Editorials
Tuesday, December 1, 1998

Official census is too
important to be wrong

THE U.S. Constitution calls for an "actual enumeration" of the population every 10 years, but the task of counting every head in the country is impossible. The Clinton administration is asking the Supreme Court to allow the use of statistical sampling on those not responding to the Census Bureau by mail. Since sophisticated methods are available to accurately reflect the population and its makeup, they should be utilized.

Only two-thirds of American households actually mail back their census forms. While the government has managed to pester most of the others into compliance, the Census Bureau estimates that it overlooked 4.7 million people in 1990. Those most likely to be missed are minorities and low-income families, whose presumed Democratic leanings have made this a partisan issue.

After the last census, President George Bush and the Democratic-controlled Congress asked the National Academy of Sciences to suggest improvements, and the academy recommended sampling. The Census Bureau then formulated a plan to send head counters to homes that didn't respond to the census mailing to achieve a 90 percent count level. The assumed balance would be ascribed racial, ethnic and economic characteristics based on those in their respective subparts of the nation's 7 million census blocks.

This is more than a dispute over bureaucratic process. The census is used to determine not only each state's representation in the House of Representatives, but each congressional district's share of the $196 billion a year disbursed for highway construction, homeless shelters, anti-crime projects and a myriad of other federal programs.

House lawyer Maureen Mahony told Supreme Court justices that census takers should not be allowed to write down how many people live in a house or large apartment if nobody is home when they knock -- even, as Justice Stephen Breyer hypothesized, "if the lights go on and off in the evening."

Ignoring the existence of such people would be political chicanery at its most basic level. House Republicans would do better to attempt a bipartisan approach at counting a population that is known to exist although difficult to touch.

Instant gun checks

WHEN Congress approved legislation five years ago to regulate gun sales, the gun lobby was able to insert an expiration date into the five-day waiting period for background checks of gun purchasers. Instant background checks replaced the waiting period yesterday, allowing gun purchases by many whose disqualifications fail to appear in the federal computer records that will be checked.

The National Instant Check System, which the Justice Department is implementing for the background checks, includes felony convictions and some other barriers, such as dishonorable discharges from the military. The system does not include many records at state and local levels, including domestic-violence misdemeanors, court restraining orders, recent arrests and state criminal and mental health records. Last year 7,500 people were denied handguns due to domestic-violence misdemeanors or restraining orders.

While the Brady law initially included background checks for handgun purchases, the instant checks will be for purchases of any firearms, so the checks are expected to double. While including all firearms is an improvement, the increased volume may create some difficulties during the transition. An estimated 12.4 million firearms are sold in the United States each year.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Rep. Morrie Morella, R-Md., say they will sponsor legislation in the next Congress to institute a three-day waiting period. The waiting period is needed not only to complete a more thorough background check but as a cooling-off period needed to prevent crimes of passion and suicides. Law enforcement agencies support the measure. The gun lobby does not.

The Brady law has been effective in controlling violent crime. Loosening those controls to allow quick purchases of lethal weapons is a step back in the war against crime.

A ‘Twisty’ idea

VICKIE Ives Speir of Marsal, Tex., may have single-handedly demonstrated why the concept of human cloning is frowned upon by a vast majority of people. According to the Wall Street Journal, Speir has created what she calls "Twisty Kats," felines with tiny, malformed front legs. Because they have difficulty moving about, they amble and can sit up on their back legs like kangaroos.

The cat breeder said she did it so they would reproduce less, be less likely to run away and pose less of a threat to small animals like birds. But after proudly posting photos of her "experiment" on the Internet, Speir is being condemned as a cruel Dr. Frankenstein.

The genetic manipulation of animals has been commonly used to produce stronger and better generations. But Speir's description of her mutants as "cute when they sit up" has been met with disgust and dismay by cat lovers across the nation. A representative of the International Cat Association says, "A Twisty Kat is like a human with a club foot. The cat may not have pain, but it is severely disabled." Adds Rick Berry, the local district attorney, "It's sick, stupid, (but) criminally, we're pretty frustrated."

Speir may not have broken any laws but she certainly has broken the hearts of cat lovers, some of whom are so incensed that they have threatened to burn down her home and kill her deformed kittens. While she says, "I am a respecter of life," her actions speak otherwise. Her experiment makes the thought of human cloning even more abhorrent than it already is.

---

Published by Liberty Newspapers Limited Partnership

Rupert E. Phillips, CEO

John M. Flanagan, Editor & Publisher

David Shapiro, Managing Editor

Diane Yukihiro Chang, Senior Editor & Editorial Page Editor

Frank Bridgewater & Michael Rovner, Assistant Managing Editors

A.A. Smyser, Contributing Editor