and order, there should be no limits. to the methods they are able to use. What was good for the gestapo should be good for Los Angeles. The courts tend to think otherwise. Awhile back, when a congressional committee joined up with the chief and others to make a big noise about the dirty-picture traffic here, (referred to ONE also, as if there was some connection). the hearing was rocked by the charge that the cops were the biggest dealers in the business, selling most of the pictures they seized on raids. The committee didn't seem to find this charge interesting enough to investigate. More recently, during a similar big noise. about the dope-traffic, the charge. comes again, that the cops are in the business themselves, selling what they take away from more "amateur" pushers. Six officers were named. Of course, the charge might have been false, but before the interested Federal agencies could investigate further, the chief witness conveniently showed up dead. The Chief quickly issued a fat report clearing the 6 on both dope-pushing and any implication in the murder of their accuser, and asking, incidentally, for more lawenforcement funds. And so we get back to the difficult problem: So society needs guardians-but who watches the watchers?

OLESON & OTHER CENSORS

Local postmaster Oleson (who recently lost his effort to ban ONE, and who has been sniping at the Courts ever since) had tried several times to stick a certain outfit for dirty photos. Each time the courts denied the pictures were dirty. So Oleson tried a new tack, and brought charges of not living up to

one

their advertisments-that is, of NOT producing obscene photos!

Oleson and his pro-censorship allies are leaving no stone turned to try to impose stiff new laws. Since the Courts have insisted on a rigid definition of obscenity, and since most present laws are vague and flabby, state and Federal legislative committees and citizens' groups all over the country have been weeping alligator tears over the amount of smut on newsstands and in the mails. Far be it from me to deny that a lot of stuff on the stands is smut, although obscenity is a very relative concept (we have only to remember what was considered obscene just a few years ago). And I am not convinced that reading a few mild obscenities can be the CAUSE of moral degeneration in a teen-ager. As Dr. Leo Pfeffer told the American Jewish Congress, "You can't set a valid rule for censorship . . . You have to take a proportion of trash with the good material. I have faith that the American people will siphon off and discard the bad."

Mrs. Paul Ashton mobilized 100 local organizations in Santa Barbara, Calif., to plan vigilante action against newsstand literature "deemed obscene or pornographic." She presented a resolution drawn by the Postmasters' Assn. congratulating postmasters on their campaign to stamp out smut, and soliciting the assistance of public groups and Congress to override the limitations placed by the courts.

In Salt Lake City, topcop W. Cleon Skousen asked the city commission to appoint a "Youth Protection Committee" to help police combat distribution of lewd magazines and books, and maybe to keep an eye on TV too . .

24