ustxtxb_obs_1974_03_01_50_00021-00000_000.pdf

speech on the subject to a conference at the UT law school, \(now reprinted in the magazine of the law student division of the is to be said. “This proposal, advanced in Texas,” Yarborough said, “would compel a law student of limited means, at the very beginning of his studies, to combat the power of the state, through an organized bar \(which even now seeks to raise its annual dues by an amount that would enable it to hire a whole army of “I warn these inquisitors: the man who invented the guillotine died under its knife. One of the older lawyers who is now proposing these rules for law students may some day find his son facing an accusation that he smoked one marijuana joint prior to 1973, until now a felony in Texas… . “This is a type of thought control represented by the dreaded Japanese Kempai-Tai in World War II. They were the special thought control police who could arrest and incarcerate without act, word or deed of the confined person anyone they accused of thinking improper thoughts. . . . Here a committee, without guidelines to halt the whims of different committeemen with different interpretations, could bar a young person from becoming a lawyer, in a supposedly free and open society. It reminds one of a communist state, where only members of the Party might become lawyers.” Yarborough said the required fingerprints were “such as might be taken of a professional burglar or pickpocket,” and the requirement of waiving rights to any legal self-defense “violates every imaginable right of privacy or decency.” “If this rule is passed,” he asked, “who will man the battlements for the poor, the down-trodden, the weak, the under-privileged, the under-educated in Texas. . . . It smacks more of Hitler’s Nazis and the OGPU of Russia. . . . “The money power backing this move is frightened by the younger generation’s will to justice. They want to screen out of the legal profession those with a concern for the underprivileged of this state, those who show their love of justice to be greater than a lust for profits. . . It is the police state here now, if such a rule is adopted.” Solzhenitsyn And after lawyers, writers. People around the world have watched transfixed and helpless as the authorities in Moscow have closed in on Alexander Solzhenitsyn. What could anyone do? The Western press carried his statements from Moscow, and Time Magazine, especially, dramatized his persecution. Protests must have flooded the Kremlin if even a provincial fellow like me was moved to one. Early in February I wrote Brezhnev and the other Soviet leaders in Moscow telling them that, for my part, if Solzhenitsyn is a traitor, so am I; that it is not he who is a traitor to his country, but they who are traitors to the human species. On the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, the Soviet secret police barged into the Solzhenitsyns’ Moscow apartment and dragged him off by force. The next day he was stripped of his citizenship and eight men accompanied him on the plane as he was involuntarily exiled. Prevented by concern for world contempt from imprisoning him, the Russian bully-state tried to cut him off at his roots, to murder his voice, by forcibly placing him in the physical position of criticizing his country that had repudiated him from foreign soil. He will go on; but it will be even worse now for the nonprominent dissidents in Russia. We cannot do much about Russia, but we can do a lot about our own country. Here, as Sissy Farenthold says, here in Texas and now, we should start the rebellion at the ballot box. Here, too, is the place to confront Leroy Jeffers and the other defenders of the State Bar’s proposed Fingerprint-and-Persecute Rule with the fact that this very rule would be precisely Austin J. Edgar Good Dog is missing. When I drove into the driveway last Wednesday night he didn’t come thundering up to put his muddy paws on the car window. Nor did he appear later that night to rattle the screen door’ or howl outside the picture window. He’s just gone and neither the neighbors nor the vet nor the folks down at the pound have heard hide nor tail of him. There’s not much left to do but write a column about him. Jay was born under the desk in the front bedroom on Dec. 15, 1971, the son of Leta Pearl, a basic Texas black hound whose single interest in life is fetching. \(This fetch fetish was illustrated beyond a reasonable doubt on the day after J. Edgar came into the world. I threw a tennis ball while Pearl was nursing the litter. Sure ’nuff, she lept up and retrieved the ball without a backward glance at the eight puppies she Jay’s father was either a border collie-like animal who used to hang out on top of the Hernandez’ car or Hedgehog, a black labrador-mix who was, as far as I know, the only dog to attend the opening ceremonies at the LBJ Library \(see Obs., was Jay’s dad. Actually he doesn’t look like either of his putative fathers or his mother, but rather like his maternal grandmother Lucy, a chocolate-colored Weimaraner. Jay is rather handsome. He’s liver colored on the top, with a white belly useful for the purposes of First Citizen Brezhnev. Consider, Mr. Jeffers, et. al., how useful to the communist dictators it would be how it would let them hide what they are actually doing for them to be able to bar from the higher professions anyone they alleged had “a mental or emotional illness or condition.” No doubt, Solzhenitsyn has such a condition! So does Andrei Sakharov! So does Ralph Nader -and so does every person of integrity who differs sharply with and challenges the interests of those who would use the state to enforce their own interest and their will to dominate. It is our part to see the connections between these different forms of impulse to bully and to go on steadily with our work for the liberation of our species from the heavy fists of state and industrial power. R. D. Reflections 1 and speckled feet and light Weimaraner eyes. We called Jay a Balcones Brown Hound. He weighs about 95 pounds and is built low to the ground, convenient for sniffing. My sister Karen named Jay after the late Mr. Hoover because of a certain flappiness around the jowls. TRUE TO his namesake, Jay was a crimebuster, even in his youth. One night he and his sister Toes and Pearl rescued a young black woman who feared she was about to be attacked. As she later recounted the story to neighbors, she was out walking alone about 2 a.m., a dangerous practice in East Austin, when a black man in a car started following her. She said he had abandoned his car and was chasing her on foot when she saw the dogs. So she climbed up on top of a VW bus and started yelling real loud. The dogs got excited and chased the man off. They weren’t being gallant, however, just racist. As soon as they had finished their fun with the man, they ran back and started barking at the girl. Nonetheless, she said she was thankful for their help. March 1..1974 21 J. Edgar Good Dog