| Show The Salt Lake Tribune 6ouy 1 Apt slot"? 171PNot1 APilkup GO Byps Itlcatslmizo r--P' vg : R190046 "niE 0 fscl ? r' KT 1:: ‘ Tribune Readers' Opinions 4:I Dismantle CIA ikrt41060o) PALRagtg HMV roc UT fignmst CR BIDEN °VW 1 CRANSTON 114EN iS TALY MOVIE "ME lk Wiloa 0 1 T likt ITAEIR iS07ks mINEss "R? dOrtit MIPI IginVuolowteMeheL Supreme Court Was Not Designed To Further Presidential Policies NEW YORK TIMES SERVICE BOSTON — A great misunderstanding — a great irony — underlies the political debate about the Supreme Court It needs illumination as Senate hearings on the nomination of Judge Clarence Thomas get under way President Bush and others on his side say they want a "conservative" court one that will merely interpret the law and not "legislate" They cheer the extent to which the present court already fits their model They want more of the same and expect it from Thomas But look at the record of the Supreme Court as the new majority consolidated its position last term What you see is a court bent on building up the centralized power of the president allowing him to rewrite statutes and use the court for end runs around Congress A court weakening the protection of individuals from the power of the state In short it is increasingly a statist court And that is the opposite of what the conservatives who wrote the American Constitution had in mind It is the opposite of what political conservatives have wanted of the Supreme Court through most of its history The Framers of the Constitution feared centralized government power They had experienced George HI and did not want a new American version of his tyranny They equally feared the passions of a populist majority It was for those reasons that the Constitution had all its checks and balances built into it: the separation of powers between Congress and the executive for one And it was for those reasons that a Bill of Rights protecting individuals was added to the Constitution 200 say -- A ti i PN Affirmative action provides other example In 1971 in the Griggs case the court held that employment tests were suspect laws when they under produced racial disparities The Griggs ruling was widely applied and accepted in industry There was no chance that Congress would change it by legislation So the Reagan administration challenged it in the Supreme Court and in 1989 the court changed its mind and adopted the new executive reading of the statute Since 1989 Congress has tried to pass legislation restoring the Griggs standard But now President Bush can thwart a majority by using his veto and he has done so Thus the Supreme Court has greatly increased the president's power on the issue For political conservatives to praise that kind of Supreme Court has a special historical irony When Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal came along in the 1930s conservatives fiercely resisted the practice of Congress delegating to the president the right to issue regulations under general legislative mandates President Bush and his supporters say they want "strict construction" of the law by judges It is a transparently cynical claim What they want and what they are getting is a Supreme Court that will increase presidential power and carry out the political agenda of the radical right It would be more honest of the president to say that that is his court a goal: an activist statist court Then the sovereign public could decide whether that is the Supreme Court it wants an- Ant hony 9'tt Lew is - 4yv tf civil-right- years ago The balance of powers has been tilted out of recognition by a device of the present court As a rule of how to interpret statutes it has said that it will ordinarily follow the interpretation put on them by executive officials That applies even when officials change the interpretation and turn the meaning of a law upside down The case in point is last year's 4 decision in Rust vs Sullivan In 1970 Congress passed a law authorizing federal funds for clinics For 17 years the law was interpreted to let doctors in those clinics give patients information on abortion Then in 1988 a Reagan administration official issued regulations that forbade the doctors to mention abortion or even to give patients the name of an outside doctor who would discuss it It was a novel executive interpretation of the 1970 law not easy to justify in the words of the statute but the Supreme Court upheld the regulation Moreover the court ignored its established practice of construing statutes to avoid possible violations of constitutional rights — in this case the doctor's right to free speech It found the ban on mentioning abortion constitutional thus indicating the remarkable doctrine that whenever the government aids an institution it can dictate what anyone there may 5- family-plannin- g s right-win- assume that the reason the LDS Church indulges in the practice of baptism for the dead is that its leaders believe that I can only Tolstoy Shakespeare and Thomas Jefferson included) would have chosen to be LDS if only they had been fortunate enough to "see the light" during their lifetime Thomas Jefferson understood that spirituality is intimately personal when he said "I never told my religion nor scrutinized that of another" Although now that his religious freedom and privacy have been invaded I suspect he would not object to further scrutiny of this issue Maybe Jefferson died with a sense of humor and ignoring his Mormon benefactors chose to remain below with all the other interesting people who didn't make it As Mark Twain said: "When I think of the number of disagreeable people that have gone to a better place I'm sure Hell won't be so bad after all" BEN J BRONICEL Salt Lake City d BONNIE MARTINEAU Salt Lake City Rains on Parade This will be my last time attending the Parade of Homes in Salt Lake County The show has lost sight of its original purpose: to show people what is available in today's homes appliances and innovations It has now become a playground for the serpent of avarice The display of excess and overindulgence is unsettling to me as well as most families that cannot even afford the most basic of e houses I think the Parade of Homes lost its way the year the cost of the houses went into triple figures When you are trying to put a child through college and deal with inflation the last thing you want is a house that is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars EDWARD ROBERT GOLDEN Salt Lake City Any Other Name The "SCERA" in Orem's SCERA Theater shouldn't stand for Sharon's Cultural Educational Recreational Association Likely replacements: Sharon's Censored Editions of Reality Association Sanitary & Clean Entertainment through Reduced Audibility or Swearing Could Eventually Ruin America secon- WALT JOHNSON Salt Lake City 3 DAY SALE! g right-win- g While I agree with Charlotte Touati (Common Carrier Aug 25) that there is some discrimination in Utah I against must disagree with her concept of tolerance She says she is tolerant of people with religious beliefs so long as they practice those beliefs in private and not in public This is not true tolerance I am not LDS but I respect people who are I am respectfully silent when an LDS prayer is offered I am tolerant of the prayer for it is after all only words Free speech should protect people who want to pray out loud and in public A person who prays will pray according to his or her faith and in Utah that often means an LDS prayer On occasions when I am asked to pray I pray according to my faith This is true tolerance Some people want religion out of public life This was never the intent of the framers of the Constitution and its First Amendment Religious views must compete for the hearts and minds of the public in the market place of ideas just as secular views To prevent people from speaking from religious points of view in public is to make religious speech an inferior form of speech and religion a d-class philosophy This discriminates against people with sincere religious beliefs The traditional prayer at the start of public meetings is a reasonable unburdensome accommodation to people of faith STAN NILES Salt Lake City Stay Below everyone (Lincoln narrow-minde- Free Prayer state-sponsore- 4(4 not believe after readthe article (The Salt Lake ing Tribune Aug 28) about Sam student Chapman the from Kamas with long hair that any public school in the United States would be enough to penalize a student for his or her appearance Expressions of individuality should be encouraged and applauded Individual expression is an important part of every person's journey to a healthy adulthood I'm relieved that Sam Chapman was able to attend a school that will allow him to look the way he wants to What about the other male students who did not have that choice? Were they forced to conform or are they still being penalized in their suspension class for being individuals? I could Public Forum letters must be submitted exclusively to The Tribune and bear writer's full name signature address and telephone number Names must be printed on political letters but may be withheld for good reason on others Writers are limited to one letter of 300 words or less every 14 days Preference will be given to typewritten (double spaced) letters permitting use of the writer's true name All letters are sub ject to condensation Mail to the Public Forum The Salt Lake Tribune PO Box 867 Salt Lake City Utah 84110 tors Expose the CIA for what it is: d the instrument of terrorism and a subverter of real democratic movements If the ideals of democracy are to truly take hold in the Soviet Union give the people a model to emulate Start by dismantling those institutions that oppose those lofty principles Dismantle the CIA and call a halt to its despicable operations MARC K HOENIG Salt Lake City CO Hair and School Forum Rules Lest we all get lost in the euphoria of the "Evil Empire" breaking up and the end of state communism I think it's wise that we examine our own deeply rooted problems One problem has received virtually no comment: our own version of the KGB namely the CIA The CIA has proven its worth It excels at subverting grass roots movements that try to shake off oppressive regimes It knows how to bypass American and international law to advance its own foreign policy initiatives And it knows how to utilize the services of the world's most corrupt dicta- 1 CMOK A7 1991 The Public Forum IF It 'MO( 1 11 September Wednesday RINtr WIN& WANTS cararritAls SIAEK COMMENTARY - :: - IP 8 e Virtues Cctpra's Movies Taught Who Exposes Conspiring Society Today? Old-Tim- NEW YORK TIMES SERVICE NEW YORK — The obituary prose being written about the heartwarming Americanism embedded in the films of Frank Capra who died the other day neglects to mention that Hollywood would surely have blackballed him as an odious Bolshevik had he tried making his films in the 1950s In Capra's most admired movies members of the snootier classes were greedy or black-hearte- d swine In Capra's America good upright innocent Mr Deeds Mr Smith John Doe and George Bailey were all at the mercy of vile capitalists lawyers and politicians who infested society Such stuff smacked of Daily Worker cartoons and could not have been filmed after the late discov1940s when ered the glamorous joys of scourging Bolshevism in Hollywood Infected by the era's epidemic cowardice Hollywood not only stopped making such films it also connived in the famous blacklist which aimed to put everybody out of work who held ideas repugnant to Looking back at the films now praised for their rich American spirit the wonder is that they didn't get Capra hauled to Washington as a threat to the Republic He may have escaped this humiliation simply because Americans were not as interested in old movies then as now Maybe they simply forgot those old Capra films with their brutal treatment of American businessmen and politicians In "Mr Deeds Goes to Town" in "Mr Smith Goes to Washington" in "Nteet John Doe" land in "It's a Wonderful Life" the nastiness of 'society's pillars is drawn in harsh red-hunte- red-hunte- -- "01' ( isic - v ' ' ' v 8 y - - Russell Baker Al : caricature strokes We can imagine these uptown villains cackling as they contemplate robbing or destroying good innocent Gary Cooper and James Stewart Sweet Gary Cooper for heaven's sake clean-livin- g who wants only to give his $20 million to the homeless and play his tuba! Gentle Jimmy Stewart who wants only to put poor hardworking neighbors into homes of their Clark Gable an unsocial sassy wise-gureporter with a touch of the rogue It was that touch of rogue that always kept Gable interesting It made him seem all grown up which meant that while he might be a decent enough guy you'd better keep an eye on him anyhow Sometimes it took a punch on the jaw from good Spencer Tracy to put Gable back on the road to righteousness Capra didn't work with Gable again The four films he made with Cooper and Stewart could not have worked with Gable They are all malarkey and sentimental nonsense The considerable pleasures they provide are childish pleasures like the pleasures of fairy tales which they are One agrees to suspend disbelief and go along with the preposterous idea that in real-lifWashington the freshman Senator Jimmy Stewart could whip the Senate's mightiest tyrants Sure it's hogwash but Stewart can make it fun Stewart and Cooper are actors of the type They can look and at the gulp like sight of a reclining nude and say "Aw shucks" without seeming ridiculous These talents were essential to make Capra's Big Four of Sentimentality work With Gable conveying his subliminal wink their foolishness would have been too obvious It's now said that Deeds Smith & Co speak of an America where virtues will triumph if people will only live by them Who can doubt it? The question is whether nybody more substantial than gulping actors will lead us in resuming our devotions to the old virtues gosh durn 'em own! Yes these films are also high in flapdoodle content but let's stick to Capra's portraits of people who run America: suavely vicious Big Shot Douglass Dumbrille conspiring to put sweet Deeds in the booby hatch Sinister Senator Claude Rains Evil rich incipient fascist Edward Arnold Mean banker Lionel Barrymore sneering — sneering! — at The People Only in Capra's first big success "It Happened One Night" in 1934 are the ruling classes treated with a humor that grants them enough humanity to be interesting Claudette Colbert's runaway heiress may be spoiled but she's never nasty Her father Walter Connolly may be a piratical tycoon but he has the folk wisdom to know Claudette deserves better than that rich twit orriving at the altar by autogiro The proletarian hero here is hate-fille- d D i Lir-----Iti- i 0 ' - ti e single-handedl- y E boy-ma- n wide-eye- d simple-minde- d wise-gu- old-tim- e 50 Si1© 0 OFF GUARANTEED PROGRAM SERVICES 50 y OFF 1ST WEEK OF FOOD Evaluation fee additional Cannot be combined with other otters Valid with purchase of guaranteed programs only Al participatintl centers One discount per person Otter valid only : CALL NOW u 010132'17Filil |
