Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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JIM FARRELL EDITOR LUCRETIA JONES DAVE LUNDGREN MANAGING ED AD. MNGR. EDITORIALS Within system Ralph Nader has done this country a great service with his muckraking studies into the practices of our industries. He has made it possible to buy many goods without guessing as to their value and safety. Nader's Raiders have also given us information pertaining to those goods which do- not meet standards and that we as consumers might not have noticed. Many states throughout the Union have public research groups that have followed the Nader methods and have achieved their goals of consumer protection and en vironmental control and continue to do so. The State of South Carolina could use a group of this sort and do well by it. There is a group of interested students throughout the state that are attempting the birth of a group typical of Nader, the South Carolina Public interest Research Group (SCPIRG). There would be a taxation of the student body that would help fund this non-profit corporation and would enable this group to hire many educated men and women in various fields of study. The group prospectus states, "SCPIRG Is an effort by South Carolina students to work within the existing educational and social system to analyze and help South Carolina's pressing problems in such areas as en vironmental preservation and consumer protection." This statement does not espouse any political connections because there are none. For this group to exist it will take every student to support the existing proposal. The group is not a political ballgame. It will be a workable plan with the needed support. Harriet Van .Hon BabblinA BY HARRIET VAN HORNE Columnist Let us not underestimate the value of Martha Mitchell. She's the best barometer we have to warn us of the political storms ahead. What the wife of the attorney general babbles in public today invariably turns out to be high-level policy tomorrow. And the more she babbles, the more valuable she is to us all. Conservatives need a Martha Mitchell in their lives because her salty, down-home invectives case their frustrations. The prejudices she expresses in public echo perfectly what they are saying everyday in private. Liberals need Mrs. Mitchell even more than her own constituency needs her. She's a natural target for their pent-up rage against the Administration. And with her unrestrained bad taste. her rather girlish ignorance of how govern ment functions, the wife of the attorney general epitomizes what intellectuals call "the Nixon spirit." Mediocrity, slyness, ineptitude and an unprecedented insolence in office. Still, we listen carefully each time Mrs. Mitchell favors us with another philosophical observation, another veiled threat, another hint that John and Dick are heating up a caldron for their foes. Naturally Mrs. Mitchell shared her husband's outrage over the Pentagon Papers. If the Johnson war secrets can become public, who's to stop the Nixon war secrets?The attorney general will do his blundering best. Meantime, Martha warned, the press is Our Times Judges h BY SMITH HEMPSTONE Columnist The extent to which all Americans are indebted to U.S. Appeals Court Judges David L. Bazelon, Harold Leventhal and Spottswood W. Robinson III will become apparent on Oct. 26. That is the date upon which the Mayday Tribe, whose members so distinguished themselves here last spring, have vowed to "surround and close the White House." For those of you who may have missed it, the three judges ruled earlier this month that the Washington police must return the collateral (estimated at $30,000) forfeited by perhaps 3,000 protesters arrested on May 3 when the Mayday horde tried to close down the capital of the nation which nurtured them. The judges further barred the government from distributing the arrest records of tribesmen other than those convicted of offenses, temporarily enjoined the govern ment from proceeding In the prosecution of the estimated 325 Mayday cases still pending and ordered government officials to retrieve any copies of Mayday arrest records which may have been disseminated outside the Washington police department. Dandy. Never rmind -thet the tribesmen interfered with the Martha getting too indiscreet for its own good. In fact, in Martha's words, this poor judgment on the part of the newspapers "has reached such an extent that it may result in com plete suppression of the press, in which event it will have caused its own death." It's impossible to read this casually dropped remark without feeling some cold shudders. First, a shudder of distaste for the gloating, smirking ill will of this Cabinet wife. Second, the ominous shudder one feels at the touch of icy fingers on the back of the neck. "Someone just walked over all our graves," I remember thinking, "and it's Martha Mitchell." No Administration in recent history has been as suspicious of or hostile to the press as this one, No other Administration has ever invoked the doctrine of prior restraint, filed criminal actions against newspapers, intimidated TV networks and attempted to manage the news for the greater glory of its own schemes and stratagems. A recent New Yorker quoted "a senior member of the Republican National Committee" as having said privately that the Ad ministration was plotting a high level campaign to destroy the credibility of the press before the '72 elections. The purpose, the New Yorker goes on to quote its Republican informant, would be to enable the President to say at election time that "since the press had proved untrustworthy, its attacks on him and his record were worthless." elp May( rights of ordinary citizens who wanted only to get to work and did not happen to concur in the belief of David Dellinger and Rennie Davis that Richard Nixon is the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler. Never mind that their freak-out cost the District of Columbia $3,271,560, and merchants and private individuals untold thousands of dollars in lost business and property damage. Apparently the demonstrators, swept up in a dragnet when, because of the size of the mob, the police were unable to apply routine arrest procedures, suffered grievous damage to their Sixth Amendment right "to be informed of the nature and cause of the acu ccusation" against them. Not to speak of the terrible blow to their psyches occasioned by being hustled off to places of detention which did not resemble the Ritz. Horrors! By all means return their $10 collateral to these paragons of virtue. Let them not be discommoded in any way. Encourage them to come back again and again. And it will not be just Washington which is indebted to Messrs. Bazelon, Leventhal and Robinson; the Mayday bravoes and their allies, the white radicals of what is a laughingly known as the People:Oalition, for'- Peace and J''teidhfaoniPne Mitchell That the plot against the press was doomed from the start seems not to have occurred to the Ad ministration. Two major rounds have been lost with maximum publicity: the decision on the Pentagon Papers and the tabling of the contempt citation against CBS President Frank Stanton. And there will be more. The New Yorker piece states that the antipress campaign will be "organized and directed by Herb Klein." To most of the working press, this is a pretty fair guarantee that the way will not be smooth. Instead of intimidating the press, Mr. Klein could better serve the President by instructing certain high-ranking members of the government in the basics of public relations. If they wish to avoid looking foolish or sinister in the press, then they should learn to speak and act with discretion. When we look back on the Nixon years-hopefully from the serenity of a more honorable government we are bound to ask in horror, "Did we really have men like that in the seats of the mighty?" We have an attorney general who, if we may accept the so far reliable chatter of his wife, isn't going to be surprised if the newspapers of the land lose their freedom. And , indeed, why should he be surprised? Isn't that what the boys in the backroom-or thQ Oval Office-have been talking about all these months? Copyright 1971 Los Angeles Times lay Tribe Action Coalition, plan to hold other demonstrations in most major cities of the country on Nov. 6. It is interesting to note that the demonstrators, while they are perfectly willing to use the Con stitution as a shield to hide behind, do not have the same fine respect for the law as Appeals Court judges. Indeed, Dellinger has stated publicly that the Oct. 26 "Evict Nixon" rally will take place even if its organizers are refused a permit. In no country in the world--and certainly not in the Communist countries which so many of the protesters profess to admire would behavior of the sort which took place here on May 3 and which promises to occur here on Oct. 26 be tolerated. For the rule of law and the niceties of constitutional rights can be thoroughly and honorably ob served only when the social con tract is adhered to by both sides in a dispute. Legality and justice are not the same thing and the first can undermine the course of the second when individuals knowingly use the law to subvert the ends of justice. A man has a right to clench his fist ; but that right stops well short of another man,'s nose in any ordered and sensible society.