THE WEEK

The most evasive yes of the week was ventured by Chairman Rostenkowski of the House Ways and Means Committee, who when asked if he was being evasive about the trade bill replied, “Maybe I am. Maybe Pm not.”

Conservatives should not mistake, as some have, Congress’s act to indemnify Japanese-Americans for just another move in the game of guilt-trip racial politics. The Constitution forbids the taking of liberty and property without due process of law, meaning individual trial and proof of personal guilt. The Federal Government did just that: deprived 120,000 U.S. citizens of liberty and property without trial. The sixty thousand living victims of mass incarceration and expropriation are to be paid a modest $20,000 each for their three years of wrongful imprisonment. They are to be compensated as individuals, not as members of a race; the reparation won’t drain the national treasury dry, and nobody is being asked to wear a hair shirt. The government is merely making belated amends for directly breaking one of the basic pledges of its founding. By the way, the chief responsible official was Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the chief enforcer was Earl Warren.

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The most evasive yes of the week was ventured by Chairman Rostenkowski of the House Ways and Means Committee, who when asked if he was being evasive about the trade bill replied, “Maybe I am. Maybe Pm not.”

Conservatives should not mistake, as some have, Congress’s act to indemnify Japanese-Americans for just another move in the game of guilt-trip racial politics. The Constitution forbids the taking of liberty and property without due process of law, meaning individual trial and proof of personal guilt. The Federal Government did just that: deprived 120,000 U.S. citizens of liberty and property without trial. The sixty thousand living victims of mass incarceration and expropriation are to be paid a modest $20,000 each for their three years of wrongful imprisonment. They are to be compensated as individuals, not as members of a race; the reparation won’t drain the national treasury dry, and nobody is being asked to wear a hair shirt. The government is merely making belated amends for directly breaking one of the basic pledges of its founding. By the way, the chief responsible official was Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the chief enforcer was Earl Warren.