ustxtxb_obs_1974_06_21_50_00008-00000_000.pdf

Fayette County Property Owners Association which has filed suit against the L.C.R.A. and the city, demanding information on how and why that corner of Fayette County was chosen for submersion. Sonny joined the suit, but Charlie did not. The senior Polaseks don’t want to get into a fight, they want to stay neutral, which Nelda is pleased to have spelled out for her since she thought maybe “mutual” was the right word for not wanting to fight. “Too old to fightneutral,” she nodded. Jeff Friedman said recently he thought Officers from the Department of Public Safety and the Crockett County sheriff’s office, border patrolmen, Big Lake police and an FBI agent threw up a roadblock on U.S. Highway 290 near Ozona recently and arrested 24 people in 18 hours. The San Angelo Standard Times was told that officers hoped to capture Patty Hearst. Instead, they came up with 22 misdemeanor marijuana possession cases and two arrests for felony possession of marijuana and possession of a stolen automobile. The Crockett County sheriff’s office said all marijuana arrests resulted from car searches made on a “probable cause” basis. The Texas’ Civil Liberties Union filed writs of habeas corpus and motions for retrial in some of the cases. TCLU Executive Director John Duncan told the Observer that defendants maintain the roadblockers waved “straight” motorists through the blockade after only casual conversation while detaining all long-haired or otherwise “freaky” travellers. One defendant told Duncan that a deputy shouted, “We got another one” to other officers as he approached the defendant’s car, then told the driver, “I smell marijuana” and began the search. Nine defendants pleaded guilty and were fined about $400 each. Charges against at least one person were dropped. Bonds for other misdemeanor defendants were set at $2,000. In April, a similar roadblock on Highway 290 in Pecos County ‘resulted in 20 marijuana arrests. Patty Hearst eluded Pecos County officers as well. Judge Ed Gossett of the Criminal . . District Court No. 5 in Dallas County is chairman of the State Bar’s Federal Court Study Committee. Judge Gossett is a staunch advocate of limiting the power of the U.S. Supreme Court. In the May Texas Bar Journal he wrote, “Almost daily, the 8 The Texas Observer the power-plant decision was the best that could have been made. “Of course I am sorry that anyone has to be inconvenienced,” he said. “But we have to weigh the needs of the many against the needs of the few, and I think this is of benefit to the many and inconveniences the fewest!’ Inconveniences? It is not an over-dramatization to say that the expression in Nelda Polasek’s eyes when she thinks about leaving is terror. Some people’s roots go deeper than others’. M.I. Political Intelligence defiled and mutilated body of somebody’s wife or daughter is pulled from the bottom of an old well, recovered from some dilapidated shack or found floating in a muddy stream. The Federal Courts prevent any real punishment of the savage perverts committing these horrendous crimes.” The Hon. Mr. Gossett concludes, “In outlawing the death penalty, the Supreme Court has removed the shotgun from over the door of civilization. To abolish the death penalty is an insult to the decency and dignity of man. . . A sad, indisputable fact of life is that human mad dogs exist. It is not only stupid but is ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ not’ to execute them. The doctor’s knife must be cruel in order to be kind. If the ruptured appendix is not removed, the patient dies.” Congratulations, Dallas.. You elected him. B.J.U. and Bro. Ro. On May 29, Bob Jones University, a fundamentalist institution in Greenville, S.C., presented the Bob Jones Memorial Award to Brother Lester Roloff of Corpus Christi for “special defense of the faith.” It was a banner day for Roloff: the Texas Supreme Court ruled that he could not be held in contempt for illegally operating a child care institution , because state law is too vague in its definition of “child.” Brother Roloff, you will recall, was shut down by the Department of Public Welfare on account of the kids in his homes kept coming up with bad bruises and other tacky stuff. Bro. Ro. has maintained all along that the Lord will provide. Brother Roloff recently sued The Texas Observer and co-editor Molly Ivins for $5 million for alleged libel. Others so honored were The Houston Post and reporter Mimi Crossley, New Times magazine, NBC, The Chicago Daily News and a Canadian magazine. In a lengthy series of interviews with Kathryn Duff of the Abilene Reporter News, former Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes expressed the belief that he was an early victim of “the Watergate thing.” Speaking of the SEC investigation that uncovered the Sharpstown scandal, Barnes said, “I think the investigators came to Texas to get something on me. They found nothing. And they stumbled onto the Frank Sharp thing.” SEC investigators were compiling information on Sharp’s enterprises during 1970, which would have made Barnes a very, very early casualty of Republican dirty tricks. During ’70 and ’71, the lieutenant governor was trying to decide whether to run for governor or to challenge Republican John Tower for his Senate seat. He believes he was one of several Democratic “comers” across the nation that Nixon wanted shot out of the saddle. “It wasn’t, at first, a ‘Stop McGovern’ campaign,” Barnes said. “It was ‘stop anybody’ who might oppose the incumbent President.” According to Duff, Barnes said he was so infuriated by the SEC scrunity of his business affairs that he flew to Washington early in 1972 to see SEC Chairman William J. Casey and Atty. Gen. John Mitchell. Robert Strauss, then treasurer for the national Democrats, accompanied him to Casey’s office, where they were assured that Barnes had nothing to worry about. Barnes went alone to visit John Mitchell. “I told him that these people had turned over all the rocks in Texas. I said if they had found anything on me to charge me. But if they kept on dragging my name in .the mud I was going to quit the governor’s race and come to Washington and call a press conference every day and tell reporters what the Republicans were doing in Texas,” Barnes remembered. “He said I should be very proud of what a clean bill of health I had.” Barnes came in third in the ’72 gubernatorial primary and retired to Brownwood and business at the ripe old age of 34. He’s now president of the Bennett Co., a construction concern. In his spare time he teaches Sunday school and is chairman of the finance committee of his Methodist church. Another casualty of *sorts of “the Watergate thing” was Donna Mutscher, wife of the Texas House speaker convicted of conspiracy to accept a bribe from Frank Sharp. A former Miss America, Mrs. Mutscher has filed for divorce, saying her marriage of nearly five years has become “insupportable because of discord or conflict of personalities.” The State Bar has filed suit to have the law licenses of George and Patty escapes!!!