The Word from Washington
THE WORD FROM WASHINGTON The National Coalition of American Nuns, with some 1,800 members in Catholic religious orders across the country, has called for the impeachment of Richard M. Nixon,...
...The announcement should have read: "The President plans to give back to the American people the San Clemente properties...
...Perhaps even in this bitter experience we will try to find new and better principles for finding human togetherness...
...THE WORD FROM WASHINGTON The National Coalition of American Nuns, with some 1,800 members in Catholic religious orders across the country, has called for the impeachment of Richard M. Nixon, charging that the President's actions "have strip-mined the remaining reserves of a once powerful mandate from the people...
...Let's see, now—who are those strong women standing next to Golda Meir and Indira Gandhi...
...But neither punishment is harsh enough to be a deterrent, and neither is swift and sure...
...vious to change since the Sage of Baltimore addressed himself to them almost half a century ago...
...America, it's been a hard pull, but it was worth it...
...This is the fundamental lesson in the current energy crisis that must be understood...
...The age of easy resource answers and reckless waste is finished...
...it's the coming back that bothers us, and that might provide an opportunity to save some precious oil...
...That isn't bad...
...That is why we need so much energy, and may it always be that way...
...When it comes to crimes that are peculiar to public officials and that arise out of their legal status, as bigamy, adultery, and wife-beating arise out of the nature of a married man's, the case is even worse...
...In the process of adopting more realistic expectations of our natural resources and our machines, we can restore relationships with our environment that have soured in our pursuit of mythological Progress without a Price...
...Even when their wrong-doings take the form of offenses against the ordinary criminal statutes of the realm—as, for example, embezzlement, conversion, blackmail, armed entry, kidnaping, or common assault—it seems to be very difficult to bring them under the lash of justice...
...And who, even in Washington, could recognize a pediculous job-holder if he were to bump into him right on Pennsylvania Avenue...
...Nixon his trips to Florida or California...
...The following observations, therefore, are set down in the serious spirit demanded by the times and in an earnest effort to cooperate with the only President we've got, at least for the time being: • Congress itself is consuming energy at the rate of three million kilowatt hours a year—and the rate is growing fast...
...At that rate, his sixteen separate sorties in 1973 to Key Biscayne and San Clemente have exhausted more than 300,000 gallons of fuel— enough, according to the Senate Commerce Committee, to heat about 500...
...The following brief excerpt from a long and sulphurous dissertation conveys the essence: "One of the defects in our American system of government, if so superb a confection of the human mind and heart may be said, without indecency, to have any defects at all, lies in the fact that it fails to provide swift and condign punishment for the special crimes of public officials...
...Potomacus AN ERA ENDS We are witnessing nothing less than the end of a national era...
...President Richard M. Nixon November 26, 1973...
...Comes now a heads-up outfit called the American Historical Replica Company (we won't trouble you with the address) which offers a "Liberty Bell" plastic platter inscribed with "America the Beautiful" and "200 Years Ago...
...Yet under this Administration and the previous three Presidents we have stumbled and bungled our way along, while the signs of trouble have been showing up everywhere...
...A reader in Louisville, Kentucky, has thoughtfully sent us a copy of an editorial that H. L. Mencken wrote for the American Mercury of June 24, 1924, which demonstrates, if nothing else, that some aspects of the American Condition have remained remarkably imperMISSING WORD Coming as it did in the Yuletide season, the President's announcement that he proposes to give his San Clemente fairyland to the people of the United States of America might have been a spot of holiday cheer were it not for the fact that the White House phrasemakers omitted one word...
...That means we are the richest, strongest people in the world, and that we have the highest standard of living in the world...
...We know how terrible the mails are, but perhaps in 1974, when Mr...
...that is good...
...The Big Spenders at the Pentagon, of course, have the hardest time adjusting to austerity, and one must sympathize...
...Where are our Menckens now that we really need them...
...Senator Gaylord Nelson November 10, 1973 Let us face with quiet public spirit and a sense of Christian maturity the sacrifice, inconveniences, and hardships of this unavoidable emergency...
...It is—hold your breath, now—an exact replica of candy and ice cream dishes first introduced for the 1876 centennial celebration...
...I allude to such special offenses as dissipating the public funds, loading the public rolls with useless and pediculous job-holders, letting contracts and franchises to political and private friends, converting public property to private uses, condoning crimes against the Government, and administering the laws in a partial and dishonest manner—all of them impossible to the mere citizen and taxpayer, as default in alimony is impossible to the bachelor...
...These are grim days on the Potomac, and chilly too— hardly an opportune occasion for offering up small, stale jokes about the thermal value of Congressional hot air...
...Perhaps an inspiration will spring from this sudden hardship to put our social ideals, so stamped by national, economic, and material egoism, under a revision...
...The President is setting an example by reducing the cruising speed of Air Force One (or, as he prefers, The Spirit of '76) so that it now consumes a mere 2,000 gallons of jet fuel per flight-hour, instead of the former 2,200 gallons...
...When you've had your way on everything for such a long time . . . Still, was it really necessary to fly two planeloads of Congressmen and assorted brass from Washington to Warner-Robbins Air Force Base in Georgia so they could properly wish a happy ninetieth birthday to former Representative Carl M. Vinson, who was, of course, the venerable chairman of the Armed Services Committee...
...they enjoy, as it were, an unwritten immunity to criminal process...
...Here the ordinary criminal statutes are obviously ineffective, and of special statutes there are almost none . . . Certain high dignitaries, when taken in gross malfeasances, may be impeached, and most lesser ones, though not all, may be cashiered...
...We hadn't noticed, but even assuming he is right, it might be possible to conserve a kilowatt or two here and there...
...Pope Paul VI November 25, 1973 OR DOES IT...
...Let us try to help those who find themselves in great difficulty...
...A brisk walk in the open air (not in the stuffy, subterranean culverts of the Capitol) can do wonders to clear the mind—and we could use a bit of that...
...Benjamin F. Markert, who has the awesome title of Coordinating Engineer of the Capitol, says most of the increase is due to greater use of computers, which is contributing notably to Congressional efficiency...
...It was bound to happen, and it did: Some time ago, when someone was speculating in this magazine about the horrible obscenities likely to be conjured up in observance of the forthcoming bicentennial of the American Revolution, there was jocular reference to the ultimate in trashy exploitation—a plastic liberty bell...
...Nearly four years ago, Earth Day speakers were pointing out the dangerous contradictions in Progress, American Style, and urging a reshaping of our national values and the adoption of a new ethic where Bigger is not necessarily Better and where More may not always be Best...
...There are only seven per cent of the people of the world living in the United States, and we use thirty per cent of all the energy...
...Vinson marks his ninety-first birthday, the Pentagon could plan ahead and simply send a card...
...And speaking of sisterhood, consider the President's magnanimous comment at a recent dinner of the Nevada State Society: "I've always found that whenever you find a strong leader you find a strong woman by his side...
...We certainly don't begrudge Mr...
...Twenty years ago, experts were warning that with its spiralling consumption and waste, America was careening towards a resource crisis, and were urging national policies of stewardship and management...
...Might not the members of both bodies, for example, set an example of austere self-sacrifice by giving up the neat and shiny subway cars that shuttle back and forth between the Capitol and their respective office buildings...
...homes for one year...
...Sisterhood, let's hope, is powerful...
Vol. 38 • January 1974 • No. 1
