ustxtxb_obs_1994_02_25_50_00031-00000_000.pdf

Continued from pg. 32 producing a surplus of milk; and since large dairies are expected to use BST, it will put more pressure on small dairies. The FDA ruled that dairies can label the products as free of genetically altered hormones, but only if they also note that there is no known difference between genetically altered and naturally occurring hormones. The dairies also must certify that BST-free milk was collected and processed separately from engineered milk. Fitzgerald said only two small dairies in Texas control their own herds and have committed to not use BST. Other farmers rely on separate processing facilities. FED UP. Curtis Soileau, the former state representative from Lumberton, withdrew his name from nomination as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District February 4, citing prolonged delays in the confirmation process that have hobbled his law practice. Jefferson County District Judge J. Michael Bradford is thought to be the next logical candidate, the Beaumont Enterprise reported. NO HARD FEELINGS? State Sen. Eddie Lucio of Brownsville has reluctantly agreed to let Gov. Ann Richards name Juan Hinojosa, a McAllen lawyer and former Lucio rival, to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, the Valley Morning Star reported. Hinojosa, a former state representative, ran against Lucio in 1992 and senators traditionally may veto appointments from their district, but Lucio said he is weary of clashing with Richards over appointments. A spokesman for the governor would neither confirm nor deny Hinojosa’s appointment. BORDER CROSSING. U.S. Rep. Henry Bonilla, the great brown hope of the Republican Party in Southwest Texas, did some backpedaling from a GOP proposal to levy a $1.50 border crossing fee to pay for tighter controls on illegal immigration. Bonilla, in El Paso with Republican National Chairman Haley Barbour, said the fee proposed by Rep. Lamar Smith, RSan Antonio, is “unfair” to legal residents but he said it wouldn’t pass anyway not least because Democrats control Congress. WHISTLE THIS. The Texas Supreme Court has ruled that George Green is entitled to $13.5 million in damages a Travis County jury awarded him in 1991 after he was fired for blowing the whistle on kickbacks and Continued from pg. 7 will end within a few months, they believe. It’s as if, in the ’50s, Communists had believed that the revolution was at hand, and that what counted was not spending a few months in jail, but the chance to issue a call through the courts and the press. This sort of attitude among defendants; some of whom, by their own admission, were not a part of David Koresh’s inner circle, speaks to the strength of both Koresh’s charisma and the lure of the theology that tied people like Hollingsworth and Schroeder into a group. The government’s case equates interpretation of Biblical prophecies to a conspiracy to commit crimes. If the government succeeds in convicting the Davidians of conspiracy, it will thereafter be illegal to take certain actions, and to have certain conversations, based upon religious belief, even though those actions and conversations would be legal, absent such belief. None of this is new. Today, any American can theorize about the violent overthrow of the state. And almost anybody can buy a gun. But buying a gun when one is a member of a radical group can lead to conspiracy charges, as the prosecution of the Black Panthers, among others, has shown. In American law, Mao’s dictum that “power flaws from the barrel of a gun,” is a criminal heresy. If the Davidians are con-‘ victed of conspiracy, the New Testament may, have to be locked away with Mao’s Red Book, for Luke, in 22:36, quotes Jesus of Nazareth: “and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.” other corruption in the Department of Human Services. The jury found the agency retaliated against Green by investigating 8,000 office phone calls and trying to bring up criminal charges against him after finding one 13-cent personal call he made to his. father. The agency fired Green in December 1989 for not signing in during a physical therapy session while he was out on sick leave. The Supreme Court denied the state’s appeal, but Green, an architect who is still jobless, has to seek the money from the Legislature. TEXTS CLEANSED. Textbook publishers backed down from their threat to withdraw from the Texas public school market rather than submit to revisions ordered by the State Board of Education to high school health textbooks. The publishers balked after state board members recommended more than 1,000 revisions in five texts that some publishers said were aimed at appeasing conservative religious groups, the Austin American-Statesman reported. The board approved about 300 revisions that focused on references to sexuality and ordered the books to place a greater emphasis on abstinence to prevent teen-age pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease. The Ontology of Stillness Stillness, sure, is seeming only, but wholly so to seem is rare. So here at dawn in early fall when faintest leafy trace of chaparral stands against the distant cirrus fixed fast as post and lintel, their frame, the sleeping dog could be a corpse, no pheromone arrived to make a nostril twitch, birds and bugs that shake the summer air have conspired to cause no wave to ripple toward tympanum, throbbing monotone of distant aeroplane is gone, vibration’s memory vanished from the ear the ear, of course, is full of sound, “The Sound of Silence”, Simon says, and truly, for beneath that surface stillness agitated things and foims of things roil and writhe with energy surpassing violence of war and hurricane. Boxes they can build and do where stillness deeper still than this still Texas dawn inflicts itself upon the hapless resident. And even here were stillness but a tiny mite of time too long to hold rebellion would not be contained. Then how before Creation came could God endure it? A day upon a cross were nought compared with this! Being still’s what Being cannot be. -James E. McClellan Jr James E. McClellan Jr. teaches philosophy at Texas A&M, Corpus Christi. THE TEXAS OBSERVER 31