Wall Street Journal

Convicted of serious crimes by a jury, Oliver North owes his freedom today to an appellate court's rigorously applying what conservatives used to call "technicalities" to free criminals. That's fine, but North's defenders should be aware that this case has significantly extended the protections of the Fifth Amendment -- the right against self-incrimination -- not just for North but for any similarly situated defendants in the future.One of the oddest aspects of the whole Iran-contra investigation and prosecution has been the incessant yammering of the Wall Street Journal about the high cost of prosecuting North and his fellow conspirators in their plot to subvert the United States government.

On May 21, an Up & Down With Baltimore column on this page quoted a story in the Wall Street Journal, stating that Eli Jacobs, the owner of the Baltimore Orioles, "sank very little of his own money into the $70 million purchase of the O's."Since that time the Washington Post has reported that Jacobs in fact put $35 million of his own capital into the Orioles.The Evening Sun is happy to make this clarification.

Kathryn Christensen, a senior producer for ABC television prime time news and a former editor with the Wall Street Journal, has been named managing editor of The Sun.Christensen becomes the first woman managing editor in The Sun's 154-year history, and one of just 15 women managing editors at comparable American newspapers. She replaces James Houck, who resigned May 15. She is expected to start work Aug. 1."I think virtually everything attracts me about this job," Christensen said during a brief telephone interview yesterday from her office at ABC News in New York.

Kathryn Christensen, a senior producer of ABC Television's World News Tonight with Peter Jennings and a reporter and editor for 11 years with the Wall Street Journal, has been named managing editor of The Sun.Ms. Christensen, 42, will begin her new job by Aug. 1.As managing editor, Ms. Christensen will be the chief of Baltimore's morning newspaper, overseeing local, national and foreign news coverage and a staff of about 250 in Maryland, Washington and in bureaus overseas. The Sun has a daily circulation of 243,609 and a Sunday circulation of 494,091.

On May 21, an Up & Down With Baltimore column on this page quoted a story in the Wall Street Journal, stating that Eli Jacobs, the owner of the Baltimore Orioles, "sank very little of his own money into the $70 million purchase of the O's."Since that time the Washington Post has reported that Jacobs in fact put $35 million of his own capital into the Orioles.The Evening Sun is happy to make this clarification.LAST Wednesday, the day Queen Elizabeth visited Memorial Stadium, the Wall Street Journal weighed in with the most detailed examination so far of the complex business empire of Orioles owner Eli Jacobs.

On May 2 the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal carried a headline which joyously proclaimed:The Pope Affirmsthe 'New Capitalism'I chuckled. I knew, of course, that the headline was no more to be taken seriously than a headline in the old Communist Daily Worker which might have proclaimed: "Reagan Affirms the 'New Socialism'." It was so amusing that I could almost picture the pope taking a tour of the New York Stock Exchange dressed in the finely tailored pinstripe suit befitting the CEO of a Fortune 500 company.

William J. Bennett, erstwhile secretary of education and drug czar, emerged this week as the new Republican designated hitter. In an article in the Wall Street Journal, he speciously attacked the Civil Rights Act of 1991 as a "quota bill."Neither the message nor the forum was new; you can set your clock by how quickly the Wall Street Journal comes out against any meaningful civil rights legislation. In his article Bennett dutifully peddled the Journal's canard that Martin Luther King would be horrified at "quota bills," because all he ever wanted was "a color-blind society" in which people are judged "on the content of their character" and "not on the color of their skin."

As predictably as the closing bell at the Stock Exchange, the Wall Street Journal weighed in on the topic of the day -- the Los Angeles police brutality scandal -- and, needless to say, weighed in on the side of the police.Oh, to be sure, the Journal's editorial condemned the beating of a defenseless man by what amounted to a mob in uniform. The editorial was only 10 lines into its topic, however, before the newspaper introduced the word but. The essence of the editorial from that point forward was, yes, it was terrible what the police did, but policemen are just awfully frustrated these days.

The port of Baltimore received a big dose of national publicity yesterday -- and it was not very flattering.A front-page story in the Wall Street Journal pointed out the major differences between labor relations and work ethics at the port here, where shipping traffic has declined 21 percent the past decade, and the port at Norfolk Va., which as posted a 130 percent jump in traffic the past ten years.The port of Baltimore has been concerned about its image problems around the world, and has tried to use the recent opening of the $250 million, automated Seagirt terminal to create a more positive view of operations here.

THE GERMANS have a trenchant word called schadenfreude, which means taking pleasure in the misfortune of others. I did not experience this feeling toward Michael Milken upon hearing he had gotten a 10-year sentence,although I do believe it would have been a mockery of justice, not to speak of encouragement of future crime, to have let him off with a lighter sentence. But I have to confess that I felt a hint of schadenfreude toward the editor of the Wall Street Journal. The Milken sentence, coinciding as it did with Margaret Thatcher's resignation, just might be enough, I thought perversely, to make the fellow jump out of the window of his ivory tower on Wall Street.