The Charlotte News
Tuesday, June 23, 1959
THREE EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from Baton Rouge, La., that Governor Earl Long's attorney, fighting for the Governor's release from a mental hospital, had said this date that he would call the Governor's wife as a witness on Friday when the Governor would go to court to seek his freedom. The attorney had filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus the previous night and a State district court judge had set a hearing for Friday morning. Mrs. Long had signed an application asking that her husband be confined to Southeast Louisiana Hospital at Mandeville, a mental facility. The attorney said that if necessary, he would also call Lt. Governor Lether Frazar, the Governor's faithful political follower, who had been reluctant to take over as acting governor, and Mrs. Wilma Lockhart, the Governor's executive secretary. The attorney said that he hoped to win his case before calling any witnesses by a favorable court decision on his first three arguments, that the Governor could be removed only through impeachment and that locking him up in a mental facility was in effect removal, that the commitment papers were not in order, that they were not filled out properly, and that even if they were, they had been obtained without proper examination as required by due process. The attorney hedged when asked whether the 63-year old Governor, making his second attempt in 25 days to get out of a mental hospital, would be a witness, saying that it remained to be seen. The attorney also contended that Governor Long had never been mentally ill and that even if he had been, he had completely recovered. A reliable source said that a comprehensive diagnosis of the Governor's physical and mental condition would be available for presentation before the judge on Friday. The East Baton Rouge Parish coroner said on Thursday that Governor Long suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, delusions of persecution. The filing of the application had climaxed a day of confusion over who would be acting as governor. State Attorney General Jack Gremillion had issued a 1,300-word opinion saying that the Lt. Governor had to be the acting governor, but Mr. Frazar had ignored the opinion, contending that he was only the lieutenant governor, leaving the state without a leader for nearly a month since Governor Long had been removed from the state to Galveston, Tex., where he had been committed for three weeks to a mental facility at the behest of his wife, after he made an obscenity-laced statement to the Legislature, attacking his political enemies.
In Springfield, Mo., it was reported that rioting psychiatric patients had seized five guards and taken over a wing of the U.S. Medical Center the previous night and that an official had said that he feared it was part of a planned escape. The sheriff said that information from inside the prison indicated that the inmates were trying to break through the wall on the northwest corner of the "10 North" building. Guards, State troopers, Springfield police officers and special guards from the Federal prison at Leavenworth, Kans., had formed three separate tight rings around that wing of the Federal prison system's general hospital this date. The unit was known as the "Country Club" because it resembled one from the outside. The sheriff said that none of the prison authorities could get inside the building to determine what was happening, indicating that they had heard terrific pounding and had sent men around the walls to see if they could detect exactly where the breakthrough was being attempted. He said that the walls were about a yard thick and he did not believe that the inmates had the equipment to break through. He said that it was his understanding that a riot had been led by six or seven inmates and that one of them, who was serving a 20-year sentence, had been considered desperate. The warden had issued orders to staff to avoid provoking the rioters. The "10 North" wing was a prison-type building, with barred doors and windows and individual cells, divided into three wards, each housing about a third of the 106 inmates. Homosexuals were in one ward, "young aggressives" in a second one, and "older aggressives" in the third. All were neuro-psychiatric patients and were among the most dangerous of the hospital's 1,046 inmates. Of the inmate population at the center, 259 were trustys and about 60 percent of the 787 patients suffered from mental illness. None of the rioters had been identified by the warden. One inmate had been observed holding a knife to the back of a hostage and a rioter had told the center's control room by telephone: "Don't try to come in here or your men will get hurt." Another inmate had said in a second call, "We mean business." Questioned by the warden on what started the riot, the latter inmate had said: "We have our demands almost ready but we will call you." That had been late the previous night and still nothing had been heard from the prisoners. There had been no sound from the wing and there were also no lights. The prisoners had smashed the lights when the uprising had begun. Only one newsman, the city editor of the Springfield Daily News, had been allowed inside the center, reporting, "There is no rioting in the general sense—no shouting and all that." He said that officials were "sitting around, sweating out" the riot and added that there was not much anyone could do except sweat. The trouble was, he indicated, that they did not know what the 106 men wanted or what had triggered the seizure of the wing. The first indication of the riot had come when a guard had peered through a door during a routine check just before "lights out". The guard told the warden that he had seen inmates milling in the long corridor and that the five guards on the wing had been stripped to their shorts, with some inmates wearing the officers' uniforms. An inmate had been holding a knife against the back of a guard. As soon as escape routes through the main door and the steel-barred windows had been blocked, the staff settled down to wait.
In Lincoln, Neb., it was reported that the State Supreme Court this date had set June 25 as the new execution date for convicted murderer Charles Starkweather, coming less than a day after the U.S. Supreme Court had turned down his petition for writ of certiorari filed at the behest of his father. The new execution date, the fifth which had been set, left Mr. Starkweather's attorneys little time to apply to the state courts for any further stay. Mr. Starkweather meanwhile was whiling away his time with paintings, remaining hopeful that he would obtain further review of his case. His court filings on habeas corpus had contended that he had not had a fair trial and that he was not represented effectively by counsel under the Sixth Amendment, basing it on the fact that his two court-appointed attorneys had pleaded him not guilty by reason of insanity against his wishes, presenting his various confessions to 11 murders, though he was charged formally with only one at the time of trial, that of 17-year old Robert Jensen. The Federal and State courts had ruled that the attorneys' actions had been within the bounds of trial strategy and tactics, and thus were not cognizable as constitutionally deficient effective assistance of counsel. The Supreme Court had refused review of the matter without comment on Monday. When told of the decision, Mr. Starkweather said only that he still had hope and returned to his oil painting of a snow scene. (There had been snow on the ground at the time of the murders in late January, 1958, though his first admitted murder had occurred on December 1, 1957 before the snows had flown.) Incidentally, Mr. Starkweather would have been subject to capital punishment even under the post-Gregg v. Georgia holding of 1976, reinstating the death penalty following revision of Georgia's statutes after the death penalty had been struck down in 1972 in Furman v. Georgia, held therein unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment because of arbitrary, capricious and inconsistent imposition of it without proper statutory guidance—as in Mr. Starkweather's case, there were multiple victims, a statutory circumstance in all states imposing the death penalty, enabling its imposition constitutionally after Gregg.
Speaking of capital punishment,
though in a different vein
In Stalheim, Norway, it was reported that a fire had raged before dawn this date through the Stalheim Resort Hotel in which 130 Americans had been staying, that seven bodies had been discovered and six or seven persons remained missing some hours after the blaze, according to a police spokesman. About 35 persons had been injured, either by flames or by jumping from the windows of the hotel. The spokesman said that the fire had spread over a huge area and that the situation was confused and might take some time to sort out. Other guests in the hotel included 12 British, four Swedes and some Norwegians. The 99-room hotel had been reduced to ashes within two hours, although all nearby communities had sent firemen to help in fighting the blaze. The seven dead had not been immediately identified and were believed to have been guests, as hotel employees lived in another building. One woman had burned to death in her room and at least one guest had perished by jumping from a window. The fire had been discovered in the early morning hours by a Georgia man who had awakened because of roaring and snapping sounds, had run out of his room and seen that the hotel was burning, had run down the corridor and screamed to alert the guests, continuing down to the lobby into which one of the hotel employees had come running and helped to set the fire alarms. Witnesses said that the blaze apparently had begun in one of the rooms. After it was over, only a concrete wing remained standing. The hotel, dating back to 1912, was insured for the equivalent of $940,000. One guest, from Los Angeles, said that he and his wife had arrived the previous night by bus with about 20 other persons, almost all of whom were Americans, reporting that three busloads of tourists had arrived at the hotel the previous night. He said that they did not know anything before the fire alarm had gone off, that they were on the second floor, had opened the door and smoke and flames had struck at them, and he had slammed the door. He said there was no fire escape or rope, that they constructed a rope from bedding and that he had let his wife down and had then gone out after her, that she had injured her back, and he did not know where the rest of their group was, that they had lost everything, their passports, luggage and their clothing, but that the people there had been extremely nice to them and had done everything they could. It was the second fire in 40 hours to wreck a European hotel crowded with Americans, after the five-floor Ambassadors Hotel in Rome's famed Via Veneta had caught fire early on Sunday, in which three maids had been killed when they jumped or had fallen from the top story.
Bob Slough of The News reports that the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond had said during the morning that a $100,000 U.S. Certificate of Indebtedness lost in Charlotte in 1956 had in some manner become mixed with wastepaper and been destroyed by burning, a view which he said was shared by the Treasury Department, and that the lost certificate had been replaced without loss to anyone. It was the first comment that he had made since the loss had been disclosed. The certificate had been lost during August, 1956 in a delivery transaction between the Charlotte Branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond and a commercial bank. The president of the bank said that complete and thorough investigations of the transaction had been made by the auditors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, the commercial bank involved, by bond insurers of both banks, and by the Secret Service, and that at the conclusion of the investigations, all parties had been satisfied that the disappearance of the certificate was not the result of dishonesty or wrongdoing on the part of employees of the Reserve Bank or employees of the commercial bank. Congressman Wright Patman of Texas had disclosed the missing certificate on Sunday when he released a 33-page statement criticizing operations and policies of the Federal Reserve System generally. The bond had been one of several sent by armored car from the Federal Reserve Bank to the Charlotte bank. An employee had opened the package of bonds and sent individual receipts for each bond to the Federal Reserve Branch. Only six receipts had been sent to the branch in Charlotte and there were supposed to have been seven. The Federal Reserve believed that the certificate must have stuck to the envelope in which the bonds were shipped and had burned as wastepaper. During the normal course of money or securities operations, some degree of human error was to be expected, according to the president of the Richmond Reserve Bank. It was impossible for any institution, he said, handling currency and securities to avoid some errors, indicating that it was amazing that the errors were so few, a tribute to the integrity of their employees and the policies and practices to keep such occurrences to a minimum.
Ann Sawyer of The News reports on the importance of the perimeter area to the City and County School Systems, indicating that it was mainly because of the size of the perimeter area to be annexed at the beginning of 1960. There had been annexations previously, and the County School System had lost area, buildings and students as a result, but had never stood to lose as much as it did after the current annexation. Some advocates of consolidation reasoned that the County Schools would be wrecked if they had to give up the perimeter area with its students and taxable wealth. The 19,200 acres in the area to be annexed had an assessed valuation of about 100 million dollars, providing half the financial support for the County Schools' supplemental tax. About a third of the County pupils lived in that perimeter area, which contained eight elementary schools. One of the strongest advocates for consolidation and a member of the Chamber of Commerce study committee, Oliver Rowe, had said repeatedly that removal of the perimeter from the County System would wreck it. He also maintained that if the City School District could not expand to take in the perimeter, it, too, would deteriorate. In previous city limit extensions when the new territory later was taken into the City School System, he said, it did not hurt the County System badly to lose schools and students, as it had occurred in times when most of the County schools had housed grades 1 through 12 and the children had come from the territory immediately surrounding the school. But since the previous city limit extension, the County had developed what was known as the 6-3-3 plan of elementary, junior and senior high schools, where every elementary and junior high school fed pupils to each successive level. With the modern school system, according to Mr. Rowe, one could not remove even an elementary school without its impact being felt on the junior and senior high schools. If the 8,000 schoolchildren in the perimeter area were lost to the County System, it would mean a drain on more schools than the eight elementary schools. A survey of principals and County School officials showed that West Mecklenburg High School would lose 30 percent of its students, that East Mecklenburg would lose 41 percent, that Berryhill would lose 30 percent, that Wilson Junior High would lose 25 percent, that Derita would lose 22 percent, Statesville, 20, Idlewild, 30, Sharon, 51, and McClintock Junior High, 62 percent. Such a heavy loss of elementary schools and the loss of pupils from the remaining schools would completely throw out of balance and disrupt the operation of the 6-3-3 system, according to Mr. Rowe. He said that the one thing which made it possible for the County School System to finance its program was because the perimeter area, which contained about half the assessed valuation, was in the County School District.
Julian Scheer of The News reports from Marvin that the sun had beaten down on Sandy Ridge township nearby the previous day as it had been, officially, the first day of summer. But one woman had not noticed as she had things to do, such as hoeing in her garden, tending her pecan trees, picking blueberries for a pie, and feeding her six frisky lambs. She had seen 87 summers and one was pretty much like the rest. "I get up between daylight and sunup, and I go to bed around 9 or 9:30," she said. The hours in between were busy, active and as bright as Union County soil. She lived in a little house on the side of a road with her talented painter-farmer daughter. On the first day of summer of 1959, she had dressed in blue jeans, covered them with a cotton dress and apron, and had worn an old felt hat sitting flat as a frying pan on her head, grabbed a hoe, walked to the garden and began digging. "I'd have more flowers, if I could get some lazy people to come plow it. Work helps people. You've got to keep busy. I keep busy. It helps me." She said she would like to have a hive of bees.
In Washington, it was reported that a kid held up a store and all the police knew was his nickname, "Bugle Head", picking him up from a file of more than 10,000 juvenile nicknames, which was expanded every day by arrest and investigation reports, the file matching the nicknames with the regular names of many of the city's young troublemakers, the nickname possibly being a clue which would solve the case. Revealing some of the nicknames this date, the police said that the old standbys were the most popular, including "Sunny", "Butch" and "Buddy", but that "Baby Brother", "Country", "Duck", "Bubbles", and "Blue", were moving up in incidence. Others on the list included: "Bubba", "Frog", "Fat Daddy", "Bird Brain", "Heavy", "Dog", "Gray Squirrel", "Thorn Head", "Ape", "Banana Peal", "Big Head", "Bean Bucket", "Carrot Nose" and "Chow Mein". Less affectionate nicknames were "Dirty Neck", "Evil", "Fat Man", "Football Head", "Greasy", and "Hog". In addition one fellow was named "Appetite", police having put the nickname in the files after arresting the youth for breaking into a restaurant.
In Spoleto, Italy, it was reported that Louis Armstrong had been rushed to the hospital this date, suffering from an attack of pneumonia. Italian doctors who examined him immediately after the attack early this date said that he had suffered a heart attack, but no examination by specialists at the hospital showed that the musician, 50, had pneumonia.
On the editorial page, "From Chief James, Great Expectations" indicates that now that everyone had made their little jokes about the name of Jesse James, who had become the new Police Chief in Charlotte, the city could decide what it expected of the new Chief. The answer was plenty.
Public sentiment favored the employment of an outsider who would bring unusual ability, training and experience to local law enforcement, based on the strong belief that a fresh start was needed, that past administrations had bred too many cliques and alliances, that the healthiest foundation on which to build for the future would be a whole new order. Chief James was expected to provide that new order.
It suggests that he ought be given time and the tools to do his job without political meddling, intra-departmental backbiting or external interference. He had many fine officers and men in the Department to build a nucleus from which he would form his new administration and no ruthless purge would be necessary. He would be expected to make the best possible use of available resources and seek whatever additions were needed to strengthen the force for an era of increasing responsibilities.
Policing the city was becoming a bigger job every day, no task for the lazy or untrained, as major crimes were commonly committed by experts. The trails they left could be followed only by officers who were equal to the professional criminals' art of concealment, and prevention of crime often took even more skill and enterprise. The force also had to be insulated from politics. The best scientific equipment available needed to be at hand along with local officers trained to make the best possible use of it.
Most U.S. cities still had a long way to go in that category and despite efforts in recent years to improve, experts maintained that the U.S. was still behind the great European cities in the type of personnel attracted to the service and the application of science to crime detection.
The community would expect from Chief James vigorous, honest and effective police administration which still did not lose the common touch with the public, vital in a democracy. The new Chief obviously had the background and experience to deliver the goods if he could also have the support and confidence of the City Council and the public at large, and it wishes him well.
"The President Avoids a Giant's Battle" finds that the President had once again shown his quaint faith in the "invisible hand" which guarded the public interest, whether in politics or in the marketplace. At his press conference the previous week, he declared that he would not use his office or his personal power to avoid an impending steel strike, stating at the same time that everyone had a stake in the future of steel wages and prices presently undergoing negotiations at New York's Roosevelt Hotel, encouraging the parties therefore to reach agreement.
It posits that many would say that it was a good thing that the President was reluctant to go into the courts against the steel magnates as had President Truman in 1948. (As there was no such situation in 1948, the piece appears to have confused the year with perhaps the 1952 steel seizure case, in which the Supreme Court held that the President lacked general inherent power under the Constitution to seize private property short of a national emergency declared by Congress.) The present steel crisis, it finds, was different from that earlier one—the 1952 seizure having been justified by the President based on the ongoing Korean War. A steel strike which would begin at midnight on June 30 would be mostly a bad joke on the public, coal miners and the already enfeebled railroads. The still industry expected to cut back about 70 percent of its capacity during the summer anyway and Detroit's automobile manufacturers were approaching the 90-day stockpile necessary to ride out any strike. The steel strike would give steelworkers leverage to raise wages and the steel managers a pretext for higher prices, but otherwise would do little.
It finds it most important that consumers could only sit and gape, that active participation was more relevant to the public interest than the President's homilies about refraining from intervention in the negotiations. It suggests that the "invisible hand" was as extinct as the dodo bird, that if it worked at present, steel prices would have plummeted during the same period of the previous year when steel had been running at 50 percent capacity, but they had not, had in fact risen, defying every law of "old" economics.
At present, steelworkers claimed that they feared inflation and believed that a wage increase not related to productivity would be folly, and yet the president of the Steelworkers Union was seeking a pay increase. It suggests that it might be a conscious choice of the President not to meddle in the battle of the steel giants and the choice of the consumer to support him, but signs of the "invisible hand" grew fewer, and if there were to be changes in steel, they would issue from the wills of management and labor, tempered only by public outrage.
"Our Own Solicitor? It Was about Time" indicates that one of the 1959 General Assembly's dying gasps had been the approval of a four-year old plea for separate solicitors for Mecklenburg and Gaston Counties, having been such a welcome concession that it was almost prepared to forgive the legislators for their failure at the same time to agree to statewide solicitorial reforms.
Mecklenburg County had become a self-contained judicial district in 1955, but for reasons best understood by the Legislature, it still had to share its solicitor with Gaston County. A bill introduced in the Senate late in the 1957 session would have corrected that situation, but it had lost in the adjournment rush. On this occasion, the measure had barely made it under the wire.
Governor Luther Hodges had appointed youthful James Walker to be the solicitor for the new Mecklenburg district, just at adjournment of the Assembly. The legislative action, it indicates, was long overdue as operations in the criminal division of Superior Court required the services of a full-time solicitor if reasonable standards of efficiency were to be maintained. It finds that Mr. Walker was a capable attorney, had served two terms as the solicitor of Charlotte's City Recorder's Court, and it expresses confidence that he would perform his chores creditably and that the administration of justice in the county would be sped up considerably.
A piece from the Louisville Courier-Journal, titled "'Let Them Eat Cake'", indicates that excessively optimistic readers of the London Times had written to that newspaper complaining that Marie Antoinette had never said: "Then let them eat cake." It indicates that it was calling those readers excessively optimistic because the letters seemed to breathe the hope that people would quit saying that she had said something she did not say. "Well, they won't, and there's nothing to be done about it—not even by writers of letters to newspapers."
It indicates that every quotation book in its office warned against attributing the quotation to the unfortunate lady, that the words had actually derived from Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confession, in the sixth book of which he had quoted it from "a great princess … on being informed that the country people had no bread." M. Rousseau had not alleged that Marie Antoinette was the "grande princesse" who uttered the words about eating cake.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations indicated: "This remark is usually attributed to Marie Antoinette after her arrival in France in 1770, but the sixth book of the Confessions was written two or three years before that date." Stevenson's went into further detail, asserting that the quote was not even an entirely sound translation from M. Rousseau's French, that being "Brioche" which the "grande princesse" had suggested that the people eat, "not exactly cake, but a bun or fancy bread something like Scotch scones."
"And yet with all of this scholarship at our command—to which is now added the learning of the Times' letter writers, who have delved far more deeply into the matter—we shall probably continue to fall into error, along with everybody else. We feel sorry for poor Marie Antoinette, but surely her shade has got used to being misquoted by this time and is reconciled to it."
Drew Pearson indicates that drama such as the Senate had seldom seen had taken place behind the scenes when it refused to confirm a Cabinet member for one of the few times in history. Seldom did the public get any sense of that drama, seeing the Senators debating on the floor and feeling the tension of the voting, but not even the press was permitted in Senate cloakrooms. He provides, however, what had occurred backstage as the Senate had voted on the confirmation of Admiral Lewis Strauss to become secretary of commerce. Republican leaders had been huddling with Minority Leader Everett Dirksen, and had three absentees whose votes were badly needed, one of them, Senator Thruston Morton of Kentucky, able to return to vote via commercial plane, but the others, Senators Wallace Bennett of Utah and Milton Young of North Dakota, could not except via military jet. A call had thus been made to the White House and General Jerry Persons, who had replaced Sherman Adams as chief of staff, had been asked to rush two Air Force jets to the rescue. The General had demurred, saying that they were the only two in the country.
Unbeknownst to the others, Senator Norris Cotton of New Hampshire had walked into another office, picked up the phone and called Admiral Strauss, asking him whether he wanted to be confirmed and if so, telling him he had better call the White House and put the heat on them for the two jets. The Admiral had done so and the two jets, one having been a tanker, the other a trainer, had transported Senators Bennett and Young to Washington at taxpayer expense to be present for the vote.
As early as June 12, Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson had asked for unanimous consent for a Senate vote and continued to repeat the request, on one occasion, Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon having objected, saying that he wanted to speak at length. Finally, Senator Johnson had called Senator Morse aside and encouraged him to allow the Republicans to do the objecting as they were not ready to vote and they wanted to place the excuse on Senator Morse, who agreed. Senator Johnson had then asked for unanimous consent to vote after eight hours of debate, divided equally. Republicans had looked hopefully to Senator Morse, but he had made no objection and reluctantly, Senator Dirksen had risen to object. After that, the Republicans frantically called the White House to get the two jets to bring the absent pair of Senators.
After the vote was taken, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona was livid with rage, jumping to his feet and approaching Senator George Smathers of Florida, who had voted against confirmation. Without saying a word, Senator Goldwater rushed to Senator Smathers with his fists out, the latter, who was lean and athletic, having turned the Arizona Senator aside with his shoulder as a football runner turns off a tackler. He asked Senator Goldwater: "What's the matter with you? Do you want to step outside?" Senator Goldwater apparently had expected Senator Smathers to vote for confirmation and was so wrought up that he had lost control of himself. Upon the inquiries by Senator Smathers, he turned and left the floor.
Incidentally, by 1964, some cute Republican revisionist history to the contrary notwithstanding, the overwhelming majority of the country was asking similar questions of Senator Goldwater. In your heart, you know he was right, but in your guts, you know he was nuts. "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice... Moderation in defense of justice is no virtue."
Joseph Alsop indicates as a footnote to history the kind of thing which had been done to try to secure the unsuccessful nomination of Admiral Lewis Strauss as Secretary of Commerce. During the Eisenhower years, real pressure had almost never been applied to make Congress see things as the President saw them. The President's line had generally been, "I propose, Congress disposes".
But in this instance, the White House had thrown everything at the Senate in terms of pressure in a way which would have been considered somewhat shocking in less sacrosanct Administrations.
It was impossible to discover whether the President, himself, really knew about the things which had been done in his name, indicating that the chances were that he had merely given the order, "Do everything you can to put over Lewis Strauss." Chances were that the President would be somewhat shocked if he ever learned how far Admiral Strauss and the White House staff had gone to win confirmation.
For example, the President was heavily committed to a freer trade policy and yet the promise that the future secretary of commerce would impose profitable restrictions on the country's world trade had been freely used in the drive to secure votes for confirmation.
Among the Democrats who had voted for confirmation, at least two Senators were tempted by the bait of restrictions on imports of Japanese textiles. A determined effort had been made to change the votes of two other Democratic Senators in the same way. But Senators Sam J. Ervin and B. Everett Jordan of North Carolina had ignored the pleas of the large textile interests in their state, which had been stimulated by the pro-Strauss high command in Washington.
Another appeal had been made to Senators from oil-producing states that the Admiral, almost alone among the President's close advisers, had argued for restricting petroleum imports from foreign nations. One vote in the pro-Strauss Democratic list could perhaps be attributed to that appeal, but most Democrats to whom pressure had been implied in that way had stood firm against the oil lobby, conspicuously including the two Texas Senators, Lyndon Johnson and Ralph Yarborough.
An indirect attempt had been made to reach the two West Virginia Senators, Robert Byrd and Jennings Randolph, by a promised restriction on imports of retail petroleum residues from the Caribbean, which the coal interests had long desired. On that basis, representatives of the United Mine Workers, generally the most powerful single political entity in West Virginia, had put out strong pro-Strauss pressure on the two Senators. Senator Byrd had stoutly resisted and they, as with the North Carolina Senators, had earned much admiration from their colleagues.
In addition, there were well-attested reports of a vain attempt to gain more Southern votes with a promise that the Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee would join Senator James Eastland of Mississippi and his similarly-minded cohorts in refusing to report a civil rights bill at the session.
Finally, and perhaps most important, the Senate had never experienced a similarly organized personal pressure campaign from grassroots business leaders. One Senator's wife was known to have left Washington in protest against her husband's decision to vote for the confirmation, as requested by a very rich man close to both Admiral Strauss and the President, who made a habit of contributing to Senatorial campaign funding. In another case, a leading Wyoming businessman, in response to a request from Washington, had telephoned Senator Gale McGee to "lay off Strauss." He had warned Senator McGee that the Jewish people in Wyoming were accusing him of anti-Semitism, a demonstrable lie. In yet another case, the pro-Strauss forces had been boasting, "We've got Herman Talmadge in the bag," because the President's golfing crony, Robert Woodruff, had called Senator Talmadge to ask his support for the Admiral. Since Georgians generally bowed to the head of the Coca-Cola Co. in Atlanta, the expectations of the Strauss supporters were perhaps understandable, but in the end, Senator Talmadge had voted against confirmation.
Mr. Alsop regards it as "perfect twaddle" that there was no recent precedent for the Senate fight regarding the confirmation of the Admiral, as an exact parallel, in which a man's character was the predominant issue, had been imvolved in the Senate fight against Henry Wallace when he had been nominated and confirmed as Secretary of Commerce under President Roosevelt shortly before the latter's death. On that occasion, however, President Roosevelt had read the signs correctly and accepted a deal stripping the position of secretary of commerce of all real power, in return for getting Mr. Wallace confirmed to the empty title. On that occasion, moreover, the Administration, often accused of being a dictatorship, had refrained from using anything akin to the methods which had been used in the confirmation of Admiral Strauss.
As Senate Majority Leader Johnson had warned the Republican Minority Leader, Everett Dirksen, the heat was so great that it helped to burn Admiral Strauss in the end.
Query whether we have not just been through in 2026 one of the more unseemly Republican trading schemes to get confirmed Todd Blanche, Trump's personal criminal defense attorney, as Attorney General by a single vote, a far more powerful position than secretary of commerce, Mr. Blanche having demonstrated in his role as Deputy Attorney General since 2025 and as acting Attorney General since a few months ago, that between the interests and midnight desires of Trump for vengeance against his perceived political enemies, his oath of office, the interests of the country and the law and Constitution, he will always come down in favor of his bossman's mercurial wish list, no matter how absurd or insane the wish, however lacking in legal basis, a devil-may-care attitude of throwing the linguine against the wall and seeing if some or all of it might stick until after dawn.
And, less than 24 hours after his confirmation, a report surfaced that the Department of Justice was dispatching election monitors this date to Minnesota to examine polling places for potential voter fraud in that state's primary election, fine and dandy as long as not in the guise of uniformed agents or hard-staring, sun-glassed goons in overstuffed suits, designed to intimidate voters, and as long as similar efforts are made in the Magaville states and districts, where in fact the most potential for voter fraud exists. Indeed, one nut on an extreme rightwing podcast was counseling El Presidente to issue an executive order requiring proof of citizenship to vote, claiming that pursuant to INS v. Chadha from 1983, each house of the Congress would then have to override the order by two-thirds vote, this idiot without any legal education, except maybe via the brilyunt legal minds at Fox Prop and News Maximus-Minimus, if that, confusing the Constitutional requirements for overriding a presidential veto of a Congressionally passed bill, two-thirds override by both houses, with executive orders issued pursuant to specifically authorized legislation, made then subject to override by the vote of one house, as was at issue in Chadha, not defeated bills, as the Drown Amurica Act. Nevertheless, El Presidente's response was, "Stranger things have happened."
And, as further evidence of the inmates running the asylum, as in this date's report from Springfield, Mo., El Presidente issued yet another of his daily ukases, this time based on Herr Doktor Trump's special feel-good Many-Ha-Ha salve available today only at half price in Magaville, USA, cutting down the required regimen of vaccines for children to enter the public schools on the baseless, debunked theory promoted obsessively, compulsively to His Highness by certain "expert" advisers
Q.E.D.
Word has it that his next executive order will be to abolish the Article III courts and disband Congress for the duration of his life, permitting him finally to release the fetters which bind his illimitable imagination and thus enable him to fulfill his Destiny as the Greatest Man Who Ever Lived Anywhere at Any Time.
A letter writer from Monroe indicates that the drive to humiliate Admiral Lewis Strauss had not begun when his name had gone before the Senate for confirmation as secretary of commerce, but rather in 1954 after the Atomic Energy Commission, which he had chaired, had denied Dr. Robert Oppenheimer access to restricted data for two reasons, because he had caused the AEC, the FBI and the MI [whatever that is, whether -5, -6 or just the Impossible Missions Force not yet formally formed on tv] to feel "the effects of his falsehoods, evasions and misrepresentations", and because of his "continuing association with Communists … as recently as last December [1953]." The writer finds that Admiral Strauss had been attacked with "the venom that only people of the Pearson-Alsop type employ. Their columns which appeared in The Charlotte News in 1954 are proof of this fact." He finds that in the ensuing years, the attacks against him had mounted from many directions, increased in intensity until on June 18, he had been publicly humiliated by the Senate after service to his country under four Presidents. "This is the punishment given a man who fought for his nation's security."
A letter writer from Talladega, Ala., says he did not blame anyone for wanting good wages, but did blame anyone for demanding unreasonable wages, which some union leaders and big industry wanted. He finds that the high wages in big industry controlled the prices of almost everything directly or indirectly and that a big wage increase in the steel industry would cause more inflation, that between the high cost of steel and the high cost of building automobiles, it would place the price of automobiles so high that many of the lower income consumers could not afford to own a car.
A letter writer from Huntersville responds to a letter of June 15 in which the writer had stated that the progress of black people depended entirely on black people. She wonders how black people could make progress if white people held them back, that there was no way to do so unless white people helped by giving black people jobs to make money to live and have the understanding to make progress. She suggests that if the prior letter writer had read any history books at all, he should have known how the white man treated black slaves, made them work in the hot fields all day with little food or clothing, the white man taking everything the black man owned. She indicates that the previous writer had said that the black man should start acting like a human being if he wanted to be accepted as one. She responds that blacks had always been treated as animals and asks how one could expect them to act like human beings. "If you white men are human beings why don't you start treating the Negro as human? Turn them loose so he can have something in life." The only way black people could have equal rights was through integration. Black people could not obtain good jobs because they did not have the money to go through school to get the education needed to obtain a good job, could not make progress if white people did not provide the chance to make a good living. She indicates that black people did not want to be accepted as whites, that they did not want to live and think as whites. "The white man's thought is of trying to get all the money he can get his hands on. The Negroes have sinful lives; the white men have sinful lives. I know of many incidents where Negro molested white and where white molested Negro. Don't put all the murder and rape cases on the Negro. The white man is in it just as deep."
A letter writer notes that Buncombe County had scheduled a vote for June 23, 1959 on a steeply inclined capital outlay to raise taxes and also whether or not to issue several millions in bonds, somewhat paralleling the bond election in Mecklenburg on June 30 to enable consolidation of the City and County school systems. He indicates that the Asheville newspapers had been filled with letters to the editor on whether or not the high tax levy and additional bonds for schools ought be issued and that many people would recall that only a few years earlier, Buncombe County had been bankrupt and could not pay its debts. The bond election would only provide for about a fourth of the amount Mecklenburg was being called to vote on, but the citizens of Asheville and Buncombe County were aroused to oppose it. He indicates that the June 30 election in Mecklenburg for the new bonds would raise tax rates drastically, based on the "faulty and flimsy reasoning that certain school officials are afraid of what might happen if the 54-cent school is not voted and if the $8 million bond levy should fail." He believes their fears were not well-founded.
A letter writer indicates that now that Governor Luther Hodges was off to parts unknown behind the Iron Curtain, he was wondering if he was thus extending his search for new industry to bring to the state or simply seeking the advice of Premier Nikita Khrushchev on how to control labor disputes in the state more economically. He suggests that if it was, as the Governor had indicated, that he was looking into methods of education, the writer doubts the wisdom of such research. "Should we learn, through such observations, to train the minds of our youngsters to their full capacities and skills in sciences, without properly training their consciences, as the Reds are doing, would we not possibly be creating a generation of little monsters, that would likely destroy us in later years?"
Framed Edition
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