I OPINION Page 4 Friday, October 7, 1983 The Michigan Daily - I - -----...... Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan Liberals cheer for James Watt Vol. XCIV - No. 27 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board Russian roulette Here was the same human being before the same court. On Ionda because he didn't in- 3 :yoke the right words and right 4heory, the court was going to 'et him die. Then he said the f ight words and the court gave him life. So said attorneys for James Autry ;after they were able to obtain a stay of eaexecution only minutes before his death sentence was to be carried out. ; Autry's case is a testimony to the serious problems with capital punish- ment. In the waning moments before Texas officials were to have killed Autry yesterday morning, Supreme Court Justice Byron White stayed the - execution until an intimately related case can work its way through the system. American Civil Liberties Union lawyer persueded White to delay i the execution until another court decides whether Autry has the 'right to have his sentence compared to others o assure that it is proportional to punishments for simliar crimes. 6 Walesa RESIDENT RONALD Reagan ac- curately called it a victory for S"moral force" over "brute force." Pope John Paul II offered his : congratulations. Polish Archbishop i Josef Glemp simply said, "Good, good." go Certainly, the Norwegian Nobel Committee could not have picked a more worthy recipient for the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize than Lech Walesa. D He earned the prize because of his con- tributions to not only his own labor :: movement, Slidarity, but to the ;o worldwide movement for human 5 rights. Equally important, though, is the method Walesa chose to pursue his °o union's goals: negotiation and Y cooperation with a government not ,W known for such toleration. l Walesa became the second person from an East bloc nation to win the peace prize - the first was Russian w dissident Andrei Sakharov. As in Sakharov's case, the communist press 1 shamelessly claimed the award was ;s motivated by politics. : In Walesa's case, though, the award ay ', tI The incident, however, was dangerously close to becoming a classic "what if" case. What if the A.C.L.U. attorneys had not replaced Autry's court-appointed lawyers, who had an appeal for a stay of execution on different grounds denied only the day before? What if the processing of the appeal had taken only 25 minutes longer? What if the related case in the court had been further behind and had not yet reached a hearing? Undeniably, if anything had gone dif- ferently than it did, Autry would be dead. And the courts would be won- dering if they had made an irrevocable mistake. The incident exposes the luck and skill involved in death sentence ap- peals; Autry was lucky to have skillful lawyers. But more than that, he was lucky the appeals procedure operated as quickly as it did, and lucky that the other court case came to his attorneys' By June Taylor WASHINGTON - When President Reagan refused to fire controversial Interior Secretary James Watt last week, audible sighs of relief rose in some offices here. But with few exceptions, the relieved parties weren't Watt's onetime Republican sup- porters. Instead, the sighs came from Watt's staunchest enemies - Democrats- and environmen- talists who consider him a major political asset. "AT THIS POINT, Watt is a greater threat to the Reagan ad- ministration than to environmen- talists," explains Louise Dunlap of the Washington-based En- vironmental Policy Center. . Said one gleeful critic in the Democratic Party: "Every time James Watt opens his mouth, he registers 20,000 Democrats." There certainly is no doubt that Watt has been a growth industry for environmentalists. Thanks largely to public concern over his policies, membership in the Sierra Club doubled to 360,000 in the first 18 months of the Reagan ad- ministration while Friends of the Earth recorded a 50 percent in, crease. THUS, A QUIET debate ac- tually is underway -in some en- vironmentalist circles over whether it is better to get Watt out now - or to keep him right where he is. Advocates of the lat- ter position claim that Watt inad- vertantly had become their best lobbyist, attracting constant at- tention to administration programs which they regard as harmful. Counters Liz Raisbeck, legislative director for Friends of the Earth, "If he doesn't get fired now, he'll slip away to the cam- paign trail in a few months without ever having been accoun- table for his . outrageous policies." Nevertheless, many, environ- mentalists feel that Watt's power has been so badly undercut - by a combination of outside pressure and his own gaffs - that the bat- tle has been won even if he stays in office. "His credibility is destroyed, and there has been a bipartisan move to block his policies," says Louise Dunlap. "We have his wagon surroun- ded." LAST WEEK THE Republican- controlled Senate rejected Watt's coal-leasing policies - his first major defeat in that body. It was an issue on which he had lobbied heavily, aided by personal phone calls to key senators by President Reagan. Many political observers believe President Reagan can not afford to fire Watt because of the strong support he enjoys with the GOP right wing - not for his en- vironmental positions necessarily, but for his stands on social issues. This factor has helped make him the largest Republican fund-raiser after Ronald Reagan and George Bush. But some Republicans fear that the Interior secretary is capable of arousing such intense animosity among those who disagree with him, that he also is responsible for a tidal wave of funds and voters to the other side. After Watt's most recent flap - set off by his description of the federal Coal Commission's makeup as "a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple" - power - ful GOP members of Congress, including Senators Howard Baker and Robert Dole, led the campaign for his ouster. AS THAT CONTROVERSY suggests, Watt's negative impact extends far afield of the en- vironment. But Ann Lewis, political director for the Democratic National Committee, notes that environmentalism remains the chief focus of his damage to the administration. Almost singlehandedly, Watt has turned the environment into a partisan issue, Lewis contends. Polls, she says, indicate that even Republicans believe the Democrats would implement bet- ter policies on the environment. Lewis believes that Watt's "abusive attitude towards natural resources" and his "human insensitivities" create :a political handicap for Republicans in registering young voters, women, and minorities. All of these groups give strong weight to environmental concer- ns in polling data and are likely to play an important role in next year's election. If her suspicions are correct, the Democrats have every reason to want James Watt in office when the 1984 campaign begins in earnest, keeping Reaganism and "Wattism" connected in the voters' minds. Says Environmen- tal Policy Center's Dunlap, "this administration is so dangerous and so abusive we want them out' - not because they are Republicans but because of their environmental policies." Taylor wrote this article for the Pacific News Service. I Wasserman attention. There is too much chance in system where mistakes irrevocable. this are a//K [7l; A w. t1 h) 's prize I could not have come at a better time. The Polish authorities were in the mid- st of a smear campaign aimed at discrediting Solidarity's leader and the man who is the symbol of the push for a better way of life for Poland. Poland's people have not been swayed by the ugly campaign. When news of the prize was announced people in train stations, restaurants, and the streets stopped to cheer their hero. Unfortunately, it is uncertain whether the Polish government will allow Walesa to accept his award in person and then return to his home. As in Sakharov's case, Walesa might have to send his wife to Norway to speak to the world for him. That illustrates the differences bet- ween this side of the iron curtain and the side on which Walesa lives as much as anything. But even if Lech Walesa is not allowed to accept his Nobel prize in person, the spirit of Poland's proud people will understand the significance of this award. WNLTE4 -- ......V _. 4 " . . " "r . * "f i " " ", f$S " F . ue .* * t . " I -* -4 - - 4 Ab ._ " " LETTERS TO THE DAILY: Letter misdirected on Hart criticism. 4 To the Daily: If I understand Karl Edelmann's letter ("Hart misdirected on Central America," Daily, September 21) on Central America, the nations consist of "...self-sufficient people..." yet poverty is their number one problem. Ad- ditonally we can help them if the military stays in power but "...we won't be able to help them anymore" if rebels ascend to power. I trust Mr. Edelmann is not a logic major. Most of Centra America is very poor with the resources concen- trated in a few upper class and the military. That is why there is a long history of revolution in thought and action throughout the region. Secondly, contrary to popular misconception, most of the leftist leaders start out as socialists, with Marxists dominating only after repeated oppression by the United States. If we were to financially back popular leftist groups from the outset they would depend on us and we wouldn't have to worry about Marxist--"Soviet domination. Furthermore we do have to worry about world opinion. Sup- porting the Contras trying to overthrow a legitimate gover- nment in Nicaragua and suppor- ting right wing dictatorsips without requiring human rights improvement as in El Salvador brings much negative opinion.- We have to tie aid to human rights everywhere, because without human rights the aid cannot help the people for which it is intended. We have to stop supporting every right wing group because we mistakenly 4 believe all leftist groups are Soviet dominated communists. The candidate supporting these positions should receive our votes. - Robert Murden Brooklyn, New York October 6 Who's team is that? To the Daily: I was pleased to find out that the Daily provided coverage of the women's rugby club this past Saturday ("Ruggers bask in variety, wins," Daily October 4). I was also pleased to discover that we would be included in an article about the men's and women's rugby clubs. So, when I opened to the back page of Tuesday's Daily, I was expecting, not too much, just a little promotion. Never mind that the women received a single paragraph in the entire article - I was ready to look over that minor detail because what caught my eye was a large nhotnuranh of nn nf the women Michigan colors are maize and blue - not red and grey! You may say in defense that the pic- ture is black and white, and well, it was an honest mistake. I know, but really, even the design of the shirts are different. Ah well, perhaps if it were not an OSU player - but it seems the final in- sult. Next time feel free to ask if you are at all unsure of picture identification.Wewill be glad to help. In the meantime, thanks for trying kids. - Julie Silverstein Silverstein is the president of the Michigan Woman's Rugby Football Club. UT _rU5 I-I T t TWUr Unsigned editorials appearing on the left side of this page represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board. Letters and columns represent the opinions of the individual author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the attitudes or beliefs of the Daily. 4 tv RaN4s 1Z«e 3tkorA