By The
Associated Press
Edited by Kristine Long
NEWS DIGEST
Netjraskan
Friday, April 8, 1994
Factions argue for a more representative court
WASHINGTON — Justice Harry
A. Blackmun’s retirement will give
America the youngest Supreme Court
in a half-century, and some court
watchers arc urging President Cl inton
to aim for one that will more closely
reflect the country’s diverse popula
tion.
“I wish he’d pick a black man or a
black woman” to provide a more lib
eral counterpart to conservative Jus
tice Clarence Thomas, American
University law professor Herman
Schwartz said.
Clinton should choose a Hispanic
to reflect that group’s growing share
of the U.S. population. Rep. Jose
Serrano, D-N.Y., chairman of the
Congressional H ispanic Caucus, wrote
in a letter to the president.
Clarke Forsythe of Americans
United for Life said Clinton should
choose someone who does not seek to
legislate from the bench as a replace
ment for the retiring Blackmun, the
court’s most liberal member.
The National Abortion and Repro
ductive Rights Action League's James
Wagoner would like to see a second
black, a third woman or the first His
panic as long as that person has a
“deep-seated commitment to individ
ual privacy and protecting a woman’s
right to choose.”
Rex Lee, a former U.S. solicitor
general, argued against trying to fill
any particular demographic slot. The
Supreme Court is a non-political
branch of government and has no
obi igation to reflect the population, he
said.
“What it should look like is the
very best talent that is available in the
legal community,” said Lee, who
served in the Reagan administration
and now is president of Brigham
Young University.
Senate Majority Leader George
Mitchell, D-Maine, is high on
Clinton’s list of possible nominees.
He’s 60. Another possible nominee,
U .S. District Judge Jose Cabrancs, 53,
of Connecticut, would be the court’s
first Hispanic.
Other possible candidates include
Solicitor General Drew S. Days III
and federal appellate Judge Richard
Arnold of Arkansas. Interior secre
tary Bruce Babbitt was named as a top
prospect but said he did not want the
job. Days is black, the others while.
White House spokeswoman Dec
Dee Myers said Thursday a decision
would be made in “weeks, not months.”
Last year, it took Cl inton three months
tochoosc Justice Ruth BaderGinsburg
to replace retiring Justice Byron R.
White.
The departure of the 85-ycar-old
Blackmun will continue a trend to
ward a younger court.
The court’s average age was 72 in
1986, when five justices were older
than 75. Two years later, after Chief
Justice Warren Burger and Justice
Lewis Powell had retired, the average
age dropped to 66.
With Blackmun, the current justic
es arc an average 63 years old. That
will decline to about 60 if he is re
placed by someone around that age.
No court has had a younger aver
age age since the early 1940s, when
President Franklin D. Roosevelt had a
chance to replace many of the “nine
old men” who had opposed much of
his New Deal legislation.
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor not
ed that with the retirements of
Blackmun and White, “we will have
lost much of the institutional memory
of the court.” Blackmun joined the
court in 1970, while White had served
since 1962.
Presidents’ deaths spur rampage
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - Ram
paging troops killed Rwanda’s act
ing premier and as many as 11 U.N.
soldiers Thursday during fierce
fighting touched ofTby the deaths of
the presidents of Rwanda and
Burundi in a suspicious plane crash.
Reports from Rwanda’s capital,
Kigali, were sketchy and it was not
clear who was involved in the clash
es or in control of the capital. Amid
the violence, three Cabinet minis
ters were reported abducted and 17
Jesuit Rwandan priests were re
ported killed.
The violence in Rwanda broke
out after President Juvenal
Habyarimana of Rwanda and Pres
ident Cyprian Ntaryamira of
Burundi died late Wednesday when
their plane crashed while landing
at Kigali’s airport. The Rwandan
government said the plan was shot
down, but U.N. monitors said they
could not confirm that.
In New York, U.N. spokesman
Fred Eckhard confirmed that at
least 10 U.N. Belgian soldiers were
killed in Rwanda. He said an 11 th
person had yet to be identified. He
had nodetailson the circumstances
of the slayings.
U.N. spokesman MoctarGueyc,
reporting by telephone from Kigali,
said the Belgian soldiers had been
kidnapped Wednesday by members
of the presidential guard. They were
heading to the crash site to try to
determine its cause, he said.
He said it was unclear if the
presidential guards who kidnapped
the Cabinet ministers and U.N. sol
diers were acting undcrorders from
some authority or were rogue ele
ments.
U.N. spokesman Joe Sill is said
there were unconfirmed reports of
other U.N. personnel missing. The
whereabouts of the Cabinet minis
ters remained unknown. Radio
France Internationale, citing uni
dentified diplomats, said Labor and
Social Affairs Minister Landouald
Ndasingwa had been killed.
Intense gunfire and explosions
echoed across Kigali, Gueye said.
He said there were reports of house
to-house killings and that the city's
streets were empty except for small
groups of youths armed with ma
chetes and clubs.
“So far as we can sec, it seems
that there arc a lot of guns in a lot of
hands and we don’t really know
who is giving orders to shoot at who
and for what reason,” Gucve said.
From Washington, President
Clinton said Rwanda’sactingprimc
m inistcr. Agathe Uwil ingiyamana,
“was sought out and murdered” by
Rwandan security forces.
In neighboring Burundi, the cap
ital. Bujumbura, was reported qui
et. a missionary said by telephone.
He said the president’s death was
being reported as an accident.
There has been widespread eth
nic fighting in Burundi since the
nation’s first Hutu president was
killed during a failed coup last fall.
Bitter rivalries between the ma
jority Hutu and minority Tutsi
groups have made the central Afri
can nations ethnic battlegrounds
for decades. Rwanda also has been
torn by divisions among Hutus over
a peace accord that Habyarimana’s
government signed with Tutsi rebels
last year.
The two presidents, both Hutus,
were on their way home from a
summit in Tanzania that was aimed
at finding a regional solution to the
ethnic hostilities in their nations
Attack causes Israel to ban Palestinians
AFULA. Israel — As thousands of
angry Israelis gathered Thursday to
bury the victims of a car bombing, the
army barred 1.8 million Palestinians
from entering Israel for a week in one
of its strictest closures ever.
The order follows two more attacks
by Islamic fundamentalists Thursday.
One Israeli was killed and four were
wounded when a Palestinian opened
fire at a bus stop in southern Israel.
“We plan for Israel to be empty of
Arabs from the territories until Inde
pendence Day,” Police Commission
er Rafi Peled announced on Israel
radio. “I hope it will calm the situation
and contribute to the security.”
Israeli Independence Day is April
14.
The attacks spurred calls for a sus
pension of negotiations with the PLO
on the withdrawal of Israeli troops
from the Gaza Strip and West Bank
town of Jericho.
The measures to bar Palestinians
from Israel were ihe strictest since
March 1993, when 15 Israelis were
killed in a scries of stabbings. They
effectively lighten travel restrictions
imposed after the Feb. 25 Hebron
mosque massacre.
Peled said all permits for workers
had been canceled and no cars would
be allowed in from the territories. The
army barred a Palestinian conference
at a Jerusalem hotel where Jesse Jack
son was lospcak. The conference would
have brought in hundreds of Palestin
ian academics from the occupied lands.
The violence came as Israelis ob
served Holocaust Day in memory of
the 6 million Jews slaughtered by the
Nazis during World War If.
In Alula, police fought running
battles with about 300 Israeli youths
who burned tires after the funerals for
the victims of the suicide car-bomb
ing.
Settlers passed out literature con
demning the peace talks. Banners at
tacked Israel’s peacemaking with the
PLO.
About 5,000 Israelis gathered in
the cemetery as four of the victims
were laid to rest in a service broadcast
nationally. Three other Israelis and
the attacker were killed in the bomb
ing.
The government representative was
booed, cursed as “trash” and forced to
leave under police escort.
Much of the anger focused on PLO
leader Yasser Arafat’s failure to con
demn the attacks.
Also Thursday, two Israelis were
stabbed and slightly wounded by Ar
abs at entrances to the Gaza Strip,
army officials said.
In a statement released in the Gaza
shortly after the attack, the military
wing of the Islamic fundamentalist
Hamas group said it planned a series
of attacks in reprisal for the Hebron
massacre.
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Clinton tours Midwest
to revive health plan
TOPEKA, Kan. — President
Clinton pushed his health-care re
form plan in the Midwest Thursday
and called on all sides to “cut down on
the rhetoric, turn up the action."
President
Bill Clinton
v imiun u^iiwu
a two-day Mid
western swing be
fore an enthusias
tic crowd of Kan
sans crammed
into a Topeka air
port hangar. He
denounced a
Washington cul
ture where "every
debate Ux)k on more rhetoric man
real ity and shed more heat than light.”
Clinton insisted the United Slates
could do belter than its current health
care system, which leaves 58 million
uninsured and millions more under
insured or afraid to change jobs.
‘‘Instead of paralyzing extremism,
what this country needs is moderate,
aggressive, progressivism by people
who are dedicated to getting together
and getting things done," he said.
“Cut down on the rhetoric, turn up the
action, put people first and move the
country forward.”
But even in Topeka, Whitewater
was not completely gone. A lone pro
tester at the airport held up a sign that
said: “Slick Willic: Whitewater Pres
ident.”
Clinton’s two-day swing through
the heartland also was taking him to
Minneapolis.
Clinton scheduled three regional
TV “town hall” meetings this week as
he sought to build momentum for
health-care reform. He got a surprise
at the first such forum, when Ameri
cans in Charlotte, N.C., hit him with
a string of skeptical and even hostile
questions Tuesday on every th ing from
Whitewater to North Korea.
Clinton’s efforts to revive interest
in health-care reform come as polls
show Americans arc divided on where
the president’s attention should be
and tiredofhearingabout Whitewater.
A limes Mirror poll taken last
month found that many Americans
thought Clinton’s top priority should
be elsewhere, with 26 percent saying
employment should be the president’s
first concern, 23 percent citing crime,
20 percent singling out the deficit and
16 percent selecting health care.
Polls also show Americans grow
ing tired of news coverage of
Whitewater and continuing to be con
cerned about their own health cover
age.
Nearly half those surveyed in the
Times Mirror poll said problems in
the health care system came up fre
quently in conversations with family
and friends; one in 10 had been
dropped from an insurance plan or
refused coverage in the last year.
Judge refuses to allow
warrantless gun sweeps
CHICAGO — Police can’t con
duct warrantless gun searches in pub
lic housing projects, a federal judge
said Thursday in a decision that re
buffed pleas from housing officials
and tenants who hoped the sweeps
would quell gang violence.
U.S. District Judge Wayne Ander
son’s ruling ended the latest round in
an emotional dispute between city of
ficials and civil libertarians who ar
gue that the courts can’t grant a whole
sale waiver of the Constitution’s pro
tection against unreasonable search
es.
“The erosion of the rights of people
on the other sideof town will ultimate
ly undermine the rights of each of us.”
Anderson said in refusing to lift a ban
he imposed last month.
Violence last summer prompted
the Chicago Housing Authority to ask
police to conduct the random, door
to-door searches for guns without
search warrants.
Some tenants also backed the war
rantless searches, saying they would
prefer the sweeps to random gunfire
that made it dangerous to stand near
windows or venture outside.
“Mothers put kids in their bathtubs
in fear of their lives,” CHA chairman
Vincent Lane said before the hearing.
Lane left the courtroom without
comment after Anderson’s ruling.
Earlier, he had said he didn’t expect
Anderson to lift the ban and predicted
the ease would wind up in the Su
preme Court.
The American Civil Liberties
Union sued to halt the searches on
behalfofChicago’scstimatcd 150,000
public housing tenants.
Gang warfare last month in the
huge Robert Taylor Homes project
brought new urgency to the debate.
Police received more than 300 reports
of gunfire in the 28-building, 12,320
tenant complex over a five-day peri
od.
Anderson had permitted police to
conduct warrantless searches if spe
cific apartments were pinpointed as
sources of gunfire, and Lane promised
to use that authority if violence erupt
ed again in the projects.
Under terms of their leases, any
public housing tenants caught with
guns, registered or unregistered, lace
eviction.
Lula Ford, principal of Beethoven
Elementary School in the heart ol the
complex, said she was incensed by the
decision and feared gang violence
would erupt anew.
“I’m not violating any law, and I
have nothing to hide, but pol ice should
have warrants before they come into
your house," resident Louis McCray
said.
