Natural Law

PICTURE A columnist appearing before an audience of readers. Someone asks a question about an issue -- capital punishment, say, or abortion, or busing.The columnist replies, "It would be improper for me to discuss that because I plan to write about it in the future."Now, there's considerable difference between columnists and justices of the Supreme Court, the greatest being that the latter are infinitely more important, despite what the former sometimes seem to believe.The similarity is that the trade-secret response for either is insulting to the audience.

A valuable allyThose Israeli bashers who constantly decry the $10 billion aid given to our ally, Israel, should take note of the Aug. 1 item in The Evening Sun, "Allies still owe United States from war."The General Accounting Office estimated the cost of Desert Shield and Desert Storm at more than $100 billion. That will more than likely turn out to be a conservative estimate. The cost in American lives and the disruption in family lives is beyond calculation.By contrast, not a single American life was ever lost in defense of Israel, and no guard was ever called up even in the direst emergency of the 40 years of Israel's imperiled existence.

JUDGE THOMAS, in a speech you delivered in 1987, you said, and I quote: 'I believe it is the responsibility of every decentperson to wear clean underwear, so that in the event of an accident, you will not be embarrassed in front of the nurses in the emergency room.' Is that quotation accurate?""Yes, senator, it is.""Now, you went on to say that if a person does not have an automatic washer and dryer, that person should wash his or her underwear by hand. And if that person does not have hot water, he or she should make do with cold water.

Foolishness is protected by ConstitutionPresident Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court presents a moving target because what he is obscures what he thinks. To get beyond the obviousness of race requires information, reflection and the will to do so. All of which is generally lacking.Consider the nominee's reported advocacy of a "natural law" concept. "Natural law" as a basis for constitutional interpretation was employed in the last century to justify a status quo which included chattel slavery and analogous legal disabilities for women.

The Senate debate over the nomination of Clarence Thomas for the U.S. Supreme Court no doubt will once more bring about more discussion of "natural law" -- a concept which Judge Thomas once fervently embraced, but which he hastily abandoned during his recent "confirmation conversion."The press analysts and commentators, usually never at a loss for words, have expressed glassy-eyed mystification over the meaning of "natural law." In reality, the issue isn't complicated at all; what's complicated is confronting the dilemmas implicit in natural law. In the simplest terms, that means balancing duty against conscience when the two come into conflict.

LANSING, Mich. -- In the existing public climate of dissatisfaction with both major political parties, the phenomenon fringe-party candidacies has blossomed this fall. Would-be Ross Perots are popping up all over the country, and they are proving harder to ignore by the news media as voters look sympathetically, if not supportively, on those willing to offer an alternative.Their insistent presence poses a dilemma for the major-party candidates, and especially for sponsors of candidate debates including radio and television stations.

Paris. -- The latest papal encyclical has disappointed the press by dealing with morality in terms of principle rather than practice. The press was waiting for more exciting stuff. As a BBC presenter genially and condescendingly asked before the document was published, would the pope ''declare himself infallible'' on questions of people's sexual behavior?The pope said something less interesting to the press but more radical. He said that there are absolute values in the order of existence, and things that are intrinsically evil.

PAM TALKIN says Clarence Thomas is a thoughtful man. Open-minded. Sensitive. Smart. And she thinks he's getting a bum rap, particularly from women's groups like NOW and the National Abortion Rights Action League and the Women's Legal Defense Fund. Talkin, a self-proclaimed "pro-choice Democrat" who was the Supreme Court nominee's chief of staff at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, decided two weeks ago that the female friends of Clarence Thomas ought to do something. What emerged is an oxymoron called "Women for Judge Thomas."

My conscience has a thousand several tongues,And every tongue brings in a several tale,And every tale condemns me for a villain.-- Shakespeare, Richard IIIWhen seemingly ordinary people commit unspeakable crimes, anguished onlookers ask: How could they? How could an American teen-ager gun down his classmates as casually as he might annihilate cartoon enemies on a video screen? How could Serbian militiamen, at the orders of Serbian leaders, methodically slaughter and rape villagers in Kosovo?

This morning we're going to talk about dereliction of duty, among those not often accused of it -- Senators Barbara Mikulski and Paul Sarbanes, and Congressmen Ben Cardin and Kweisi Mfume. The subject is death by shooting -- of gross indifference to it: Je les accuse!We take notice of a record number of murders last year in Baltimore. Each year approximately 34,000 Americans -- nearly as many as those who die in traffic accidents -- are shot to death. The vast majority of them are not career criminals.