TILTING AT WINDMILLS

...Guess what's the biggestspending lobby these days...

...Put yourself in the shoes of a beleaguered commander, desperate for some way to save his forces from almost certain defeat, and then ponder this paragraph from a recent article in The Wall Street Journal by John Fialka, a very careful and reliable reporter: "Take a 20-year-old Russian ballistic missile, readily available on the world's arms market...

...In the Peace Corps we found that the group feeling produced by going through the physical challenges of Outward Bound experiences, such as rock climbing and drownproofing, helped prepare our volunteers for both the physical and emotional challenges of living and working in difficult circumstances overseas...

...Military training also has tests like the one Shuger endured that are necessary to determine if recruits have the combination of courage and intelligence needed to be effective in combat or to deal with their captors...

...One attorney told him, "I think one would have to have a deranged sensibility to genuinely enjoy...the day-today practice of law...

...And there was no attempt to intimidate, humiliate, or dehumanize...

...West Germany and Australia have a solution to this problem—not for the parking ticket but for the red-light runner...

...But it also can be catastrophic if the order to be obeyed is bad and if there is still time to argue...

...But what can be said in defense of the Ohio State Bar Association, which is holding its taxdeductible Continuing Legal Education Seminar not in Zanesville or Dayton but in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico...

...A reader who shares my concern about the snobbish trend in the names given to girls has sent me a clipping with a photo of the president of the Jacksonville (Florida) Bar Association sitting in his back yard with his wife and daughters, Stacey, Hillary, and Ashley...

...Not long ago we gave you the dismaying figures on how many more administrators per student there were in the headquarters of Chicago's public schools than in its parochial schools...

...Charles Peters...

...What is most maddening about this episode is that the recruit, who had fled from the pool before, had been diagnosed as having a possible phobia and classified as unfit for training of this kind...

...No one who watched this year's Olympic boxing matches, in which headgear was worn by all participants, will ever believe that argument again...

...Here was a profession, entertainment, long associated with liberal attitudes on race, and a city then considered the most liberal in America...

...There were no stupidities like drinking to excess or having to follow pointless orders...

...It has now surpassed manufacturing as well and has the largest payroll in the state...

...Let's amend the Constitution so that, in the event of a president's death, someone like the secretary of state would serve as president until, but only until, the House and Senate could convene to elect a successor to serve the remainder of the term...

...Make sure men are trained to argue that that is a civilian airliner not a warplane out there and it's going up not down, as long as there is time to argue, and that they're trained to shut up and obey only when there is no rational option left...

...for the parochial schools, one for every 4,200 students...

...I saw where it had jumped the 100-foot-wide Madison River...

...I realized then that this was a battle firefighters could not win...

...The extent to which this country was once segregated was recently brought home to me by the obituary of Barney Josephson, a New York night club owner who was the first to have black and white entertainers work in a club before a black and white audience...

...The habit the military should try to inculcate is one of distinguishing between an order that has to be obeyed instantly and one that can be rationally examined...

...This committee is also demagogic and misleading in its fundraising, which is why it made our recent list of the worst lobbies...

...Although I'm rarely accused of being a card-carrying member of NOW, I do think many of the grievances of the women's movement are real...

...It is that, although affirmative action is a wise policy when it involves special efforts to recruit minorities and to make them aware of opportunities and to train them to take advantage of these opportunities, affirmative action is wrong when it involves giving a specific job to a black when there is a white who can clearly do a better job...

...There is no chance that such an election would produce a Dan Quayle...

...The 1989 Midwinter Convention of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America is being held in London...

...Did you see Eugene McCarthy's article arguing against the vice presidency...

...I've already indicated that I favor the partition of Cyprus between Greeks and Turks on similar grounds...

...That it was a Jew who took it is something blacks, who are becoming increasingly antisemitic, should ponder, and that those Jews who are becoming antiblack should recall as they seek, as I hope they will, a rebirth of their old liberalism...

...The Journal of the American Medical Association, once notorious as a propagandist for the views of the medical establishment, has in recent years seemed to embark on a flirtation with integrity...

...Speaking of blacks who have gone astray, the Congressional Black Caucus gets the financing for its annual conference in Washington from the tobacco and alcohol industry, two of the great enslavers of black people throughout the country...

...I fear, however, that the ACLU will delight George Bush by coming up with some bizarre argument claiming that our liberties would be in the direst danger...

...which] largely consists of arguing with other people about money...

...It's the National Committee to Preserve Social Security...

...I was pleased to see the headline, "To Stop the Killing, Partition Burundi," over an oped article in The New York Times not long ago...

...I reported to you a few years back that government had surpassed coal mining as an employer in West Virginia...

...How many times have you noticed a speeding car recklessly run a red light, looked around for a cop, and seen not one in sight except for the guy busy ticketing your car for being parked five minutes overtime...

...This month he will receive a check that will put the retirement income he has received from the government at a total of more than $1 million...

...These tests should never be conducted as the navy water exercise was that refused to let the recruit say, "I want out...

...There were actually physical situations one could conceivably be confronted with some day and the mastery of which would prove useful, if not in lifethreatening at least in pleasurable recreation situations later in life...

...After the recruit said he wanted to withdraw from the drill, Combe used a head hold to force him back into the water and held his head under until he died, as "The Star Spangled Banner" was being sung by his fellow recruits at the order of their instructor...

...Instead there was mutual support, the good feeling that will be understood by everyone who saw that girl finally make it over the obstacle course in An Officer and a Gentleman...

...Yet the judges gave the decision to Park in a move that may have been directed at making up to the South Koreans for slights, either real or imaginary, they had suffered earlier in the games...

...Yet it was not until the eve of World War II that this seemingly simple step was taken...

...While other health costs—doctors, nurses, operating rooms, bandages, etc.—rose by 85 percent between 1980 and 1986, the cost of administration grew 186 percent...

...This did not happen until Josephson opened Cafe Society in December 1938...

...In addition to Iraq and the major powers, Fialka says, Egypt, Syria, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan all are strongly suspected of having chemical weapons now, with ten other countries seriously considering obtaining them...

...It photographs their license plates so that the offenders can be punished...

...Certainly, in combat, instantaneous obedience can be essential...

...There was new underbrush on the floor of the forest, but at eye level and above there was nothing to be seen but the charred skeletons of dead trees...

...These figures are in fact caused by demographic trends, which, by the way, were predicted in this column in May 1981...

...And the worst cause of this increase was in the corporate bureaucracy sector, revealed by what is called the "net cost" of private health insurance, which is the premiums collected minus the benefits paid out...

...This would mean thoughtful consideration would be given, not to balancing a ticket, but to choosing the best president...

...Michael Combe is the petty officer second class who killed a frightened navy recruit by repeatedly forcing his head under water...

...Now for my annual warning to young people who are thinking about becoming lawyers...

...And not just for a little while...

...This is just as credible as the lawyer's claim that he relies on reason alone to convince legislators of the wisdom of his views...

...One other legitimate purpose of hazing is the bonding that occurs when a group of peopl e has met a tough challenge together...

...For a firm with a legislative practice, this is just as much a cost of doing business as is maintaining facilities or providing legal services...

...Where Jimmy Carter had to find jobs for the hordes of baby-boomers entering the labor force in the seventies, Ronald Reagan is the beneficiary of the much lower birth rate that followed the boom, which means fewer first job seekers and lower unemployment today...

...They have a camera that is triggered by cars going through red lights...

...I think it is the only answer where animosity is so intense that it is sure to produce violence for generations unless the warring tribes are physically separated...

...The fire was going to have to be put out by nature, by heavy rain or snow, and by nature alone...

...The beneficiary of the education pays for it, but over a term long enough to be affordable...

...I happened to be in Yellowstone Park on what was probably the worst day of the fire, September 9, and saw both the devastation the blaze had caused and how frighteningly out of control it was...

...Just as the black boxer who fights best should win, the white worker who performs better than the black worker should get the One of the more dubious claims made by the Republicans this fall is that the Reagan-Bush administration is responsible for the lower unemployment figures...

...The tragic episode of the drowned navy recruit and Jason DeParle's article on fraternities in this issue (page 38) combine to make me want to figure out what kind of hazing makes sense and what doesn't...

...The hatred, the author argues, between the Hutu and Tutsi tribe is so strong that they can't live together...

...For my ammunition this time I'm grateful to a long article by Paul Ciotti of the Los Angeles Times, who reports that "many lawyers say they are working harder, getting richer, and enjoying it less...

...An example is revealed in a recent survey conducted by the American Compensation Association: most companies continue to determine secretarial salaries, not on the basis of the work the secretary does but on the rank of her boss, who of course is more often than not a male...

...I agree with McCarthy...

...This is bad news for those of us who feel that we have to stop wasting Social Security on the affluent, whose benefits the committee is determined to protect...

...An awful lot of hazing still goes on in fraternities, at the service academies, and in many other military training programs...

...His reward from postal authorities was an official disciplinary letter of warning, charging him with "deviating from your scheduled delivery time" and "failing to complete your route as scheduled...

...Some people have moral but not physical courage, and a good many have neither...

...A ranger pointed and said, "Look, you can see the process of regeneration is under way...

...Michael Dukakis, I am delighted to report, has adopted The Washington Monthly program for financing higher education: long-term loans for students repayable out of their future income through an additional assessment on their income tax (see "Highbrow Robbery," Timothy Noah, July-August 1983...

...Why then does Donald Santa write in the July-August issue of The Washington Lawyer, the official magazine of the District of Columbia Bar Association: "A lawyer with a legislative practice invariably can expect to receive solicitations for campaign contributions...

...As to the devastation, it seemed at least half the park was destroyed...

...Sometimes it has a legitimate point, such as to inculcate the habit of swift obedience or to teach people how to deal with difficult or dangerous situations, like the prison camp Scott Shuger described in the May issue...

...But they weren't punished either...

...Install a hollow warhead with tiny vents that blow open as the missile nears its target...

...The SEC staff recently proposed an end to this outrageous practice, but they were overruled by Ronald Reagan's chairman of the SEC, David Ruder...

...One of the arguments against the protective headgear that makes boxing a far safer sport has been that it deprives boxing of excitement...

...This tender tap on the wrist could have been justified only by the punishment of higher-ups who may have encouraged such practices and who thus may have been really responsible...

...Take Albert Gore Sr., who retired from the Senate in 1971 and is a wealthy man...

...Speaking of Olympic boxing, everyone I know who saw the fight between Roy Jones, a young American black, and Park Si Hun, says that Jones was the clear victor...

...It rose 249 percent...

...Let such people be radar operators or supply clerks...

...He did an outstanding job," said the local police chief...

...There was not a single reprimand in his file...

...Combe's punishment by a navy court-martial panel: 90 days in the brig and a reduction •in rank to petty officer third class...

...Then pour in a compound that any competent lab can mix up from off-theshelf ingredients: nerve gas...

...But the challenges of Outward Bound all made sense...

...The beauty of this idea is that it means people will not be denied higher education because they or their parents can't afford it...

...Ciotti also points out that the alcoholism rate among lawyers is about twice that of the general population...

...The world's failure to crack down hard on Iraq for its use of poison gas against Iran and the Kurds may leave a terrible price to be paid as the other countries see the use of gas tolerated and as they learn how cheap and easy it is to use...

...The post has attracted far too many second-rate people who are only an assassin's bullet away from running the country...

...Find out who can be a hero in battle, but don't try to force every man to be one...

...We were shown one area that had been burned more than ten years ago...

...Paul Snapp, a mailman in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, had compiled an exemplary record over 141/2 years of service...

...So it is the man's status, not the woman's work, that governs the size of her paycheck...

...And the similarity of English and American law does lend a faint, if very faint, justification for the tax deductibility of the London convention...

...This very sensible plan, one that should appeal to intelligent conservatives above all, was immediately rejected by George Bush...

...Unlike most such plans, the taxpayer is not stuck with the bill...

...Because he, not his parents or society, will pay for it, he is much more likely to be the kind of customer who demands that colleges hold their costs down (for one university's scandalous administrative costs, see "Letters," page 1...

...Speaking of wasting money on Social Security for those who don't need it, the government is guilty of even more egregious waste in its retirement programs...

...I've written before about the small print in brokerage contracts that gives the big Wall Street firms the right to screw the small investor, and, if he is graceless enough to protest, to compel him to submit the dispute to an arbitration panel loaded in favor of the brokerage firm...

...TILTING AT WINDMILLS When one is so vulgar as to call a Washington lawyer an influence peddler, the indignant attorney will reply that he persuades congressmen only because of the soundness of his argument and the merit of his cause...

...There were no barriers they could construct that would be more formidable than the river...

...That the romance has ended is suggested by a recent "study" published by the Journal that conclusively demonstrates something that tight-fisted hospitals and senior physicians, both of whom have a keen interest in exploiting young doctors, desperately want to believe—namely, that sleeplessness does not impair the performance of residents...

...The growth of the bureaucratic economy is further illustrated by the cost of "administration" in the health care field...

...The opportunity to gain a touch of class by rubbing shoulders with bewigged barristers doubtless is irresistible to the people who some cynics suspect spend their days advising clients on such elevated matters as how to feign a whiplash injury...

...We are now paying him a pension of $81,347 a year...

...Snapp immediately rushed to the building and proceeded to help police keep people away from the dangerous area...

...Here are the figures for the City of New York: for the public schools, one for every 147 students...

...Then on August 6, as he was a few minutes from completing his route, a natural gas explosion took place in a nearby office building, which then caught fire...

...This makes great sense to me...

...It seems to me that, ironically enough, there is a lesson in all this for American blacks...

...And he will not be able to escape paying, as many student loan recipients have done in recent years, because the IRS will collect...