Pag= Four
EDITORIAL
Sequestered
Rarely has the wisdon of jury sequestration
been demonstrated more dramatically than during
the recent brou-ha occasioned by Joseph C.
Dorang’s accusations against Atty. Theodore L.
Krohn. Atty. Krohn is presently serving as defense
counsel for John Terry Wilson, alleged slayer of
George Wesley, so when Dorang charged that
Krohn had offered him money to “get to’ the jury
and to obtain phony witnesses to testify on behalf of
Wilson, everyone connected with the case took a
deep breath and turned to Judge Albert H. Aston,
the presiding jurist, for answers. ;
When initial efforts failed to muzzle Dorang
until after the trial was concluded, Judge Aston
called members of the news media into his
chambers and read a three-page telegram from
Dorang detailing the allegations. He announced his
intention of entering an order which would prohibit
“extra-judicial statements by or about persons
having any connection with the case.”
Before the order could be implemented,
Dorang appeared in court to pursue his ac-
cusations. A former convict who might be
described as having a controversial past, Dorang
proceeded to level charges at Krohn and the D.A.’s
office in an errafic, confused and confusing
manner. There was obviously nothing more that
could be done to keep his statements from the
public, and Judge Aston decided against issuing his
intended order.
Judge Aston’s primary concern was not for the
public, however. Nor was it for the much maligned
Atty. Krohn, for the D.A’s office, nor even for
himself—indeed, even his integrity had been im-
pugned by some of Dorang’s comments. It is most
assuredly to his credit that Judge Aston’s concern
was focused on those jurors who will decide the fate
of John Wilson. The judge denied a motion for a
mistrial, directed that Dorang stay away from the
courthouse until the trial is over, and tightened
security precautions at the Hotel Sterling, where
the jurors are presently lodged.
Death Penalty
Gov. Shapp has recently come under fire from
members of the state senate for filing an amicus
curiae brief before the U.S. Supreme Court urging
the abolition of the death penalty. Sen. Richard
Snyder and others have demanded that Gov. Shapp
withdraw his name from the brief, accusing the
governor of being ‘‘soft on crime.”
We support Gov. Shapp in his efforts to abolish
the death penalty, not only in this Commonwealth,
but in the country as a whole. It is our firm belief
that capitol punishment is, on a moral level,
nothing more than sanctioned murder, and, on a
practical level, ineffective as a deterrent to crime.
The major argument for capital punishment is
that it will deter crime out of fear for the potential
criminal’s own life. This argument, although highly
logical, fails because it does not consider whether
or not a criminal considers death before he acts.
The death penalty is not a great threat to the
mentally ill, as a 15-year study at San Quentin has
revealed. Furthermore, it is highly likely that those
who commit murder while involved in other crimes
(robbery, etc.) do so out of surprise or fear without
an opportunity to ponder the consequences. Ex-
tensive studies in England and elsewhere have
shown that homicide rates do not increase after
abolition of the death penalty, and a study at the
University of Pennsylvania indicates that rein-
Statement of capital punishment after its abolition
has no appreciable effect on homocide rates in this
country.
Above and beyond practical considerations we do
not believe society has the right to take a man’s
life, no matter how logical, sanctioned, or con-
venient it may seem, and that no nation which con-
siders itself civilized should have to revert to so
simple and heinous a measure to compensate for
the intricately complex causes which create crime.
Tie IALLASCR0ST
An independent newspaper published every Thursday morning by the Greenstreet News
Co. from 41 Lehman Ave., Dallas, Pa. 18612.
Entered as second class matter at the post office at Dallas, Pa., under the Act of March 3,
1869. Subscription within county, $5 a year. Qut-of county subscriptions, $5.50 a year. Call
675-5211 for subscriptions.
The officers of the Greensireet News Co. are William Scranton 3rd, president and
managing editor; J.R. Freeman, vice president, news; William W. Davis, vice |
president and general manager; Doris Mallin, secretary-treasurer.
Editor emeritus: Mrs. T. M. B. Hicks
Editor: Doris R. Mallin
News editor: Shawn Murphy
Advertising: Carolyn Gass
Changes
g By Eric Mayer
The problems that seemingly beset all
democracies might best be explained by
that all of us tend to comprise aristo
cracies of one. Counter to, and more com-
pelling than any legal constitution is the
constitution that we carry around inside our
heads, a constitution that guarantees certain
inalienable rights for a certain elite-
ourselves. As regards this elite we are all
liberals, assuring ourselves not only the
rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of hap-
piness, but also such rights as omniscence in
setting standards of taste, morality, and
appearance for our subjects-the rest of
mankind.
Since it is impossible for us to implement
our various utopias we have to satisfy our-
selves with lording it over newspaper ac-
counts of traffic fatalities, TV medical show
victims, acuary tables, and other such docile
proofs of our own privileged position in the
world.
With this in mind, and noting also the
venerable cliche that a man’s home is his
castle, we may better understand how—on a
certain Sunday not so far in the future, that
football has joined mastodon hunting in the
forgotten sports hall of oblivien—Arnold
Smith came to be sitting, in a strictly illegal if
pleasant daze, in front of his television, in his
large suburban house, in a swimming pooled
development that hasn't yet been developed.
Arnold knew all about the official crack-
down on drugs. The local papers were playing
the busts up for all they were worth. Ten
arrests at a party here, three arrests at an
apartment there, two arrests in a car search-
they all added up. It reminded Arnold of the
good old body-count days of Vietnam; back
before the times had gotten out of joint. He
knew that drugs were a risk these days but
this typical ego-eglatarianism never expected
‘to hear that knock at his own door.
When it came it wasn’t actually a knock.
Rather, it was a screech of broken hinges and
a splinter of shattered wood, followed by a
polite thump as Arnold's front door toppled
onto the wall-to-wall carpeting of his living
room.
“You're under arrest!”
Arnold jumped up. His only thought was
to get to the garbage disposal unit before- But
too late. In his drugged stupor he’d kicked his
beer can across the room. It rolled to a halt at
the boots of the law.
[TRB
from Washington
It is cold these nights and I wake up at 3
a.m. and snap on the electric blanket. Then I
‘back to sleep. Mr. Nixon is going to
to Moscow and everything is all
those antiwar young people huddled on the
stone pediment of the fence before the White
House. That does it. One minute past three. It
must be cold under the yellow street lamps
with the occasional car and the Guards with
radios changing place every four hours, and
the fountain. What are they doing out there?
What am I doing in bed?
They are the last remants of the antiwar
demonstrations. They keep their vigil 24.
hours a day, rain or shine, hot or cold. They
have been at it about 150 days now. They are
quiet; they don’t cause disturbances. They
are under the auspices of the Quakers but
most of them, I think, are not Quakers. They
are uncouth enough, about as uncouth as
college students, and most of them wear
jeans, and the boys wear long hair mostly,
and some have beards that make them look
like Sophocles or Jove or Jesus. Some wear
sandals and they might be hippies’ except
what hippies would stay out in front of an iron
fence night and day for some preposterous
cause?
There have been antiwar demonstrations in
this town since 1965 and some of them have
been huge and one of them caused the White
right-with the world. But then I think about *
THE DALLAS POST, OCT. 21, 1971
~
A Greenstreet News Co. Publication,
B
The Big Beer Bust 1
“What right do you have to come bursting
into a man’s home like this?’ he blustered,
remembering a late show.
“The no knock policy,” said one of the
policemen calmly, pushing his long hair away
from his eyes as he spoke. ‘Come along with
us now.’ His companion, likewise long-haired
and blue-jeaned with the uniform flag shirt,
bent over and picked up the incriminating
' beer can.
“But you-you've got no right. . .?”
"Oh, we have you dead to rights.” The
policeman studied the beer can disdainfully.
“We've got the no knock policy, the
preventative detention policy, the suspicious
persons act of '72, the preventative execution
act of '75, the J. Edgar Hoover Memorial Act,
and the supreme court's recent semi-
temporary injunction against the Bill of
Rights. Not to mention the dangerous drugs
amendment.”
“A nice long stay in jail’s just what you
need, mister. It'll give your hair some time to
grow. Maybe you'll look human then.”
Arnold glowered at his captors. ““A little
beer never hurt anyone.”
“That's what they all say.”
“Yeah. Tell that to an alcoholic. How do
you think they got started. Beer leads to the
harder stuff, to whiskey. That's a fact.”
“Not only that; it leads to traffic
fatalities, disease, brain damage, violent
behavior and immorality.”
“Just like they told us at school last
week."
Arnold's mouth fell agape as his son
appeared in the doorway brandishing a pull
tab.
“I'm sorry daddy, but our teacher told us
if we found any of these around we should
bring them to class. I didn’t want you to be a
‘cancer to society’.
“And it's lucky for your daddy that you
did,” said one of the cops, lighting a joint.
“We'll help your daddy now.” He blew &¢
smoke ring toward Arnold who recoiled,”
thanking heaven that his wife was out at a*
PTA meeting. Aq
\/
“Yessir, Mr. Smith, we’ve had our eyes,
on you-eccentric hair style, those strange.
gray suits and ties, a Rotary member-wg;
know your type.” a
The certainty of his fate settled to the pit :
of Arnold's stomach. He'd become one of the
unlucky ones. ;
“It’s not fair,” he muttered. he
“Look at it this way. We're saving you
from skid row, a horrible life, an agonizing”
death, and worse besides.” i
“Come on now. We've had a report that
someone's pushing cigarettes at a PTA.
meeting and we've gotta get over there and:
break it up. We'll have to put an end to those
things.”
Arnold went along quietly.
House to be barricaded off by buses parked
around it bumper to bumper while half a
million paraded and the President announced
stoutly that he wasn’t going to be stampeded
or see the leaders, and was going to watch the
football game on television.
And this is all that is left. A group of 30 or 40
or so. They take turns in shifts, maybe six or
eight hours each. There are no rules; it is all
voluntary; they can come or not as they
want ; they sleep at a friendly settlement, or
over at the William Penn House, 515 East
Capitol. It is called the Quaker Vigil. People
like this always take contributions. Their flier
says make checks out to William Ralph
Walker, whoever he is.
‘The worst time is when it rains,” says
Paul Goodwin. He is an ex-sergent from Viet-
nam and wears an army fatigue jacket.
“When it's cold you can walk around. But
rain!—we had a dozen or so one night when it
rained. We only had ponchos for a few. Well,
we just got wet.”
‘Any pneumonia?”
“No, just a sniffle or two.”
They used to do things like that in the
Middle Ages. Make a vow to hang a chain
between mountains, or pledge something to a
monastery or just perform their juggling
tricks before the painting of the Madonna.
They did their thing. As I lie in my bed with
the warmth coming up from the electric
7
Insights
and
by Bruce Hopkins
waking up on a fine morning to discover
vou've been robbed while you slept, securely
tucked away in your dreams, leaves you with
a rather strange sensation. It's like
awakening with the knowledge that you've
been raped, but you can’t recall anything
about the actual event.
Coming home to a rifled apartment is
something most New Yorkers learn to an-
ticipate. You know it’s going to happen to you
in time. And every time you turn the key in
vour lock and push your door open, there is
that momentary intake of breath carrying
with it the fear that this may be the time
vou'll find everything topsy-turvy and
discover some of your possessions gone from
vour life forever.
But it didn't happen that way at all. It
lacked that kind of excitement and an-
ticipation. It was a simple matter of here-one-
minute-and-gone-the-next. It was a simple
matter of scoffing at David Susskind one
Sunday evening as he’ tried to intimidate
seven lesbians, and feeling good inside when
they ended up intimidating him with their
“intelligence and their pride in themselves;
flicking off the television, and awakening
some six hours later to discover the television
missing.
“Uh, Bruce, wake up.”’ Frank said quite
calmly. "We were robbed during the night.”
I clung to the warm arms of sleep,
thinking this was one of Frank's schemes to
assure that 1 would jump up and out of bed,
thus keeping my promise to get up that
morning. I sat up and tried to shake the fog
from around me. How could we have been
robbed during the night when we’d both been
Illusions
there all night? Frank simply replied that if
we hadn't been robbed, he had two questions:
why did I leave the bathroom window wide
open on a cold October night, and where did I
suppose the television had wandered off to?
I stared at the blank space less than three
feet from my bed, that only six hours ago had
been filled with David Susskind and seven
leshians. Now it was a blank space.
I couldn't come up with any other ex-
planation as to what might have happened to
the television, so we mutually accepted the
fact that we'd been ripped off in our sleep. I
figured that the thief must have entered our
tiny livingroom-bedroom, discovered us
sleeping, and grabbed the closest thing to
him: the television. Well, actually 1 was as
close to him as the television, but he must
have figured he wouldn't get a lot for me on
the streets. He then must have exited fast so
as not to wake us. :
“Wrong,” said Frank. ‘‘He also took my
watch off the table.”
I hopped out of bed figuring it was in-
ventory time. I was amazed at the audacity of
this person to stroll about in our apartment
while we slept away unknowing. I mean I'm
a light sleeper. I usually wake up at the drop
of a hat. If only the thief had dropped his hat.
“So what would you have said if you'd
awakened?’ asked Frank. ** ‘Excuse me sir, , .
would you mind putting the television back? I
have to watch the Today show in the mor-
ning?" °
“You don't suppose he’d have come all
the way back here?" I asked as I wandered
through the kitchen and into the back room.
My wallet lying open on the chair answered
THE PAY BOARD WILL NOW
N
\
I TH
in WD
blanket I wonder about them. Sensible people
don’t act that way. It must be something they
feel; something important: They hate war.
They imagine they are doing something about
Vietnam. 1
The cops don't bother them. Further along
is a man with a sandwich board protesting
some incomprehensible wrong by the gover-
nment, and down by the place where the
tittering tourists come out is the comic with a
sign demanding equal rights for husbands. He
laughs and they laugh and everybody laughs.
He is one of the sights.
This morning I talked to a boy with red hair,
that hasn't been cut, I guess, for half a year,
who said, ‘Just call me Mike.”” He has been
hitchhiking from California. Has been on the
road a long time but came to a halt here. He
liked it—men, women, blacks, whites—they
seemed to respect each other.
Like Gene Williams, a Negro, from
Chicago. He was more articulate. “For
something I believe in—peace,’” he said. Gene
wears an army jacket with a captain’s bars,
and was in an artillery tank division. ‘‘You
know,’ he says as though he were telling me
something I wouldn't believe, ‘‘all the letters
home in my unit had to come to me and I had
orders, if any of them complained in their
letters, to bring it to the attention of the
authorities. Can you imagine that.”
The war is all over—everybody knows that ;
Thief in the Night
the question. The five dollars was missing.
It’s not so much, except that I had planned on
making it last all week. My watch was
missing too. He's left the change on my
dresser, and my keys, and my deodorant can.
Frank was searching for his wallet. It
was missing. It had been in the pocket of his
corduroy pants. They were also missing. I
wondered if the guy had them on before he
took them. :
“He could at least have left me some
identification.”” Frank said. ‘How am 1
supposed to know who I am? Just my luck—I
finally register to vote, and somebody steals
my voter registration card.”
As it turned out, Frank's identification
was on the edge of the tub, where the guy had
left it after finding no money in it. Polite of
him, I thought.
As we sipped our morning coffee, we
noted how appropriate the music on the radio
was. It was perfect music to rob an apartment
hy. We envisioned our thief breaking in: he
opens the bathroom window and furtively
peeks in; soundlessly he removes the extra
roll of toilet paper from the window sill and
sets it on the fire escape; he crawls into the
bathroom and puts his left foot into the toilet
howl.
“Do you suppose he made coffee?” I
asked.
“Hell, he probably cooked dinner.”
Frank remarked. ‘Well, I'm certainly glad
he left our valuable objets d’art. He probably
figured he'd be recognized if he tried to sell
them.’
Then we envisioned him sneaking out °
again, pausing momentarily as his flashlight
COME TO ORDER
One Cold Night
Mr. Nixon has got into the habit of speaking o
it in the past tense. The Thirty Years’ War
was from 1618-1648 and the German ggbasants,
lived underground and ate rats and wiere glad
to survive; and the Vietnamese have had war, 7
too, now, for 30 years. Americans speak ,
tragically about the cost of the war 5.00
dead, $120 billion spent, veterans’ benefits
ahead that will last 100 years. But for the .
Vietnamese nobody knows how many are ,
number of orphans. American herbicides
have sprayed about one-seventh of the land ;
area, and when one of our big 7 !» ton Daisy,
Cutters comes down with a whump it slears
an area the size of a football field in dense
jungle, suitable for helicopter landings, and it
turns anybody in the area, friend or foe alike, {
dead and there simply is no count of the {
into hamburger ‘steak. Mr. Nixon has re-/
sumed bombing recently. Nobody protests.
Next month Mr. Nixon is expected to an- .;
nounce plans for withdrawal of all the ground ...
combat forces in Vietnam, ening
Spring, leaving only residual forces of
30,000 to 50,000; also artillery and helicopters ;,
and those Daisy Cutters, and he is probably
turning the unused defoliants—a couple of
million gallons of them—over to the uth i
Vietnamese. They are pretty toxic b¥t it.»
hasn't actually been proved that they produce... di
sterility and cancer. So...back to sleep. 1 !
Dammit, the electric blanket is unplugged.
scanned the poster next to the bathroom'!'
which reads: ‘For all that has been, thanks; '
for all that will be, yes.” it
We were most angry, 1 suppose, Jith
ourselves for having left ourselves so
vulnerable. And it was a bit depressing to
know that our money and our television were '
now supporting someone’s habit. Poor guy
must have been desperate. Ji
“Well, we're real New Yorkers now. ~
We've been ripped off. Now we can tell our
burglary story along with the rest of them.”
Frank said. Meanwhile I couldn’t find my
bunny slippers. wd
“Frank, you don’t think he would have +
taken them, do you?’ I mean, they were
made by my very own sister’s very own two
hands." %
"He probably used them to walk around -
in while he was here.” Frank said, noting also
that he saw them under the bed. pe
p
=
We finished our coffee and made the beds, +;
ready to go on with the day’s activities. We yd
remarked how different it would be if we were .;
in our hometowns now. We'd be outraged and i
defiant, and we’d have the police in to in-
vestigate. We could report this to the police, .»
and they'd say, yeah, well congratulations
and we'll make a note to watch that area a i]
little more closely the next few nights. Wl
So we woke up on Columbus Day having .;
lost a few possessions. Frank paused as he ;
‘opened the door and headed off to work.
“Well,” he said, *‘don’t think of it as having
lost a television. Think of it as having gained a «
column.” i
I laughed and headed in to my typewriter. aks
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