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**’*- News Digest Thursday, August 24, 1995 * Page 2 Reynolds considers resigning from Congress CHICAGO—Rep. Mel Reynolds is considering resigning from Con gress as he faces a prison sentence for sexual misconduct and a continuing federal investigation of his finances. Reynolds was convicted Tuesday of criminal sexual assault, which car ries a mandatory minimum four-year sentence, for having sex with a former campaign worker when she was 16 and 17. He also was found guilty of asking her to get him lewd photo graphs of a 15-year-old girl and try ing to sabotage the investigation of the case. Reynolds would not comment Wednesday and his attorneys did not return phone calls while preparing to appeal his case. Prosecutors want him jailed during the appeal process, but have not said what sentence they will seek. The conviction does not automati cally remove Reynolds from his House seat. But a Reynolds confidant said the congressman told him he will resign soon. “He can hang on and try to weather an ethics committee investigation or inquiry, but he doesn’t want to go through that,” said Nate Clay, who said Reynolds called him several times Wednesday. “He didn’t want to put his family through that. “He does not want to prolong the agony and the pain by fighting it out in Congress, so he’s going to resign,” Clay told The Associated Press. Other observers questioned why Reynolds would be so quick to leave his $133,600 yearly salary. “I just don’t know where he would get ajob for $ 11,000 a month and he’s really got financial problems,” said Paul Green, a Governors State Uni versity political scientist. “My gut feeling would be he would stretch it out just as long as he can.” U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun, D-Ill., called on Reynolds to resign. Other politicians, including Demo cratic Mayor Richard M. Daley, Re publican Gov. Jim Edgar and House Speaker Newt Gingrich said it was Reynolds’ decision. Jury selection begins for Menendez trial LOS ANGELES—Jury selection for the retrial of Erik and Lyle Menendez started Wednesday, with prosecutors promising a more aggres sive attack on the brothers’ claim that lifelong abuse drove them to kill their millionaire parents. A total of 181 people reported as potential jurors. Superior Court Judge Stanley Weisberg excused 86 for hard ship reasons. Ninety-five will return for the next round of questioning. The brothers reacted with surprise, when a man named Jose Menendez - their father’s name - was excused for an unstated reason. The irony seemed to briefly brighten the pair, whosmiled at their lawyers as the man left the courtroom. It was unclear if the man was related to the defendants. Another group of potential jurors was scheduled to be screened on Thursday and a third batch next Wednesday. Weisberg said he expected to have a jury selected by the end of Septem ber and that the trial could last six months. Defense attorneys worry that heavy media coverage of the first trial will make it extremely difficult to choose a jury. “It’s ugly and it’s scary, and I’m concerned whether it’s going to be fair,” said Erik Menendez’s attorney, Leslie Abramson. Prosecutor David Conn disagreed. “If jurors are directed to base their decisions on what they hear in the courtroom and put aside everything else they’ve heard about or know, they can render a fair verdict,” he said. Lyle, 27, and Erik, 24, are charged with the Aug. 20, 1989, murders of Jose and Kitty MenendeS in the family’s Beverly Hills mansion. The brothers eventually confessed, con tending they shot their father, an en tertainment executive, and their mother because they feared the two were going to kill them after years of sexual and mental abuse. The brothers’ first trial ended in January 1994, when jurors split over murder and lesser manslaughter charges. Prosecutors, who are seeking the death penalty, plan to attack the de fense contention that the brothers were terrorized by abuse. Weisberg, who also presided over the first trial, has indicated he will limit the number of defense witnesses who testified during the first trial about the brothers’ childhood. News... in a Minute Hart considering Senate run DENVER—Gary Hart, the former Democratic presidential candi date and Colorado senator, said he is considering another run for the Senate. Hart told the Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post that he is considering a bid for retiring Republican Hank Brown’s seat. The 58-year-old Hart, who served in the Senate from 1975 to 1987, said at first he dismissed queries from friends after Brown announced his retirement last December. “Then within the last month I began to get a round of calls from Colorado, Washington and other points saying, 'You’ve got to take it seriously,’” he said Tuesday. While he is taking it more seriously, Hart, now an international trade lawyer based in Denver, said he has not made a decision about the 1996 election. Some political observers said Hart would have to win over Demo crats still upset with his 1988 campaign for president. He dropped out of the race after allegations that he had an extramarital affair. Hagman critical after liver transplant LOS ANGELES—Larry Hagman was in extremely critical condi tion Wednesday after getting a new liver and losing a few gallstones during a 15-hour operation. “Mr. Hagman has done very well,” said Dr. Leonard Makowka, director of the liver transplant program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. “I expect that he’ll return and have a fully normal lifestyle.” The first 48 hours after the surgery, which began Tuesday night and ended around 2:30 p.m. Wednesday, are crucial to determining if his body rejects the donor organ, Makowka said. Hagman, 63, the loathsome J.R. Ewing from the TV soap “Dallas” and the long-suffering astronaut on “1 Dream of Jeannie,” was diag nosed three years ago with cirrhosis of the liver, which he blamed on years of heavy drinking. Makowka said the surgical team was surprised to find that Hagman’s cirrhosis was much more advanced than believed. “We really did get the liver just in time,” he said. But a cancerous tumor in the liver was “completely dead” after a procedure earlier this month in which one of Hagman’s arteries was short-circuited to prevent blood from feeding the tumor, Makowka said. '" • \ ~ Immigration officials storm L.A. sweatshops, arrest 55 LOS ANGELES — Immigra tion agents stormed three suspected underground sweatshops and took 55 people into custody on Wednes day. The raids followed a nationally publicized sweep three weeks ago of a sweatshop in El Monte, where authorities discovered 72 Thai na tionals imprisoned and forced to sew clothes for up to 150 hours a week. Wednesday’s raids at three Los Angeles buildings were prompted by a tip that was made soon after the El Monte raid, said Richard K. Rogers, district director of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. “The tremendous publicity in the El Monte case has heightened public awareness about the prob lem,” Rogers said. All but three of those taken into custody Wednesday were illegal immigrants from Thailand, Mexico, Central America or South America, authorities said. Officials say the premises seemed crowded and there were indications that the workers also lived there, but none seemed to have been held against their will. INS officials believe that the Thai nationals were brought over to work in the sweatshops until they had repaid the cost of their passage, Rogers said. The U.S. attorney’s office and Department of Labor were investi gating possible criminal violations, authorities said. Judge raises bond for suspect DETROIT — A magistrate on Wednesday increased bond to $ 1 mil lion cash for a man charged with murder in the drowning of a woman who was dragged from her car and attacked on a bridge. A day earlier, Magistrate Kerry Leon Jackson set bond for Martell Welch, 19, at $250,000, meaning Welch could have been freed if his family raised 10 percent or $25,000. In raising the bond, Jackson noted a statement from a witness identified as Welch’s friend. The witness said he saw Welch “punching and kicking (the victim) while she sat in her vehicle on the bridge... pulling her from the vehicle and saying' I’m gonna kill that bitch,’ pulling her pants off as he drug her from the vehicle and ramming her head into the vehicle several times, picking her up and putting her over the retainer wall and saying ‘I should throw this bitch over the bridge.’” “What really, really bothered me is the degree to which the complain ant witness was assaulted prior to whether she jumped off the bridge or was thrown off the bridge,” Jackson said. Police say Deletha Word, 33, jumped to her death early Saturday from the Belle Isle bridge. Some of Word’s family members have said they doubted she jumped because she didn’t know how to swim. Welch was charged Tuesday with second-degree murder and faces up to life in prison if convicted. He is accused of attacking Word after she hit his car twice on the Detroit River island. Sociologists: Blue-collar voters unpredictable WA5H1NUTUN—Anypresiden tial candidate who takes the nation’s skilled blue-collar workers for granted is making a mistake, say three soci ologists who study die influence of class on voting. Employees in the building trades, workers who operate complicated equipment and anyone with a techni cal manual skill are members of the class that is least likely to stick to a party line, said Michael Hout, a pro fessor at the University of California, Berkeley. “Skilled blue-collar workers, once the bedrock of the Democratic coali tion, are now up for grabs,” he said. Previous studies nave led social scientists to conclude that class plays far less of a role in U.S. politics than it once did. But Hout and study co authors Jeff Manza of Pennsylvania State University and Clem Brooks of Indiana University took a new look at the traditional division of American society into white-collar and blue collar workers. They released their findings Mon day at the American Sociological Association’s 1995 conference here. “In the 1984, ’88 and *92 presi dential elections, class has re-emerged as a critical factor in presidential voting” and continues to be far more influential than gender, Hout said. The study divides the population into six groups: professionals; man agers and administrators; the self employed; “routine” white-collar workers, such as retail sales, clerical and service employees; skilled blue collar workers; and semiskilled and unskilled blue-collar workers. Professionals have shown the most striking change in the study of presi dential elections from 1948 to 1992, Hout said, moving from being more likely to vote Republican to more likely to vote Democratic. “Professionals, who were the most Republican class in the 1950s, have now joined the unskilled blue-collar workers and the ‘routine’ white-col lar workers - the so-called pink-collar workers because of the concentration of women - in the Democratic coali tion,” Hout said. Retail sales, service and clerical workers followed professionals, “moving from modest Republican support from 1948 to 1960, to indif ference from 1964 to 1984, to sup porting the Democrats in 1988 and 1992. Managers have remained solidly Republican in every election except 1956, the researchers said. The self employed had a similar pattern. The voting habits of drilled blue collar workers have been more vola tile,however. They strongly supported President Carter, a Democrat, in 1976 and 1980, then moved back toward Republican Presidents Reagan and Bush in 1984 and 1988. What seems to be driving the changes, Hout said, is a new empha sis on social issues - abortion, civil liberties, civil rights and gender equal ity - rather than economic ones. Nefcrraskan Editor JL Christopher Haiti Night News Editors Mitch Sherman 472-1786 Julie Sobczvk Managing Editor Rainbow Rowell Matt Waite* Assoc. News Edtors DeDra Janssen Doug Paters Brian Sharp Art Director Doug Kouma Opinion Page Editor Marie Baldridge General Manager DanShatdl Wire Editor Jamie Karl Production Manager Katharine PoUcky Copy Desk Editor Tim Pearson Advertising Manager Amy Stnithers \ Sports Editor Jeff Griesch Asst Advertising Manager Laura Wilson Arts & Entertainment Editor Doug Kouma Publications Board Chairman Tim Hedegaard, 436-9222 Photo Director Travti Haying Professional Adviser Don Walton, 473-7301 FAX NUMBER 472-1761 ,, JheDaity Nebraskan(USPS 144-060) is published by the UNL Publications Board. Nebraska Union 34,1400 R St., Lincoln, NE 68588-0448, Monday through Friday dunng the academic year; weekly during summer sessions. Readereare encouraged to submit story kteM and comments to the Daily Nebraskan by phoning 472-1763 between 9 am. and 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. The public also has access to the Publications Board. For information, contact Tim Hedegaard, 436-9222. 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