My mother and countless other family members grew up in a time in which most moms worked hard at home. The children correspondingly had a great deal of free and essentially unsupervised time (when they weren't doing chores themselves). The notion that stay-at-home moms earlier in the century were full-time caretakers of their children is a silly one and further obscures the issues surrounding work and family.
John Hood
Raleigh, NC
Drum Bea t
Charles Oliver's column on the enforcement of Oklahoma's child pornography statute ("The Tin Drum Meets the Tin Badge," October) appropriately targets the First Amendment issues raised by this sordid affair. However, Oliver failed to cite the Fourth Amendment in discussing the Oklahoma City police's raids on citizens' homes and businesses.
The Fourth Amendment states that "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated." My dictionary defines effects simply as "movable goods"; thus it should not require a wild-eyed judicial activist to observe that "effects" surely include video cassettes.
Common sense should also suffice to reject the police contention that "we solicited the voluntary cooperation of the people in trying to abate future legal problems," a statement obviously made to give the illusion that the searches and seizures were consensual and that no warrants were necessary.
The homeowners, tenants, and business people abused by these local officials should not require the Video Privacy Act of 1988 to protect them from governmental madness. The Fourth Amendment has not been repealed, but it requires a modicum of courage and decency on the part of federal and state courts to enforce it vigorously. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis stated in Olmstead v. United States that the Founding Fathers "conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone...the right most valued by civilized men."
Kenneth Kleiner
Staten Island, NY
Hit the Nail on the Head
Virginia Postrel's editorial "The Nail File" (October) was one of the most insightful I have read about the beauty industry, which almost prides itself on its smallness. As a small business in a small industry, I believe the balance weighs in favor of being overlooked by big government as opposed to being over-examined.
Obscurity does present financing, recruiting, and image challenges, so we may not always be the first choice of America's best and brightest. "Hidden" industries offset these challenges by the benefits of a free market economy that rewards entrepreneurial drive and risk taking.
The small industry is also threatened by the almost equally heavy hand of big business. The clout of a $25 billion business can wreak havoc on a $100 million business. A company the size of Bristol-Myers can buy its way into the beauty industry and leave a path of broken business in its wake before divesting itself of the industry. It happened with Dow, Syntex, and American Cynamide in the beauty industry.
The ignorance of big government can be bliss, and perhaps America wants to keep policy makers inside the Beltway and out of our business.
Kevin Linehan
Standard Beauty Supply Inc.
Omaha, NE
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