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“In the 11,1 of Downtown Dallas 24-Hour Coffee Shop $5.00 up No Charge for Children Under 18 24-Hour Coffee Shop Radio-Television Completely Air Conditioned FREE INSIDE PARKING Atria Commerce-Murphy-Main Streets Telephone: Riverside 2-6431 Dallas, Texas HOTEL feel war has been declared, why should the students feel restrained? Congressmen should know, since Congress is supposed to be the war-declaring power, the Tonkin Gulf farce notwithstanding. It is generally agreed around here that LBJ doesn’t try know whom to declare it against \(the Cong only? the North Vietnamese only? the at all sure he would not be rebuffed by a Congress that up to now has seemed compliant enough. Pool’s opening statement of purpose carries this paragraph: “Over and above the fact that we are engaged in a war today, de facto, if not de jure, I would like to point out that the Constitution declares that treaties made under the authority of the United States `shall be the supreme law of the land.’ Citizens therefore have a duty to observe treaties and to refrain from any activity which would impede or obstruct the United States in the execution of its lawful treaty commitments. U.S. forces are committed to Vietnam under a supreme law of this land, the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty, signed by this country in accordance with constitutional process on September 8, 1954.” The kindest thing that can be concluded from this is that Pool can’t read. If he could he would know that the Southeast Asia treaty forbids our being in Viet Nam. This is one point that the Johnson admin 12 The Texas Observer istration has gingerly avoided trying to explain. While the New York Times muffs its reporting duties, it is steadfast editorially in support of completely free dissent \(something the Washington Post, which can’t rethe greatest newspaper in the country in this regard is the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Not long ago the P-D editorialized: “One of the striking things about the criticism Washington, D.C. Adios, mother. To say that the end of government support for Mohole the Brown & Root-administered experiment in deep sea drillingcame as a shock even to many members of Congress is certainly no overstatement. Just about everybody thought that somehow at the last minute President Johnson would do the Johnson twist on enough arms to save the project. About four months ago D. S. Greenberg, writing in Science, acknowledged that with the death of Congressman Albert Thomas the Brown brothers were conspicuously without any great horde of friends in Congress”if Mohole has any friends in the Capitol they are hard to see for the multitudes that are sore about the whole business”but he went on to express the general prediction: “Mohole must be likened to the serial hero who is sealed in a cyanide-gas-filled lead casket and dropped into the depths of the sea. The next episode opens with ‘After our hero’s miraculous escape. . . ” That’s the way it was supposed to happen. But it didn’t. On a standing vote a sufficiency in the House said that by heaven they were tired of being asked by the White House to cut down or do without truly virtuous projects while at the same time giving more and still morein this goround $20 millionto Mohole. One congressman seemed to capture the mood of the day when he called it Rathole. When Project Moholewhich was supposed to discover a way to dig through the earth’s crust under the ocean about 100 miles from Honoluluwas dreamed up at a morning breakfast of geophysicists about eight years ago, it was thought that it could be completed for between $15 and $20 million. In November, 1963, the official estimate was $16 million. But at last estimate the cost had climbed well over $100 million. What happened? Well, he may have been putting it a little crudely, but POLECAT MOUNTAIN Is a new community in the Ozark lake country. We have homesites in several price ranges and sizes. Interested? Write: TIGER TUCKER Polecat Mountain, Incorporated P.O. Box 524, Rogers, Arkansas 72756 of Vietnam policy is its persistent refusal to be silenced. We hope that continues to be the case. Every citizen shares the moral responsibility for this country’s conduct. If he believes his country’s conduct to be wrong, but fails to speak out, he is betraying his own obligations as a citizen …” That is the best answer I have seen to the Pool uproar. It is a tragedy that the Post-Dispatch is in St. Louis and not in Washington. 0 one congressman noted retrospectively: “Immediately upon the proving of the feasibility of drilling the Mohole, the National Science Foundation disbanded the outstanding group of scientists which had done the original deep drilling and got a bunch of high-powered businessmen who had never drilled a hole bigger than a cesspool anywhere in the world before and put them in charge of the program. It was not any more than a year before the cost of the whole operation was better than doubled.” This is not quite accurate. Brown & Root has dug holes deeper than a cesspool, but the congressman is correct in what he says about the cost jump. And it kept jumping. From the beginning the National Science Foundation’s role in this was smudged. The N.S.F. is not supposed to admiister science programs, it is just supposed to hand out money for basic research; but it has administered Mohole, and not at all effectively. It ran into trouble in 1962, and probably laid the groundwork for the defeat of Mohole’s appropriations this year, when by a secret arrangement it awarded the contract to Brown & Root although a panel of experts had recommended two other firms. Brown & Root’s bid was not the low bid. In fact, it was 50% higher than the low bid. At first the N.S.F. refused to reveal the contractual maneuverings, saying this would not be “in the public interest.” Only after the Los Angeles Times and California Senator Kuchel raised a national stink and President Kennedy intervened and ordered the information made public did most of the hanky-panky come out. Most, not all of it For its work Brown and Root was guaranteed $1.7 million. Senator Kuchel said “politically powerful” selfish interests had intervened on behalf of Brown & Root. No #rflutz’ Since 1866 The Place in Austin GOOD FOOD GOOD BEER 1607 San Jacinto GR 7-4171 GOODBYE TO MOHOLE