KEEP YOUR NOSE CLEAN One day this week I opened The Derrick and was slapped up side the head. What I read appalled me. When Will Rogers Jr. once said, "All I know is what I read in the newspapers," he might understand why today so many people are confused about the issues of law and order, crime and punishment, and are wondering seriously about who will write, The Decline and Fall of the American Empire. SANTA MONICA. Michael Jackson settled a child molestation lawsuit Tuesday on terms that left his 14-year-old accuser "very happy" and the singer proclaiming his innocence. Get this! Terms of the settlement were confidential, but a source put it at at least $10 million. Michael paid his accuser but still maintained he was innocent. It must be nice to be able to bypass the court system. How many of us, facing even a minor traffic violation, can write a check and forego the "inconvenience" of appearing in court? Not many I imagine. There are many levels of justice in America today, and one of them is justice for the "haves" and one for the "have nots." Was Jackson guilty? Who knows except God, the boy who accused him, and Jackson. We'll never know because money silenced any inquiry into the truth. Forget about justice because in this case she ain't blind. LOS ANGELES. Jurors in the Lyle Menendez murder trial said they were deadlocked Tuesday, and the presiding Judge declared the jury hung and a new trial to be scheduled. Erik Menendez's jury was also declared a deadlock on January 13. Both brothers admitted they killed their parents. The question is not whether they committed the crime, but what kind of juggling act the court can perform to determine just how they should be charged. Was it first, second, third degree murder, manslaughter or what? Who can understand the complexity of modern jurisprudence? The father allegedly abused his sons. He's dead now. We won't know what the real story is until Erik and Lyle write their memoirs, or until NBC makes a miniseries about it. Even then it will still be only the tip of the iceberg. PORTLAND. Olympic skating star, Tanya Harding, claimed she didn't know before the fact about the attack on Nancy Kerrigan, a fellow skater, but said she only learned about it afterward. She was sorry that she didn't immediately tell authorities about what she knew. Maybe it was the 10 hours she spent being interrogated by the FBI that "loosened her tongue" just a little. Her ex-husband claimed that Tanya not only knew about it before hand but approved of it. Tanya denied this allegation. In the mean time, the U.S. Amateur Skating Association still named Harding as one of America's representatives to the 1994 Winter Olympic Games. They also named two alternates, just in case Harding's guilt appears greater than it already does. Is she guilty of a crime? Who can tell except God and Tanya. She did know about it after the fact and didn't say anything. In some law book somewhere that's called, withholding evidence. Or maybe its, accessory after the fact. The question I ask is are we so determined to win gold medals that we'll send such a dubious representative to the Olympics games? MONTGOMERY. Less than a year after Alabama's first Republican governor this century was convicted and ousted, the Statehouse is threatened again by a widening probe, this time of Democratic Gov. Jim Folsom. Ethics questions arose during his first months as governor. Critics complained about upwards of $250 million in incentives that Folsom gave Mercedes Benz to locate a plant in the state -- and about a Mercedes that Folsom promised to use as his official car. No big deal! Why every governor should roll around in a Mercedes Benz. Politicians in Washington do it. Whatever happened to buying American? I guess a Chevy or Ford isn't good enough for him. It may be merely a case of bad judgement on the Gov's part, but please, what kind of people are we electing to office today that they cannot understand that the American electorate is no longer willing to go along with the okie-doke. Enough's enough. DuBOIS. The day is coming when DuBois won't be able to put a police officer on its streets, the police chief said. The force once had 12 full-time officers but now only has nine. "I came close Sunday night to not having anybody to work a shift. It's going to happen. And when it does and nobody is here, there's not much I can do about it," Chief Darrell Clark said. Something is amiss in America. The criminal justice system is running ragged attempting to stop crime in the streets and in the bedrooms. The court systems are deadlocked. Politicians are unwilling to role model for their constituents. Even the President of the United States is being investigated for alleged shady dealings in the "Whitewater Investment Scandal." Since I became a registered voter in 1968, one scandal after another has rocked this nation. Vice-President Agnew resigned from office under cloudy circumstances. Who can forget Nixon and Watergate? Iran-Contra, the savings and loan scandals, and a host of major and minor catastrophes gnaw at my patriotic spirit. In the last election, we were asked if we wanted change. People said yes. Then we sent almost the same group of senators and congressmen back to Washington that were already there. Crime in our streets is a reflection of dishonesty and corruption in higher places. We had the chance to vote the scoundrels out and we didn't. My father's one message to me when I was a kid was, "Hey, keep your nose clean." He didn't elaborate. I knew what he meant. If you did something, you told the truth. If you didn't do it, you had nothing to worry about. The best case scenario for me was to not do anything I might have to lie about in the end. You know, it worked! My father never went to law school. In fact, he never went past the seventh grade. He started in the steel mill at age 15 and spent 41 years working hard for his money. I guess that was "his Yale College and his Harvard." Thanks Dad, for the lesson in Human Justice.