European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - January 12, 1993, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Tuesday january 12, 1993 commentary the stars and stripes Page 15 in a fortnight after the pardons issued by president Bush gives a measure of the Public reaction. It is not volatile. There Are those who believe that the difficulties Trace to lines of authority that have not constitutionally crystallized and from that body of the Public there is total sympathy with the Pardon. Critics tend to stress that a lie is a lie is a lie and that if lies were uttered under oath then the person who is detected having done so should be punished. But of course there is the difficulty in defining a lie. If or. Jones tells mrs Jones that yes he thinks even at 80 she is the most Beautiful woman in the world that Isnit the kind of lie we would want to Send or. Jones to prison for saying even if he said it under oath. And when a witness answers literally a question put to him by a congressional investigator and in doing so Shields information the transmission of which would in his judgment her tray his obligations to the executive then we need at least to Ponder the Point. George Bush has done so and has concluded that in re Spect of six people the prosecution should end. The harshest critic As might have been expected is the hapless Lawrence e. Walsh who has been sitting there for years and years at the front Row staring at the Guillotine and has seen Only two people executed. He was voluble indignant Over the pardons and contributed the criticism that Bush kept a diary beginning in 1986, which diary he Only now advertises the existence of. The insinuation is that Bush should have stepped Forward earlier with the diary or the journal. Bush seems to be saying that there is nothing in the journal that was not included in the extensive testimony he gave in 1988, and that it is All therefore irrelevant. William f. Buckley now one suggestion that has been made and we can to yet know whether Walsh will act on it has to do with the technical nature of the Pardon. What happens next is that Walsh will file a report. Depending on what the report says we can gauge the temperature of Congress when it asks itself the question whether to renew Walsh a mandate. It is widely expected that the whole Enterprise will go to sleep. But if Walsh makes representations that he insists can be backed up there will be a lobby that will want to move in on this technicality that the Pardon is for acts done before the Pardon was issued. Here is a hypothetical situation. Or. A who has been pardoned by president Bush is called up again by the special prosecutor put under oath and asked a question to which the answer is known based on previous testimony from the same witness. Then another witness is called who stands by the Story he gave five years ago which contradicts the Story of or. A. The special investigator can then Call in a grand jury and advise the jury that the investigator believes that or. A is lying. The jury agrees Ana an indictment is issued. Jurisprudence informs us that such a procedure does not violate the constitutional authority of the president to Grant pardons it is a fresh offence for which perjury is being charged and the effect of it could be to undo that Pardon. The question was put to a prominent constitutional lawyer whose specially Many years ago was a study of the fifth amendment. He reports that in anticipation of such an ambush it would be Legal for or. A to plead the fifth amendment. Theoretically having been pardoned or. A has no reason to plead the fifth because he is not in danger of incrimination but if there is the possibility that the evidence will be reiterated on the basis of which the perjury can be charged then or. A could decline to answer the question. It would be an ignoble punctuation of or. A a career. Normally the fifth amendment is used by people who have something to hide we know however that in this Case. Or. A and a few of his colleagues did indeed have something to hide but what they had to hide. Was the result of instructions Given by a Superior officer in Pursuit of executive goals judged to be constitutional.-. A to is unlikely that anyone is going to charge that there is a Nimberg precedent mixed up in All of this. Whatever was done by retired air Force maj. Gen. Richard v. Secord or retired Cia officer Thomas Clines and he is in jail it is hardly contended that they were guilty of War crimes. To have sold arms at a profit to Iran so As to accumulate Money for Freedom fighters in Nicaragua Isnit the kind of thing that gets you hanged save possibly in the editorial columns of the Washington Post. The likelihood is that Bill Clinton is going to have the critical voice Here and it is not irrelevant that he and Bush have in recent Days got on like fraternity Brothers. He is unlikely to undertake a prosecution that would strike most americans As a gesture in retroactive vindictiveness. C Universal press Syndicate Home alone couple reflects today s families it was a free ride for the headline writers. Take one sure fire human inter est Story of parental abandonment and one hit movie and the words almost wrote themselves Home alone. Overnight David and Sharon schoo who went to Acapulco and allegedly left their two Little girls to fend for them selves were billed As a the most hated couple in  when they were arrested at the Airport and led away in Handcuffs one bystander hissed Scrooge 1�?� an across America parents asked aloud How could. Anyone leave a 9 year old and a 4-year-old by themselves and go off on vacation like that but there were other voices too and they Are the ones that Bear hearing. A delivery Man called a radio station in Pennsylvania to say he habitually delivered packages to households in which Small children were Home by themselves. Police in Texas discovered an 8-year-old in a hotel room on Christmas Day. He had apparently been left there Anna Quindlen t for two Days by his father alone with a a of Peanut butter a loaf of bread and a it Oxon Cereal. And a teacher in new York City reported that she once taught Sisters whose Mother worked a night shift. She sus it acted the Sisters were left alone All night Ong locked in the apartment for their own Well being. She said she believed there were Many such stories in her school. A these Are not bad mothers a she said. A a they re trying to support their  whatever the reason America is a country in which child welfare advocates have been warning for years Many children Are Home alone. It May not be for nine Days which is How Long the schoos were gone. But it might be every afternoon from 3 . To Nightfall. The estimates of kids who come Home from school to an empty House vary widely but All Are in the millions. What we do know is that childhood has changed since Many of us were children. Ten years ago Marie Winn in children without childhood posited the end of an age of Protection and the beginning of the age of preparation. Quot the new Era Quot she wrote a operates on the belief that children must be exposed Early to adult experience in order to survive in an increasingly Complex and. Uncontrollable world As parents Are Home less and children know More a about sex about drugs about How to run the microwave a the lines Between child and adult blur. It even shows in our clothes once mothers wore Hose and heels and their Little girls wore anklets and Mary Janes. Today it is different 4-year-Olds, 14-year-Olds, 40-year-Olds a the Gap dresses us All alike. In this atmosphere treating kids As quasi adults becomes easier earlier. And it makes life easier for working parents we Are naturally More comfortable at our desks on the night shift with the idea of the competent child rather than the dependent and vulnerable one. Wide n we think of the dangers of children Home alone we think of the physical the fires the accidents. But what stays with me from the schoo episode is what the elder girl said afterwards when she and her sister had run next door after a smoke alarm went off. She said that she had been lonely. People were shocked that such a thing could have happened in a prosperous neighbourhood. But in her Book on americans children when the Bough Breaks the economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett cited a California study of 5,000 eighth graders that concluded it was the affluent children who spent the largest amount of time on their own apparently because their parents careers were so time consuming. The traditional school schedule is not set up for today a world More afterschool and summer programs would pro vide at least a Safe Haven for Many children. Nor Are traditional work schedules conducive to family life More flexible arrangements arc needed for both mothers and fathers. Hut ultimately the Issue of How we treat our children is More Complex than matters of education and economics. It goes to the question of How much childhood we Are willing a and Able a to allow  a we should not confuse the toughness and savvy we impose out of our own need and fear with real maturity. What the schoos Are accused of doing is an aberration and an outrage but they did it in an atmosphere that openly treats Young children As quasi adults. Perhaps More often than any of us realize Many of americans kids Are Home alone a Ancl lonely. The opinions expressed in the column and cartoons on this Page rear scr those of the authors and Are in no Way i be considered As representing the View of the stars and stripes or the unite states government