What About Law, Rights, Justice?
Your daily diet of news almost always includes a healthy portion of law-enforcement stories.
Yes, such stories fall smack in that despised category of “bad news,” but, after all, self-governing citizens in a nation of laws deserve to know how well those laws are being followed and what happens when they aren’t.
In Wednesday’s Spokesman-Review, you could have read about a sudden sweep by 80 officers from various agencies that resulted in the arrests of five motorcycle gang members or associates on charges of intimidating the prosecutor and some witnesses in a recent criminal trial.
The same paper told of charges being dismissed against a rape suspect because he wasn’t arraigned on time; it also reported about the latest phase of negotiations between the FBI and the freemen near Jordan, Mont.
The delicacy with which federal agents have handled that standoff for the past 11-1/2 weeks is in conspicuous contrast with the swift, no-nonsense approach used in the Hells Angels arrests in Spokane.
Different cases, different circumstances, different conditions.
Viewed together, however, these stories and others provide an opportunity for thoughtful discussion of our current attitudes toward the law, toward civil rights and toward the current level of respect for the social compact that governs how citizens live and coexist.
Americans pride themselves in a legal system that affords the same rights to, and makes the same demands on, the scummiest of the scum and the mightiest of the mighty. (Ask Richard Nixon. Ask Bill Clinton.)
You are invited to share your impressions and observations. Go ahead - get philosophical.
Baseball gives it its worst Schott
Sportscaster Chris Berman, noted coiner of outlandish nicknames, probably already has called the Cincinnati Reds’ principal owner “Marge Schott ‘Heard-Round-the-World.”’ If not, he should.
Schott’s penchant for outrageous comments - often aimed at minority groups - has stirred a great deal of controversy. Under pressure from major-league baseball to step aside, Schott agreed Wednesday to give up daily control of the Reds through the 1998 season. It’s not because of anything she has done to affect the competitiveness of the Reds or the quality of the game as a whole, but because of the politically and socially disturbing ideas she has voiced and the PR repercussions they have generated.
Is baseball, presumably the American pastime, abusing the American tradition of free speech?
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