Other Views

By The Associated Press

Here are excerpts from editorials in U.S. newspapers:

A bum rap

The Advocate, Baton Rouge, La.

This time House Speaker Newt Gingrich is making excellent sense, and he's getting a bum rap from some of his fellow conservatives.

That's a mind-boggling reversal from a few months ago, when he was getting support from misguided conservatives at a time when he deserved condemnation for ethical lapses.

Gingrich seems to have come around to the eminently sensible, totally logical idea that the budget should be balanced before taxes are cut. You can't get any more fiscally conservative than that.

Dollar coin

Telegraph Herald, Dubuque, Iowa

Snakebit by the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin fiasco of two decades ago, the federal government has shied away from minting a coin worth $1.

So shy, in fact, that the last Susan B. Anthony dollar was minted 16 years ago. Only now are government stocks of that coin running low.

Everybody who had or handled that dollar coin knew the problem: It was too much like a quarter. So people stopped using them.

Yet that experience should not stand in the way of saving hundreds of millions of dollars in currency manufacturing expense.

Affirmative action

Los Angeles Times

The dismantling of affirmative action programs at public university systems in California and Texas appears to be having a chilling effect. Applications from Latino and African American students are down significantly in both states. That could portend a long-term trend toward less diversity on these campuses and in education generally. In short, a big step backward.

Welfare reform

The Times-Union, Rochester, N.Y.

The surest signs of the high discomfort level with Gov. George Pataki's welfare proposal are the concerns raised by some New York county executives.

The state's plan for phased-in benefit cuts, they fear, would make it all the more difficult to move recipients from welfare to work. And Pataki's proposed mandatory drug testing of adults on welfare as well as his use of vouchers would be an expensive administrative nightmare.

The misguided federal overhaul of the welfare system has turned a commitment to help the poor into a block grant system - without guarantees and with a five-year lifetime limit on cash benefits.

Decency bill

Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal

The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments concerning the 1996 federal Communications Decency Act, which would make it illegal to provide "patently offensive" material to minors over the Internet, So far, lower courts have said that steps too heavily on the First Amendment.

In Ohio, the spotlight is on public libraries. Some parents, concerned that their children could use publicly funded library equipment to view pornographic, violent or other offensive material, are asking that access be limited.

Nothing can stop kids determined to look at dirty pictures. In the end, parents should set the rules. Libraries have a proud history of making information available; they should not be the ones to make it off limits.

Time off

The Daily News, Jacksonville, N.C.

To hear the Democrats and their union allies tell it, just about the worst thing you could do to hourly employees in this country is to give them a choice about whether they get pay or time off in recompense for overtime work.

That takes the darkest possible view of those who happen to own or manage businesses.

The Senate is not sure to pass the bill, and President Clinton has vowed to veto it should it ever reach his desk. What's really going on is political theater, but it's educational theater, highly informative about the irretrievable prejudices of some office holders.