In the Public Interest

Is there a Party of the opposition anymore? Each new year makes this question increasingly insistent. During the first two weeks of January the Reagan regime had a virtual media field day to itself, while leading Democrats were elsewhere or occupied with tearing into Mondale. Two cases are illustrative. Presidential counselor Edwin Meese III, with…

Gerald P. Carmen, Reagan’s administrator of the General Services Administration (GSA) is a bit nervous these days. You see, I have praised him publicly and his Reaganite friends won’t let him forget that. But as head of the country’s biggest consumer buying operation, he deserves praise and wider notice for the way he is using…

Mark Fowler wants to take away from you the last remaining rights to have access to public property — namely the public airwaves, unless, that is, you happen to own a radio or television station. Who is Mark Fowler? He is the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, the darling of the broadcasting industry and…

It is at the end of a year that one more easily thinks of constancy — defined by Webster as “steadfastness of mind under duress.” I think of those public citizens who year after year stay on the course against large odds in order to fight for justice in America. They work out of a…

A few years ago the Washington Post carried a series of articles on the failure of the local school system to teach students how to read and write. The reporter’s most stunning finding: more than a few high school seniors relied on their classmates to read the signs on the Metro bus so that they…

Safety has the highest mandate in her administration, says Transportation Secretary, Elizabeth Hanford Dole. She then fails to preside over three days of Departmental hearings three blocks from her office in Washington on the most important safety decision she will be making — the automobile crash protection proposal. Granted she did appear at earlier hearings…

“Politics is just like show business. You have a hell of an opening, coast for a while, and then have a hell of a close.” So said Ronald Reagan to his consultant, Stuart Spencer,in 1966 as he started his gubernatorial career in California. With such an attitude a politician can develop a highly refined sense…

Your telephone companies, led by AT&T, are telling you that a major reason why they have to double or triple your monthly residential telephone bill is because long distance rates will no longer subsidize local service after January 1, 1984. That is the date when AT&T’s long distance unit splits from the soon-to-be independent regional…

A small New Jersey company, the Breed Corporation out of Lincoln Park, has developed a simple, reliable, less costly automatic crash protection system to save the lives of motorists. Called the Breed airbag module, it uses a mechanical system instead of the present airbag systems that operate with sensors which are crash activated electric switches.…

As a student at the Harvard Law School (HLS) in the Fifties, I used to wonder what that pre-eminent institution would be like years later. With all my imaginings, I guessed wrong. The school neither remained the same nor did transform into an active center for the analysis and advancement of justice in America. Instead,…