University of South Carolina Libraries
Wednesday, March 30, 1994 "IBaif Serving US J.T. Wagenheim, Editor in Chie Ed Iter I Wendy Hudson, Carson E Nancy Salomon Insanity ' Supreme Court's rulin accused from abusing Monday, the U.S. Supreme Coui insanity defense, suggesting I defense if they desire. Without dissent, the Court refused bids convicting an insane person of a The question as to whether people crime has been hotly debated over th< Congress tightened the restrictions in ted by reason of insanity of attempting . ganI Hinkley's "insanity," wanting to inn sufficiently capable to control his owr The question remains, at one point to true insanity? It would seem that 1 mined. Few would argue that most murder ble frame of mind. An angry person w sidered to be "sane" at that particular That being the case, anyone who kil for a "temporary insanity" plea, and all their clients out of trouble. The lack of a defined "normal" pre 1 ****** 1 r* r\ fU/> 1/m. * UVp^liUOUlt UAU9C, <uiu U1C WW 1 Without any qualifier, pleas of "The' ' Jodie Foster become legitimate consi clear people of violent crimes. The present insanity system is like a abused. In the Montana case, a man assaulter trv\l His "inMnitv" nrat hrpitinn infrv ?' M&VIUUIig UUV food and watching their televisions, an were his own when he was discovered Obviously, the man needs some degi not be released into society without re] ticular, is committed, a conviction is ai The Supreme Court's reiteration of tl ways to strictly define insanity, it simp! olent offender. inclosing X-rat constitutions On March 16, Circuit Judge Walter Bristow ruled that Columbia unw constitutionally applied its law regulating sexually oriented businesses in the case of Chasers' Mags-n-Mixers. The city cited Chasers' location within 1,000 feet of both a residential boundary and a church as reason for the business being asked to move to another location. Columbia's ordinance, similar to that of Richland County, says "adult 1 businesses" (those X-rated in nature) must be located in a general commercial zone and at least 1,000 feet from other adult businesses, churches, schools, parks, residential areas or day-care centers. Judge Bristow said the city's ordinance, in effect, zones out adult businesses entirely. The constitutional issue here is whether a city should have the right to completely zone out a business that it deems corruptive or dangerous to the citizens of the community. Many smaller towns and subur1 ban communities have been able to keep X-rated businesses out completely. That is one of the many rea sons most families prefer living in the suburbs rather than the city. Adult businesses bring many problems to the community around them. In most cases, they attract crime and prostitutes. Most people I know believe these businesses to be an eyesore to the community. They are generally "run-down" looking, and most have names or symbols on their signs which are at least > indirectly sexually explicit. Adult businesses also reduce the property value of the other "normal" businesses and residential communities around them. The fact is, most people don't want to live in close proximity to one of these businesses, especially if they have young children. Can you ?6aitcock B Student Media Russell House-USC* Coli J.T. Wagenheim Nancy Salomonsky Editor in Chief Carolina! Editor Lee Clontz Tony Santori Viewpoints Editor Sports Editor Carson Henderson David Mandrel! Copy Desk Chief Photo Editor Gordon Mantler Chris Muldrow Copy Desk Chief Graphics Editor Wendy Hudson Nora Doyle News Editor Asst. News The Gamecock is the student newspaper of the University of South Carolina and is published MoDday, Wednesday and Friday during the fall and spring semesters, with the exception of university holidays and exam periods. Opinions expressed in The Gamecock are those of the editors or author and not those of the University of South Carolina. The Board of Student Publications and Communications is the publisher of The Gamecock. The Department of Student Media is its parent organization. fcodt C Since 1908 f Lee Gontz, Viewpoints Editor I Board lenderson, Gordon Mantler, sky, Tony Santori g should prevent r system rt declined to review a Montana man's that individual states may abolish the I the claim that the Constitution forcriminal act. deemed insane can be convicted of a ; past several years, particularly since 1984 after John Hinkley was acquit; to assassinate President Ronald Reaipress Jodie Foster, deemed him inl actions. does a person go from maliciousness line can never be adequately deter s are performed in a completely staho kills another could hardly be conmoment. lis another person should be eligible too often, lawyers try to use it to get vents the insanity plea from being a must be, above all, dependable. 1 winkles made me do it" and lust for derations which can, in some cases, . bad joke which is being intolerably d a forest ranger with a tree-planting other people's houses, eating their id violently asserting that the houses L ee of psychiatric help, but he should percussion. If a violent crime, in pari absolute necessity, tie conviction is clear. Until there are Y should not be used to liberate a vied business lly valid H * Tommy Touchbeny COLUMNIST blame them? Local and state government has always had the right to shut down or remove a business which causes a "health hazard" or a "disturbance" to the community around it. Two immediate examples come to mind. One is the restaurant that fails state health standards. The state shuts down a business to protect the "health and well-being" of the con sumer. Two is the bar or nightclub that directly causes "rowdiness" or "property destruction" to the surrounding neighborhood. The city or county forces the business to move, through zoning laws, to protect the residents of the neighborhood. These, I believe, are legitimate precedents which legally give local government the right to "zone" or "zone out" sexually explicit businesses. I don't believe it to be constitutional or right for the federal government to make these busi- ] nesses illegal, but I think that local 1 governments have to be granted the J right to control their own zoning laws. ; If a constitutional basis can't be < found to support local government < zoning laws, then the Legislature : ought to put the issue on a refer- 1 endum and let the citizens of South Carolina democratically decide what zoning power they want 1 their local governments to have. i 1 - Chris Carroll II/-IIZ O Cootduialor of Student Medu ising: 777-4249 Laura Day 777-6482 Production Manager iimbia, SC 29208 Keith Boudreaux Gregory Perez A cat K!?va Ih/v1n/?tlAn A cat Brian Garland Brian McGuIre Asst. Carolina! Graduate Asst. Emily Peterson Renee Gibson Asst. Photo Advertising Manager Jimmy Debutts J. Taylor Rutland Asst. Sports Asa. Advertising Manager Paul Jon Boscacci Erik Collins Cartoonist Faculty Adviser Lattars Policy The Gamecock will try to print all letters received. Letters should be 200-250 words and must include full name, professional title or year and major if a student. Letters must be personally delivered by the author to The Gamecock newsroom in Russell House room 321. The Gamecock reserves the right to edit all letters for style, possible libel or space limitations. Names will not be withheld under any circumstances. W\t (gamecock Viewpoin liMOu$iMe pp truck. But that bouse on Main Street belongs as much to me as it does to anybody else in the state." -Statement by the Rev. John Hurst Adams of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Columbia. Someone, clearly a very wise someone, once noted that you cannot reason a person out of an opinion he didn't arrive at through the use of reason to begin with. Unfortunately, the latter characterization accurately describes about 95 percent of the most vocal personalities on either side of the flag debate in South Carolina these days. As a result, the tactics of argumentation seem to have shifted. The logic inherent in either side's case is, evidently, completely transparent to the other, ' and each side therefore seems to have forsaken log- 1 ical arguments altogether. Currently, the reigning strategy appears to be something along the lines of an effort to insult the nn#tAcl#irt v/ppv/omg paiij Uliu La^llUiaUUU, 1U1 LCfJl C5CXU?ttives of both camps have hurled themselves into ' the foray of calumny, invective and sweeping, de- : risive generalization with verve. 1 Although I personally have never managed to persuade someone over to my cause through such J means, perhaps others see potential in the method. ( The ubiquity of the strategy would seem to imply 1 as much. i The Confederate flag atop the State House has a 1 deep symbolism to all those who feel strongly i about it, regardless of the source of their feelings, i Clearly, there is widespread disagreement on the nature of that symbolism, and for that reason, much as it saddens me as a native Southerner, I feel the flag should go to a new home in a memorial to commensurate with the strength of feeling which has defended it thus far. I make that statement not as a person who has Viewpoints section aLre' in,fact'" . . . c . . . that at least tl uuulu a^ouui have died in tr of "domestic i To the editor: discriminatioi For the past few weeks, the View- not declining, points page has been host to count- The fact th less misguided attempts to define women with j feminism. Are we really trying to de- will earn the relop a sisterhood of victims? Do we high school c all want to mutilate men for the cause economic pre of our own advancement? No and no, declining. Anc and it's time for someone who actu- sue of feminis ally identifies as a feminist to address belief that all this misinformation. full political, "With economic and discrimina- rights and pri\ tion problems declining, feminism has " (Femini run out of unifying political issues." more aggressh The fact that we're having a running centered.. :ommentary on whether women Powerful, x nust tolerate sexual harassment sug- ten character^ jests that discrimination problems "demanding" i Should South Carolin; 'Tes. There are people who ? to decide between right ; should be treated, not punisl I M; "People should be tried f< Anyone could say they are, ; M "I'm very honored. Th of the finalists are Location of Conft "IfJohnny Reb wants to bang a Confederate flag on the antenna of bis pickup truck while be spits tobacco out the window, that's bis privilege. That's bis its I tere were so many other people thai friends and peers of mine. I feel tha award as much as I did." iderate flag shon f Patrick Shaibaugh COLUMNIST decided finally to acquiesce to the opposition, but as one who has decided there can be two equally valid but different ways of understanding the symbolism inherent in the Confederate-1kg, as one who does not need the capitulation of aa^ opposinginterpretation to feel secure in my own. The State House is not intended to represent merely a simple majority of South Carolinians, but, ostensibly, every last one of us. That truth is incontrovertible. More importantly, though, the flag should mean the same thing to those of us who rerere it whether it is atop the State House or not. Our reverence for it should not wax and wane with the flag's physical location, not if it is in fact true reverence for the flag itself, and not merely an affinity for the statement that keeping it above the State House is making to certain groups. If the latter is true, the flag is indeed up there for for the wrong reasons. But if the reverence we claim to have is truly for the symbol itself and the heritage it represents, moving it to another location will have no effect on the value we place in it, for the value is in the symbol, not in something as ntangible and trifling ? compared to that of the ivmhol irwlf? as its nhvsiral Irv-atinn There are, of course, those who dismiss out of land the possibility that the flag could have any xisitive connotation for those of us who make that :laim. Southerners, though, are a people for whom pride is vital and as natural an essence as the air we ineathe. We are fiercely proud to be from the South ? proud of our reputation for friendliness and hosot declining. The fact seem less "feminine," ! iree Columbia women like. "Feminine" is a loa< te last month as a result has traditionally been us nolence" suggests that women from being op< 1 problems are, in fact, feminist ideas they m bored, because for a w< lat, on the average, a ninity to be questioned i baccalaureate degree ual identity into questio same wage as a male This is known as "dj 1 f - J t uufjuui 5uj;gc5is niiti anu wc una an exampi >blems are, in fact, not "How many young I the single unifying is- going to run to the pick ;m continues to be the lesbian rights?" women are entitled to Martin Luther King Ji social and economic oppression anywhere i rileges. freedom everywhen ism) teaches us to be women and men recogr ne, demanding and self- in that statement, and m happy to march with 1 jsertive women are of- anyone else whose fr< ted as "aggressive" and threatened by bigotry ant in order to make them I don't know whether a courts continue to allc ire mentally unable Pec and wrong. They jlp. angt 'hilip Crotwell ath graduate student 5r what they do. IbbmbI "Peo and there'd be no |H^Rr ll ever igineering freshman ttTcttOB F'lft "s*. vO< ^N, 5_ tw?OSt t applied, and so many t they deserved the Krista Nichols On being named USC Outstanding Woman of the Year ildn't affect pride pitality, of our obsession with propriety and the simple, slow love of life that are our hallmarks throughout the world, the things that draw other people here in droves. We are proud of our ancestry, whether it be slave or plantation owner; we are proud of the fierce sense of integrity ? integrity meant here in the strictest sense of the word ? that led us to secede from a Union we felt was being overly restrictive of state's rights. We are proud of pecan pie and salt marshes, grits and Spanish moss. These are the things we mean By heritage. The Confederate flag is the one tangimr: symb&l *if these things into its aegis. But is a culture disallowed any pride at all in the instance of a single, or even several, blemishes in its history? Surely cultures have made the mistakes in the past which they acknowledge as such; yet < manage to retain a pride in that past, pride not in the mistakes but in the accomplishments. The bumper sticker that reads "I Love N.Y." is a symbol of the pride many Americans have in living or even having visited that great city. But although NYC is the setting for terrible crimes every day, astonishing pollution, massive ethnic and racial strife, corruption, graft and unconscionable greed by thousands, I do not object to that bumper sticker, because it is a symbol not of the unfortunate things that happen there, but of the wonderful. For me to claim that people who display it are espousing crime, pollution, racism and corruotion I would be utterly ridiculous. It would be equally \ ridiculous if I demanded that the bumper sticker be banned because it meant those things to me. I can appreciate that there are conflicting inter- I pretations of what the flag symbolizes, and while " that may be unfortunate, it cannot be gotten * around. The nest we can do is what reasonable adults do; instead of hurling insults, we should ! work around it. f less women- McNeill and Jeff Turbitt have studied jcu iciui ui<ti lciiuiiiM uicory. i nave, ana wnat 1 nave ed to prevent learned is that feminism is about self in about any definition and self-determination. The ay have har- reasons I call myself feminist aren't the \ Oman's femi- same reasons my roommate is feminist calls her sex- Aside from a basic belief in n. women's social, political and eco- ! rke-baiting," nomic equality, the rest is up to you. J le of it here: There are pro-life feminists, pro-sex ; women are feminists, Christian feminists, lesbian :et lines over feminists. There is room under the feminist umbrella for anyone who rec- ! r. wrote that ognizes that sexism hurts everyone, s a threat to Perhaps "less than one-third of Feminist young females consider themselves lize the truth 'feminists'" because of misinformed diost would be atribes like those which have appeared esbians and in The Gamecock these past weeks, eedoms are 1 intolerance. Wendy Powell Paul Jon, Pat Religious studies junior >w an insanity plea? >ple should be able to get off for mental tish if they've been beaten up or abused." Natasha Witlierspoon Public relations sophomore pie should be tried for what they do. If pone could get off for insanity, it would be rd. People need to get help." Terri Evans Nursing freshman