The Week

Unless someone rules to the contrary between now and January 7, it appears that our old friend, the Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Jr., will have to stand trial for alleged tax evasion, just as though he were, well, just anybody. It is recorded in the New York Herald Tribune (Nov. 18, 1959) that in pleading before a judge to set once and for all a firm trial date, the voice of the assistant U.S. attorney actually broke, as he reviewed the legal undulations over the past year and one half by which Mr. Powell has successfully kept out of court—ending with this fall’s plea that he be given time to have a hernia operation, which he never got around to having. The judge, visibly moved, responded by setting trial for Jan. 7 and warning Mr. Edward Bennett Williams, ace lawyer for criminals—to whom Mr. Powell instinctively turned when the Administration’s attempted fix of the grand jury investigating his affairs failed—that this time the court really means it, and if Mr. Powell has to go and have a hernia operation, he can damn well have it before the 7th of January, or sometime thereafter. Mr. Williams said meekly he will go along: and so it looks as though the Reverend Powell, angel of the Lord, scourge of the white community, heroic prosecutor of anti-Communists, will step forward into the arena and face, with that great faith of his, the lions of his tormentors. If we were the judge, we’d keep those lions under lock and key the next few weeks.

New Jersey Republican Senator Clifford Case 1) has an 80 per cent average in voting for increased government spending, against proposed economies (exceeded only by Jacob Javits’ 96 per cent); 2) on sixteen key roll calls, watched attentively by the AFL-CIO’s Committee on Political Education, voted COPE’s way twelve out of sixteen times; 3) voted against every proposed amendment to strengthen John Kennedy’s anemic labor bill, against Everett Dirksen as Senator Republican leader, against the loyalty oath requirement in the National Defense Education Act; 4) voted for reducing the oil depletion allowance, for curbing Senate debate time, for increasing aid to Communist Poland and Yugoslavia and reducing Eisenhower’s anti-Communist “Cold War Contingency Fund.” This is apparently why the New York Times rushed into an endorsement of Case’s re-election, months before the New Jersey primary, a year before the election, and only one day after conservative Republican Robert Morris declared his intention, come spring, to oppose Case for his party’s nomination.

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Unless someone rules to the contrary between now and January 7, it appears that our old friend, the Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Jr., will have to stand trial for alleged tax evasion, just as though he were, well, just anybody. It is recorded in the New York Herald Tribune (Nov. 18, 1959) that in pleading before a judge to set once and for all a firm trial date, the voice of the assistant U.S. attorney actually broke, as he reviewed the legal undulations over the past year and one half by which Mr. Powell has successfully kept out of court—ending with this fall’s plea that he be given time to have a hernia operation, which he never got around to having. The judge, visibly moved, responded by setting trial for Jan. 7 and warning Mr. Edward Bennett Williams, ace lawyer for criminals—to whom Mr. Powell instinctively turned when the Administration’s attempted fix of the grand jury investigating his affairs failed—that this time the court really means it, and if Mr. Powell has to go and have a hernia operation, he can damn well have it before the 7th of January, or sometime thereafter. Mr. Williams said meekly he will go along: and so it looks as though the Reverend Powell, angel of the Lord, scourge of the white community, heroic prosecutor of anti-Communists, will step forward into the arena and face, with that great faith of his, the lions of his tormentors. If we were the judge, we’d keep those lions under lock and key the next few weeks.

New Jersey Republican Senator Clifford Case 1) has an 80 per cent average in voting for increased government spending, against proposed economies (exceeded only by Jacob Javits’ 96 per cent); 2) on sixteen key roll calls, watched attentively by the AFL-CIO’s Committee on Political Education, voted COPE’s way twelve out of sixteen times; 3) voted against every proposed amendment to strengthen John Kennedy’s anemic labor bill, against Everett Dirksen as Senator Republican leader, against the loyalty oath requirement in the National Defense Education Act; 4) voted for reducing the oil depletion allowance, for curbing Senate debate time, for increasing aid to Communist Poland and Yugoslavia and reducing Eisenhower’s anti-Communist “Cold War Contingency Fund.” This is apparently why the New York Times rushed into an endorsement of Case’s re-election, months before the New Jersey primary, a year before the election, and only one day after conservative Republican Robert Morris declared his intention, come spring, to oppose Case for his party’s nomination.