The Courier from Waterloo, Iowa • 13

wntoi Editorial Cut government before raising taxes emocrats caDtured the White Ml House for the first time in 12 years, supposedly with a new Section James Lewis Publisher David Tansey Assistant to the publisher Saul Shapiro Editor George Saucer Managing editor Virgil Dahl Circulation director "centrist" ideal. But the talk and actions emanating from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue thus far don't show much of a break with the past. Less than a week after his inauguration, Bill Clinton has broken promises on Haitian immigration and a $10 billion middle-class tax break, which, like George Bush's "no new taxes" pledge, weren't realistic in the first Page B5 Courier abandoned. Thanks to Ross Perot, there is a realization that an out-of-control deficit is robbing this nation of its future. Our advice to the president: Make cutting government your priority.

Use your "State of the Union" address to freeze whatever expenditures you can and outline services or subsidies the federal government can no longer afford to provide. Don't even deign to mention new taxes until you have a plan to streamline government. The goodwill that your administration now has can be as shortlived as the Persian Gulf War popularity that President Bush enjoyed. You run the danger of having an administration dead in the water for four years if it isn't keenly in tune with voters' priorities, and that would leave any social tickering subject to reversal in 1997 by a Republican president and Congress. "It's the economy, stupid" was the rallying slogan for the Clinton campaign, and post-election momentum was built at the economic summit in Little Rock.

With his detailed position papers during the campaign, it was expected the Clinton administration would have more focus from the outset. Thus far, the only economic measures being touted by the Clintonites are the same old Democratic remedies new taxes: on energy, gasoline, consumption (the difference between spending and saving, rather than income), employer-paid health-care premiums, individuals earning more than $200,000, cigarettes and alcohol, and a "means test" tax on Social Security benefits. We suspect the public would be willing to accept some new taxes, if combined with substantive cuts in government spending even the "flexible freeze" that Bush once promised but officially addressed as "Hillary Rodham Clinton," has been put in charge of health-care reform, giving critics two Clintons to shoot at rather than one, no matter what qualifications she may bring to the job. Because so many promises have already gone awry, the president may have perceived that his pledges to end the prohibitions against homosexuals in the military and abortion counseling at federally funded clinics were required to show that he can be true to his word. Unfortunately, an executive order on gays in the military picks a diversionary fight with the military brass and Congress, which righdy wants to review all the ramifications from morale to spousal benefits.

Once declawed by Congress on issues where he has little popular support, his administration like that of Jimmy Carter may be forced into a subservient role to lawmakers on more pressing concerns. (CI lUimi) place and put together an affirmative hiring program at the Cabinet level that, unfortunately, put expediency ahead of quality in several positions. Promises to cut 25 percent of the White House bureaucracy and other aspects of the government payroll, as well as reining in the out-of-control entitlement programs, have been downgraded to "goals." As a sideshow, Hillary Clinton, now Gays and conservatives: Not wholly antagonistic 'A 1 MAM 1, Mona Charen Syndicated columnist Keep your walkways clean WATERLOO Everyday this 15-year-old comes home and does something most of you only dream of I deliver the newspaper. Yes, I am one of the lucky few who enjoys their job (ha). Anyway, delivering the paper has its advantages; I meet more people, in the summer I work on my tan, and practice preventing frostbite in the winter.

Still, every job has a dark point and mine is no exception. My biggest enemy is popping up a lot this winter ice. But the paper must be delivered. So I venture across driveways and sidewalks that have never heard of sand or salt. Not to mention that I continue performing tricks even professional skaters can't do, while kids giggle from the safety of a window.

I know this seems funny now but in reality it's rather scary. I am asking anyone reading this to please salt or sand your driveway and sidewalks. This would not only make me a happy camper, but also be appreciated by mail persons and other carriers. However, this could lower the risk of someone suing you if they injure themselves on your property. So, the next time we have an ice storm (I have no doubt there will be one) please salt or sand your property.

That way I can leave ice skating to the pros. AMANDA KNIEF 1111 Lindner Drive Waterloo Courier Carrier A wash-day primer WATERLOO The housewife of today can scarcely fathom the drudgery of wash day in their great-grandmother's time. Her wash day began with the rising sun. If she was fortunate, she drew water from an open well by hand with a rope and bucket or windlass or she might have had to carry the water from a nearby spring to a big iron kettle which she heated outdoors over an open fire in favorable weather. She then carried the hot water to a tub and proceeded to wash the clothes on a washboard using homemade soap of grease, wood ashes and lye.

Each article of clothing had to be rubbed then wrung out by hand. If there were several in the family it proved to be an all-day job. After washing the white clothes, they were boiled in water that had been "broken" by adding lye to soften the water and whiten the clothes. Kettles for white were copper, galvanized for colored clothes. The washboard was replaced by a wooden washing machine with a hand wringer.

There was a "dolly" in the lid of the machine which agitated the clothes as the handle of the machine was pushed forward and backward, giving the desired results. Another patented design featured three or four plungers in the lid run by a small crank shaft operated by a hand crank. Soon, gasoline engines were used to operate the machines instead of hand power, then came electric power, which made all the household duties a snap compared to the old way, in the good old days. Hoover's ghost has lingered much too long over the FBI What do homosexual activists really want? Just civil rights, they reply. But it's more complicated than that.

Over the weekend, the National Review Institute held a "conservative summit" in Washington, D.C. The conference, attended by 800 people from 41 states, took up every issue of interest to conservatives from environmentalism to defense, from school choice to saving the inner cities, from crime to multiculturalism. I chaired a panel entitled "sexual politics," which wound up focusing primarily on gay rights. Conservatives resent being caricatured as gay bashers. Most are content to be tolerant of homosexuality.

As one panelist, Professor Hadley Arkes of Amherst College, put it, "We all have gay friends, whose friendship we treasure. And who wouldn't rather spend an evening with Noel Coward than Al Gore?" Where conservative resistance to the gay rights agenda tends to focus is in response to aggressive measures by homosexuals to go beyond tolerance to endorsement. That is what the curriculum dispute in the New York City school system is about. It is one thing to say gays should be left alone, quite another to say that "Daddy's New Roommate" should be taught to first-graders. Homosexual activists tend to frame their demands in classic civil rights language.

They seek only an end to discrimination, they claim. That includes discrimination in the military and in marriage and adoption laws, which currently require that spouses be of different genders. Andrew Sullivan, editor of the New Republic, also on the panel, urged the case that marriage would be good for gays just as it is good for straights. "If you object to gay male promiscuity," he said, "permit us to marry. Marriage civilizes men." Sullivan's plea is arresting but not ultimately persuasive, because is not marriage that civilizes men it is women.

If you doubt this, just visit any college dorm before and after it goes co-ed. Or, for a grimmer example, visit any maximum security prison, where, for all intents and purposes, homosexual marriage does take place. The prisons are hardly more civilized thereby. The whole weight of the homosexual claim to equal status with heterosexuals rests on one pillar the belief that homosexuality is innate, unchosen and immutable; that it is like skin color or gender, a more "constitutive" (Sullivan's word) part of their natures than religion. This is an article of faith in gay and lesbian circles.

Gay activists, the linguistically alert will have noticed, stopped using the term "sexual preference" some years ago. It has been replaced by, "sexual orientation" to remove the suggestion of choice. Yet the evidence for this key belief among homosexuals remains elusive. Despite eager searches for biological proof, the results so far have been disap- pointing. This is not to say that proof will never be found, merely that the jury is out.

But as traditionalists, like Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition, see it, homosexuality should not be treated like race or gender in any case. Not because it is a sin' (which Christians and Jews believe, but that's a theological matter) but because it is not a trait that is obvious to outsiders. Forbidding discrimination against gays is like forbidding discrimination against mystery readers. How does an employer know? And there's another wrinkle as well. Conservatives are concerned because civil rights protection in the America of 1993 doesn't mean non-discrimination.

It means quo-, tas. Accordingly, if gays are grant-', ed the status of "protected class" under the civil rights laws, they will soon be entitled to "affirmative action." Finally, if gays are a protected class, based solely on what they do in the bedroom, who's next? Polygamists? Sadomasochists? Peeping Toms? Perhaps those people believe that their sexual orientation is a "constitutive" part of their being as well. Conservatives neither hate nor despise homosexuals. But they do believe that society's preference for the traditional family is From watching television I learned that today's mod This feeling was particularly strong during the tenure of William Webster, an autocratic former judge who, rightly or wrongly, was perceived as someone who didn't really like FBI agents. While Webster did much to restore public confidence in the nation's premier law-enforcement agencies, his aloofness, bordering on arrogance, and his heavy-handed treatment of some bureau old-timers made it much more difficult for Sessions.

From the minute Sessions won confirmation, the bureau's potent whispering machine went into action. His affability was portrayed as "goofiness." His wife's demands, while unfortunate, were magnified. And the most serious grumbling came over his determination to diversify the once all-white, all-male organization. Some current and former senior officials charged privately that the director's affirmative action policies were ruining the agency. In the Sessions was stepping on some Justice Department toes and leaving himself vulnerable to the kind of report the department filed last week accusing him of a variety of improprieties, most of which can only be called, as he did, The fact is much of what he is being accused of is fairly regular practice in the bureau and other agencies, including the personal use of phones and cars.

Nevertheless, Sessions may be hard put to remain in the job. It will be up to President Clinton, of course. The new chief executive, who was but a boy during most of Hoover's nearly 50 years in the job, does not have the same fear his predecessors had about bureau abuses. Thus, there is a chance that Hoover will be buried once and for all. Clinton's first choice, should he decide to fire Sessions, reportedly is Lee Col-well, a former associate director of the FBI who is now teaching at the University of Arkansas.

Colwell's reputation in the bureau is impeccable. He is considered smart, fair-minded and thoroughly honest. His appointment would be hailed as an emancipation for all those young agents who aspire to greater heights. While the outsiders have brought some badly needed stability to this all-important organization and largely removed it from the political arena, a director from the inside would add a new dollop of professionalism. It is time.

By DAN THOMASSON Scripps Howard News Service WASHINGTON It's time to dispel the ghost of J. Edgar Hoover and put the FBI in the hands of one of its own. Director William Sessions' current problems stem as much as anything from the fact that, like his three predecessors since the death of Hoover two decades ago, he is an outsider. And like L. Patrick Gray, Clarence Kelley and William Webster before him, Sessions a pleasant, likable man never has been able to completely overcome the resentment FBI insiders feel for one not from their ranks.

Despite a law that now limits the FBI director's term to 10 years, past presidents have been reluctant to consider senior bureau personnel, most of whom were around during at least Hoover's latter years, for the powerful directorship. They believed outside management was utterly necessary to wipe out the last vestiges of Hoover excesses. In many ways, this was a correct position, but it also left an entire generation of young agents feeling they were second-class citizens good enough to die for the bureau if necessary but not to direct it. ern housewife has another labor-saving device to assist her further, her husband, and then again I could be wrong. ORRINE.

MILLER 1930 Franklin St. Work for veterans rights Justice's pursuit of Bobby Fischer is embarrassing WATERLOO It was with a certain amount of pride that I read (county veteran affairs administrator) Bennie Spain's recent letter (about helping veterans). However, there was a measure of sadness too. Sadness in that there are so many more within the community deserving of recognition in respects to their dedicated service to the veterans, I am just one of many. It is true that at times, I get disgusted, disillusioned, and yes, even angry at the system that has placed the veteran so far down the list of folks to help.

A system, if it weren't for the veterans who fought and died so it could exist, continually attempts to limit the benefits they were promised as far back as Abraham Lincoln. As long as I live, I will always fight for the veterans rights, because in my world there is nothing or no one more important than the veteran. My understanding, disgusted and sometimes angry wife is the only exclusion. Without her love and understanding I'd have lost it long ago. But of all the things that his letter said, there was one phrase that meant more to me than all the rest of the letter combined.

That was the phrase that he used in signing off: i.e. your friend. To be classified as a friend is the ultimate compliment thank you. He has done good things for the veterans as a whole and if the truth were known, has made unsolicited sacrifices on their behalf. Please continues the good work.

LEE A. WHITE JT Leonard Larsen Syndicated columnist won in Yugoslavia, the prosecutor was quoted as saying: "People are really mad about Fischer playing over there for all that money." People are mad about that? Maybe so, considering Fischer has never thrown a touchdown pass or hit a major league home run. A better guess, though, would be that people aren't nearly as mad at Fischer as they grew to be mad at their own government, including the Justice Department Fischer can't be blamed for the incredibly inept and criminal stupidity of government that saddled Americans with a $300 billion tab for the collapse. It was the government that was responsible for all that and much more. And if some flunky in the Justice Department actually believes that people have forgotten all that to be mad at Fischer, the flunky himself may be goofy enough to set out on the chess tour.

flourished, an organized ring of Wall Street robbers collected immense illegal wealth and an international banking crime cartel operated freely, all of that going on for years before the Justice Department arrived late on the scene. Right in Washington, Capitol Hill thievery and corruption went on unhindered by a timid Justice Department and suspicious official conduct inside the executive department was excused and explained away under a White House theory that there could be no charges since the White House had found no one was guilty. Fischer, it now appears, might be the last notable scalp targeted for collection by the retiring Bush Justice Department. It is a bureaucratic act of dumbness that was actually put in its best perspective by an assistant prosecutor, mercifully unnamed in a Washington Post report of the criminal filing against Fischer. Referring to the chess prize former Russian champion, Boris Spassky, in Belgrade.

The Serbian atrocities were not curbed by the Bush sanctions. So the Justice Department laid on the lash. Not on the Serbs. Not on Yugoslavia. On Fischer.

And now he's threatened with a fine of up to $250,000 and a 10-year prison term for "trading with the Presumably, the legal wizardry of the Justice Department can link Fischer's play in the chess tournament with the Serbian atrocities in Bosnia and, in that magic process, will prove Fischer was trading with an "enemy" that no one else in the entire federal bureaucracy has yet called an "enemy." This last-gasp business was carried on by an expiring Justice Department that spent much time and effort in recent years dodging its responsibilities to probe and prosecute genuine big-time crooks. The savings and loan scandal WASHINGTON Bobby Fischer, an American eccentric, chess genius and world-class cuckoo, has been charged by the federal government with a crime that's never before been heard of. The Justice Department, whose practice over the last decade was to excuse and ignore financial barracudas and blink at official misconduct in its lap, lodged a felony charge against Fischer, an orchestrated grand jury indictment that Fischer violated economic sanctions against Yugoslavia. Fischer is a man so preoccupied with chess that he might still have to have his mittens pinned to his coat sleeves. Now he's a fugitive American desperado, the first ever charged in an oddball crime where there's not even a victim.

In Washington, U.S. Attorney Jay Stephens said he's got a warrant for Fischer's arrest and he might try to extradite Fischer from Yugoslavia, bring him back to America in handcuffs and leg irons to be put on trial. What Fischer's done, the federal prosecutor explained, is to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. There's more: It's said Fischer entered a contract "in support of a commercial project" in Yugoslavia during the period in which former President Bush had imposed economic sanctions against Yugoslavia. The sanctions were intended to bring influence to curb Serb atrocities and they were ordered by Bush last summer, before Fischer won $3.5 million in a high-stakes chess match against the The Courier welcomes letters on topics of general interest.

Letters must include the writer's signature, address and phone number. Concise and legible letters are printed with the least delay. Letters should not exceed 300 words. All letters are subject to editing. Address: Letters to the Editor, Courier, P.O.

Box 540, Waterloo, Iowa 50704. i.