Newspapers / Jones County Journal (Trenton, … / Aug. 13, 1970, edition 1 / Page 2
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Into tfto EDITORIALS NmVer Forget That These Editorials Are The Opinion Of One Man _ And He May Be Wrong Pentagon Absurdities There surely is nothing to give one any sense of total security about the overall brains presently controling our armed forces when one considers the unbelieve afrio mismanagement of this minor chore of disposing of a small quantity of pois onous gas. During World War Two millions upon millions of pounds of poisonous gas were moved all across the nation and shipped into many foreign lands. The Eighth Air Force in England had huge quantities of assorted deadly gas in its bomb depots but fortunately none was used apd after the war was over it was hauled out into the Atlantic and dump ed without a mumbling word — even by the mayor of Macon, Georgia. For the armed forces to confess that it cannot move two small trainloads of anything for a relatively short distance without screaming headlines, court ac tions and politicians beating their breast and standing like Horatio at the rail road bridges is just too much to compare with the kind of military operation that won World War Two. Times change and systems change and even in some fields the answers are changed, but nothing seems to be right About the' unholy mess that has been of this and other recent efforts to dispose of some deadly toy the mill* tary mind has asked science to conceive. And, while on the subject, it is of pass ing consideration to also consider the stupidity of dumping this stuff in just 1600 feet of water and only 300 miles off the coast; when just a few hundred mere miles off the coast there is water 16,000 feet deep in which nearly no cision-making that dominates the arm ed forces today it is small wonder that this small war in Vietnam has already cost us more than all of World War Two, which bad American fighting men in action on all the seven seas and on every continent and most of the islands. There is an effort currently being reported to shake up the brains in the Pentagon. We’d be in favor of this if they could find any brains to shake up. But after casually following this nerve gas fiasco for the past several weeks we dout>t that Sherlock Holmes could find a brain in a carload, or even in a train load, of Hie current Pentagon brass. About The Schools This year Lenoir County will be fac ed with total racial mixing in the schools for the first time and ot^ier counties in the area will be moving into second or third years with this federally forced usurpation of local powers. But whether it is usurpation or as legally pure as the newly-fallen snow it is really beside the point in the final analysis, because in school affairs, as all others, one has to Hve in the world as it is, rather than as we’d prefer it to With this unavoidable finality it is the duty of every citizen to do all he can possibly do *o make this unwanted sit uation as comfortable as possible. Above all we should keep dearly in mind that Jl Chief", and bout the tn federal cour ess points out th-' only 89 habeas corpus federal courts while last more than 12,000. •’] r Those who do not keep up with the courts may wonder what in the world caused such a jump in 20 years — from just 89 to 12,000! There is only one answer: The court itself brought about this upsurge in monkey business, when it illegally moved into fields over which it has no right to operate and the ma jority of congress has too little guts to force the federal courts to stick to their legal knitting. Chief Justice Burger said in a judg ment before he readied the highest ju dicial position in the nation 'that every defendant is due a fair trial but not a perfect trial. And the reason the federal courts are swamped t6day is because they have made it the established policy that ev ery defendant must have a perfect trial. Hie issue of- guilt or innocence is lost in a web of thinly woven technicality which frustrates justice, lowers respect for the courts and makes the weary life of the police officer more impossible than ever before. Such issues as the infamous Mallory Case in the District of Columbia, in which a man named Mallory freely con fessed a brutal rape murder and then was turned back onto the streets be cause he had not been arraigned within less than eight hours. And there are many more of the same variety. Guilty men turned out of prison to go and break more laws be cause they were not sitting in their lawyer’s lap when they freely confessed their crimes. Guilty men set free be cause a comma was misplaced dr a word misspelled in a search warrant. All of this mischief was committed by the United States supreme court. Not by state courts, or federal district courts — but by such empty headed goats as thievishly inclined 'William 0. Douglas and turncoat aptly named Hugo Black, and the worst of the entire lot, frustrat ed and beaten for vice-president Earl Warren who took his spleen out on the nation. '• other school officials we should^ offer our sympathy, and our help when"need ed, rather than constant carping criti cism which does nothing to improve a situation that is already bad enough without further overalls being thrown in the chowder. Those parents of either race who feel that they cannot accept what is being forced upoA their children have two reasop^ble alternatives: One, tcfwithdraw their children from the public schools, or two, send them to the public schools with strict instructions to behave and above all to live in good manners at all times with all those they come to ■meet- „ JONBS The point is that through today we have paid $3,500 in reward money al though there has been no conviction. There have been preliminary hearings in which probable cause of guilt was found in six instances. Now I know very well that there is a vast difference between probable cause and guilt A preliminary hearing evidence to bring a person to formal trial, and it surely does not mean that a person against whom probable cause has been found IS guilty. And certainly I know with the un-, believable amount of technical red tape that surrounds and protects even the most guilty criminal today that there is a very long gap between probable cause and a guilty verdict in a court of competent jurisdiction. But in these efforts we are making to fight the flood of dope that is threat ening to drown our civilization one can not split fine technical hairs and the peo ple who give us information that has led to' eight indictments so far don’t like to do business on a long-term credit basis. —. f1 They very largely are people wbo live a day-today, almost a hand-to-mouth existance and it would almost certain ly' lower and possibly cut off informa tion if these informers had to wait six or eight months or even several years in some instances for that final convic tion. - . - So we bave agreed in' cases where the evidence is positive with dope being found on the premises and on the per son of the defendants that this shall be sufficient' after probable cause of their guilt has been found to merit thd payment of these promised rewards. If later juries, judges and technical man euvers permit these pushers to go free, that is not the fault of the informer, the law enforcement officers or the Con. cemed Citizens Committee, so I hope those who have subscribed to this re ward fund will understand this change in our position and that others will add more money to this fund, which now is almost halfway used up. '
Jones County Journal (Trenton, N.C.)
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Aug. 13, 1970, edition 1
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