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Show vf DESERET NEWS, SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, v' ? i. MONDAY, MAY 28, 1973 A5 t We, stand for the Constitution of the United States as having been divinely inspired. Why lawmakers don't belong in the reserves 3 Should members of Congress be allowed to hold commissions in the military reserves? That question should soon be resolved by the Supreme Court, which has agreed to hear arguments in this persistent controversy. If the rulings of two lower courts are upheld, more than 100 members of the House and Senate would have to choose between their seats in Congress and their membership in the military reserves. n t o - y v . s The legal practice is based 1 - y i i i t : 1 on No person holding any office under the United States shall be a member of either house during his continuance in office. The trouble is the Constitution also provides that each house shall be the judge of . . . the qualifications of its own members. By that, standard, Congress alone should decide whether or not its members have to choose between their seats and their commissions. t Moreover, there's room for doubting that membership in the military reserves is the kind of office under the United from which the Constitution States barred members of Congress. The Supreme Court has previously held that office implies continuing and permanent duties and compensation. Few members of the reserves have continuing and permanent duties. While the law on the subject looks !0 - . case against the present that section of the Constitution which reads: ? ' it muddy, the proper policy seems clear enough on at least four counts. First, few if any members of Congress are likely to be called to active duty with their reserve units in a national emergency. Its a disservice to allow reserve posts to be filled by men who can t help in a military capacity when most needed. government. Third, the military establishment is supposed to be kept subservient to civilian authority as a bulwark of freedom. But that bulwark is weakened when the line of demarcation between civilian and military becomes blurred. Fourth, congressmen are supposed to avoid conflicts of interest. But how disinterested and objective can both the House and Senate armed sendees committees be in voting on military and veterans matters when these committees contain a substantial proportion of reservists? Indeed, the men who make the nations laws ought to avoid not only conflict of interest itself but even the appearance of such conflict. Instead of trying to serve two masters, the lawmakers involved should choose between Congress and the reserves. e - V The Kremlin and copyrights ! 9 e t ' d . I, - g st n ll t ' y 0 Literary figures in the Soviet Union, as well throughout the world, have warned that Soviet leaders may use the copyright convention as a tool to suppress dissident Russian writers. as y fi.O y .v.,' " S 0 The Soviet Union's formal adherence to the Universal Copyright Convention Sunday must appear to be another step relations. toward defrosting East-WeBut theres a built-i- n potential for censorship that makes it necessary to keep a dose watch on the situation. J Under the terms relating to an authors consent, a Soviet writer whose work is being published abroad would be caught between publicly giving consent to the publication of a book critical of Soviet authorities or refusing to give consent, and thus halting publication of the work. The uneasy feeling of many Soviet authors over Russian participation in the copyright convention was illustrated by y f o. o : y f e - - t ! IjV t Second, Congress is supposed to be a separate and independent branch of government. That independence is certainly not enhanced when members of Congress belong to military reserves falling within the jurisdiction of the executive branch of T (- I Zhores A. Medvedevs eagerness to get antiof widely-rea- d his biography communist author Alexander Solzhenitsyn published in London before Sundays deadline. Also, the Soviet government will probably collect substantial royalties from foreign authors through participation in the copyright agreement. The arrangement to have Russian royalties, paid in rubles while foreign royalties are paid in dollars will provide a means to ease Soviet balance-of-trad- problems. Honest efforts to promote world understanding through free literary expression are desirable. The months ahead will tell whether the Soviet leaderships attitude Russian and toward writers both mellowed. has foreign e Lets hope that what was designed to protect creative expression will not be turned into an instrument of repression. Plumber's Friend Garments baptism of fire with the press By Nick Thlmmesch L.A. Times Syndicate WASHINGTON-Leon- Garment, chief of litigation in the Nixon Wall Street law firm, counseled Mr. Nixon on civil rights, social change, the arts and the humanities. When Watergate swept bodies out of the White House, Garment suddenly found himself summoned by the President to use the great legal mind he has to help extricate the President from W'atergates seaweed. one-tim- e the press in the White House briefing room with its TV klieg lights and jam of men and women with note pads and insistent looks, it was like an amateur boxer going in the ring for the first time. Whatever sparring Garment had As he faced wall-to-wa- ll a s Maybe the public is under the impression that when Congress passed a pesticide control bill last year it did everything there was to do. Not so. While there are regulations for large numbers of substances from weed spray to detergents, many other chemicals are not controlled. As a case in point, the Washington Post reports no federal agency is now empowered to protect chemiagainst the environmental harm of industrial and consumer cals in products operations. y f. By Ann Elliott . ft When we lived on the East Coast one of lifes pleasures sr ' was to climb on our motor scooter and head away from at j the books and pressures of r, yr-aCambridge into the rolling ;ff cr countryside. It was in this v xp way that we first noticed a which seemed phenomenon re semi-rurMassato peculiar le . er th Garment had scarcely explaining the Presidents statement when he got punched in the nose (verbally, of course, its not that bad here yet) by a lady reporter with a question as to why isnt the President making it? Garment shook it off and continued with his ready begun remarks. But the bout was to become marathon, like the old bareknuckle slugfests of John L. Sullivans time. The Q & A went 72 minutes, turned into a shouting match at times and was punctuated with hoots, hollers and insults. At times Garment sounded like he was pleading for the of Marquess Queensbury rules. Punched with a succes Congress tried to fill this gap last session, but the House and Senate were unable to iron out differences over the pro- posed Toxic Substances Control Act. Some of the differences linger on this year. r For example, the Senate version of the bill would require the Environmental Protection Agency to examine new chemicals before the public was exposed to them. But the House version wouldnt require any such screening until a new and unknown chemical becomes considered dangerous. Thats like stationing an ambulance down in the valley instead of erecting a fence at the edge of the cliff. The fence would be better, of course. But even the ambulance is better than nothing, which is what we now have. tall and aging trees serving as n- - n- - with the press in his years in government, it had been done in the relative safety of his office. Now he was out in the arena, and the cry was for action and blood. "On his itinerary, Mr. Brezhnev would like to see some of your significant sights like the Lincoln Memorial, the Capitol Building, the Watergate Hotel ..." Cemeteries: Islands of timelessness 'i at done Fence or ambulance? t If Americans want to be protected and who from poisonous chemicals doesn't? they had better start speaking up. So tar, however, there has been considerable silence on the subject, except for the special interests that would be affected by legislation. lb or Mr. Thimmesch DOUG SflEYD r is behind-the-scen- traordinary statement admitting some concealment on Watergate, but with cause. So after the President unloaded 4,000 words of that, a press and briefing was in order that meant Garment. For many years. Garment, r' chusetts. The cemeteries were often located in the loveliest pockets of land. In Marblehead, the tombstones catch llie sky from high on a bluff. In Concord, Sleepy Hollow is nestled within the community with A sentinels. Even in downtown Boston, the Old Granary Burial Ground remains within the and no heart of the city one seems to complain about all that high tax rate land not being put to "better use. Many people walked picnicked within toe cemeteries. England were there to visit departed friends. Some and New Some with came to read grave markers. Some looked for Emersons grave or Mother Gooses grave. And some simply walked quietly, perhaps reflecting upon the passage of time within these islands of timelessness. few years later we were in Honolulu and visited with a fnend who was stationed there. He invited us to cruise the harbor where we had a of the retelling A first-han- d bombing of Pearl" and its impact upon toe Islands. When we parted, our friend The only sadly remarked, way to really understand what this was all about is to go up to Punchbowl and watch the sun rise. of the In the dim half-ligwe next mornings were seated at the rim of the grassy crater. No one else was there. Soon the dawn pre-daw- n came. Row by row the sun's rays spotlighted 26,000 simple white markers of Americans of all races who had died in the service of our nation during the Second World War, the Korean Conflict, and toe Vietnam War. After a quiet time we left thinking about toe name toe Hawaiians had given the crater: Puowaina, the Hill of Sacrifice. few minutes later we were back in the sunny tourism of downtown Honolulu. We boarded our plane and were soon engulfed in the live for the moment" ration-a- l of Southern California. A BOfTlBECK sion of stinging jabs, Garment said: I think perhaps we can have a continuing understanding here that wo will both try to avoid either asking questions or answering questions that involve prejudgment of issues of fact that are quite serious in their implications for many individuals. ard longtime confidant for President Nixon, had to bravely come out last week to meet the press, and it was rough. Garment, as acting counsel to the President now that John Dean is elsewhere, helped draft Mr. Nixon's ex- ERmfl of contemporary American life. I occasionally think about these cemetery encounters and about the burials of family and ... ... Midway In the fight, Garment felt he had been gouged in the eye with too many thumbs, and he protested: I doubt anybody else here has encountered a situation in which the articles of faith by which journalists and lawyers live by are so unceremoniously and so rigorously ignored. To which the press responded with a thundering It has been 10 punch: months, Len (since Watergate happened). What obviously bothers Garment is that the reaction by the public, Congress and the press to the Watergate scandal hasnt elicited the orderly process by which lawyers want to work courtroom procedures, direct line of questioning and a ban on hearsay and irrelevant testimony. Thus the Presidents stateGarment explained, ment, came in part because of an increasing number of allegations and charges, a virtual Niagara of charges from public proceedings and leaks from private official investigations conducted in secret, and these charges, many of them hearsay, two or three steps removed from knowledgeable assertions of fact, have in many instances been bantered as fact in news accounts, in newspapers and on television. Garment doggedly stuck to this attack throughout and, at the end, was telling the press of its enormous responsibility to inform the public concurrent with an equally important obligation to individuals under investigation by grand juries not to prejudice their rights. After his first exhausting bout with the press, Garment came back next day for another go, and took 76 more minutes of it. Now a little nngwise, Garment told me: Thats a The Hill of Sacrifice seemed light years away from the realities Several times Garment was smothered in the comer of the ring and, like the boxer try ing to stop the rain of blows and punch his way out, he protested, Let me just finish, Let me get my anplease swer. Just a moment May I finish answering your question . . . Ron (Ziegler), could I just finish with one statement? good friends whose graves are scattered around the world. I sometimes remember a final resting place, a marker, the carefully selected ground cover and the slowly maturing trees which will perpetually" shade those precious remains. As memories fade, that one spot in our world serves as a visible statement a memorial, of a loved ones existence. bad place (press room) to explain matters this Im not very complicated. good at that sort of thing. I feel strongly that the due process principle should be operative some place. This town is somewhat in hysteria now. I just cant continue to go through with this. It takes too much of my energy and too much of the time I need for other things. So Lenny Garment, good stouthearted fellow that he is, was led out of the ring, a bit wobbly on his feet, but having the satisfaction of knowing he wasnt knocked out. The press even said thank you after the bout. C Dr. Bergen Evans, humorist, author, and lecturer in the Department of English at Northwestern University, confided in one of his speeches that he held an inherent belief that God would never strike him down in a plane if he were riding in first class. It comforted me enormously to hear him say that because I hold a lot of irrational, unexplained theories that I know to be true because I feel them on the hair on my neck. I I know that all size 8s are childless and that if they ultimately were to give birth, they too would be unable to get out of deep chairs and wear bikinis without a coat. Also that Paul Newman never bleeds when he shaves, Jackie Onassis never has bad breath, and Miss America never sweats. It is written somewhere that the minute I take down my ironing board, my heart will stop beating and my life will be over. That women with long fingernails never make meat loaf and have husbands who make over $50,000 a year. That my dog is laughing (so highly pitched that only other dogs can hear him) when he sees me come out of the shower. That could put an end to droughts by washing my picture window on the outside. statement of facts to Maybe you have no hard-cor- e back up the crawling feeling of the hairs on your neck, but anyone would be a fool to tempt fate and take a chance. I personally 1 Vi Who among you would face the back of an elevator just to be cute? Who would rip the tags off of pillows and chairs when you know in your heart it would place you in mortal sin? Who would dare ignore an airline hostess when she is telling you about your supply of oxygen and points of exit? Frankly, have you the guts to tell an appliance what you really think of it, or somewhere in the small of your mind is there a nagging that there are little people from another planet who are just waiting to take over. It is obvious (and has been from the beginning) that coat hangers are bisexual and will not control their production cycles until we are all dispossessed from our A . 5 rift homes by them. . And I also know as well as I am sitting here that a mother who goes on a field trip to the stockyards with 43 second graders will have a divine death without pain. I have o believe that. I s SYDflEY i HARRIS I don't often feel what the Germans so untranslatably call the emotion of Schadenfreude, but I must admit to this unlovely reaction when I read recently that the Saturday Review magazine was filing for bankruptcy. My Schadenfreude (perhaps best translated as pleasure in someone elses misfortune) springs out of a mixture of sorrow and resentment. I had been reading, and for many years, contributing to, the Saturday Review and was an old friend and of its decent publisher, Norman Cousins, in our common advocacy of world federalism, nuclear disarmament, tennis, and offcolor limericks. fellow-crusad- er When Norman sold the magazine to a California combine, I had doubts, but also hopes. Doubts that the new people would be as humane and idealistic as he, and hopes that they might on the other hand raise the level of that worthy magazine to attract a circulation of millions rather than mere hundreds of thousands. Alas, as so often is the case, the doubts multiplied, and toe hopes diminished. The magazine swiftly took on toe look of a business enterprise more than an editorial achievement; selling seemed to take precedence over thinking, writing, and editing. Emblematic of this change was the blunt name of the new publishing company; Sat- i r urday Review Industries. A publishing firm of any pretension to seriousness is in the business of retailing ideas, not commodities. And, especially, one that is devoted to the arts, science, education and society must demonstrate that its prime allegiance is to the advancement of these fields, not to its own The people who read it will quickly lose faith, and others will not be attracted to such a hybrid periodical. ; 1 'V . ' t I felt that at the time, and in something like a year, it came true. The magazines failure,. I feel sure, had little to do with its editorial content or its marketing strategies; it mercanhad to do, mainly, with the aura of tilism that seemed to saturate every issue, so that readers felt they were being manipulated by their abiding interest in the arts, science, education and society. In my view, the new publishers betrayed the very values the magazine used to stand for; and it is kind of a sweet poetic justice that Norman Cousins was called in to take over the failing venture end combine it with his new World magazine. Virtue isnt often vindicated so fast these days. p i J i 5 |