NOTES IN THE NEWS

...Court of Appeals...

...Before the election, the GOP controlled both houses in eighteen states...

...Beyond that, the court denounced the Post Office Department practice of maintaining lists of persons who had filed the required written requests, lists which the court stated had, in the past, been turned over to the House Un-American Activities Committee...

...Each year humanity swells its total by sixty-five millions, more than the population of West Germany or the United Kingdom...

...Their petition, now on the desks of Congressmen, asks them to vote to abolish HUAC by refusing to continue it as a standing committee of the House when that chamber adopts its rules for the new session...

...The petitioners say that the House Judiciary Committee already has authority to investigate internal security matters and its powers in this field can be clarified by the House if deemed necessary...

...They further urge that after HUAC is abolished, its files, "containing miscellaneous and often inaccurate data about millions of Americans" be placed in the government archives and sealed for fifty years, except for such material as may relate to law violations...

...Robert M. Hutchins, President of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions and former University of Chicago president...

...But in his recent letter accepting the co-chairmanship, he said he had changed his mind because the population explosion "threatens to smother the economic progess of many nations and endangers the world struggle for peace and security...

...But the cold warriors in Congress reinstituted the practice by Congressional act the following year, in spite of opposition from the Post Office Department itself, the Justice Department, and the National Security Council...

...We have adequate laws, regulations, specialized personnel, and procedures for that purpose...

...these were some of his findings: % Only one newspaper in six has columnists balanced against its own opinions...

...Only one newspaper in five strikes a balance between liberal and conservative columns...

...We warmly commend the new attitudes of the AMA and former President Eisenhower...

...The output of food alone dropped by slightly less than one per cent per person...

...For example: f World population has been increasing by two per cent a year while worldwide agricultural production, including food, last year rose not more than one to two per cent...

...All of this reaffirms the existence of what Adlai Stevenson twelve years ago termed "the one-party press...

...Thomas I. Emerson, Yale University professor of law...

...Not only is the press top-heavy with conservative columnists, but the overwhelming majority of daily newspapers is conservative to begin with...

...Since ninety-six per cent of American cities have monopoly newspaper managements, this function of columnists could be of major importance...

...The existence of HUAC, the signers of the petition charge, "is irreconcilable with a system of free expression in this country...

...The Post Office Department first began intercepting "Communist propaganda" mail in 1948, under an administrative decree which stubbornly resisted attack until President Kennedy ordered it revoked in 1961...

...Notes in the News More Life, More Death Describing the world population explosion as the "starvation explosion" or the "death explosion" might jolt the average citizen and politician out of any complacency they may feel about soaring populations around the globe...

...An increasing share in that effort should be undertaken promptly by the United States, which has the resources to step up vital research in birth control methods and help to expand the education of the world's peoples—through the United Nations, the Alliance for Progress, and other regional bodies—on the urgent need to slow down the perilous rate of human reproduction...

...Reportedly, the government will appeal the district court's decision...

...Whether they were proud or frightened of being on the same ticket with the Arizonan, the penalty for such association was made painfully clear to them in November, and clearest in those states where Goldwater was defeated by the largest pluralities...

...Then in a ringing passage that exposes HUAC as the legendary Old Man of the Sea that we can afford to carry no longer, the signers declare: "There are serious problems confronting us, but the human and natural resources in this country are surely adequate to the task...

...The maintenance of a legislative committee to restrict this process betrays an ultimate lack of faith in a democratic society...

...And it is "the developing countries with low levels of living" which are the high birth rate areas...

...What is needed is an opportunity to permit our democratic institutions to function as they are meant to do, with new and unorthodox ideas welcomed but subject to full and free discussion...

...At the meeting of the House of Delegates in December, this ruling body of the AMA, recognizing that human reproduction poses economic and social problems as well as medical ones, approved a new policy which declared that "the prescription of child-spacing measures should be made available to all patients who require them, consistent with their creed and mores, whether they obtain their medical care through private physicians or community-supported health services...

...Since the legislatures must perform this task, and most of them are now in Democratic hands, the GOP can expect to lose more seats through the redress of inequities that have benefited Republicans...

...Among the sponsors of this petition, released to a generally indifferent press by the National Committee to Abolish HUAC, are such distinguished citizens as Alexander Meiklejohn, winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom...

...More state aid to meet education and welfare needs, more progressive tax legislation, and state help for the mass transit problems of cities —these are among the other possible fruits of Democratic election gains...

...Although some state and county medical societies had broken away from the AMA's traditional "neutrality" policy previously, the new top level declaration should encourage more doctors throughout the country to give wide support to planned parenthood practices...

...Food and Agricultural Organization, the source of these production figures, pointed out that during the past five-year period there has been no increase in world agricultural production per person—an ominous indicator of more starvation to come in underdeveloped nations where the grim outlook is for an ever increasing number of mouths to feed and less to go into each mouth...

...Some of these reasons are advanced most impressively in a petition recently addressed to the House, which was signed by one hundred Constitutional law authorities...

...Seven of ten newspapers with an imbalance of columnists are heavy on the conservative side...

...The GOP's reversals in the states constitute a powerful blow against reaction at the grass roots...

...The bizarre candidacy of Barry Goldwater resulted in a temporary modification of the conservative imbalance of the press...

...The One-Party Press One of the theories behind the increasing use by newspapers of snydi-cated columnists is that it is supposed to provide a simple means of presenting to the newspaper reader a variety of opinion and interpretation...

...There the anti-Goldwater tide swept Democrats into control of legislatures that, in some cases, had been Republican property for as long as thirty to fifty years...

...Of those surveyed, more than severty-five per cent had endorsed only Republican Presidential candidates in the elections from 1948 through 1960...

...It is this law that the court found "clearly incompatible with the requirements of a free society...

...The scores of other signers included law school deans and professors, political scientists, historians, and prominent attorneys...

...Journalist and author Ben Bagdikian reported in the current issue of Columbia Journalism Review his survey of 711 daily newspapers...

...The heavy weight of printed political commentary on the conservative side," the author concludes, "its domination of papers already conservative in their editorial direction, and the lack of any relationship to local political tendencies all warn that there is a serious alienation between the daily press's display of political ideas and the political processes of the country at large...

...We hope not...

...Conservative newspapers use conservative cartoonists at a ratio of six to one, while liberal newspapers use liberal cartoonists at a ratio of three to one...

...With the eighteen as a nucleus, a larger vote against HUAC should be possible this time, especially since the November election increased the number of liberals in the House...

...the 'middle mild' groups have forty-two per cent...

...Victory for Freedom The cause of freedom won a significant victory recently when the San Francisco Federal District Court struck down a law that authorizes postal authorities to intercept and hoM what they consider to be Communist propaganda material mailed from abroad unless the person to whom the mail is addressed files a written request that it be delivered...

...The November setbacks to conservatives and reactionaries and their replacement by Democratic liberals and moderates in the legislatures make possible, and probable, more progressive legislation than has come out of state capitals at any time since the depression days of the Thirties...

...Believing that there is no place in our system for such a Committee, we urge the House of Representatives to abolish the Committee . . ." As we noted in these columns last month, of twenty Representatives who voted against funds for HUAC in the last Congress, eighteen ran for reelection and all won, most of them by larger margins than before...

...f The GOP lost, and the Democrats gained, ninety-six seats in state senates and 445 in the lower houses...

...Among the more startling proofs of GOP shrinkage in the states are these figures: % This year Republicans will control both houses of the legislature in only six states—Idaho, Kansas, New Hampshire, Vermont, and South Dakota...

...The Democrats dominated both houses in twenty-six statesjast year but will have two-house control in thirty-two states this year, having added Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, New York, and Utah to their election trophies...

...At present rates of increase, he said, "world population by the year 2000 will approach or exceed seven billion and could reach twenty billion by 2050...

...In fact, a newspaper reader living in a "liberal" district was less likely to have access to a liberal columnist than one living in a "conservative" district...

...They can help develop support for the massive effort needed to cope with the population explosion...

...and the 'liberal-very liberal' group gets a mere nine per cent...

...Under pressure of the Supreme Court's ruling of "one man, one vote," legislatures now malapportioned in favor of rural areas must soon draw new district lines to give the cities and suburbs the legislative seats that ecjuity demands...

...An analysis by Congressional districts disclosed no relationship between a newspaper's use of columnists and the local political climate...

...f Of 7,570 legislators (excluding those in the Minnesota and Nebraska legislatures which are technically nonpartisan), 5,040 are Democrats and 2,530 Republicans...

...i[ By the time today's American infant is a youth (1980), the number of people on earth will have risen by one billion to 4.3 billion...

...and Henry Steele Commager, professor of history at Columbia University and Amherst College...

...Organized labor sees a good chance for repeal of "right-to-work" laws in some states, the improvement of unemployment and workmen's compensation laws, and passage of state minimum wages laws or increases in present minimums...

...We shall never achieve his cherished goal of a "great society" unless we first become a truly "free" society...

...Assurances that these practices have been discontinued," the court said, "cannot be reasonably expected to mitigate a person's reluctance to have his name associated with 'Communist political propaganda.' There are no similar assurances that this information will not be made available in the future in view of the lack of a statutory requirement that [this] information . . . remain confidential...

...The reliable Population Reference Bureau of Washington, which released these estimates, pointed out that while today "about a third of the world's people have gained—or are gaining—control of the birth rate," two-thirds of them have not...

...Mark De Wolfe Howe, Harvard Law School professor...

...For ten years, he said, famine has been staved off in some parts of Asia only because the United States has been sending some surplus foods...

...He predicted that growth at this pace will be checked either by a drop in the birth rate or a rise in the death rate and that "the latter solution could be more imminent than many believe...

...these latter items, the petitioners assume, already have "been made available to the appropriate prosecuting authorities...

...Another change of position took place in the American Medical Association...

...Certainly there are plenty of Constitutional and moral reasons to undertake a major effort against the Committee when the Eighty-ninth Congress is organized...

...The States' Bright Outlook When legislatures convene in January in many states, Republicans will hold 541 fewer seats than before—part of the staggering price they paid for the candidacy of Barry Goldwater...

...A count of the number of column appearances, said Bagdikian, reveals "the 'conservative very-conservative' groups has forty-nine per cent of the column appearances...

...Since liberal Congressmen will be bucking part or all of that power structure anyway, by attempting to reform the House rules so that major measures can be released for floor votes, we see no strategic reason why the liberals should not now make a vigorous fight to abolish HUAC...

...For next to prevention of nuclear war, control of population may have become man's most urgent challenge...

...The lag of food production behind population growth was critical in parts of Africa, and desperate in parts of Latin America and Asia...

...The three-man court unanimously found the law "a clear and direct" invasion of the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech, and "unconstitutional on its face...

...But for the long pull, unhappily, this condition will probably worsen, as the trend toward monopoly ownership continues, and the number of competing newspapers steadily declines...

...When the Arizonan went down, he took with him to defeat some legislators who had fought for his nomination, others opposed to it, and still others who camouflaged themselves as innocent bystanders...

...In these four elections no more than seventeen per cent supported a Democratic candidate in any one campaign...

...The U.N...

...Republicans were left with only thirty-two per cent of the total membership of the senates, and thirty-four per cent of the total assembly seats...

...In 1959, Eisenhower said that "as long as I am here" in the White House, the government would not use foreign aid funds to promote birth control in underdeveloped countries...

...The same pattern emerges in the use of political cartoonists...

...Legislatures of such stripe were generally sources of Goldwater support...

...To allow the Committee to enter its twenty-seventh year without an all-out challenge would be to rob the election returns of some of their meaning...

...Both the short term and long term effects of this Democratic tidal wave in the legislatures may prove more meaningful than the party's gains in Washington—thirty-eight seats in the House and two in the Senate...

...Thurman Arnold, former Assistant Attorney General and Associate Justice of the U.S...

...So far as the Committee purports to serve the function of safeguarding internal security, it is quite unnecessary...

...A recent study reveals, however, that the overwhelming majority of newspapers use columnists who support their own editorial position...

...The state legislatures have, in a number of states, long been citadels of reaction offering tax havens and other privileged sanctuary to the big utilities and powerful business interests, and sometimes giving aid and comfort to forces opposed to civil liberties and civil rights...

...As the Bureau's editor Robert C. Cook wrote: "Since the early 1950s, it has been clear that mankind is on a collision course with respect to reproduction...

...In its operations the Committee "has taken as its main function . . . exposure and extermination of ideas, opinions, and organizations which it conceives to be 'un-American.' Its methods have often been unfair...

...The latest facts and figures underscore that truth in a way to justify the most dramatic terminology...

...It would seem not too much to expect from President Johnson that he have the courage to accept the judgment of the court...

...Former President Eisenhower has agreed to serve with former President Truman as co-chairman of the sponsors council of Planned Parenthood-World Population...

...For twenty-six years the AMA had an official "neutrality" policy on birth control...

...The brutal facts about the meaning of the population explosion in terms of human misery have begun to win support for control measures in new quarters...

...Challenging HUAC What keeps the House Un-American Activities Committee alive through one session of Congress after another, we are told, is the power structure of the House, which is adamantly opposed to abolition of the Committee or even a curtailment of its powers...