Category Archives: Law

Jim Crow, 1937

Eighty years ago today, Life Magazine, May 24, 1937, carried these images of two separate but “equal” rail cars in the southern United States. The car on the left was reserved for white passengers, with the one on the right for African Americans. The caption noted that the car for whites was spotlessly clean and air conditioned, with individual seats. For the same fare, black passengers travelled in a dirtier car without air conditioning with standard seats.

The magazine feature was prompted by a lawsuit by Rep. Arthur Mitlchel of Illinois, who was then the only black Member of Congress. In April, he had traveled by rail from Chicago to Hot Springs, Arkansas. He traveled in a Pullman car and first class coach until the train reached the Arkansas state line. At that time , as required by Arkansas law, the conductor asked him to move to the Jim Crow coach, which the Congressman called filthy.

He brought suit against the railroad, but made clear that he was not crusading for the end of Jim Crowism. Instead, he was seeking merely the “equal accommodations” promised by the law. He lost before the ICC and the District Court, but ultimately appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The case, Mitchell v. United States, 313 U.S. 80 (1941) was decided in Mitchell’s favor on April 28, 1941. In 1896, the Court had ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), that “separate but equal” satisfied the Equal Protection clause. That case wasn’t overruled until 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). But in Mitchell, the Court held that equal does, indeed, mean equal.

The railroad and the ICC had argued that there was little demand for first class accommodations by African-American passengers. In fact, the evidence suggested that Mitchell was the first black person to request first class accommodations on the train. But the court held that this was irrelevant, since the ruling “made the constitutional right depend upon the number of persons who may be discriminated against, whereas the essence of that right is that it is a personal one.”

The practical difficulties were irrelevant, according to the court. It was enough that the discrimination had taken place.

Congress Institutes Draft: 1917

Wikipedia image.

On this day one hundred years ago, May 18, 1917, Congress passed the Selective Service Act of 1917, authorizing the military draft, now that the nation was at war.

Unlike the draft for the Civil War, the act specifically prohibited the hiring of substitutes:

No person liable to military service shall hereafter be permitted or allowed to furnish a substitute for such service; nor shall any substitute be received, enlisted, or enrolled in the military service of the United States; and no such person shall be permitted to escape such service or to be discharged therefrom prior to the expiration of his term of service by the payment of money or any other valuable thing whatsoever as consideration his release from military service or liability there to.

The first registration under the act, for men age 21-31, was set for June 5, 1917. 18 year olds were set to be registered in 1918.

In 1918, the U.S. Supreme Court held the Act constitutional.

Texas City Disaster, 1947

Parking lot a quarter mile from the blast. Wikipedia photo.

Today marks the 70th anniversary of the deadliest industrial accident in U.S. history, the Texas City disaster of April 16, 1947, which started as a fire aboard the French-registered vessel SS Grandcamp docked at Texas City, Texas, with 2200 tons of ammonium nitrate. The disaster killed at least 581 people, including all but one member of the Texas City fire department.

Smoke was spotted in the cargo hold of the Grandcamp at about 8:00 AM. The captain ordered his crew to steam the hold, which probably made matters worse by converting the ammonium nitrate to nitrous oxide.

Spectators gathered, believing that they were a safe distance away. The sealed hold began to bulge, and water splashing against the hull began to boil.

The cargo detonated at 9:12 AM, with a blast leveling over a thousand buildings on land and destroyed the Monsanto chemical plan and ignited refinery and chemical tanks on the waterfront. Bails of twine from the cargo were set afire and hurled around the city. People in Galveston, 10 miles away, were forced to their knees, and the shock wave was felt as far as 250 miles away.

The ironically named SS High Flyer was docked nearby, and the blast set fire to that ship’s cargo of ammounium nitrate. Fifteen hours later, that ship exploded.

As might be expected, the blast destroyed much of the city’s communication infrastructure, and amateur radio operators quickly responded to fill the gap. Many of these stories are detailed in the July 1947 issue of QST (pages 38-40).

B.H. Standley, W5FQQ, on the air at city hall, along with city clerk Ernest Smith, Nurse Mrs. E.L. Brockman.

By noon, the first amateur portable and mobile stations had moved into the city and were on the air, working in conjuction with Army, Navy, Coast Guard, U.S. Engineers, FBI, and local and state police. Links were quickly set up between City Hall and stations in Houston and San Antonio. Most traffic was handled on 75 meter phone and 80 and 40 meter CW. W5KMZ reportedly handled over 200 messages, mostly involving needed medical supplies. As the hours went on, additional traffic was handled by W5FQQ at the mayor’s office, with over 300 messages passing on behalf of city officials, the Army, Red Cross, and Salvation Army.

An impromptu three-way net was established on 3989 kHz between Texas City, Galveston, and Houston.

Two hams, W5FQQ and W5EEX, had been advised to evacuate but remained at their stations. They narrowly escaped death when the High Flyer lived up to its name with its explosion. W5FQQ was on the air at the time of the blast, and the blast was heard by W5IGS in Houston. 21 seconds later, the Houston station experienced his windows shaking.

W1AW declared the emergency to be over 11 days later, on April 17.

As might be expected, considerable litigation followed, much of it under the Federal Tort Claims Act for alleged negligence of the U.S. Government. The case ultimately made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, Dahelite v. United States, 346 U.S. 15 (1953), in which the court held that the Government was not liable, since all of the claimed government negligence amounted to discretionary acts.

Old Glory: Banned in Boston

We recently carried an image , a smaller version of which is shown at the right above, of the SS Kansan, illustrating how the U.S. flag was illuminated to make abundantly clear that the ship was a neutral vessel. The image appeared on the cover of the January 1917 issue of Electrical Experimenter.

Newsstand readers in Boston, however, didn’t see the flag. Instead, some of them saw a sticker of Santa Claus. Massachusetts law forbade the sale of goods displaying the flag, so news dealers were forced to obscure it. In this case, Santa Claus got the honors of being the censor. The image above is taken from the magazine’s March issue, which explained the odd juxtaposition.

Justice William O. Douglas, 1947

Shown here 70 years ago at the soda fountain of a drug store near the U.S. Supreme Court is Associate Justice William O. Douglas.

The 17 year old soda jerk serving him is his daughter, Mildred Douglas, and the picture appeared in the February 24, 1947, issue of Life magazine. According to the magazine, she was somewhat abashed by the publicity, and announced that she took the job for the money, earning 65 cents per hour. Her younger brother, Bill, 14, had a paper route.

Douglas was four times married and three times divorced. He divorced Mildred’s mother, also named Mildred, in 1953. The children were subsequently estranged from their father, and the younger Mildred was later quoted as saying that the Justice “never talked to us like we were people” that “when he got angry at us, which was often over the slightest things, he would simply not speak to us for days on end,” and that she “didn’t like him very much because of the way he treated my mother.”

When the elder Mildred died, the Justice was not immediately informed, since neither sibling felt the desire to inform him.

Editorial Endorsement: Gary Johnson for President

Today, we interrupt our normal programming and announce our endorsement for President of the United States.

I am a lifelong Republican, and have voted for every Republican nominee since Ronald Reagan in 1980. In some cases, I cast my vote enthusiastically. In other cases, I only reluctantly voted for the nominee. But in each case, I believed that the nominee more or less reflected the principles of the party of Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan. I am also a card-carrying Republican, both as a precinct officer and delegate to the Minnesota state Republican convention (although the party would certainly be within its rights to remove me for publishing this endorsement.)

For the first time in 36 years, I will be voting for someone other than a Republican for the nation’s highest office. This year, I will be voting for the Libertarian nominee, Gary Johnson. It is with a certain amount of sadness, but also with hopefulness, that I publicly endorse him.

Obviously, this amounts to a vote against Trump, and I want to explain why I am voting against him. It is not because I subscribe to the conventional wisdom and believe that Trump is Another Hitler, because I don’t think he is. I might be wrong, but it seems to me equally likely that Hillary Clinton would actually turn out to be the Another Hitler. I don’t think she is either, but it’s just about as likely.

The real reason I’m voting against Donald Trump is because he fails to embody the principles for which the Republican Party has stood for over 150 years. First and foremost, the Republican Party is the party of Liberty–and that includes both personal and civil liberties as well as economic liberty. A free people best govern themselves when personal decisions are left to the individual, with an absolute minimum of government coercion. That’s what Republicans believe, and it’s what I’ve always believed.

In the economic realm, this means that every person should be able to succeed or fail on his or her own merits. And as a conservative, I believe that the Free Market is in the least worst way of determining who should succeed and who should fail. If there’s no market for my product or service, then the public is best served if I fail and abandon that product or service in favor of another. My resources and my talents are wasted if I devote them to something the public neither wants nor needs. And the best way to deliver that message to me is to have consumers stop patronizing me.

If another casino is what we need, then the free market should bear that out for someone who wants to take the risk to open one. But the full coercive power of government shouldn’t be called upon to decide that a casino is the highest and best use for private property.

I have no doubt that Donald Trump was a successful businessman. But he did not become a success by means of the free market. For the most part, he became successful because of what are euphemistically called “public-private partnerships,” or what we used to call Mercantilism. (Or what we could call Fascism, as the word was originally defined.) He was successful because the full coercive power of the state sided with him. Perhaps another real estate developer would have been more successful, but we will never know that. The other real estate investor didn’t get the imprimatur of the regulators.

Hillary Clinton is no better. The only difference is that she sat on the other side of the table in many a “public-private partnership.” Her attitude is best exemplified in a 1993 quote in which she said, “I can’t be responsible for every undercapitalized entrepreneur in America.” This was in reference to whether health-care mandates would drive small businesses out of business. It didn’t matter to her, because she dismissed those businesses as “undercapitalized.” But they are undercapitalized only because they are not established players in a given industry. I used to believe the Democrats when they said that they cared for the little person in the fight against big business. But I started to notice that the largest established players in any given industry tend to favor greater government regulation. This is because the established players can bear the costs of overregulation, unlike their “undercapitalized” competitors and startups. It’s merely another way in which the government is able to pick winners and losers. The established competitor is favored by regulation, and innovative newcomers are locked out of the market.

There’s only one logical choice for President, and that is someone who exemplifies those principles that the Republican Party once stood for, and that choice is Gary Johnson. He’s a fiscal conservative, but more importantly, be believes in both personal liberty and economic liberty. He was a successful businessman, not because he received a favored position in a “public-private partnership,” but because he provided goods and services that the public wanted.

I don’t agree with Gary Johnson on every issue. Fortunately, however, he is not running to be the absolute dictator; he is merely running for President of the United States. He cannot act unilaterally on most issues. And critically, he seems to understand the Constitutional limitations of his office and would not act unilaterally.

I won’t catalog every issue on which I disagree, but I will mention the most troubling. Gary Johnson is apparently pro-choice. I am pro-life, and I believe that the state has a legitimate duty to protect innocent human life. To the extent that President Johnson acts in accordance with his stated principles, I will oppose him.

But I’m also aware that the President of the United States does not perform abortions, nor does he order that they be performed. He has no power to permit or outlaw abortion. Donald Trump claims to be pro-life (although he declared himself to be staunchly pro-choice in the past). But whether or not the president is pro-life has little effect on whether innocent lives will be slaughtered. The nation’s policy on abortion should be, in my opinion, properly vested in the state legislatures, who have legislated criminal codes since before the beginning of the Republic. The policy is currently vested (improperly, in my opinion), in the judiciary. But it’s not currently vested in the federal executive branch, nor should it be. So in a sense, whether or not Gary Johnson is pro-life is irrelevant. More importantly, as a proponent of limited government, Johnson himself should see it as irrelevant to his office.

Donald Trump’s sole redeeming quality is his apparent willingness to appoint conservative justices to the U.S. Supreme Court. For example, one of the names that is allegedly on his short list is that of Minnesota Supreme Court Justice David Stras. As a committed federalist, Stras, or someone like him, would be an excellent choice for the nation’s high court. Again, Trump’s pledge to nominate someone like Stras is the candidate’s sole redeeming quality.

But frankly, I don’t trust Donald Trump enough to vote for him based upon one single pledge. And given Gary Johnson’s apparent willingness to embrace the U.S. Constitution, I do trust him to appoint constitutionalist judges, even if he has not yet named names.

Roe v. Wade won’t be overruled by the executive branch, no matter how zealously pro-life the president happens to be. And it certainly won’t be overruled just because the candidate says that he’s pro-life, despite a long history of saying that he’s pro-choice. In my opinion, Roe v. Wade is a constitutional aberration that ought to be overruled. I believe that a constitutionalist judge would agree if the issue were squarely presented. And I believe that Gary Johnson is the most likely presidential candidate to appoint constitutionalist judges.

In short, Gary Johnson is not a perfect candidate. But he is the closest to a perfect candidate that I’ve seen in the past 20 years. More than any other candidate in the race, he best exemplifies the values of the Republican Party, whether or not he bears that label.

And no, I don’t believe that I am “wasting” my vote by voting for Gary Johnson. I have never voted for a candidate merely because I though he or she was going to win. In fact, as a Republican in a staunchly Democratic state, I rarely vote for the winning candidate. For example, I don’t believe that I have ever voted for a candidate for the state legislature who actually won. In every single legislative race since 1980, I have voted for the loser every single time. For 18 straight elections, I have consistently voted for the losing candidate. I’ve volunteered for losing candidates, knowing full well that they were going to lose. I’ve even served as the campaign treasurer for a losing candidate, knowing full well that she was going to lose. But I never considered my vote wasted. The purpose of the whole exercise is to determine who the majority supports. And for that process to work, the people voting for the minority candidate must see their candidate lose.

This year, it’s quite likelty that I’ll be voting for the losing candidate for President. But that’s nothing new for me. Even if I do vote for the loser, I won’t consider my vote wasted.

However, I am not convinced that Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton will be the next President. I’m not the only person who believes that there should be another choice. I’ve seen as many Gary Johnson signs as I have seen signs for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. I’ve seen more support for Gary Johnson on social media than I’ve seen for either of the other candidates. If all of those people vote for Gary Johnson, then he might win. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy to vote against him merely because he will lose.

It seems unlikely that Gary Johnson will be the winner as of election night. But it seems quite plausible to me that he will carry enough states to deprive either of the other candidates a majority in the Electoral College. If that happens, then our Constitution calls for the President to be selected by the House of Representatives, voting by State. In that case, the House will be called upon to select the President from among the top three in the Electoral College. In that scenario, it seems likely that Johnson would be elected, as the only palatable compromise candidate. No Democrat is going to vote for Donald Trump, and very few Republicans are going to vote for Hillary Clinton. Johnson is probably the only candidate who can win. Or to put it another way, members of the House would be wasting their vote by casting it for either Trump or Clinton.

Currently, Gary Johnson has more endorsements by major newspapers than Donald Trump. Most recently, the Chicago Tribune endorsed Johnson. For whatever its worth, OneTubeRadio.com now joins them in endorsing Gary Johnson for President.

Tomorrow, we return to our normally scheduled programming, consisting of pictures of old radios.

This page was prepared and paid for by Richard P. Clem. This page is not endorsed by any candidate or candidate’s committee. Minnesota attorney Richard P. Clem is solely responsible for the content of this page.

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Endorsements: Craig Foss for Minnesota Supreme Court, Ryan for Congress, in the August 9 Primary

I’m sure most OneTubeRadio.com readers have been eagerly waiting for my endorsement for the contested Minnesota Supreme Court seat, so here it is.

There are three candidates running in the primary election. Voters are asked to vote for one candidate. One will be eliminated from the race, and the remaining two candidates will appear on the November ballot. This is the only statewide primary election.

The incumbent is Justice Natalie Hudson, who was appointed to the bench in 2015 by Governor Dayton. Prior to her appointment to the Supreme Court, she served from 2002-2015 on the Minnesota Court of Appeals, and before that as an Asistant Attorney General. She began her legal career in 1982 as a staff attorney for Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services. I will probably be voting for Justice Hudson in the November general election. You can read her response to questions by the Minnesota State Bar Association at this link.

Justice Hudson faces two challengers, Craig Foss and Michelle MacDonald.

Mr. Foss unashamedly states that he wants to become an appellate judge because “the demand for legally blind attorneys is not high. So I decided to see if I could get elected to a job.” He is a duly licensed attorney in the State of Minnesota, and has been since 1995. He therefore meets the minimum legal and constitutional requirements for the position he seeks.

Ms. MacDonald is also a duly licensed attorney and has been since 1987. Therefore, she also meets the minimum legal and constitutional requirements to appear on the ballot. Ms. MacDonald also ran for Supreme Court in 2014 and sought, and obtained, the Republican endorsement. I was present at the 2014 state Republican convention when she was nominated, without discussion, after the now dissolved judicial elections committee recommended her nomination. (For the record, I did not vote for her during the otherwise unanimous voice vote.) Unfortunately, the committee recommended her without disclosing that she was then facing criminal charges. She was ultimately found guilty of some (but not all) of those charges. When her criminal charges came to light, the party backpedaled its support and refused to offer her a spot at the Minnesota State Fair. Ms. MacDonald showed up anyway and created a scene.

In 2016, she once again sought the Republican endorsement. This time, with her record known to all of the convention delegates, the party wisely decided not to endorse. In fact, it went a step further and disbanded the judicial nomination committee. I voted with the majority on both of those votes.

For these reasons, I recommend voting against Ms. MacDonald in the upcoming primary. It is very likely that Justice Hudson, because of her incumbent status, will be one of the two top votegetters in the August 9 primary. Therefore, to ensure that Ms. MacDonald does not appear on the November ballot, I will be voting for Craig Foss. There will be two candidates in the November general election. In my opinion, Ms. MacDonald does not have the required judicial temperament to serve on the state’s high court. On the other hand, I have no reason to believe that Mr. Foss would not serve fairly and impartially. Indeed, his disability would probably bring an unrepresented point of view to the high court. I doubt if I’ll vote for him in November, but if he’s elected, I have every reason to believe that he will take his position seriously and will serve with distinction. He would not be an embarrassment to the state or to the legal profession.

Therefore, I endorse Craig Foss for Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court in the August 9 primary election.

I also endorse Greg Ryan in the Republican primary for U.S. Congress in the 4th District (St. Paul area).

Attorney Richard P. Clem is solely responsible for the content of this page. This page is prepared and paid for by Richard P. Clem, and is not paid for by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

14th Amendment 150th Anniversary

Today marks the sesquicentennial of the passage by Congress of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution on June 13, 1866, which was ratified on July 9, 1868. Section 1 provides:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

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WOW Omaha Turns 18, 1941

Radio station KXSP, Omaha, first came on the air in 1923. The station is probably best known for the WOW call letters that it bore from 1926 to 1999, representing its owner, Woodmen of the World Life Insurance Society. When it first came on the air, those call letters were not available, since they were assigned to the steamer Henry J. Bibble. Instead, the station signed on as WOAW. When that ship was scrapped in 1926, the station took over those call letters.

When the station reached the age of majority eighteen years later, it held a birthday party, and invited six young Omaha women who were born the same day. The six are shown here, and they are, from left to right, Blanche Zaloudek, Roslyn Levy, Jacqueline Giles, Helen Rummelhart, Elaine Kinzli and De Lorse McCarty. They appeared in the May, 1941, issue of the station’s program guide, Radio News Tower.

Seven years later, the young woman on the left had married, and was known as Blanche Howard. Her uncle, J.F. Zaloudek, died in Kansas without a will, and Blanche was one of the heirs. She inherited a portion of some property in Wilson, Kansas. Shortly thereafter, Blanche, along with one of the other heirs, was back in court. It turned out that her uncle had a judgment against his brother, another one of the heirs. She went to court to seek to enforce this judgment, and the case ultimately went to the Kansas Supreme Court. In its opinion in the case, Zaloudek v. Zaloudek, 171 Kan. 72, 229 P.2d 727 (1951), that court held that Blanche and the other heir didn’t have standing to revive the judgment against the brother.

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NPOTA: North Country Scenic Trail, Jay Cooke State Park, MN

Today, I did a National Parks On the Air (NPOTA) activation of the North Country National Scenic Trail, a hiking trail that extends from eastern New York to North Dakota. My operating location was in Jay Cooke State Park, Minnesota, about 25 miles south of Duluth. My operating location is shown here. The radio itself, my Yaesu FT-817, is barely visible propped up by the bright blue canvas bag, in front of the dark blue bag. The 12 volt battery is on top of the bright red bag, and my lunch is inside the dark red bag. The cable going up to my antenna is visible, but the antenna, a 20 meter dipole tied to trees with string, while in the frame, is not visible.

During NPOTA, amateur radio operators set up portable stations at National Park units and make contact with other amateurs at home. The event has been very popular, and there have been hundreds of thousands of contacts made from the parks. Since the event includes all units of the National Park Service, the North Country Trail qualifies as a “National Park,” allowing me to operate from one of the Minnesota state parks crossed by the trail.

During today’s activation, I managed only four contacts, the furthest being Mississippi. According to the Reverse Beacon Network, my signal was getting out. Unfortunately, many chasers don’t bother looking for stations. They wait until they’re spotted on the internet, and then work them. So making that first contact can be a challenge. Since I was only there for a brief stop over lunch, I didn’t bother persisting to make six more contacts. But I’ll be operating from this spot again on June 5 as part of the Light Up The Trail event being done in conjunction with NPOTA. During that event, stations will be set up at various locations along the North Country Trail. I decided to do a trial run today, since I’m in Duluth to present a Continuing Legal Education program on Friday morning, and then serving as a delegate to the Minnesota Republican State Convention on Friday and Saturday.

The swing bridge at Jay Cooke State Park was washed away.

2012 flooding of bridge. USGS photo.

Swinging Bridge prior to 2012 flood. Wikipedia photo.

Jay Cooke State Park was originally created in 1915 by a donation of land from the St. Louis Power Company. It remained undeveloped until the 1930’s, when the Civilian Conservation Corps built many of the park’s structures, including the iconic Swinging Bridge over the St. Louis River. The bridge was destroyed by flooding in 2012 but subsequently rebuilt according to the original plans. As you can see from the picture at the top of the page, my operating location was near the bridge and near the River Inn visitor center in the picture shown below, also constructed by the CCC. The North Country Trail passes over the Swinging Bridge, putting my operating location well within the 50 yards from the trail required by the NPOTA rules.

River Inn Visitor Center, Jay Cooke State Park. Wikipedia photo.

This stretch of the St. Louis River consists of a long rapids impossible to traverse by canoe. Therefore, both Native Americans and Europeans portaged around the rapids, and this portage remained in use until the 1870’s.

Starting in the 17th century, the portage was used heavily by fur traders, since it formed part of the route from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River basin. The voyageurs had to traverse the 6.5 mile portage through the area, carrying two or three packs weighing about 90 pounds each. It took three to five days to cross the portage, and the voyageurs doing so would be covered with mud and insect bites. My activation today was not quite so strenuous. It required me to carry my complete station, including battery, radio, and antennas, weighing a total of about 10 pounds, a total of about 100 yards from the parking lot to the picnic area. And even though I got mostly skunked, I bet the voyageurs who traversed the area a few centuries ago would never dream that it would someday be possible to toss a wire into a tree and talk halfway across the continent with a piece of equipment that would have made only a small dent in their 90 pound packs.

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