Flower and Weeds

Attorney General Frank Murphy, whose sister calls him Christlike, last week named the man to run his new Civil Liberties Unit: Henry A. Schweinhaut, the special assistant who prosecuted civil-liberties violations in Harlan County, Ky. and in Jersey City. Besides protecting liberty's delicate flower, Mr. Murphy last week received the grubbier task of rooting evil weeds out of the Federal judiciary.

President Roosevelt, incensed by what New York District Attorney Thomas Dewey discovered about Circuit Court Judge Martin T. Manton, who resigned in disgrace last fortnight (TIME, Feb. 6), instructed his Attorney General to see if any more U. S. judges were taking "loans" from litigants or otherwise besmirching their robes. Only the President politely put it the other way around: where else were efforts being made to "influence" the Federal judiciary?

Mr. Murphy's men soon shouldered Mr. Dewey out of the headlines and gave the public another scare by landing on Judge Edwin S. Thomas of the U.S. District Court in Connecticut, who sat in a bribery case whose handling by Judge Manton is now being investigated by a grand jury. Federal agents subpoenaed Judge Thomas to appear with his books and papers but failed to catch him with the summons before he sailed for Panama on the S. S. Santa Barbara. A radio to the captain to put Judge Thomas off with the pilot brought the message: "JUDGE CONTINUING TRIP."

After a sharp radiogram from Brien McMahon, criminal division chief in the Attorney General's Office, Judge Thomas snorted that a subpoena was unnecessary, promised to debark in the Canal Zone and return immediately if necessity demanded. Though Federal authorities said they wanted Judge Thomas and his books chiefly for the Manton investigation, they confessed their interest in a case from Judge Thomas' own court: the McKesson & Robbins receivership that exploded the notorious Coster-Musica drug scandal (TIME, Dec. 19, et seq.).

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