The Press: Keep the Rascal In

In its Pulitzer-prize expose of the Texas land scandal (TIME, March 7, 1955), the tiny (circ. 3,016) Cuero Record last year pointed up the sloth of the state's big-city dailies. Last week readers lamented the Record's display of its own seamy side: a front-page editorial urging reelection of one of the scandal's chief figures, U.S. Congressman John J. Bell.

In the investigation touched off by the Record, Representative Bell admitted that while serving in the state senate he accepted more than $27,000 in "legal fees" from promoters of high-profit veterans' land deals. He was indicted for conspiracy to defraud the state of $154,100 in one of the deals, but escaped prosecution when the indictment was killed on a technicality over the qualifications of one of the grand jurors.

Under the headline I WILL VOTE FOR JOHN J. BELL, Record Publisher Jack Howerton ran his editorial in the absence of ailing Managing Editor Kenneth Towery, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting of the scandal. Wrote Howerton, a longtime friend of the candidate: "John Bell is not personally without guilt in connection [with] profits from the sale of state lands to veterans . . . What he did, in my opinion, was at least morally wrong . . . It is common practice for at least 75% of all those representing us in Austin and in Washington to get their fingers into public appropriations or to be remembered for their legislative efforts with legal fees and retainers ... Unfortunately for Congressman Bell, the legal fee payments in the veterans' land deal came to light."

In short, by Texan Howerton's generous code, there should be hope even for those who violate the eleventh commandment, i.e., "don't get caught."