Popular & Politic

President Truman this week picked two headline names for major judicial jobs.

>As a reward for able, patient handling of the marathon 1949 trial of the eleven Communist leaders, he appointed District Judge Harold R. Medina, 63, to the seat on the U.S. circuit court vacated by the famed Learned Hand, 79, who retired last fortnight.

>To succeed Medina, Truman picked New York's big Police Commissioner Thomas F. Murphy, the prosecutor of Alger Hiss.

The choices were sound by any standard, and politically shrewd. Murphy had resigned in a huff last year as an assistant U.S. district attorney, after he was passed over repeatedly when promotions were made; Republicans gibed that Truman did not want to reward the man who had put Alger Hiss in prison. Now, apparently, things were all patched up.

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Also appointed to the U.S. district court in New York: Frieda B. Hennock, who was born in Poland 46 years ago, and became the first woman ever to serve as a Federal Communications Commissioner.

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