SENSENBRENNER ABUSES RESPONSIBILITIES

As an independent voter in this election season, my vote will go to the
candidate who most consistently demonstrates a humane concern for all
persons, regardless of their fame or fortune or party affiliation. By that
principle, my vote will go to the 5th Congressional District candidate
Bryan Kennedy, not to incumbent F. James Sensenbrenner.

Consider this case in point: As chairman of the House Judiciary Committee,
Sensenbrenner has been asked repeatedly to schedule hearings on glaring
human rights abuses, as well as misuse of funds, in the 16-year-old federal
grant program known as the Byrne Grant. He repeatedly puts off such hearings.

The Byrne Grant program commits some $500 million a year of our tax money
to set up hundreds of anti-drug task forces across the country, with little
or no supervision. There are 45 such task forces in Texas alone. The system
hands out more funding to those task forces which report more drug arrests,
no questions asked. In Tulia, Texas, white "investigator" Tom Coleman
milked the system by getting 46 people, 40 of them black, arrested and
imprisoned solely on his uncorroborated word. After months in prison, these
innocent victims of racist corruption were pardoned and released.
Investigations of such perversity are under way in nine different states,
but such scandals are not enough to move Sensenbrenner to schedule hearings
on the abuses of this federal program.

However, we now read the headline, "Sensenbrenner wants hearing in Hamm
controversy" (Freeman, Oct. 7). After all, going public in Hamm's defense
plays well in Sensenbrenner's home district. Never mind those poor, black,
innocent victims in Texas. A hearing might embarrass Sensenbrenner's
good-ole-boy colleagues Tom DeLay and Trent Lott.

U.S. Olympic Committee Chairman Peter Ueberroth accuses Sensenbrenner of
using the Hamm issue "to raise his profile in an election year." Of course,
it's quite obvious. Sensenbrenner puts personal self-promotion and partisan
politics above any concern for a more just and humane society. That's an
abuse of his responsibility as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

Glenn Van Haitsma
Waukesha