NOTES IN THE NEWS
Deserted Summit The notion of a summit meeting of the Great Powers has been bouncing around for many months, but the prospect for a genuinely meaningful high-level conference grows no brighter...
...3) Extend the Smith Act to include "theoretical advocacy" of the government's overthrow...
...Both Benton and Bowles have hinted they will carry their case to the people if rejected at the convention in Hartford June 27 and 28...
...Bryant takes a diametrically opposite position—she has called on the Administration to cancel scheduled nuclear tests, to begin negotiation of a treaty with Britain and the U.S.S.R...
...Benton & Bowles Back in 1929 two young Yale graduates left their jobs to found a new advertising agency, Benton &: Bowles, which was to become one of the largest and most prosperous in the nation...
...That is why so many Americans were startled recently when Cyrus S. Eaton, Cleveland financier and industrialist who presides over a multi-million dollar empire of steel, coal, and transportation, lashed out at the FBI in a radio interview...
...Bowles served as administrator of OPA during World War II, as governor of Connecticut, and ambassador to India...
...Senator...
...Deceptive Names What's in an organization name...
...Passage of the bill would pave the way for Southern states to bar lawyers representing Negroes in school segregation cases, and for Congress to go on free-for-all fishing expeditions in its committee investigations—in both cases denying the victims appeal to the Supreme Court...
...It is 90 years since Congress has succeeded in limiting the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court...
...The American Legion, nationally, and also in Minnesota, has sacrificed some of its prestige and esteem by its zeal in declaring things to be un-American...
...We have not opened a single closet, nor have we peeked under a single bed...
...There is a third candidate for the Democratic nomination, Thomas J. Dodd, a former Congressman, who conceivably could whip them both...
...Like an irresponsible schoolboy heaving bricks through the school windows on the last day of the term, Jenner has carefully aimed and let loose a final shot at the U.S...
...Senate seat held by Senator William A. Purtell, retired Hartford manufacturer, who defeated Benton six years ago, and is now unopposed for the Republican nomination...
...The situation is complicated by Connecticut's peculiar election law, which provides nomination by convention but authorizes the losers at the convention to take an appeal to the voters of their party at a statewide primary...
...Your committee refuses to be a part of unsupported attack on individuals or organizations...
...Both were retired to private life with the Eisenhower landslide of 1952...
...Ed Ryan, Hennepin County (Minneapolis) sheriff, and William Proetz, St...
...Probably no such sweeping attack on the authority of the Court has ever come so close to success as the Jenner-Butler effort to shackle individual liberties...
...Bryant has chosen the most vital issue of our time as her political battleground, but it is far from certain that the widespread uneasiness about nuclear testing can be translated into votes—and it is far from certain that Senator Jackson's drive for more and bigger weapons of destruction can achieve his goal of national security...
...She is no neophyte in Washington politics, having run for Congress in 1952 and again in 1954...
...Thus, when the Kremlin was convinced that the West, meaning mostly John Foster Dulles, did not want a summit meeting, it fired off letters and statements at a furious pace emphasizing the great hope for peace that a conference at the summit represented...
...The Eaton interview was sponsored by the Fund for the Republic...
...When Robert M. Hutchins, head of the Fund, wired J. Edgar Hoover offering him equal time to reply, Hoover said no...
...Politics and the Bomb The protest against nuclear weapons has taken a variety of forms in recent months—petitions, picketing, mass marches, and lawsuits...
...that would outlaw testing, and to take immediate steps toward mutual disarmament...
...Are you for progress, freedom, constitutional government, the Bill of Rights...
...Bryant has much chance against the personable and capable Senator Jackson is an open question...
...Dag Ham-marskjold, secretary-general of the United Nations, put it to the world in somber terms the other day when he warned that unless genuine negotiation soon replaces the diplomatic "chess game" between East and West, we may one day soon find the road to agreement closed altogether...
...Ironically, the best hope of defeating the Jenner-Butler measure seems to lie in the probable efforts of Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson to keep it from even reaching the floor of the upper house...
...But nothing, it seems to us, would be a more fitting farewell to Senator Jenner than for the Senate to stand up and vote a resounding No to this attempt to undermine the independence of the judicial branch of the government and the freedom of the people it has so ably safeguarded...
...Both retired early from the pursuit of wealth to enter public service...
...All too often we have adopted the technique of the dictators when the machinery of democracy would have better served the cause...
...Only now the often-obscured direction is away off to the right instead of the presumed left...
...Both sides continue to insist on having things precisely their own way...
...The lines are sharply drawn between Senator Jackson and his challenger: Jackson leans heavily on military power in the world crisis...
...neither has yet shown that it is willing to meet the other halfway by breaking up its tightly wrapped package of inflexible demands...
...The popular front scheme isn't dead...
...Both made their fortunes with Benton & Bowles...
...This is irresponsible legislation by any standard, and most casual observers were surprised when it sailed through the Senate Judiciary Committee by a comfortable margin...
...Alice Franklin Bryant, Seattle Democrat and a grandmother, will oppose Washington's freshman Democratic Senator Henry M. Jackson for the Democratic Party's nomination for the Senate, basing her campaign on the issue of continued nuclear bomb testing and the arms race in general...
...2) Forbid the Supreme Court to review cases involving state rules for admission to the bar...
...I always worry when I see a nation feel that it is coming to greatness through the activities of its policemen...
...Sometimes more than meets a trusting eye—as many earnest joiners of popular fronts have found out ruefully...
...But the time may come when we will look at the Legion differently, and that time will come when the national organization emulates the example of its Minnesota branch...
...The FBI Under Fire For more than three decades the Federal Bureau of Investigation has occupied a privileged sanctuary— largely free from attack by the press, politicians, and the public...
...The law requires that there shall be such a primary if the petitioning candidate received 20 per cent of the vote at the convention and posts bond as evidence of good faith...
...We feel that such practices are unfair, undemocratic, and, in effect, subversive in themselves because they are contrary to America's fundamental precept of innocence until guilt has been proved under due process of law...
...And the FBI is just one of the scores of agencies in the United States engaged in investigating, in snooping, in informing, in creeping up on people...
...Remember the heyday of the American League Against War and Fascism and other patriotic sounding outfits which were organized by the Communists for their own purposes...
...Friends who have sought to dissuade them from opposing each other have admitted defeat...
...Communist organizing techniques still serve totalitarian purposes...
...Your committee has not indulged in fanatical searches for alleged subversives...
...Johnson is fearful of a long and bitter debate that might result in much worthwhile legislation being hopelessly delayed in an election year when members of Congress will be anxious to get home for the campaign...
...Today William Benton and Chester Bowles are locked in a bitter struggle for the Democratic Senatorial nomination in Connecticut...
...In tandem with Senator John Marshall Butler of Maryland, who was also a McCarthy crony, Jenner has successfully maneuvered through the Senate Judiciary Committee a bill that would reverse the Court's recent decisions in four major areas and open the way to severe and capricious curtailment of civil liberties...
...It has gone to an extent here that I think is very alarming...
...Here, surely, is a remarkable—and hopeful—statement by a branch of the Legion...
...Now the first direct political challenge of this election year has been made with the announcement that Mrs...
...this was back in the emotion-ridden Reconstruction era...
...Hope in the Legion The American Legion has never been one of our favorite organizations, mostly because its jingoism, its distorted patriotism, and its demand for repressive legislation and witchhunts have seemed to us a corruption of genuine Americanism...
...More recently, however, Soviet ardor for a journey to the summit has cooled—at just the time when Dulles and his associates were coming around to the conclusion that they could no longer resist public pressure for a high-level conference...
...Supreme Court designed to undo some of its finest work in preserving the Bill of Rights...
...Scientific development in the United States, he said, has been "enormously retarded" because "the scientist is conscious that the FBI is breathing down the back of his neck all the time, scaring him...
...Great injury can be done to our own country by well-meaning people and organizations who wave the flag of nationalism so vigorously that they are blinded by the realities of the times...
...You—and your contributions—will be welcome in the American Progress Foundation, Congress of Freedom, Defenders of the American Constitution, Federation for Constitutional Government, or half a hundred other interlocked leagues which have similarly virtuous names...
...Both the Soviets and the Western Powers seem far more interested in scoring propaganda victories in the headlines than in seeking earnestly for some middle ground on which they could meet, discuss, and perhaps agree on at least the first tentative steps toward peaceful accommodation...
...Paul chief of police...
...Now, nearly 30 years after they joined forces to make their fortunes, both have their hearts set on the U.S...
...Eaton's courageous indictment included the observation that the work of the FBI is "enormously exaggerated" and that the agency "makes no contribution to the upbuilding of this country and its respect abroad that its literature and those who support the publicity suggest...
...Briefly, the bill would: 1) Allow Congressional investigating committees to be final judges of whether questions put to witnesses are pertinent to the purpose of the inquiry...
...he is strongly in favor of continuing bomb tests and wants to increase the present arms budget by another four or five billion dollars...
...Its adoption by other states and the national organization would go far toward restoring public respect for the American Legion...
...Deserted Summit The notion of a summit meeting of the Great Powers has been bouncing around for many months, but the prospect for a genuinely meaningful high-level conference grows no brighter despite the torrent of words on both sides...
...They sound virtuous and patriotic, but their common purpose is un-American racism...
...their kind is sadly needed in a number of states where men of their stature and outlook too rarely seek, or are urged to seek, high public office...
...After several years of control of McCarthyite elements, the Minnesota Legion cleaned house and appointed a new subversive activities subcommittee composed of Wilbur T. Lind-holm, an official of the Minnesota Selective Service Commission...
...But the explanation is quite simple: the Committee is heavily loaded with Southern Democrats who are angry with the Court over its desegregation decisions and reactionary northern Republicans like Jenner and Butler who are frustrated over the Court's defense of individual liberties against their witch-hunting of "subversives...
...It seems a tragedy for American liberalism that both Benton and Bowles live in Connecticut...
...4) Allow states to enforce their own laws against sedition...
...Worst Senator's Worst Bill Senator William E. Jenner, the Indiana Republican who will not seek re-election this year, seems determined to end his Senate career wearing the mantle of Worst Senator—a mantle he eagerly reached for when Senator Joseph R. McCarthy died...
...This apparent lack of initiative on our part does not mean that we are indifferent to the perils of subversive activity, but it does mean we have confidence in our organized police system...
...The subcommittee's first report, submitted to a Legion conference and published in the Legion's official journal without dissent, had this among other things to say: "During the past year we have received no reports of subversive activity within the state...
...The other two provisions of the bill present a serious threat to freedom of speech by making even street-corner speaking by radicals a criminal act, and by again making possible the creation of a checkerboard of state sedition laws—-a maze of diverse legal restrictions which the Court had placed exclusively in the hands of the federal government...
...Benton found his place as an Assistant Secretary of State and as U.S...
...Whether Mrs...
Vol. 22 • June 1958 • No. 6
