make a better case for the assistance than Prime Minister Attlee, given his Labor Government's incompetence in curing the British ills. But, rather than making a direct plea for aid, it was likely Mr. Churchill would ask for a lightening of the burden imposed by NATO on British rearmament.

France also faced problems from this rearmament burden and it was cutting so deeply into the general economy of Western Europe as to produce a train of economic and political disasters which could open the way to Communism from within.

An alternative request might be to change the proposed military aid to Britain into economic aid, a proposal discussed at the Ottawa meeting of NATO. Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett believed, however, that such alteration of the form of the aid could not be accomplished without further action by Congress.

Mr. Childs suggests that the record of the Labor Party in foreign policy was also lamentable, in that, while nationalizing industries at home, it had allowed the dispute with Iran over nationalization of the British oil properties to come close to a final break with Iran. The Government had also been indifferent to France's Schuman plan for pooling Europe's steel and coal and the NATO concept of a European army, indicative of the inherent strain within the Labor Party of isolationism.

He concludes that the problems faced by Britain after the war had been staggering, and that these problems would not suddenly go away after the elections.

Robert C. Ruark tells of the recent day on which the piano tuner had come to tune his piano, a day when everything else had gone wrong. The Giants had been losing to the Dodgers in the second game of the National League playoff. And he could not find his shirts or his socks. Tuning the piano was unnecessary anyway, especially because he was tone-deaf and, in any event, when somebody was playing it, everybody was talking so loud that it could not be heard.

"I dunno, but there always seems to be one of those days in the life of every man, and that is always the day on which the piano tuner cometh."

A letter writer objects to what he believes was spot zoning and violation of the intent of the zoning act, when the Board of Adjustment had recently approved re-zoning from residential to industrial of a tract of land lying in the southwestern part of Charlotte along the New Thrift Highway.

A letter from Harry Golden, editor of the Carolina Israelite, responds to a talk provided by an Arab to the Lions Club on October 1, in which the speaker had stated that a million Arabs had been "dispossessed of their homes, and their lands to make way for Jewish immigration in Palestine." Mr. Golden assumes that he was referring to the sovereign state of Israel, established by the U.N. in 1947. He had omitted one key fact, that seven Arab states, with a population of 30 million people, had attacked and invaded Israel in defiance of the U.N., hoping to drive the 750,000 Israelis into the sea. He had also neglected to point out that the land which the Jews had bought in Palestine had previously been a useless wasteland, undeveloped through the centuries by the Arabs, made arable by the modern farming methods introduced by the Israelis. Thus, the speaker's claim that the Arab peoples had been "robbed" was not supported by a single fact. There had scarcely been in history, Mr. Golden suggests, a change of possession of land more cloaked in legal authority, as well as practicality, than the establishment of Israel.

The speaker had also neglected, concludes Mr. Golden, Ezekiel, chapter 37, verse 25: "And they shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob, my servant, wherein your fathers have dwelled and they shall dwell therein, even they and their children, and their children's children, forever."

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