Francly, They Don’t Give a Damn

--French motorists are blithely driving down the road to chaos amid expectations that reelected President Francois Mitterrand will follow tradition and proclaim an amnesty for traffic offenders. In Paris, squares are clogged with illegally parked cars, traffic inches along the boulevards to a chorus of car horns and gesticulating Frenchmen can be seen arguing over their crashed vehicles. “People are driving any way they like and it’s even worse this time around because the amnesty is being delayed by the impending general elections,” Francois Gentil, director of the French Road Safety Council, told French radio. Socialist Mitterrand, unable to form the broad-based center-left government he needs to win a majority in Parliament, has called general elections for June 5 and 12. Newly appointed Justice Minister Pierre Arpaillange called amnesty “part of the great Republican tradition.” But he said Parliament will first have to approve it. This means a pardon, first expected in May, may have to wait until June or July.

--Interior Secretary Donald P. Hodel rejected the advice of an advisory panel and designated the Westminster, Md., farm where Whittaker Chambers led Richard M. Nixon, then a California congressman, to the “pumpkin papers” in 1948 as a national historic landmark. Hodel, who like many modern conservatives laud Chambers for his role in the perjury conviction of former State Department official Alger Hiss, himself nominated Pipe Creek Farm for landmark status. Hodel said Chambers, who is deceased, is a “historical figure of transcendent importance in the nation’s history.” Chambers used a hollowed-out pumpkin to hide microfilmed documents that supported his charge before the House Committee on Un-American Activities that Hiss had given U.S. secrets to the Soviets. The National Park System Advisory Board had opposed Hodel’s action, citing the general rule that landmarks are not designated until at least 50 years after the events qualifying a site.

--American folk singer Joan Baez is still singing protest songs, much to the chagrin of Israeli army radio. The station canceled a live broadcast of a concert by Baez and later played a taped version after editing out a protest song, a station official said. The song “Shooting and Crying” was written by Israeli singer Si Hi-man to protest the army’s use of beatings and live ammunition to quell a Palestinian uprising in the occupied territories. Baez also was the target of members of the anti-Arab Kach movement in Zerifin, who heckled and threw eggs at a rally backing Israeli soldiers who refuse to serve in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Baez was not hit.