“Are you or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?†It’s like asking someone “œwhen did you stop beating your wife?” Questions like these more often than not led to no-win situations. If the answer was, “I didn’t”, the interrogator could take it to mean that the person under the spotlight never stopped hitting his spouse or if they were of a less suspicious nature that the person never had hit his wife. As for the political persuasion- even if one had once been a member but had quit five years earlier- it still made them guilty by association.
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Category: Ignorance of the Law
I Didn’t Know I’m Ignorant of the Law
By Larry Teren
Recently the radio newscaster played a soundbite from a long forgotten movie and then announced in a funereal voice that the actress Jane Russell had passed away at the age of eighty-nine. The usual response when one hears that is “well, she lived a long life and probably had a good one with all the creature comforts.” Except that when you are in your late eighties, you think the guy who is ninety-nine is old and that you would like to live at least until one hundred and three.
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