The Word from Washington
The Word from Washington One of the few significant changes wrought in recent years in the ancient and undemocratic procedures of the House of Representatives was the introduction in 1971 of a...
...that if the people knew and understood, "they would remove from office those responsible for it...
...Two American scientists—Arthur H. Westing, a botanist from Windham College in Putney, Vermont, and Egbert W. Pfeiffer, a zoologist from the University of Montana—have made extensive studies of the impact of American herbicides, defoliants, bombs, and bulldozers on vast areas of North and South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia...
...Four cases recently argued before the Court seek abolition of the death penalty on grounds of the Eighth Amendment's injunction against "cruel and unusual punishment...
...Critics of recorded votes complain that the device is being used "frivolously," and takes up too much of the House's precious time...
...Four-fifths of the timber forests and one-tenth of all the cultivated land in South Vietnam have been ruined...
...But an analysis by Congressional Quarterly shows that recorded teller votes that could be termed "frivolous" were quite rare in the last session, and the time involved in each vote is all of twelve minutes...
...The disgrace of our prisons is likely to be with us for a long time, but the shame of capital punishment can be ended now, by a simple act of justice on the part of the Supreme Court...
...That should suffice to preserve the reform...
...It should be self-evident by now that the life of no human being should be placed in jeopardy by the workings of a very imperfect system of criminal justice, subject only to the discretionary review of a public official...
...South Vietnam alone, they reported, is pockmarked with twenty-three million bomb craters, each twenty-five feet deep and forty feet in diameter...
...The Word from Washington One of the few significant changes wrought in recent years in the ancient and undemocratic procedures of the House of Representatives was the introduction in 1971 of a system to record the teller votes members cast on amendments when the House is sitting as a Committee of the Whole...
...WUwt Ecocide is a new word in the language...
...Nelson is convinced that if Congress knew and understood what is happening, "we would not appropriate the money...
...It should be obvious, too, that the death penalty, like the total penal system, claims its victims primarily among the poor and the deprived...
...More than five million acres of forest land— an area the size of Massachusetts—have been destroyed by herbicides...
...While on record he can pose as a champion of environmental protection, of the elderly, and of the sick, he has in fact voted against their very interests...
...Inevitably, the abolition of such a handy system for hornswoggling the electorate has dismayed some members of the House, and an effort is under way to undercut the reform...
...The reform produced some noteworthy results: Once members knew that their constituents would be able to ascertain how they voted, they turned out in significantly larger numbers—and they voted differently...
...in 1971, under the record teller system, 421 members participated in the vote on the SST, and turned it down...
...We wish we could believe him...
...Never before has a land been so massively altered and mutilated that vast areas can never be used again or even inhabited by man or animal...
...It has been defined as "the willful and permanent destruction of environment in which a people can live in a manner of their own choosing...
...Fortunately, any effort to return to the old, hypocritical system of secret voting on amendments will have to be mounted in the open, by a record vote...
...Although eight of the fifty states have done away with the death penalty or severely curtailed its application, although no execution has taken place in the United States for almost five years, about 700 men and women still await their fate on the nation's death rows...
...Some have been waiting for many years, and an adverse ruling by the Supreme Court will consign them to an early and ghastly death...
...There is nothing to compare with it," he told the Senate...
...Potomacus...
...Citing the evidence compiled by professors Westing and Pfeiffer, Senator Gaylord Nelson, Wisconsin Democrat, has introduced a bill calling for a Presidential report within six months on the "monumental catastrophe" visited on Southeast Asia by American technology...
...It is what the United States has been doing to Indochina...
...Representative David R. Obey, Wisconsin Democrat, aptly described the abuses possible under the old system: "A member can vote for any number of amendments which may cripple a water pollution bill or render ineffective a civil rights bill or fail to provide adequate funding for hospital construction or programs for the elderly," Obey pointed out, "and then he can turn around on final passage and vote for the bill he has just voted to emasculate by amendment...
...The Supreme Court of the United States has an opportunity this term to put an end to the ancient and barbaric practice of State-sanctioned homicide...
...Army bulldozers are stripping trees and bushes from 1,000 acres every day...
...that if the President knew and understood, "he would stop it in thirty minutes...
...Others will be entirely at the mercy of governors who may—or may not—decide to commute their sentences...
...To deny these appeals would be a monstrous offense against civilization...
...In 1970,188 Representatives showed up to vote on the supersonic transport plane, and approved it...
...Their findings, illustrated by devastating photographs of devastated countryside, were presented to members of Congress a few weeks ago, and amounted to a graphic course in ecocide...
Vol. 36 • March 1972 • No. 3
