The Charlotte News

Tuesday, October 12, 1954

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that in Paris, the French National Assembly this date had given Premier Pierre Mendes-France a resounding vote of confidence, endorsing the nine-nation London agreement for West German rearmament, with the unofficial vote tally having been 365 votes for the Premier's position, an absolute majority being 314. The majority was comprised of members of the Premier's moderate Radical-Socialist Party, plus various center and right of center groups, including followers of General Charles de Gaulle and most of the French Socialists. The Socialist Party's national executive council had made approval almost a certainty late the previous night, when its members voted to authorize the 104 Socialist deputies in the Assembly to support the Premier, with no opposition registered from that group and only four abstentions in the final vote. In contrast, nearly half of those delegates had opposed ratification of the European Defense Community treaty, rejected in August by the Assembly, killing the treaty. The resolution of the executive committee had said that the Premier had promised to seek desired safeguards against any rebirth of German militarism in effecting the new agreement. Had the vote of confidence failed, the Premier would have been forced to resign immediately, possibly triggering the calling of new national elections.

In Detroit, Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson had become the center of a protest this date after his remarks at a press conference, in answer to questions on the nation's unemployment in distressed labor areas, telling newsmen the previous day that while he had "a lot of sympathy" for the jobless in labor surplus areas, he had always "liked bird dogs better than kennel-fed dogs, you know, one who'll get out and hunt for food rather than sit on his haunches and yelp." A transcription of the press conference had shown that the Secretary had made the statement in the context of comments regarding the draft and labor during the Korean War, stating that when a 19-year old boy could be drafted and sent to Korea to be shot at and did not have "enough gumption to go a hundred miles to obtain a job", the Secretary could not "go for that", after which he made his bird-dog comment. After reading published reports of the press conference, UAW and CIO president Walter Reuther sent a five-page telegram to the President, demanding that Mr. Wilson publicly retract the statement or be asked to retire from public life.

Senator James Beall of Maryland asserted this date, during a public hearing of the Senate Banking subcommittee investigating coffee prices, that unjustified coffee price increases had cost the American consumers an estimated 293 million dollars between January and August of 1954, that there was no evidence of a coffee shortage at present, nor during the previous year, which justified the increased prices. The subcommittee had called New York Coffee and Sugar Exchange officials before it for questioning about the charges made the previous day by the Federal Trade Commission that the Exchange had engaged in unlawful restraints of trade, contributing to the rise in coffee prices. FTC chairman Edward Howrey defended the Commission's charges against the Exchange, but the president of the Exchange said, in response, that the FTC had been "biased and inaccurate" in its allegations. If sustained, the Commission had the power to order the Exchange to cease its unlawful practices.

In Sioux Falls, S.D., 300 rioting prisoners at the South Dakota State Penitentiary had agreed this date to return to their cells and release three guards they had been holding as hostages, provided the mayor of Sioux Falls would convene an impartial investigating committee regarding conditions at the prison. The mayor indicated that he would do so if the prisoners would let him do it, and began conferring with the warden, saying that he would give the prisoners his answers after the discussion. As evidence of the prisoners' good faith, they released one of the three guards, indicating that the other two guards would be held until the mayor made his reply. The released guard said that he felt fine. The inmates had presented a long list of grievances, but only the one demand for an investigation of prison conditions. The riot had erupted the previous evening during the meal in the prison dining room, and tear gas had been used to drive the inmates from the dining room back to their cell block, where they continued their protest during the night, asking for a conference with newsmen in the early morning. While waiting for the meeting to get underway, about 25 prisoners had appeared at the gate of the cell block with a tear gas gun which they said was loaded, asking in a threatening manner whether anyone wanted the tear gas, that they just wanted to get out. Eventually, the prisoners surrendered the tear gas gun and two teargas canisters to a guard. Earlier, two prisoners had waved a blackjack and a razor from a window. When it had appeared shortly before the meeting that the prisoners were trying to break through the roof of the old wing of the prison, the warden had issued orders to guards outside to shoot if anyone broke out. One prisoner serving a term for burglary, apparently an Indian, had died during the rioting, after drinking hair tonic during the night.

Mecklenburg County had been declared a drought disaster area and farmers were due to receive Federal aid from the National Drought Committee, as the County farm agent this date had been informed by Congressman Charles Jonas. Mecklenburg was the fifteenth county in the state to obtain the aid, for which the County agent had applied in Raleigh on October 1. The aid would consist of reduction of the purchase price of hay by half its costs in freight, up to $10, with hay selling at a price between $40 and $45 per hundred pounds at present. They would also receive a dollar per hundred pounds in reduction off the costs of feed grains, corn, barley, oats, etc.

Emery Wister of The News indicates that construction of a new residential subdivision, to contain 500 homes at a construction cost of six million dollars, was underway in the eastern area of the city, being built by the Ervin Construction Co., to be known as Markham Village, located on a v-shaped, 168-acre tract bounded by Eastway Drive, Arnold Drive and Windsor Road, with 75 homes currently under construction, 65 of which had already been sold, and another 120 homes to be completed within 8 to 10 months.

Julian Scheer of The News tells of a telephone conversation held in the third-grade class of a teacher at Elizabeth School during the morning, utilizing a connecting phone powered by a battery, as part of the school's audio-visual education department's telephone course, held in cooperation with Southern Bell. Telezonia was a firm which supplied the audio-visual department with two kits for City schools and one for the County schools, containing the battery-powered telephones, telephone directories, an instruction manual on how to use the telephone, filmstrips and a color movie, plus a teacher's manual. The program was designed primarily for the third grade, but during the previous three years had been used throughout the grades with advanced materials accordingly, during a week long training course, enjoyed by the students. They learned how to use the telephone directory, telephone courtesy and etiquette, party lines (where one partied), and other such necessary ingredients to a happy, healthy phone future.

Query why, in 1954, it was taking until the third grade to learn the use of the telephone, use of which we were taught in kindergarten, if not earlier, in case of emergencies. Moreover, one had to know one's phone number when one entered the first grade.

These days, by contrast, the schools need to hold courses on how to end youthful addiction to cell phones, which seemingly have become adjunctive to the infra-adolescent, adolescent and supra-adolescent anatomy, such that, in the future, cell phones might become part of the evolutionary tree, with infants born with an adaptive webbing in the hand containing all the ingredients of a cell phone, awaiting only the insertion of a battery, unless something is done to stop the malady—perhaps some sort of electric shock aversion therapy, similar to the Pavlovian dogs, or the Skinnerian boxes. One cannot live in or by a cell phone.

In Baltimore, a 19-year old boy told police that he had stolen so many cars he could not remember what he had done with all of them, pleading guilty the previous day to car theft and being sentenced to not more than nine years in prison. He had told police that he usually drove the cars until they ran out of gas and then abandoned them. The prosecutor said that police had been able to connect the defendant with nine thefts of cars or articles taken from stolen cars, including a set of false teeth.

In Cincinnati, a customer at a drive-in restaurant sought to order a hamburger and a soft drink, after which two paper bags appeared on the service ledge and the driver picked them up, took them home, only to find that one of the bags contained a hamburger and the other, $100 in receipts, prompting the woman to call the drive-in and tell them to send her drink and that they could have their money back, the restaurant promptly complying.

In Asheville, a billy goat, appearing to be full of bock beer, challenged a police cruiser by butting its fender and resisting arrest, winding up in the drunk tank of the city jail this date, while officers tried to identify it, as it remained belligerent, displaying symptoms of a hangover. The lieutenant on desk duty said that the goat had resented some other drunks in the tank and was allowed to simmer down in solitary.

In Miami, Fla., it was reported that Hurricane Hazel, still with 115 mph winds, had moved into waters just south of the Windward Passage this date and spun northward toward the populous eastern end of Cuba, site of the U.S. Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay. The storm was virtually blocked by a high pressure system to the north, and its movement was very slow, with its forward speed not exceeding eight mph. Hurricane warnings were posted over eastern Cuba and Haiti, and the southeastern Bahamas were under a hurricane alert. A meteorologist in the Miami Weather Bureau said that at present, it appeared that Florida was out of the hurricane's path, that when it was blocked by a high pressure system, it could go almost in any direction. There were no reports yet from Haiti, the southern peninsula of which had been crossed by the hurricane. It would only be three days hence that the hurricane would hit eastern North Carolina during the late morning.

On the editorial page, "Supreme Court Needs Judge Parker" indicates, as the newspaper had with the death or retirement of every Supreme Court Justice since 1946, that with the death of Justice Robert Jackson the previous Saturday, Judge John J. Parker of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, from Charlotte, was, at age 68, in the prime of life as far as great jurists went, and while only two members of the present Court were older, it had been less than 20 years earlier that the youngest member of the Court had been 62 and six members had been past the age of 70, with Justice Louis Brandeis having been 80, and that the President could make no better appointment to the Court than Judge Parker.

It laments the loss of Justice Jackson, appointed by FDR in 1941 from his position as Attorney General, after having served in other capacities within the Roosevelt Administration. It indicates that the probable high point of his 13 years on the Court had been in 1946, when he was tapped to become the chief American prosecutor in the Nuremberg war crimes trials. His questions and comments from the bench had cut through the double talk and extraneous issues, getting to their heart, being a joy to the press and laymen alike in his concision and ability to be understood by non-lawyers. It finds that his death underscored the great deficiency of the Court as presently constituted, because only Justice Sherman Minton, a former Senator, had any prior judicial experience at all before being appointed to the high Court, unless one included the brief police court experience of Justice Hugo Black.

It states that it was why it believes Judge Parker was well-suited to the appointment, having been on the Circuit Court of Appeals since his appointment by President Calvin Coolidge in 1925, and having been appointed previously to the Supreme Court by President Hoover in 1930, defeated by a single vote for confirmation, based on a charge that he was "anti-labor", a charge later proved to be without foundation, and having been recognized as one of the nation's greatest jurists during the ensuing years, while a number of men had been appointed in the meantime for political rather than judicial reasons.

The appointed successor to Justice Jackson, President's Eisenhower's second appointment, the first having been Chief Justice Earl Warren following the death in September, 1953 of Chief Justice Fred Vinson, would be John Harlan II, grandson of Justice John Harlan, who had been appointed by President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877 and served until his death in 1911, having been the sole dissenting Justice in the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson case of 1896, establishing the principle that the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause was satisfied by "separate but equal" accommodations, the case having come to the Court factually based on alleged discrimination in railroad seating, eventually extended to other areas, including public schools, until the unanimous May 17 decision in Brown v. Board of Education overruled the principle as not having served its originally intended function in 58 years, thus holding continued public school segregation, even when justified on the basis of "separate but equal" facilities, to be unconstitutional. Justice Harlan had been on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals since his appointment in February, 1954 by President Eisenhower.

It should be noted that Judge Parker delivered, in 1951, the 2 to 1 opinion of the special three-judge District Court panel in Briggs v. Elliott out of South Carolina, rejecting the NAACP's argument that segregation was unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment, adhering to Plessy, while finding the schools of the district impermissibly unequal under Plessy doctrine, eventually overturned, as part of Brown, insofar as the constitutionality of the segregation, the Supreme Court using Judge J. Waties Waring's dissent in Briggs as the framework for Brown, Judge Waring having stated: "From [plaintiff's witness] testimony, it was clearly apparent, as it should be to any thoughtful person, irrespective of having such expert testimony, that segregation in education can never produce equality and that it is an evil that must be eradicated." As Judge Parker, however, was only following, as required of the lower Federal and state courts, established Supreme Court precedent, while Judge Waring, who said to Samuel Grafton in 1950 that his eyes had been opened regarding the evils of segregation by reading two books, Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma and W. J. Cash's The Mind of the South, had the luxury in dissent of opining as to what ought to be the law in the face of repeated rejections by the Supreme Court of claimed equal, segregated facilities, the position did not suggest thereby Judge Parker as the villain of the piece, as oversimplification of the matter might suggest.

"Vox Populi" indicates that the decision of State highway officials to hold a public hearing on plans to widen Providence Road had been both just and proper, that while it was not required by law, opposition to proposals that the thoroughfare be widened to 78 feet was mounting, with many arguments against it being reasonable, deserving a hearing. There was evidence that other roads in the area, if improved, would better serve the needs of the entire community. It finds that broader applications of long-range planning, rather than piecemeal solutions, were needed to solve the growing traffic problems of the community.

"Relief for Midtown's Growing Pains" indicates that the State Highway Commission did not need to fear that construction of a Southern Railway crossline south of Charlotte would increase metropolitan traffic woes, as the move was designed to ease midtown growing pains, not produce new ones. The Commission chairman, A. H. Graham, had stated that the City Council had to adopt a resolution guaranteeing that regulations would be drafted to prevent blocking of traffic in the central business district's east side, apparently concerned about railroad switching operations in that area.

It indicates that the Council ought be able to advance the necessary assurances without difficulty, that construction of the crossline would eliminate the necessity of Southern's operation of through-trains on the east side of midtown.

It concludes that Charlotte had been throttled by railroad tracks for too long, that the construction of the crossline would help ease the pressure somewhat, but that it was only one of many steps needed to give midtown the breathing room it required.

"Good Sign" quotes from an address by State Supreme Court Chief Justice Walter Clark, from January 27, 1914, in which he had indicated that it had been said that "a contented people have no annals", that therefore the present unrest among the people, not only in the United States but around the world, was one of the best signs of the times, that when people were largely content, they were "either ignorant of better conditions or hopeless of attaining them", that a "'divine discontent'" was "the basis of civilization and of all progress in bettering the condition of humanity."

A piece from the Wall Street Journal, titled "The Talking Frogs", indicates that a Texas scientist had discovered, after spending time in damp places in three states, that frogs were not remarkable only in Calaveras County, California, the locale made famous by Mark Twain in his short story. The scientist had tape-recorded frogs croaking and had presented the findings to a meeting of the American Institute of Biological Scientists, concluding that frogs were able to talk to one another and did so in accents specific to the region of their habitat.

The piece suggests that the discovery opened vast fields of speculation for science, for if bullfrogs in the Deep South really drawled, it begged the question whether their "you-all" took on Cajun overtones in Louisiana swamps or the hearty "howdy partner" of the Texas plains, or whether frogs in Boston's ponds clipped their croaks, or Midwestern frogs twanged the same as other Midwesterners.

The scientist said that the reason for the frog talking was so that one frog could distinguish his species from a very similar species, and if it were not for the language differences, all frogs would soon be the same, hard to determine whether that would be good for the frog population, but nature appeared, according to the scientist, to be against it.

It hopes that the discovery would confound those who believed that humans were different from frogs, that the truth appeared to be that humans were as different as frogs were, but that the moral would be lost on those who went about the world trying to fit everyone into the same pattern, even as to their accents.

Drew Pearson indicates that the President now had the benefit of a specially built electronic device to help him with his golf game, the first one ever used in the country, developed by Dr. Luis Alvarez of the University of California at Berkeley. It was used for practice, measuring the timing of the swing, the impact of the club on the ball, whether the stroke was off-center and how far the ball would have traveled in an actual hit. Presumably, it would be developed for use by the public later, but presently the President's device was the only one in existence.

Did the Vice-President eventually use the machine? Did others later adopt it for purposes other than golf?

For about a week prior to the political strategy meeting the previous week, the President's advisers had been pretty much torn apart over what he should do about alarming reports coming from the campaign front, with political advisers urging him to get out on the hustings and make a two-week whistle-stop tour through strategic states, while personal strategists advised against it, arguing that the President was not under any compulsion to rescue Congressmen who had failed to support his program and that he could not afford to risk lowering his prestige by campaigning in certain key states and then having the candidates there lose. They were cognizant of the backfired 1938 effort by President Roosevelt to purge members of his own party in the Senate for failing to support the New Deal, and although the President in 1954 would be speaking for Republican Senators, the advisers were afraid that outside interference would not be effective. Political advisers were just as vehement on the other side, including RNC chairman Leonard Hall, Congressman Richard Simpson of Pennsylvania, chairman of the committee to re-elect Republican Congressmen, and Congressman Charles Halleck of Indiana, the House Majority Leader. The latter indicated that reports from all over the country had been bad, so bad that if Republicans suffered a major defeat, it could bring down the President with the party, placing not only the party's prestige on the line, but also that of the President. The debate had become so furious that reportedly the President had lapsed into typically Trumanesque language, having said at one point, according to friends, "Those sons of bitches wouldn't have been in this trouble if they had upheld me in the Congress."

Democrats, who had taken literally to begging in the streets to raise money for the campaign, had enjoyed great success in Washington, where they had collected more than $4,000 in eight hours of panhandling from an estimated 15,000 contributors, a performance they wanted to repeat in other cities. But in Pittsburgh, for instance, ordinances prevented such solicitations by other than charitable organizations. In Washington, Democratic contributions were the lowest near Government buildings, with many Government employees apparently fearing reprisal.

RNC chairman Hall was giving liberal Republicans the cold shoulder during the campaign, leaving them off speaking schedules except in their home states.

The Atomic Energy Commission would build a giant 15 billion volt cosmotron at Brookhaven, N.Y., which would considerably speed up atomic research.

Parenthetically, the afore-linked blur analysis conducted by CBS, in conjunction with its June 25, 1967 broadcast regarding the Warren Report, as suggested by Dr. Alvarez, had inevitable limitations because of lack of direct access at the time to the Zapruder film and, as with the 1976-78 House Select Committee on Assassinations, because they lacked the technology then to have the original film in digitized frame-by-frame format capable of being viewed in order, slowed down or sped up manually by the click of a mouse, even if there were film editing machines then available capable of advancing or reversing film frame by frame, necessarily, however, under dimmed projection light to avoid burning the film.

The computerized process reveals that there were several blur anomalies in the film, between its first appearance of the President's limousine at frame 133 and the hypothesized delayed reaction blurring from the sound of the fatal head shot striking the President at frame 313, appearing in blur at frames 318-320, thus the assumed sound and reaction delay of about a third of a second or five frames, assuming the manually wound camera to have been fully wound and running at a constant rate of 18.3 frames per second in real time. There was blurring in the initial frames, 133-134, showing the limousine, which might be attributable to establishing the frame after turning the camera back on, it having first shown a few seconds of the leading motorcycles, during which sequence, incidentally, there was also blurring, at frames 12-15, 36-38, 44-47, 52-54, 69-71, 79-82, 87-93 and 104-114, before the President's car had even come into view. In addition to that at frames 133-134, after the car came into view, there was blurring at frames 142-143, 154-156, 158-159, all before the sequence which CBS noted at frames 190-192, at which point the President's car was still ahead of the Stemmons Freeway sign and the President was still waving to the line of bystanders with his right hand raised, obscured about one second later by the sign at frames 212 through 225, for about two-thirds of a second, then, as the car emerged from behind the sign, showing his hands beginning to come suddenly up to his throat at frames 225-226, with substantial blurring then at frame 227, clearing momentarily at 228 and then blurring again at 229, clearing again momentarily at 230 and again blurring at 231-234, blurring again at 241-242, at which point Governor John Connally appears to begin to turn back to look in the direction of the President—at which time, he recounted five days later, while still recovering in Parkland Hospital from his wounds, he was hit—, again blurring for an instant at each of frames 250, 263, and 296, with Governor Connally having turned fully in his seat to his right and looked directly at the President for just over a full second, between frames 266 and 288, then abruptly beginning to fall back into the lap of his wife, Nellie, obviously by that point hit. More blurring occurs at frames 291, 296, 298-300, 303, and 313-315, with the film recording the shot to the President's head at 313, before the substantial blur at 318-320.

Bearing in mind that sound travels at about 1,125 feet per second, far more slowly than light and about half as fast as the estimated 2,000 feet per second of the Mannlicher-Carcano bullets, the recording on film of the President having been hit in the head by the last shot would have occurred prior to the sound reaching the cameraman, Abraham Zapruder, with human reaction time thereafter being very subjective to each individual when reduced to eighteenths of a second, the approximate time it took for each frame of film to pass through the camera gate where it was exposed, assuming again the 18.3 frame per second rate on a fully wound camera. None of the other blurring anomalies match the substantial blur of frames 318-320 in intensity. Thus, whether the slight blurring at frames 190-192 is indicative of a first shot, as CBS posited as the possible point of Mr. Zapruder having heard the shot, backing its actual incidence up to a point coincident with about frames 185-186, based on the hypothesized five-frame sound and reaction time delay, cannot be stated with any certainty, given the other similar anomalies occurring thoughout the length of the film, even before the President's limousine entered the picture and afterward, before frames 190-192.

The latter constitutes merely guesswork to accommodate a preconceived opinion that the time sequence might have been longer than that posited by the Warren Commission, which established the point of the first shot at frame 215, about two-thirds of a second before the President emerges into view from behind the sign. Fitting that preconceived opinion to slight blurs in the film, which occur throughout the film at numerous intervals, would suggest multiple bullets being heard by the cameraman, with only the last blur at frames 318-320 showing substantially more than slight blurring, the second most visible blurring having occurred at 225-226, as the President begins to move his hands toward his throat after emerging into view from behind the sign, the first time he showed visible signs of being wounded. There is no substantial blurring while the President is obscured by the sign, such as at frame 215 where the Warren Commission estimated the first shot struck the President, about a half second before he is shown moving his hands abruptly toward his throat, or at frame 220, five frames afterward, compensating for sound and reaction time delay. Nor is there any substantial blurring at 230-231, five frames after the President is clearly first shown to be hit at 225-226, which would be expected to be consistent with the blur theory on hearing the sound of a shot, assuming the shot inflicting the throat wound was fired an instant prior to frame 225. The blur theory actually moves that shot to about frames 220-221, to be consistent with the blurring and the President's reaction registered at frames 225-226, meaning about a third of a second later than the Warren Commission estimated, at frame 215.

The fact of the greatest blurring at frames 318-320 could indicate more physical reaction to the sight of the President's massive head wound or it could be reaction to a closer occurring and hence louder shot than earlier shots in the sequence.

There is also the problematic issue of the back wound to the President, which was not probed during the autopsy, but was later assumed to be the entry wound matching the throat exit wound, which Parkland doctors had described, prior to the tracheotomy made through that wound, as having appeared consistent with a wound of entry, relatively small and concentric. The mysterious whole and relatively unblemished bullet found on the stretcher gurney at Parkland Hospital would be consistent with a bullet which had worked its way out of the President's back while being transported on a gurney from the limousine to the emergency room, assuming that wound to have been shallow and not through to the throat.

And, of course, the major timing issue occurs with respect to the wounding of Governor Connally, if it occurred from a distinct bullet from that which produced the throat wound of the President, which appears evident from the fact that the Governor continues to hold his Stetson hat in his right hand for at least a second or more, through about frame 248, after the President has reacted at frames 225-226 to the throat wound, despite the Governor's right wrist having been struck by the bullet which hit him. It does not take a bullet a second to travel about four feet, from the President's throat into the Governor's back, traveling at 2,000 feet per second, assuming it had the energy left, as it had to have, to pierce the Governor's back, travel through his lung, exit his chest, hit his right wrist and deflect to his left thigh, assuming the Governor's reaction time to be coincident with that of the President. Nellie Connally, sitting immediately beside her husband in the left jumpseat, stated, in an interview in the second segment of the 1967 CBS report, that she was certain her husband was wounded by a separate shot from that inflicting the throat wound of the President, as she had looked directly at the President after he had been hit, holding his hands at his throat, and then subsequently saw her husband hit and blood all over his chest area. The reason for the single-bullet theory was that it was deemed by the Warren Commission not possible for one gunman to have fired separate bullets inflicting the throat wound of the President and the wounds to Governor Connally because of the necessary close proximity in time of such shots. Yet, for the two men to have been hit by the same bullet would have necessitated virtually simultaneous reactions, not capable of being captured separately in one-eighteenth second intervals on each frame of the film, certainly not separated by a full second or more—the timing of nearly but not quite simultaneous separate shots having been capable of coordination by the three possible signal men on the sidelines, the man with the umbrella, the man with his hand raised straight up in the air beside him and the man across the street appearing to wear some form of chest padding, waving both of his arms in a strangely exaggerated motion downward and backward from his former clapping motion while not continuing to look at the President after he is hit, all three persons simultaneously visible between frames 227 and 257, not to mention precisely timed, predetermined lines of sight having been susceptible of establishment through the camera lens, itself, in electrical coordination with other camera lenses present, enabling us to peer, as the unsuspecting audience, through part of the elaborate murder weapon.

It should be noted, too, that none of the Secret Service agents in the follow-up Cadillac and neither of the motorcycle officers riding just to the rear left of the President's car exhibit any noticeable change of expression or reaction to anything which might suggest the loud report of a gun at any of the frames preceding frame 225, when the President emerges from behind the sign, beginning to react to the throat wound. Starting at frame 231, one-third of a second later, the time the blur analysis would suggest for reaction time to the delayed sound of a gunshot, Agent Clint Hill, riding on the left running board of the Cadillac, begins to look directly toward the Zapruder camera perspective, in line with the visible man with his hand raised straight in the air, beside the man with the umbrella. Both of the motorcycle policemen to the right rear of the Presidential car and slightly ahead of the Cadillac also look in that same direction, the officer nearest the President's limousine turning his head first. All three continue to look in that direction until first Mr. Hill disappears from the frame at 249 and then the two officers also disappear from the frame, at 277, thus having their attention drawn to that area spontaneously and simultaneously for 46 frames, or about two and two-thirds seconds, during which time the President is visibly in great distress, with both hands to his throat area. The Ike Altgens still photograph, taken coincident with frame 255 of the Zapruder film, from the other side of Elm Street, looking back through the windshield of the President's limousine, shows the two motorcycle officers and Mr. Hill looking toward the area of the Zapruder camera, with the agent behind Mr. Hill on the Cadillac's left running board looking directly to the right, toward the line of bystanders preceding the freeway sign, and the two agents on the right running board of the Cadillac looking back, directly toward the entrance of the Texas School Book Depository. The motorcycle officer immediately to the right rear of the President's limousine looks directly to his left, appearing to look toward the other two motorcycle officers on the opposite side, trailing the limousine. None of these trained officers and agents is looking up, through frame 277, after which they are no longer visible, fully 52 frames after the first visible reaction of the President, three and one-quarter seconds. From the perspective of the Altgens photograph, it would appear that Agent Hill and the two motorcycle officers to the right rear could be looking in the direction of the President, but the Zapruder frames show, at least insofar as the two officers, at frame 255, and Mr. Hill, while visible between frames 231 and 249, that they are looking straight toward the perspective of the Zapruder camera, in line also with the man with his hand raised, not toward the President.

Sorry, but in this instance, we have to conclude all these years later, that while it was well-intended at the time and utilized then available technology and documentation, the conclusions of the CBS report in 1967 mainly, in hindsight, amount to the latter two network call-letters, were one using Trumanesque language to describe them.

Joseph Alsop, in Chicago, indicates that, at this still early stage of the midterm election campaign, it appeared Senator Paul Douglas would win re-election in Illinois, that if his somewhat obscure opponent, Joe Meek, were to upset him, it would signal special proof of the political magic of the President. Mr. Meek was a remarkable, likable man with many thousands of friends across the state, almost all of whom, however, were Republican small-town businessmen, with his campaign to date having amounted to a private conversation with those cronies, with little or no direct appeal to farmers, industrial workers or independent voters. In contrast, Senator Douglas was not always liked by the voters but was universally respected, and despite his campaign not always being electrifying, that which he said had wide practical appeal.

The result was that Mr. Meek needed the strength of the President to win. Yet, it was never easy for the leader to transfer his popularity to the follower, and it was all the harder in Illinois because Mr. Meek had won the Republican nomination as an unaffiliated Republican right-winger of the classical anti-Eisenhower, pro-McCarthy mold. He had now made a quick switch to follow the "Eisenhower crusade", achieving the remote blessing thereby from the President, which still left him without much more than Republican hard-core support.

As a result, Republicans admitted that Senator Douglas had the edge presently in the race, with bookmakers in Chicago showing the Senator strongly in front.

In Cook County, the Senator would lose many Irish votes because of the issue of Senator McCarthy, although being helped in that regard by the impending censure vote based on the unanimous recommendation by the bipartisan Senate select committee for censure. But there was a large independent group of voters in the suburbs on whom Republicans pinned their hopes.

The Congressional Quarterly indicates that North Carolina's Senators had voted on the record only 73 percent of the time during roll call votes of the 83rd Congress, whereas the total Senate roll call voting record was 84 percent, compared to the 82nd Congress, when North Carolina's Senators had voted on the record an average of 85 percent of the time, while the Senate as a whole recorded votes 79 percent of the time.

Senators from Maine led all other state delegations in the 83rd Congress by voting 99 percent of the time on roll call votes, while Wisconsin had the lowest percentage, at 63 percent. In the previous Congress, Senators from Arizona had the highest roll call voting at 96 percent, while New Mexico had the lowest, at 56 percent.

Republicans in both houses had an 86 percent roll call voting record, compared to 82 percent in the previous Congress, but there were fewer roll call votes in the current Congress, 407, compared to 512 in the 82nd Congress.

In the 1954 session, there were 171 Senate roll call votes, with Senator Alton Lennon of North Carolina voting on 109 of them, or 64 percent of the time, with his average being 69 percent for both sessions. Senator Sam Ervin had voted on 74 roll call votes in 1954, 74 percent of those for which he had been eligible, having been appointed to the seat only the prior June. Senator Lennon, including pairings with other members of the Senate on roll call votes, made his stands known 29 other times during the 1954 session, bringing his average to 81 percent. Senator Ervin recorded 20 other such stands in 1954, bringing his average to 94 percent.

The Senate voted on the record 91 percent of the time in 1954, one percent higher than the previous high recorded in 1949 in the 81st Congress, with the Quarterly's survey dating back to 1945. The Senate had the same average for both sessions.

Frederick C. Othman, en route home from Venezuela, tells of running hot water being the greatest invention to a couple who had just emerged from the Venezuelan jungles, a luxury he and his wife had experienced for the first time in three days when passing through Caracas on their way home from Uruyen, deep in the "green hell the adventure writers tell about." Other than the absence of washbasins, it had struck them as a pretty nice place, but the Indians there had never heard of chlorophyll toothpaste and did not have toothbrushes. Nor was there a dentist within 500 miles, and yet their teeth were perfect, a condition which he attributes perhaps to the lime in the River Aicha.

He had a more serious problem, however, as it appeared a normal thing in the jungle to purchase from a friendly Indian a nine-foot blow gun, replete with a dozen darts, ready for poisoning. No one raised eyebrows at it when he lugged it aboard the airplane from Uruyen, as fellow passengers had blow guns as a matter of course. But as he reached civilization, it became a problem, as it would not fit on the elevator of the hotel in Caracas, and at the airport, he continually poked people by mistake with it. The airline steward aboard the Pan American Airways DC-6, which flew across the Caribbean via Port-au-Prince, Haiti, could not find a place to stow it except across the seats in the rear lounge, which irritated other passengers, the steward, however, assuring them that it was a genuine Indian blow gun with poison darts, causing them not to bother it. The customs agent in Miami had also taken a dim view of the blow gun, wanting to know what it was, and when Mr. Othman had informed him, sighed and motioned them through.

In three weeks in Venezuela, they had fun and were educated, but their feet also suffered, and his wife indicated that the jungle hammock probably would leave permanent curvature in her back. They had not found any gold or diamonds, but had accumulated several memories, as well as bites from the many jungle bugs, swelling his wife's ankles, deeming it a good thing that the health officer did not notice them as he would never have allowed her back into the country.

A letter writer from Burgaw says that he had been in Chicago attending a meeting of one of the American Farm Bureau Federation's committees, and happened to pass a newsstand near his hotel which sold out-of-town newspapers, having a copy of The News, which he was glad to purchase, finding in it a story about the "devilish" odors emanating from Charlotte's Sugaw Creek, that as a member of the State Stream Sanitation Committee of North Carolina, he was interested in cleaning up the state's streams, indicating that the committee was working as rapidly as possible in classifying the streams of the state, that he had introduced a stream anti-pollution bill in both the 1947 and 1949 General Assemblies, but that it had not been until the 1951 biennial session that a bill he had introduced was amended into the present stream sanitation law. He indicates that his committee would be getting to the Catawba River and its tributaries late in 1955 or in 1956 in terms of their classification and what was needed to be done to clean up the streams. He suggests, in the meantime, advising the municipal authorities of Charlotte that they discuss the matter with the secretary of the State Stream Sanitation Committee in Raleigh, if they had not already done so, and that the secretary's technical staff might have some suggestions as to what would help the Sugaw Creek situation. He advises that the people of the state had to remember, after years spent polluting the streams, that a button could not suddenly be pushed to clean them up, that it took patience and time, suggesting that if there had been no opposition to his original 1947 bill, every stream in the state would have been classified by this point.

A letter writer responds to a letter appearing in the October 8 edition, which had told of the nearly universal approval by the churches of public school integration and their stated opposition to segregation as being against Biblical teachings, this writer wondering why it had been necessary for a court decision to awaken the Anglican Congress, referenced in the previous letter, to its responsibilities, and why it had remained silent, effectively condoning segregation of the races for more than 100 years.

A letter writer from Marshville congratulates the newspaper on its recent editorial concerning Army "justice", stating that, as a "retired serviceman", he knew of no greater service which the newspaper could render to the country's fighting forces than exposure of a "now traditional differentiation between the officer and enlisted man in military courts." He indicates that the recent two contrasting cases of the colonel and the corporal, to which the editorial had made reference, was only one of many such instances, causing him to wonder whether the recent "military court of justice", which was supposed to equalize justice for all, was accomplishing that goal. He urges the newspaper to continue the fight.

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