Viewpoint 4A The Marshall News Messenger, Wednesday, June 25, 1997 A little town throws a parade The Marshall News A Messenger iVt4 fete V2f rxj eratgh to tbsafan a 7 PHIL LATHAM Editor and Publisher SHELLY JONES Managing Editor HT! Not to assi with rrsther in vxn TAMI GOODELL Advertising Manager KEITH WEST Circulation Director DANA MORTON Business Manager DAVID WEAVER News Editor A Cox Newspaper PTvTa Secal staions TMraciie viewer yy By ELIZABETH SCHUETT Cox News Service Editorials Right result on Whitewater home Congress, phone New York Times Thanks to the Supreme Court, Whitewater investigators now have the notes they were seeking from conversations in 1995 and 1996 between White House lawyers and the first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton. In refusing to review a subpoena ordering the White House to turn over the notes, the court left standing a lower court ruling that rebuffed the White House's overreaching claim that the notes were protected by attorney-client privilege. The lower court correctly found that such privilege did not extend to Mrs. Clinton's conversations with government lawyers about Whitewater matters, which are of a personal nature. The White House has maintained that there is nothing in the notes that would suggest any criminal behavior by Mrs.
Clinton or even advance the Whitewater inquiry, which is led by Kenneth Starr, the special counsel. Starr, on the other hand, sought the notes because of what he said was their value in an investigation of possible perjury and obstruction of justice charges. The notes relate to two discussions Mrs. Clinton had with White House lawyers. The first took place after her appearance last year before a grand jury, and the second was the previous year when she conferred with lawyers about what she did after the suicide in 1993 of Vince Foster, her former law partner and the deputy White House counsel.
White House lawyers say they are dismayed by the Supreme Court decision, not so much because of the sensitivity of these conversations but because of the potential for open-ended demands for any notes taken by WTiite House lawyers that might involve criminal investigations now or in the future. By making no ruling in this particular case, but simply letting an appeals court ruling stand, the Supreme Court left it uncertain just how open-ended its attitude would be. Starr should now focus his investigation carefully and avoid using the court's stance as a license to attack legitimate lawyer-client privilege. For its part, the White House should release the notes to demonstrate its contention that it has nothing to hide. why has the Air Force never mentioned the skies raining dummies, even in the 1994 report on Roswell? The new report, with sections that sound like "The X-Files" episodes Alien at the Hospital," "The Missing will simply be taken as another sign that the truth is out there.
Here is how the Air Force tries to rebut witness descriptions of the "mysterious little men." A witness said, "Their heads were hairless no eyebrows, no eyelashes, no hair." The Air Force said: "Anthropomorphic dummies did not have A witness said, "No visible ears." The Air Force said, "Dummies had ears that were molded to their heads Haynes could not explain why dummies dropped in the '50s could account for what witnesses saw in 1947, except to say that witnesses might have been mixed up. And he refused to reveal anything about Area 51, a military facility in Groom Lake, except to say, "classified things go on there." This cover-up may be bigger than we thought. The briefing with Haynes indicates that aliens may now be working at the highest levels of government. Only aliens would be unsophisticated enough about American culture to think they could dispel suspicions of their presence here by issuing a government report. Indeed, aliens infiltrating Washington with the aim of destroying the fabric of democracy is a perfectly coherent explanation for a lot of hitherto inexplicable phenomena.
If the military leadership hasn't By MAUREEN DOWD N.Y. Times News Service WASHINGTON Talk about your wacky military optimism. Just in time for Independence Day and the big UFO bash in Roswell, the Air Force has finally coughed up an explanation of what happened in the New Mexico desert that caused untold numbers of Americans to believe that the military covered up a 1947 spaceship crash. The Air Force put an alien on the cover of its Roswell Report and stamped it "Case Closed." Klaatu Barada Nikto. Or as we say in our galaxy, get a grip.
The Roswell report will settle the debate over aliens about as well as the Warren report settled the debate over the single-bullet theory. There is a perfectly logical explanation, Col. John Haynes told tittering reporters at the Pentagon. The Air Force was taking 200-pound crash dummies up as high as 98,000 feet and dropping them from balloons and planes to see what would happen. Some of the-dummies lost fingers and legs in Project High Dive, leaving them doo-doo-DOO-doo four-fingered and 4 feet tall.
The Air Force also ventured that a serviceman had crashed in a test balloon near Roswell, suffering cranial swelling that might have made him look like an extraterrestrial. Oh, that sounds plausible, coming from the folks who brought you Agent Orange, optimistic body counts in Vietnam and denials of chemical weapons in the gulf. And GIBSONBURG, Ohio It's 6nly. seven o'clock in the morning but already our village of 2,000, give or take a new baby or two, is on the move. It's parade day.
Gotta gef an early start. There are plants to. water, porches to be swept, and rockers to be positioned just right for parade watching. Next door, my neighbors are brushing a second coat of paint on the porch of their 100-year-old (and then some) Victorian home. A couple of houses down, 'the young folks who bought the widow Albertson's home after she died, look like they're just about to finish up the new roof.
I heard them out nailing before I got up. Sharon and I have been checking out their progress on our evening walks and since the weather has allowed, doors have been thrown open wide, making it easy for nosy folks like us to sneak a peek inside. It's going to be nice. Real homey. And they have young children.
The lady spots us looking and waves. We wave back and Sharon hollers a "welcome to town" through the open frontdoor. Eric, a former student, just loafed by in the village's 1928 American LaFrance fire engine, shifting gears and grinning, on his way to the firehouse. He joined the volunteer fire department right after graduation. It's a family tradition.
Our 1919 Model the one that Oppie Krotzer remembers coming to town brand new and being deliv-' ered to the depot on a railroad car, is down at Jim Ruggerio's house getting it's oil checked and a final fussing over! I can hear music from uptown vibrating through a tinny sound system, as folks go about some last minute grocery shopping or stop by the bakery for fresh doughnuts. Others will be going into the cafe for biscuits and sausage gravy. I've been thinking about it myself. There's a carnival in the park, two blocks over. Kids of all ages lined the grassy lawns watching them set up.
Couples I've never seen before walk past my house, hand-in-hand, swiveling their heads and pointing out first a bed of just-opened peonies or a particularly inviting-looking front porch. Sometimes I think I can read their minds. "Gee, I'd like to live there." Last night, a camper turned down Patterson Street, probably headed for the family's back yard. Somebody's kids coming home for the festivities. Later I'll see them uptown laughing and slapping old friends on the back.
They'll be reminiscing about the last time they saw each other. Maybe at a class reunion, a graduation, or a' wedding. It's Gibsonburg's Homecoming Week. It happens every Charlie, the undertaker from across the street, has the deepest, smoothest voice in town (all those years of condolence) so he's the master of ceremonies at the nightly festivities. There's live entertainment.
Qne night a country another night a "Big Band" from a nearby town. Folks will be dancing in the street. Pretty soon, the Shruiers with their Jeepsters and motor scooters will start to show up. They're real crowd pleasers. They'll have coffee and a sandwich uptown before lining up.
There'll be horses and tractors and fire engines from all the neighboring villages. And a float for the homecoming queen. Two little boys are eying my brick wall out front as a possible parade-watching spot but probably wondering how to reserve a seat. Five minutes later, they're back. The little guy who asked permission holds up a piece of chalk and asks if it's all right for them 'to write their names on a piece of the wall.
Big trouble for little smokers the deal. The only bright spot is that this at least gives us a little time to plan our next move." Bureau of Land Management accused of abusing powers been body-snatched, then why is the Pentagon conspiring against itself with weird sexual inquisitions? If you were the leader of a hostile galaxy, what better way to disarm the earthlings than to make the chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs too pure a job to fill? Consider this description by a Roswell witness, Frank Kaufmann, 81, who said the aliens "were very good looking people, ash-colored faces and skin about 5-feet-5 tall, eyes a little more pronounced, small ears, small nose, fine features and hairless." spitting image of Dick Gephardt, obviously. And doesn't that alien with the big eyes and light-bulb head on the cover of Time bear an ominous resemblance to Bob Kerrey? (D-Pluto.) Does anyone seriously believe that James Carville and Janet Reno were born on earth? Don't Dick Armey, Bob Bennett, Brian Lamb and Erskine Bowles all have the look of people who were kidnapped and experimented on in a flying saucer? Why else would the president suggest that middle-class people could be lured back to live amid urban blight by offering them a $200 break on their closing costs for a new house? And why else would he talk about rewriting the rules of human evolution, and creating a truly multi-racial "democracy? Maybe he doesn't mean just the human race. It's a strange day in America when the Steven Spielberg view of life and the Oliver Stone view of life coincide. in any of this was Gibbons's account of the 1994 incident at Santa Cruz Lake.
A BLM ranger stopped the car and forced the family to get out, firing his shotgun "to show that he meant business," Gibbons said. The picnickers asked if they were being stopped for "fishing without licenses." "The BLM ranger maced the driver and handcuffed him," Gibbons continued, then knocked the driver's mother to the ground, and, "when one of the men picked up a child to comfort him, the BLM ranger put a shotgun to the child's head." Court papers say BLM was worried about a wave of car burglaries in the Santa Cruz area, so they filled a rented Ford Taurus with valuables and parked it in a roadside lot. After a while, a Chevrolet arrived, containing William George Moya, his wife, two sons, a son-in-law, a son's girlfriend and two grandsons. Soon all the grown males were "pulling on the door handles," court papers said. Finally, Anthony Carl Moya, one of the sons, pitched a rock through the Taurus's window.
The family reached in, helped themselves and drove off with a BLM ranger in pursuit. All six adults were arrested. About placing an ad. For retail ads call 927-5981. For classified (want ads) call 935-7355.
About a Call 927-5972 for classifieds or retail advertising; for subscription call 935 2525. "Where were you thinking we'd move to?" "Maybe Russia," I said. "Right now it's the" freest country on earth. And everyone in Russia smokes. I believe it's mandatory." "Mandatory? In a free country?" "All freedom is qualified.
Or maybe we'll go to France. France has always been a nation of libertines. The French not only smoke. They eat snails, for pete's sake. They even eat boudin." "What's boudin?" "You don't want to know." "The thing I don't understand," she said, "is why, when they write about it in the news, they hardly ever write just tobacco.
It's always Big Tobacco." "That's because Big is the new shame word. Big Government. Big 00. The next targets will be Big Grease, Big Chocolate, Big Booze. I heard there's a move afoot to refuse health care to anyone with more than 15 percent body fat." "Maybe you could be Little Tobacco," she said.
"Cultivate a small patch of the stuff in the back yard, or under lamps in the basem*nt." "Are you kidding? The narcs would be all over me like a cheap suit." "That hardly, seems fair. Even the American Indians grew tobacco. Not to sell just for their own use. It's a matter of historical record." "Exactly," I told her. "And look what they did to the Indians!" HOW TO REACH US BY PHONE: (903)935-7914 Longview customers dial (903) 758-7355 BY FAX: (903)935 6242 BY E-MAIL marnewsMMernetwork.net By CHARLES GUSEWELLE Kansas City Star It's a rare day when anything in the news can make so many people happy.
The settlement with Big Tobacco was one of those exceptions. The anti-smoking crusaders can congratulate themselves on what they see as a shining victory. And the 45 million smokers those flawed wretches who constitute America's only legally detestable minority have a grace period of nearly a dozen years before they have to leave the country. "That's crazy," said my wife. "Nobody's going to run you out." Ours was the generation that grew up with Bugs Bunny, Bogart and the Marlboro Man.
She gave up the weed years ago and wishes I'd do the same. But she understands that, even today, certain kinds of unhealthy behavior are permissible among consenting adults. "Don't kid yourself," I said. "Listen, those people are fanatics! They'd deport me in a minute if they could." "They can't, though." "Not now. But just wait until 2009." "What happens in 2009?" "That's when the FDA can outlaw nicotine," I told her.
"It's going to be Prohibition all over again. You'll have teams of federal agents swarming through neighborhoods, knocking down doors. Anyone they catch smoking will have his picture shown on crime TV." "They wouldn't do that." "Read the settlement. It's part of THE MARSHALL NEWS MESSENGER (USPS 331020) (ISSN 1053-5075) is published Sunday through Friday by Cox Newspapers 309 E.Austin, Marshalljexas 75670. Periodicals postage paid at Marshalljexas, and additional mailing locations.
POSTMASTER: Send address changes to News Messenger, Box 730, Marshalljexas 75671. the editorial, news and advertising copy published in the Mar shall (T) News Messenger is copynght protected Any unau thorved commercial use at the matenal without written per mission of the publisher is strictly prohibited. actions." Excuse me? The vandalism and theft occurred July 24, 1994, but three years later, the story is still apparently too good for Gibbons to check. And apparently, if you believe, as Gibbons said in his May 14 speech, that the BLM is a "power-hungry bureaucracy" exercising "unconstitutional police powers," you can just pick any story that fits even if it's made up. BLM, which tends 270 million acres of federally owned range land, wilderness and recreation areas, has 204 rangers who watch for federal crimes such as rustling wild horses, cutting trees without a permit or growing dope.
Gibbons and some other western conservatives believe that most BLM law enforcement is more properly the duty of locals. The BLM "does not need police powers," he said. Fair enough, except at a House Resources national parks and public lands subcommittee hearing the day after Gibbons's floor speech, he and several colleagues took the argument several steps further: Rep. Helen Chenoweth, R-Idaho, said BLM is "frightening Rep. Linda A.
Smith, called BLM "an agency out of and Rep. Rick Hill, another freshman, spoke of it as "an occupying army." But the only apparent substance Mail delivery is $9 per month, $27 for 3 months, $54 for 6 months, $108 per year. About delivery problems. If you have not received your paper by 6 p.m. weekdays or 7 a.m.
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The Washington Post WASHINGTON At first blush, the story was outrageous. A ranger from the Bureau of Land Management accosted a picnicking New Mexico family and, for no apparent reason, maced and handcuffed one man, knocked his mother down and put a shotgun to a child's head. "The agents are turning into bullies with little respect for public safety or property," freshman Rep. Jim Gibbons, said on the House floor last month. "No longer are Americans free," he added.
"They are chained to the dictatorship of bureaucratic monsters." Wait a minute, Jim. It turns out the BLM had a videotape, which tells a story different from the early accounts spread by the family members. The first of four BLM-supplied video stills shows the picnickers sizing up a parked car. In the second, one picnicker throws a rock through the car window. In the third, he reaches inside.
The last photo shows several picnickers under arrest. In the end, the picnickers decided to cop pleas. "I would say the five people had nothing to do with this incident," he said. As for the resulting indictments, pleas and sentencing: "It doesn't matter," Gibbons added. "The point is that the BLM abused the power of a police agency in their CAN WE HELP? If you have questions please call us.
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