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Show ; HOITIE ; Town i IN WASHINGTON JJI i iiHiiiiiifiioiiiL'iiil'iiii.ri Probe Violations THIS column has repeatedly reported re-ported concerning the violation of civil rights of citizens who are called before congressional committees commit-tees as witnesses In the many probes now going on. The utter disregard for these rights, the brow-beating of witnesses, the star-chamber sessions ses-sions without reference to any rules or the justice of jurisprudence has become scandalous. It remains, however, for a freshman fresh-man senator to really rebel at the tactics used in these probes and administer ad-minister a verbal lashing to his colleagues col-leagues in the United States senate. He is Sen. Herman Welker of Idaho, a member of a senate crime investigating investi-gating committee, elected for his first term In 1950. Senator Welker was particularly incensed at the use of radio and television tele-vision which has made a spectacle of many of these senatorial inquisitions. inquisi-tions. In a television forum sponsored spon-sored by Georgetown University he charged that these probe committees commit-tees have no rules of evidence, no rules of demeanor and could browbeat brow-beat a witness and' force him to testify testi-fy about something he would not like to mention; that the committees are not governed by any sacred rules of law, admit hearsay evidence and conclusions; that the witness is subject to the whims of the men conducting con-ducting the investigation and that such tactics Invade the constitutional constitution-al rights and the right of privacy of the witness. He further declared that radio and television broadcasts were using the testimony of the wit- ' nessea In the hearings In commercial com-mercial enterprises and for commercial com-mercial purposes, certainly a violation of the Individual's rights and for which the witnesses wit-nesses are uncompensated. Said Senator Welker: ". . . here an unfortunate individual that some of our detectives or investigators want to bring before us have never perhaps seen a United States senator sen-ator before. They are racked up before be-fore us, before these cameras and microphones and the august body of senators presiding, and they are nervous and it affects them, and by one slip of the tongue, they may become be-come guilty of perjury, they might incriminate themselves, or they may find themselves in contempt of the body investigating them". Continuing, the gentleman from iuaiiu oaiu. ... " v. u ..... v.. a good show, dealing with morbid curiosity of the people who like to witness these "people before congressional con-gressional hearings where we literally liter-ally put the heat upon them ... I iayi there has been too much mugging mug-ging on the part of many senators who have enjoyed this limelight of being on the television and before the radio audience, and I say it is about time to get back to fundamental funda-mental justice, and decency and get some courtroom judicial demeanor into this matter." Harold Ickes In the recent passing of Harold L. Ickes from the Washington scene, death has stilled one of the most powerful voices in the nation's capital capi-tal against the persistent efforts by large special interests to grab the nation's natural resources. During his more than 13 years as secretary of the interior the "old curmudgeon" had his sights raised above the petty chiselers in and out of government in a continuing fight to preserve the country's public lands, to preserve the natural resources re-sources in water and electric power, and to keep for the people generally general-ly the untold millions in wealth of the nation's oil-bearing tidelands. But even as he lay upon his death-bed the big oil companies , which he had held at bay, with the aid of a presidential veto and two supreme court decisions, decis-ions, were moving In again. Settlement of this dispute, under the guise of states' rights, will be one of the major issues in this campaign. cam-paign. In two decisions, ln 1947 and in 1950, the supreme court has held that coastal states have jurisdiction over submerged lands in bays, rivers riv-ers and Inlets and along the coast from high to the low-tide mark, but that farther out to the continental shelf, these submerged lands belong to all the people of all the states. California, Louisiana, Texas and Florida have joined with the oil lobby in an effort to wrest this bonanza bon-anza oil reserve from federal jurisdiction. juris-diction. There is now up in the senate sen-ate a compromise bill, which is merely an entering wedge, which would give royalties from oil produced pro-duced from these tidelands to the public school system. Grain Investigation Secretary of Agriculture Brannan is urging the senate agricultural committee to call as witnesses operators op-erators of warehouses from which government stored grain has disappeared disap-peared . . . What movies have to do with price controls may be nothing, but the President went to the National Nation-al Motion Pictures Association to get Eric Johnston and now he has gone to the Independent Motion Picture Producers Association to get Ellis Arnall to succeed Mike DiSalle. |