The Charlotte News

Thursday, December 20, 1951

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports, via George A. McArthur, that the truce negotiators in Korea had turned the problem of how to supervise an armistice over to staff officers this date in an effort to try to break the continuing deadlock on that issue. The staff officers met for two hours this date but there was no report on what had occurred. An allied spokesman stated that the decision to turn the matter over to staff officers was the result of lack of progress on the issue. The Communists had last suggested a compromise whereby the allies would permit construction of North Korean airfields, adamantly opposed by the allies, accept the Communist proposal for inspection by neutral teams at specified points, and eliminate the allied demand for aerial observation over all of Korea. The Communists had said they "might consider", in that event, the U.N. demand for unlimited rotation of troops and replenishment of equipment and supplies. The regular subcommittee would meet again on Friday, regardless of the outcome of the session with the staff officers.

Freezing weather and heavy fog curtailed fighting along the battlefronts this date, with only scattered small arms and artillery fire being heard and no report of major action, as soldiers on both sides concentrated instead on keeping warm.

Korean farmers brought stockings across the lines, with Communist guns at their backs, and left them where U.N. troops could find them. This part of the report is limited and presumably refers to stockings for keeping warm rather than Christmas stockings.

Air operations were reduced, as ten B-29s hit rail yards at Chongju in a night attack, in one of the heaviest B-29 raids against a single target during the war.

Given the mutual release of prisoner lists two days earlier by both sides, the U.S. Eighth Army completed plans this date for beginning the homeward journey of allied prisoners after the signing of an armistice. No one yet knew when that would be.

The Communist prisoner list had caused one woman in Atlanta considerable confusion by the fact that her first husband was on the list after having been reported killed in action the previous May, coupled with the fact that she had then remarried in the meantime. She told reporters that she did not know what to do and did not know how she felt, could not yet say which husband she would choose. The Government had paid the $10,000 under her first husband's insurance policy. The Defense Department said that the discrepancy had been sent to General Matthew Ridgway at U.N. headquarters in Tokyo for investigation.

In Paris, Greece won a seat on the U.N. Security Council, beating out White Russia on the 19th ballot to achieve the necessary two-thirds majority of the present and voting members of the General Assembly. The deadlock had been the longest in U.N. history. Greece replaced Yugoslavia, whose two-year rotation on the Council would end at the beginning of the year. Chile and Pakistan had been elected two weeks earlier to fill the other two vacancies by India and Ecuador. Britain, France and other members had originally backed White Russia under a "gentleman's agreement" entered in 1946 which gave one rotational seat to the Eastern European bloc, but the U.S. balked, saying that the agreement had only been for one year. Britain and France had switched their votes during the afternoon. It had been pointed out that the Korean war resolution had only been passed by a spare majority of seven votes on the Council and would have been lost had White Russia or some other Soviet-bloc country been a member. (At the time, Russia was boycotting Council meetings since the beginning of 1950 based on the refusal of the Council to allow Communist China to take the permanent seat reserved for China in lieu of the Nationalists, and, thus, there had been no veto.)

The General Assembly also approved the creation of a five-nation committee to survey whether Germany was ready for countrywide free elections.

Also in Paris, two Congressmen spearheaded the U.S. counter-attack against Soviet spy charges, Congressman Mike Mansfield of Montana suggesting to the U.N. political committee, of which he was a delegate, that the Soviet-dominated world was in the grip of "spy mania", while Congressman John Vorys of Ohio, also a delegate and addressing the weekly luncheon of the American Club, called Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky "a venomous old goat" issuing "a matchless, putrid stream of vituperation", added that there were certain kinds of contests "you do not enter with a skunk". He accused Mr. Vishinsky of trying to wreck the two accomplishments during the week at the U.N., the establishment of a disarmament commission and the establishment of a commission to study the possibility of free elections in Germany. Both men were members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Mr. Mansfield's description followed a Polish accusation that the U.S. was operating a vast spy ring and financing "killings, assassinations and outrages" behind the Iron Curtain, and referred with particularity to the four American airmen being held in Hungary on claims that they had been on a spy mission when forced down in their plane on November 19 during a trip from West Germany to Belgrade.

The U.S., in a note to the Soviets, had denied it was trying to promote subversion against the Soviet Government. Russia had charged on November 21 that a 100-million dollar appropriation in the mutual security act of the previous October to help victims of Communist rule constituted subversion. The U.S. responded that the assistance was in keeping with the traditional U.S. policy of helping victims of oppression, in this case those refugees in Eastern Europe escaping to the free world. It further said that Russia's charge was an attempt to disrupt NATO.

The President postponed his announcement of the drastic action he intended to take to clean out Government wrongdoers, originally scheduled to have been made the previous week. It was not clear when the announcement would be made.

Senator Mike Monroney of Oklahoma stated that he would introduce in January a bill to prohibit any member of Congress from interfering in a tax case pending before the IRB and would place tax collection agents under Civil Service, in addition, require publication of any intervention by a lawmaker in RFC loan cases as well as bar pensions to officials convicted of breach of the public trust.

The House Ways & Means subcommittee investigating the IRB scandals called in Henry Grunewald to explain his associations with IRB officials, but the hearing this date was in executive session. Among other things, investigators wanted to inquire regarding a $1,300 loan to Mr. Grunewald acknowledged by Charles Oliphant, former IRB chief counsel, during his testimony to the subcommittee two weeks earlier. Mr. Oliphant testified that Mr. Grunewald had taken an interest in tax cases and had told him that he was "helping" Senator Styles Bridges of New Hampshire in a multi-million-dollar tax case against a Baltimore man.

In Charlotte, a 24-year old driver was seriously injured when he lost control of his car on a curve and it wound up flipped upside down on the porch of a home on Tuckaseegee Road the previous night at around 1:00 a.m. He remained unconscious in the hospital.

The northern two-thirds of the nation, already hit by snow and cold during the previous week, was struck by a fresh storm this date, behind which was a new blast of frigid air. At least 228 deaths had already been attributed to the severe weather of the previous week. Temperatures again dipped far below zero in many areas. The new storms hit the Rockies first and Denver received five inches of new snow, and then the storm spread over the plains states, the upper Mississippi Valley and the Great Lakes region, was expected to strike this date in Virginia, Maryland, western Pennsylvania and through most of West Virginia and Ohio.

Time to erect a giant winter wall, nay, a dome, against this menace to society. It happens every year, but nobody will do anything about it. Nature murders innocent people. And so it is time that we take back our nation from this intruder and send Nature into detention where it belongs, indeed, send Nature to the chair. We need vengeance. Blood for blood. Do it today before Nature gets you tomorrow.

On the editorial page, "A Start Toward Redevelopment" tells of the City Council having approved the Redevelopment Commission's resolution for preliminary study of four blighted areas in Charlotte, a first step toward slum clearance. A place would have to be provided for relocation of the residents currently in those areas and the Commission had found two sites which were well-equipped with the basic requirements for residential use. Contrary to the opinion expressed by one member of the Council, that redevelopment was a "Federal hand-out program", it was, counsels the piece, a local program, administered by local officials, using local funds to a large extent, and designed to correct local problems. The Federal Government was a partner in the project only to the extent that it would help pay any deficiencies between the original purchase price of an area and its resale after redevelopment. Wise management by the Redevelopment Commission could avoid any such deficiency.

"A Great Job, Well Done" congratulates the Pentagon for working very hard to check the list of Korean War prisoners and locate their next of kin so that the Pentagon could impart the news for Christmas that their loved one was on the list. It finds that this story was one of the greatest news stories of the year. It rejoices with the families who received the hopeful news and expresses sorrow for those whose hopes would be dimmed by the absence of their loved one's name on the list.

"A Lesson for All of Us" tells of overhearing a woman sitting in the next booth who said that she was ashamed of herself for being concerned about such things as buying presents for Christmas, meeting the rent and paying the food bill, after she was reminded by the release of the Korean War prisoner list that her husband was at home and not in Korea, that her problems paled beside those of wives, mothers and sweethearts who had to await news from Korea regarding their loved ones.

"The Service Dismissal" tells of the dismissal of John Service from the State Department having been hailed by some as vindication of McCarthyism and proof of softness toward Communism in the Government. But the fact was that his dismissal had only been the result of a less strict standard of proof ordered by the President the previous May and utilized by the Loyalty Board, to find a "reasonable doubt" regarding Mr. Service's loyalty, whereas previously the Board had required actual evidence of disloyalty to justify dismissal. No new evidence had been found with regard to Mr. Service and none had ever been adduced that he had Communist affiliations.

It indicates that the country had long followed the presumption of innocence and wanted the principle continued to avoid the prospect of a police state. It finds that the Government had temporarily amended this principle for the sake of expediency during the present emergent times. It further indicates that as some innocent Americans would no doubt be deprived of office during the emergency, the country would more quickly return to its just policy if it withheld unwarranted condemnation in the meantime.

Just as with some commentary on the recent confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, the piece makes the mistake of confusing the presumption of innocence, a term of art applicable in the criminal justice context, with civil standards of jurisprudence, where that presumption does not apply and never has. The Supreme Court, in 1895, stated in Coffin v. U.S.:

"The evolution of the principle of the presumption of innocence, and its resultant, the doctrine of reasonable doubt, make more apparent the correctness of these views [that the presumption is part of the proof in favor of the accused and the reasonable doubt standard of proof, the result] and indicate the necessity of enforcing the one in order that the other may continue to exist. While Rome and the Mediaevalists taught that, wherever doubt existed in a criminal case, acquittal must follow, the expounders of the common law, in their devotion to human liberty and individual rights, traced this doctrine of doubt to its true origin,—the presumption of innocence,—and rested it upon this enduring basis. The inevitable tendency to obscure the results of a truth, when the truth itself is forgotten or ignored, admonishes that the protection of so vital and fundamental a principle as the presumption of innocence be not denied, when requested, to any one accused of crime."

Unstated in that opinion was the dovetailing between the presumption of innocence and the privilege against self-incrimination in the criminal context, as embodied in the Fifth Amendment. It is thus not necessary that a criminally accused defendant testify—or, for that matter, a witness in any proceeding where testimony might be self-incriminating—, enabling the defendant to rest on whether the prosecution has met the burden of proof. The "proof" offered by the presumption of innocence provides the accused a sufficient quantum of evidence at the start which must be overcome by the prosecution to establish the truth of the charge, and every element of it, beyond a reasonable doubt, before the defendant offers any affirmative evidence. The trier of fact, of course, must then factor in also any evidence which the defendant does offer to confute the charge in weighing its final determination of whether the prosecution has sustained its high burden, always bearing in mind that extra quantum of "proof" on the defendant's side, the presumption of innocence.

It is true that typically in administrative proceedings as well as in other civil proceedings, the administrative body or the plaintiff in the matter has the burden of proving a given contention—either by a "preponderance of the evidence", more probable than not, or the somewhat higher "clear and convincing evidence"—which would result in denial of a property right, but, there is no, per se, presumption of innocence, which imports the high standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt of the guilt of the accused. No one is entitled to Government employment, and certainly no one is entitled to a seat on the United States Supreme Court or any other Federal appointive position. The firing of someone from same or removal from office or preventing someone from being hired, while involving a property right, does not involve criminal or even civil penalties, and should not be subject, therefore, to the presumption of innocence, but only the basic due process rights of a hearing before an impartial fact-finder, at which the person whose conduct and qualifications are to be adjudicated may have counsel present, present witnesses and other evidence in their behalf and cross-examine witnesses testifying against them—as to the latter, at least insofar as the structure of the particular body before which the hearing is held admits, a political body, such as a Senate confirmation process, allowing for a form of cross-examination by its bipartisan composition, assuming a reasonably fair and impartial chair.

Parenthetically, this due process is necessarily limited by both the Constitutional requirements of advice and consent on positions for which Senate confirmation is required and by the Constitutional procedures laid out for impeachment, originating in the House and tried in the Senate, with a two-thirds majority thereof required for removal, all limited by the nature of the position in question and its relative importance. Positions not subject to Senate confirmation and having no life tenure, including Cabinet positions, are subject to firing by the chief executive without cause or Congressional approval, and so right of hearing before an executive board is performed by executive order, to act as proxy for the President in making a recommendation, and is not constitutionally mandated in the first instance.

Perhaps, some of the confusion over application of the presumption of innocence to the civil and administrative context derives from loose usage of terms employed in the media on occasion regarding "guilty" versus "liable", where often the terms are used interchangeably though the first always applies only to criminal convictions and the second, though loosely applicable to the criminal context, is usually employed as a term of art only with respect to civil causes of action and damages, with "culpable" and "findings of true or false" being used in the administrative context. "Guilt" is never properly applied in either a civil or administrative context, with the exception of the case of a hybrid criminal and civil penalty, such as in some cases of contempt. And, for the same reasons, so, too, the term "innocence" is limited to the criminal context, though, as noted previously, findings by the trier of fact in criminal cases are limited to "guilty" and "not guilty", the latter phraseology for reasons of failure to meet the high burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, but never stated as "innocent", as no finder of fact makes that determination—as long as one is not being poetic in the heavenly sense of Final Judgment by a Higher Power.

Moreover, in the case in point, we find it quite interesting that the same individuals who most strenuously insisted on a presumption of innocence in the case of Justice Kavanaugh, appear to be the very persons who are least likely to provide that presumption to the ordinary run of the mine defendant in criminal cases—such as Bill Cosby and O. J. Simpson, to cite two well-known examples where that presumption flew out the window in many, if not most, media reports involving editorial commentary. Specifically, we refer most pointedly to the idiots on Fox News.

Again, we stress, if you watch that trash and believe in it, you are an uninformed idiot, too, living in a land of make-believe, spoon-fed to you by the sensationalist Rupert Murdock, who only has one thing in mind, making as much money as he can from telling people fairy tales which they wish to hear, exploiting their preexisting prejudices, not certainly in engaging in anything resembling honest, objective journalism. You are simply hearing what their demographic studies tell them you wish to hear. You exist, in other words, in a Pavlovian echo chamber, where a conditioned response to stimuli being fed to you is anticipated in advance by the string-pullers. Wake up, before you sell the country down the river to totalitarian oligarchists in Russia and elsewhere. Or are you completely crazy?

We note that the idiots on the radio out in Texas contend now that "globalists", having "silenced" the idiots in Texas, are now out to silence Tucker Carlson—because his sponsors have withdrawn from his cartoon show, meaning, therefore, we take it, that his sponsors were all globalists or controlled by same, which does not speak well for Mr. Carlson or his brainwashed audience, now, does it? Perhaps, he can take to hawking he-man, non-globaloney vitamins which won't turn the friggin' frogs gay, so's you don't lose your gun rights or won't be tempted to kill your little unwanted love-child with a quick cure 'cause you can't provide it succor.

A piece from the Asheville Citizen, titled "Wind on the Mountains", tells of the mountain wind being a wanderer, coming down from Michigan or perhaps up from the Gulf, into the mountains. It goes on a bit, in celebration of creative writing, to describe the wind.

It blows.

Bill Sharpe, in his "Turpentine Drippings", snippets from newspapers around the state, provides one from Louis Graves of the Chapel Hill Weekly, in which he recounts of having had a member of his staff read his copy for a paragraph in which he had stated that he had attended football games while "prone" upon a couch. His proofreader corrected that he actually meant "supine" rather than "prone", and he agreed that he was not listening to the radio report of the game while lying on his stomach, admits that he had never realized the difference between "prone" and "supine". He provides the OED definition for each word, that there would be no controversy in the matter.

He was prone to lie supinely on his couch, albeit not sublimely, assuming for the moment he had been listening to the Duke versus UNC football game, during which, for the most part, judging by the final score, the UNC players were lying prone on the field, having played the game, and most of the season, in supine fashion.

Billy Arthur, former UNC head cheerleader, in News & Views, tells of a person at Camp Lejeune threatening not to purchase anything further in neighboring Jacksonville until the parking difficulties were corrected there, to which Mr. Arthur states that he only knew of one or two items thereabouts which sold for a nickel.

News & Views also tells of there being a shortage of dimes and pennies at the bank, which nevertheless had plenty of nickels, because everything which had gone up in price had risen by a dime.

Mack McKay of the Salisbury Post imparts of an individual from Spencer who told of a soldier who had gotten drunk and wound up locked in the Spencer jail, after which some of his friends, worried about him waking up with a headache, went to the back of the jail and formed a human pyramid by standing on each others' shoulders, whereupon the top man handed the prisoner a pack of cigarettes through the barred window, and then also handed him a fifth of liquor, telling him to take a snort so he would sober up, at which point the soldier took the fifth to his bunk and held it in his arms like a baby, proceeding then to guzzle it, told his friends when they protested and demanded his return of the bottle, that they would have to come and get it.

The Pinehurst Outlook tells of Senator John Stennis of Mississippi having informed how much a billion dollars was by explaining that if a man opened a grocery store at the birth of Christ and had lost $1,000 every day since, he would still need another 788 years before the entire billion could be spent. He had added that the Government was spending about 100 billion dollars per year.

Frances Frazier of the Waynesville Mountaineer tells of having heard in passing: "The prettiest place for snow is on a Christmas card."

And so more, forth on, more so, on more and on further more.

Drew Pearson tells of there being honest officials in Washington who had stuck out their necks to block corrupt deals, one illustration of whom having been Florence Shientag, an assistant U.S. Attorney in New York, who had almost single-handed blocked the wire-pullers who had sought to prevent the prosecution of two tax crooks who were second-hand machinery dealers in New York. She wound up trying the case herself and sent the two men to jail. He provides the details, including the use by the two men of a fixer who had been behind the $30,000 airplane purchase, from which Lamar Caudle had earned a $5,000 commission. The two men accused of tax fraud had hired an attorney from Greensboro who was a friend of Mr. Caudle, and though the attorney had quoted a retainer fee of $2,500, they offered him $25,000. This attorney was still sharing offices in Washington with the fixer who engaged in the airplane deal. During this time, Mr. Caudle had accepted airplane rides from the fixer and palled around with the attorney. The fixer, meanwhile, had done everything he could to ingratiate himself to Democratic leadership, even purchasing ten tables at a Democratic dinner in New York in 1949 for $10,000, tables he had made a point of purchasing through Mr. Caudle. Meanwhile, Mr. Caudle was laboring under the impression that all of the attention being paid him was because people liked him.

The more wires which had been pulled to stop the prosecution, the more Ms. Shientag had insisted that the case go to trial, for which she received support from U.S. Attorney Thomas Murphy, who was now a Federal Judge—the lead prosecutor of Alger Hiss in 1949-50, who had just been placed in charge of the commission by the President to clean up the Government. The trial, in October, 1950, had lasted six weeks and wound up in four-year and two-year jail sentences. Ms. Shientag tried the case by herself against six high-powered attorneys representing the two defendants.

Mr. Pearson remarks that though her persistence and long record in the U.S. Attorney's office merited a Federal judgeship, Frieda Hennock had instead been appointed from the FCC, only to be blocked by the Senate. He suggests that it would be interesting to see whether the President now would belatedly recognize Ms. Shientag and appoint her to the bench.

While not making any particular reference to Ms. Shientag, as a general proposition we have to question whether prosecutorial prowess ought be a prerequisite for appointment to the bench, whether at the state or Federal level. This time was in the days before the Federal Public Defender's Office, first established in 1964, and so there was no functional equivalent pool of defense attorneys from which to choose appointees to the Federal bench, though there is nothing which would bar appointment of state-level public defenders and other defense attorneys—though, in actual practice in those times, appointments to Federal judgeships, as they still are in some instances, were often based on purely political criteria, regardless of qualifying experience.

So does the skill of a prosecutor, with the odds of success stacked in their favor by virtue of choosing which cases actively to pursue, thus usually limited to eminently winnable cases, necessarily translate to skill as a jurist, any more than the skills of criminal defense attorneys or active civil litigators? Mr. Pearson appears to have limited his focus.

Stewart Alsop tells of Prime Minister Churchill having, since the October elections in Britain, adopted many of the views held by his most dangerous political antagonist, Aneurin Bevan, leader of the left-wing, anti-American socialist minority. The Conservative Government had taken a similar stance with respect to the American position, which supported the Schuman Plan for pooling European iron and steel and the European army, both now opposed by the Government, despite Mr. Churchill having first proposed the European army and having often spoken in favor of European economic and political unity.

Mr. Churchill also had spoken with apparent alarm regarding the "great and ever-growing" American airbases on British soil. The Government had clashed on many lesser issues with the U.S. as well during the previous couple of months, for instance, Foreign Minister Anthony Eden's support of White Russia as a member of the U.N. Security Council against Greece, favored by the U.S., and the British refusal to adopt the American small arms standard for NATO countries and to accept an American as NATO naval commander in the Atlantic.

The most important issue concerned the level of armaments. Mr. Bevan had resigned the Labor Government earlier in the year over this huge expenditure taking precedence over social programs in the country, and a few days earlier Mr. Churchill had told the House of Commons that rearmament would have to be sharply reduced, stating in the process that he believed Mr. Bevan had been correct in his belief that the rearmament program would wreck the British economy otherwise. Mr. Churchill was accustomed to dealing with military generals and was not overawed by them, as had been his predecessor, Clement Attlee, and President Truman. He was also anxious to disprove the Labor charge during the elections that the Conservative Government would allow American strategy to dominate policy. The elections had been close, the Conservatives holding but a narrow majority, and so he wanted to to try to shore up support.

The primary reason for what had occurred was the desperate economic situation in Britain, forcing Mr. Churchill to move somewhat toward the left regarding foreign policy. Mr. Alsop concludes that the only direction which Britain could move was toward a recasting of the whole basis of the Anglo-American alliance.

Marquis Childs wonders whether the appointment by the President of a special commission of inquiry to examine the current crop of scandals in the Administration would be too little too late to save the credit of the Administration. There was much more involved than mere political strategy, as there was a great amount of resentment in the country which ultimately flowed from the fact of mediocrity in the Administration. People believed that the times called for dedicated men, "men devoted to the public service, and instead they see all too often cheap opportunists, climbers, hangers on ruled by petty personal desires and ambitions."

The problem was to separate public service from private ambition, a matter to which the country had never faced up beyond the rudimentary step of installing the Civil Service system. Attorney General J. Howard McGrath had not done badly in his testimony before the House Ways & Means subcommittee, provided one overlooked his defense of Lamar Caudle. But Mr. McGrath had spent his entire career in public office at modest salaries and yet was said to have substantial means, which could only have been acquired through "careless intermingling of public office and private gain".

One of the most conspicuous examples was that of former Jersey City boss Frank Hague, who recently stated his net worth to be at least two million dollars, in response to interrogatories in a lawsuit. The taxpayers of New Jersey had been footing that bill for years.

During the course of Mr. Childs's recent travels across the country, he had talked to an able Governor, one of whose friends had confided that each of his two campaigns for two-year terms had cost $500,000, most of it from liquor dealers and road contractors who expected to be repaid in State contracts.

He posits that the country could no longer afford that kind of toll, added to the heavy burden of the costs of legitimate government, and that the wave of indignation in response to the current scandals would not cure it. It required a change of public attitude toward public service such that it was no longer a "kind of hunting license" for private enrichment, to which occasionally the public became righteously indignant. "Turn the rascals out" was an ancient political slogan, he reminds, but was of little avail if the "process means merely exchanging one set for another set."

Well, you can rest assured that there will be no rascals any longer in Gov'ment, should the Gen'ral get elected next year. He'll root 'em out, just like he done with the Nazis on D-Day. Washin'ton 'll be as clean as a hound's tooth, come 19 and 53.

Framed Edition
[Return to Links
Page by Subject] [Return to Links-Page by Date] [Return to News<i><i><i>—</i></i></i>Framed Edition]
Links-Date Links-Subj.