Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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J1%9 FARRELL EDITOR LUCRETIA JONES DAVE LUNDGREN MANAGING ED AD. MNGR. EDITORIALS Goodbye Blatt Sol Blatt is going to retire from his Speaker of the House position July 1973. All we can say is, congratulations. Congratulations to Rex Carter, D-Greenville, for his efforts in bringing about this move; to the House for realizing that new leadership was needed; to Blatt for removing a major roadblock in South Carolina's road to a progressive government for the people. There are, however, some questions that need to asked and answered before we accept the succeeding speaker, who from all indications will be Carter. What, for instance, will the so-called new directions be? Why have Blatt's opponents given in to this retirement plan for July when they should still be out trying to defeat him in January? In other words, the sooner the better. How much power will Blatt retain? It is assumed that he is probably the most powerful man in the state. Will he remain so? Hopefully, not. Why? Well, when the Citizens Conference on State Legislatures placed the S. C. General Assembly 44th in the nation, Blatt replied, "I love South Carolina, and I resent anybody saying we're at the bottom of anything." This is the kind of leadership South Carolina doesn't need. It's good to be losing this type of inspiration. Hopefully, Mr. Carter or whoever takes over, will forsake the preservation of the antiquity we call the General Assembly. Maybe we are placing a lot of emphasis on what we expect of Mr. Carter. We are because it will take a strong willed individual to take the leadership of the House and place in a firmly progressive direction. Modernization can never be too soon. iA PEE7TM9- ThiE AMCH-ITKA MUCl.EAR W$T . .t/T E/R7? OUR :NAT/ONAt ANT/EM! Harriet Van Horn Nixon BY HARRIET VAN HORNE Columnist It's perfectly consistent that a President who sees the grand design of his incumbency as a "game plan" should refer to the Supreme Court as "the fastest track in the nation." It shouldn't make an ordinary citizen wince but it does. Mr. Nixon eased our em barrassment somewhat last week when he introduced his two nominations for the Supreme Court--(they'll go as an entry, to keep matters in a sporting con text). No Carswells this time. No Byrds, Lillies or Poffs. No former Kleagles of the Klan, no hacks or cronies. At last two men of sub stance and academic standing, however one might disavow some of their ideas. The President, we may now conclude, has learned a bitter lesson. Namely, that the Senate and the public place a higher value on the Supreme Court than he does. And the White House, in the final analysis, must acknowledge this wonderful, ornery pride and refrain from insulting it. Lewis F. Powell may not slip into the robes of the late Mr. Justice Black but he's a giant compared to some of Mr. Nixon's earlier choices. Described as "courtly and scholarly," Mr. Powell is said to be a moderate on civil rights and a hard-liner on demonstrations and protests. Strom Thurmond will doubtless claim that he could have picked a worthier and truer son of the South, but Powell's Virginia background will hardly militate against him when his name comes up for confirmation. There will be no cheers on the left and few from the center for William Rehnquist. Being billed as "the President's lawyer's lawyer " in this Administration is not necessarily a compliment. Mr. Rehnquist has a 19th century air. He's precisely the sort you'd expect to find at the right Our times Chiang BY SMITH HEMPSTONE Columnist To paraphrase Marx (Groucho, not Karl), Mao Tse-tung might be lorgiven if he declined United Nations membership on grounds that he is uninterested in joining a club that would accept the likes of him. Certain it is that the Gadarene haste with which 59 nations sud denly decided that the expulsion of Nationalist China was not "an hmportant question" requiring a two-thirds (rather than a simple) mnajority reflected small credit on an organization which has been living on the same for years. Indeed, many if not most of the *had been on record for a decade as regarding the issue as "im portant." Suddenly, with Dr. Kissinger in Peking, It became "unimportant," and the scuttling In the corridors was as of that of jats deserting a sinking ship. Still and all, as our teen-age philosophers put it, perhaps that is the way the fortune cookie crumbles. "No tickee, no washee," as both the Israelis and the South Africans, who voted with us on the important question issue, may discover one. .day o e coor ou e learns le4 hand of John Mitchell. He has defended wiretapping. He would not be displeased if the Supreme Court reversed itself on the Miranda decision. He believes that the way to cope with a mass demonstration, even a peaceful one, is to arrest everybody. That was his game plan last May Day. Now the courts have nullified those May Day arrests and ordered the government to refund the bail money. The dialogue that is bound to ensue between Justice William 0. Douglas and Mr. Rehnquist would make crackling good reading. One is only sorry that Mr. Justice Black will not also be on hand to temper and deepen-let us be optimistic the judicial philosophy of Mr. Rehnquist. Rarely, to this viewer's mind, does President Nixon radiate any endearing wisdom in his TV ap pearances. But for a moment last week I liked him for the pride he took in the accomplishments of these two nominees. Then he said, "It is our duty as citizens to respect the institution of the Supreme Court." Said it piously, righteously, as from a pulpit. This , from the President who has repeatedly demeaned the court by championing men who had no distinction, morally or in tellectually, men with ugly racist records and one man-Sen. Robert Byrd-who has never been ad mitted to the bar! Respectful duty, indeed. Mr. Nixon might also be ticked off for saying that the Supreme Court "should, in the broadest sense, be representative of the entire nation." One would like to hear the President elucidate that point. Would the ideal Nixon court, then, have a Protestant, a Catholic, a Jew, a black and maybe a Chicano? And a Madam Justice? Would the Establishment, the Bible Belt and the old keep gets last J as God made little green apples, the Arabs and the Africans will join forces one day in an effort to drive both nations from the in ternational organization in favor of governments-in-exile. Aside from the basic inequity of chucking out a nation which has honored the U. N. charter in favor of one which has not, one wonders why anybody much .cares. Both friends and foes of the United Nations vastly exaggerate the capacity of that organization for either good or evil. Like what our forefathers used to refer to as a "social disease," it exists, but the less said about It In polite society the better. Nor was there ever reason to expect equity from the United Nations. Any organization which can grant membership to delegations from Ukraine and Byelorussia, which represent nobody but the men in the Kremlin, certainly can deprive of mem bership a delegation which, at the minimum, represents 2 millIon Nationalist Chinese, if not 12 million Formosans. Anyway, Chiang ha'l a pretty good run for his (or our) money and ended up writh the last laugh: when they 4eparted the Nationalists left a !son them niggers in 'their place Southland each have-a judge? Clearly, nine seats would not be enough for the Nixon dream court. If not broadly representative of the entire nation, what, then, should the Supreme Court be? Well, it should represent the very best in the American spirit. If law is "the calling of thinkers," as Mr. Just ice Holmes once wrote, then the bench should be the calling of the very best thinkers, of scholars and philosophers. It should be the lamp unto our feet, the place where wrongers are made to render right. Chief Justice Burger has lately cautioned law students not to st rive for social revolution through the courts. But considering the nature of so much litigation today - -the activists' suits, the class ac tions in behalf of consumers-how can the courts escape their role in the revolution? In an Administration that has dealt so many blows to our civil liberties, one would like to feel that the Supreme Court sits in vigilance, becoming "activist" when the Congress is laggard, prodding the conscience of America, reminding us that "consent of the governed" is a living concept. One of the glittering "credits" in Mr. Rehnquist's record is that he once served as law clerk to Justice Robert Jackson. Regrettably, his clerkship took place in 1952 by which time Mr. Justice Jackson had abandoned his New Deal fervor and turned sharply right. But he did write some words that his one-time clerk might bear in mind as he prepares to don his new robes. To wit: "The task of this court to maintain a balance between liberty and authority is never done because new conditions today upset the equilibrium of yesterday. The seesaw between freedom and power makes up most of the history of governments." laugh $30.2 million "calling card" in the form of unpaid dues and U. N. assessments. And you can whistle "The East is Red" until you're blue in the face before Mao picks up that tab. Which brings us back to the matter of credit, and the U. N.'s lack thereof. It is amusing that it should require a major vote against the United States for a hue and cry to develop about the state of the organization's finances. For years the United States has been financing a disproportionate percentage of the organization's budget (from a high of 39.9 percent in 1948 to the present level of 31.5 percent) and for years the U. N. has been tottering on the brink of bankruptcy. At any rate, both the finances of the U. N. and the U. S. contribution to it will bear some scrutiny. But it would be unwise to make a major slash in our contribution at this time, if only because the cost really is not that much ($318 million in 1970) and the organization and its specialized agencies are of some use. The point is that the U. N. need not be taken terribly seriously: The action simply is not there.. -.-. .. . .. . .. . .iJWB4INGTON STAR