The Week

■ After strangling his wife, Mr. Murphy went voluntarily to the police station where the police, over his objections, scraped from under his fingernails just enough of Mrs. Murphy to secure his conviction. It was understandable, in the light of recent legal history, that Mr. Murphy should argue in his appeal that he had been the victim of “unreasonable search and seizure”; but it was also reassuring, in the light of selfsame history, that the Supreme Court should say him nay. Equally reassuring was the Court’s ruling in favor of police in another case who, entering Mr. Mattlock’s room by permission of a woman whom they naively supposed to be Mrs. Matt- lock, discovered $5,000 Mr. Mattlock had unreasonably seized from a bank. The court rejected the defense argument that the police should have ascertained before entry whether the woman had in fact legal authority to grant them access. A third decision affirmed the right of radio and TV stations to refuse advertising for political campaigns and controversial public issues; a fourth, that accused criminals judged too ill mentally for trial could be confined to mental hospitals run by a state’s corrections department only if deemed “dangerous” by a jury. None of these was a landmark decision, but all were eminently reasonable; for which, Deo gratias.

■ Health bills are the latest fad in Congress. Only Representative Phil Crane voted against one $1.27-billion House measure, the most significant feature of which is to continue the Hill-Burton aid to hospital construction. The trouble is, most areas already have surplus hospital beds, new outpatient provisions of insurance plans are making that surplus more and more acute, and Hill-Burton projects have often been constructed in communities where existing hospitals are chronically half-empty. Another House bill, passed 361 to 5, provides $415 million over two years for grants and fellowships for aspiring medical researchers. But the Bureau of Labor Statistics already projects a rapid increase in the number of life- science graduates without more federal grants, and “keen competition is expected for the more desirable positions.” Congress might well rethink the whole idea of taking tax money from average citizens to finance an education that will guarantee the recipient an unusually comfortable income. According to Christopher Jencks, the liberal Harvard sociologist, “it would … be fairer to finance advanced education through long-term loans to those who attend college and graduate school than through taxes on those who do not attend.”

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■ After strangling his wife, Mr. Murphy went voluntarily to the police station where the police, over his objections, scraped from under his fingernails just enough of Mrs. Murphy to secure his conviction. It was understandable, in the light of recent legal history, that Mr. Murphy should argue in his appeal that he had been the victim of “unreasonable search and seizure”; but it was also reassuring, in the light of selfsame history, that the Supreme Court should say him nay. Equally reassuring was the Court’s ruling in favor of police in another case who, entering Mr. Mattlock’s room by permission of a woman whom they naively supposed to be Mrs. Matt- lock, discovered $5,000 Mr. Mattlock had unreasonably seized from a bank. The court rejected the defense argument that the police should have ascertained before entry whether the woman had in fact legal authority to grant them access. A third decision affirmed the right of radio and TV stations to refuse advertising for political campaigns and controversial public issues; a fourth, that accused criminals judged too ill mentally for trial could be confined to mental hospitals run by a state’s corrections department only if deemed “dangerous” by a jury. None of these was a landmark decision, but all were eminently reasonable; for which, Deo gratias.

■ Health bills are the latest fad in Congress. Only Representative Phil Crane voted against one $1.27-billion House measure, the most significant feature of which is to continue the Hill-Burton aid to hospital construction. The trouble is, most areas already have surplus hospital beds, new outpatient provisions of insurance plans are making that surplus more and more acute, and Hill-Burton projects have often been constructed in communities where existing hospitals are chronically half-empty. Another House bill, passed 361 to 5, provides $415 million over two years for grants and fellowships for aspiring medical researchers. But the Bureau of Labor Statistics already projects a rapid increase in the number of life- science graduates without more federal grants, and “keen competition is expected for the more desirable positions.” Congress might well rethink the whole idea of taking tax money from average citizens to finance an education that will guarantee the recipient an unusually comfortable income. According to Christopher Jencks, the liberal Harvard sociologist, “it would … be fairer to finance advanced education through long-term loans to those who attend college and graduate school than through taxes on those who do not attend.”