European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - September 29, 1987, Darmstadt, Hesse Page 10 the stars and stripes tuesday september 29, 1987 columns James Kilpatrick How Are the mighty fallen in midst of Battle the. Word irony is much abused but in inc Mailer of sen Joe Biden and judge Robert bark. Inc word applies with remarkable precision. As chairman of the Senate s judiciary com Millie inc Junior sen air from Delaware proposed to examine the judge s record. His idea was to destroy Dork s chances for winning confirmation 10 inc . Supreme court. The hearings had scarcely begun before inc senator found his own record under examination. He destroyed his chances for winning the democratic Nomi nation and dropped out of the race. Biden had hoped the hearings would launch him to the Heights. He has toppled to the Bottom. How arc the mighty fallen in the midst of Floc Battle o Joseph thou wast slain in thy we a make mistakes but we must press on 1 was just thinks of the Way Over Here fourscore and seven Vears ago,., High places. Not my line Sec 2 Samuel 1 25. The ironies Are compounded by chronological parallels. Much of the Case against Robert Bork rests upon an essay the judge wrote in 1963. The first charges against Biden rested upon a Law school paper the sen Ator plagiarized in 1965, More serious were charges that Biden quite recently has embroidered his academic record. Not much remains to be said about the Bork Nomi nation. His accusers charge that he is some kind of conservative extremist that he is out of the main Stream of jurisprudence that if confirmed he would vote to reverse a whole body of established constitutional Law. The charges a Cal off like Damp rockets. They fizzled before they popped. Bork s record As a member of Floc . Circuit court of appeals for the District of Columbia provides Over whelming evidence to inc contrary. If Bork at last fails to be confirmed it will nol be because of his qualifications or his philosophy the vote will turn on politics pure politics. If senators wish to Grovel for inc support of Liberal pressure groups they will Grovel. Dork can do nothing about it. Biden s problems were More serious. In confessing the 1965 incident at Syracuse University the senator agreed that he had done something very stupid but his assertion that his plagiarism was unintentional is unimpressive. One might unthinkingly plagiarize a phrase or a simile but rive whole pages in a 15-Page paper it strained credulity. In Charity the kind of Charity most of us would Pray for let me suggest that stupidity at the tender age of 22 should be forgiven. Other matters were nol so kindly resolved. At inc Iowa state fair on aug. 23, Biden swiped an eloquent peroration from a speech by Neil Kinlock Leader of Britain s labor party. Was this a ghostwriter s Gaffe no indeed. This was an idea that had struck him As i was coming Over plainly in was not so. Challenged for the theft Biden at first said that a tape recording of the Kinlock speech had been Given to him by British political Leader Dennis Haley. This was not so. The recording came to Biden from a Friend at the american Enterprise Institute. Kinlock a welshman had recalled that his Coal mining ancestors had such stamina that they could work eight hours underground and then come up and play Biden saw Kinlock s eight hours and raised him by four. His own Pennsylvania ancestors he boasted worked in the Coal mines of Northeast Pennsylvania and would come up after 12 hours and play football for four this also was not so i am not a or Chi last week Newsweek Magazine added to the de pressing list of fabrications. Al a gathering in care Mont n.h., Biden said that he had attended Syracuse on a full academic he said he had graduated in the lop half of his class. Me said he was graduated from College with three degrees. He said that at College he was the outstanding student in the depart ment of political science. And none of this was so. The senator has a reckless Way with words. Last year he wrote in the National Law journal that the Constitution requires a president to select nominees for in Federal judiciary from the mainstream of american jurisprudence. The most casual student of the Constitution knows this is not so. The Constitution docs not require even that judges be lawyers. A Well. Perhaps we should expect no More from a scholar who finished 76lh in a Law class of had attractive characteristics but he had lost that Quality of credibility which is like virtue in a woman. Meanwhile judge Bork for his part has gained in stature. In inc combat of two Strong men Bork won hands Down c univ Btl Pils Syf dam William Buckley heroin should be of d for use in cancer cases the movement to ease he awful pain of some deaths from cancer is show ing signs of life. Nol inconceivably the present Congress could make the Deci Sive move to permit terminally ill patients who have failed to respond to lesser drugs to be Given injections of heroin. It has been a very Long tight and Judith quattlbaum of Washington has led in. Unflagging by. It was More than 10 years ago that she undertook to organize a committee to bring to the attention of Congress which passes Laws regulating the use of drugs the plight of americans who suffer great pain of the kind that could be alleviated by such injections of heroin As Are routinely administered in great Britain to those who Are certain Toon to die. What qual Klebaum keeps running into is a a pan of the medical establishment thai against All reasonable evidence persists in instilling that a combination of lesser drugs will accomplish the same pain abatement there arc plenty of Doc tort on the other Side and the British experience is now Long and conclusive and b More important those in con Gress who succumb to the argument that to authorize heroin in the hospitals would be to flood the streets with this dangerous drug augmenting the Inci Dence of drug addiction. But the data have been carefully accumulated and the committee on the treatment of intractable pain has in hand data difficult to contend with. If every Milligram of heroin that in is pro posed to be legally authorized to Hospi tals tending to cancer patients were Sto Len from the Hospital safes at 2 o clock in the afternoon and made instantly Avail Able to Street paddlers of illegal heroin the result would be to augment the exist ing Supply of illegal drugs by Between 2 percent and 4 percent. Since there is Little likelihood that 1,000 hospitals would coordinate the circumstances for such an operation More difficult than the Normandy Landing Whai we see is a threat of no Conse Quence. And then the most important Fig ure of All since 1980, when the commit tee came close to winning congressional approval 8,000 persons per year have died of cancer of that excruciatingly painful variety that might have been sharply mitigated if Only Congress had acted. The Good news this season has been inc activity of sen. Daniel Inouye who is the principal Senate sponsor of the he Roin Bill. He is joined by a number of senators across inc ideological spectrum. Sen. Dennis Deconcini has been very Active. Add Sens. John Melcher Quenlin Burdick Ted Stevens Thad Cochrane Donald Riegle Carl Levin John Warner Nancy Kassebaum James Mcclure Pat Rick Leahy and most recently Robert Dole. The principal opponent of the Mea sure is congressman Charles Rangl of Harlem a Man of great Charm and per suasion who is however a fundamental is on the drug problem. If heroin is bad. Range reasons then Why would con Gress authorize its use Well Congress authorizes Hie use of napalm and every Day in every Hospital tools and drugs Ore used that misused would cause trouble sometimes death. But Range does not own Congress and much urns on the position taken As yet unstated by the president. And on this particular Issue much turns on the Altitude of the first lady the nation s most Adamant and conspicuous oppo nent of drug abuse. But mrs Reagan the daughter of a distinguished doctor and of an ailing Mother knows the difference Between heroin used by a healthy Street Delin quent and heroin administered by Doc tors one of whose mandates is to ease pain. Sen. Edward Kennedy As chairman of the committee on labor and human resources presides Over that committee thai normally would hear testimony for and against the proposed measure. He has told his colleagues thai he is Loo Busy to undertake to examine the proposed Bill during this session. But congressional tradition holds that at least one committee of Congress should hear testimony and Back in 1984, the House subcommittee on health and the environment which reports to the com Mittee on Energy and Commerce heard such testimony. It would be altogether conventional for the Senate to waive in own hear Ings accept those of the other House and move directly to a Vole on the floor. Kennedy who often Speaks of the unnecessary cruelties of life ought to react to the principal problem before the House which is every Day s delay Means 25 deaths in unnecessary pain. The whole of Congress should be alerted to this Point. It is responsible to pass the Bill or to vote it Down. What is nol responsible is simply to dither away another month year decade letting the agony of the hopeless subsidize congressional torpor. Utvik us i u
