News
PAGE 2
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 27,1996
Senate vote makes abortion
campaign issue, Loti saps
By Jim Abrams
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The Senate
upheld President Clinton’s veto of a hill
TTiursday that would ban a procedure
for late-term abortions. The bill’s sup
porters promised to keep the issue alive
during the election campaign.
The 57-41 vote was 10 shy of the
two-thirds margin needed to overturn
a presidential veto. An override vote
in the House succeeded 285-137 last
week.
Opponents of abortion have made
the prohibition of the procedure they
call partial birth abortion their main
goal this legislative year. The bill’s
demise moves the focus to the cam
paign, where it presents a vulnerable
issue for abortion-rights candidates.
“It will immediately become one of
the most powerful issues of the fall
election,” said Trent Lott, R-Miss., the
Senate majority leader.
Democrats, aware of polls showing
popular opposition to the procedure,
U
Everyone involved in this debate opposes
late-term abortion ”
Sen. Barbara Boxer
D-Calif.
said they’d support a ban that included
exceptions for the life and health of the
mother.
“Everyone involved in this debate
opposes late-term abortion,” said Sen.
Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.
The bill does allow doctors to per
form the procedure if there is no other
way to save the life of the mother, but
Republicans rejected a health excep
tion saying it would be exploited to
continue the procedure at will.
Clinton vetoed the bill last April
over the health issue.
The bill, which would mark the first
time Congress has outlawed a specific
abortion procedure since the 1973 Su
preme Court decision guaranteeing a
woman’s right to an abortion, passed
the Senate last December by 54-44.
It would make doctors who illegally
perform the procedure subject to up to
two years in prison and civil lawsuits.
The issue was one of the most divi
sive to come before Congress this year.
Opponents of the procedure claim it
amounts to infanticide, and those
against the bill charge that its authors
are playing politics with the lives of
mothers.
The two sides were equally divided
on how often the procedure is used.
Abortion rights groups say only about
600 third trimester abortions are per
formed annually.
ValuJet returns to skies
after full investigation
WASHINGTON (AP) — The
Transportation Department gave
ValuJet permission today to return
to the sides.
“After a thorough review of ob
jections ... as well as (comments)
in support of ValuJet’s recertifica
tion, the department concluded that
the company met” the qualifications
to operate safely, the department an
nounced.
It said it approved the airline’s
management and financial condi
tion and concluded that it has “dem
onstrated a positive disposition to
comply with all applicable laws and
regulations.”
John V. Coleman, director of the
Office of Aviation Analysis, said the
airline is authorized to resume ser
vice “virtually immediately.”
ValuJet, the low-priced Atlanta
airline, was grounded in June be
cause of doubts about its mainte
nance programs.
A ValuJet spokesman did not
immediately return a call seeking
comment.
Employees responded jubi
lantly.
“I am so excited,” said Christie
Wright, a flight attendant. “We
never expected it to go on this long.
Relieved is the best word right
now.”
Attention focused on the airline
after a May 11 crash in Florida’s
Everglades that killed all 110
aboard the Atlanta-bound jet from
Miami.
The Federal Aviation Adminis
tration has already approved the air
line to begin flying, and new flights
were awaiting the second approval
from the parent Transportation De
partment.
The airline was operating with
more than 50 planes when it was
shut down. It plans to return only to
limited routes at first with a dozen
or so planes.
The FAA returned ValuJet’s li
cense Aug. 29. It reported that after
close inspection it concluded the
airline was in compliance with
safety regulations.
Returning to the air, however,
had to await a similar Transportation
Department finding.
Lucid returns to Earth,
able to walk off shuttle
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP)—
Astronaut Shannon Lucid, NASA’s
space superwoman, returned to Earth
on Thursday after six debilitating
months of weightlessness and to
everyone’s amazement, walked off the
shuttle Atlantis.
Doctors had met her inside the
space shuttle with a stretcher, figuring
the 53-year-old biochemist would be
too weak and wobbly to stand, let alone
walk. But she surprised them, insist
ing, “I can stand uo.”
Two workers assisted her during the
short walk onto an airport-style mov
ing sidewalk and into a reclining chair.
After a record-shattering 1 days
in space - most of that time aboard the
Russian space station Mir - she was
thrilled to be home.
“We could hear her laughing all the
way up to the flight deck, I’ll tell you,
she was just so tickled,” said Atlantis’
commander, William Readdy.
She was still laughing when she met
her family a few hours later.
“It was just a great mission and I
just had a great time,” said Lucid, who
rocketed away in March and spent a
longer stretch in space than any other
American and any other woman.
Lucid was welcomed back to Earth
with a 10-pound box of red, white and
blue M&M’s from President Clinton
and an offer for 188 cases of potato
chips - one for every day she spent in
orbit. She had craved both while liv
ing aboard Mir.
Clinton called from the Oval Of
fice to congratulate her. “I couldn’t
believe you walked off the shuttle,” he
said.
Lucid, who traveled 75 million
miles and circled the Earth 3,008 times,
faces weeks of rehabilitation to recover
Item the eifbcts oTprolong^ dfgfrt
lessness, which include weak muscles,
fatigue, vertigo, anemia and deteriorat
ing bones. She could be dragging for
months to come.
Unaccustomed to the puH of grav
ity, she said she felt heavy, but noted
that was normal. She also was wobbly,
almost falling over when She got up
from a chair at NASA’s crew quarters.
“It will take just a little Wt to get
fully adapted back to living in one-G
(gravity) again,” Lucid said.
Lucid was taken to the crew quar
ters building for a battery of medical
tests. She was reunited there with her
husband, Michael, and their three chil
dren, all in their 20s.
Lucid was able to enjoy fruit juice
and a soft (kink. But a shower - her
first in six months - had to wait until
the most pressing tests were completed.
Lucid will make the final leg of her
journey, back home to Houston, on
Friday. Clinton promised to meet her
there.
Lucid rocketed away March 22 to
the Mir station, expecting a 4 1/2
month mission and an early August
homecoming. But booster rocket prob
lems and two hurricanes delayed the
shuttle’s trip to get her, leaving her in
orbit an extra seven weeks.
NASA Administrator Daniel
Goldin said Lucid “never, never
flinched once” despite all the setbacks.
“This is a tough, brilliant, deter
mined human being,” Goldin said.
“She’s my hero.”
Polly Klaas killer gets death sentence
Richard Allen Davis enrages family by chiming father molested victim
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — The
killer of Polly Klaas enraged her fam
ily even as he was being condemned
to death Thursday with a wild claim
that the 12-year-old girl told him be
fore he killed her that she had been
molested by her father. ; *
Marc IGaas cried “Bum in hell,
Davis!” and lunged at his daughter’s
killer as he was hustled out of the court
room. Polly’s grandmother wailed
aloud and wept, leaning against her
husband in shock.
Richard Allen Davis was sent to
California’s death row at San Quentin
Prison for killing Polly after kidnap
ping her from a slumber party in the
bedroom of her Petaluma home Oct.
1,1993. A nationwide search for Polly
ended when Davis led police to her
body in December.
Moments before his formal sen
tencing, the 42-year-old career crimi
nal criticized his investigators and law
yers in a rambling speech., r
Then, Davis started talking about
the one charge he had always stead
fastly denied — that he had tried to
sexually molest Polly.
“The plain reason I know I did not
attempt any lewd act that night,” Davis
said, “was because of a statement the
young girl made to me while walking
up the embankment: ‘Just don’t do me
like my dad.’”
«-—
Bum in hell,
Davis!”
Marc KlAas,
to the man convicted of murdering
his daughter, Polly
% Spectators gasped and a long
drawn out moan of “Ohhhii!” echoed
in the courtroom as Klaas shouted,
jumped toward bis daughter’s killer
and had to be escorted outside.
Prosecutor Greg Jacobs, who said
he was “nauseated” by Davis’ allega
tion, said no such claim had ever been
leveled during the case, nor was there
my evidence to support it.
The accusation was reminiscent of
Davis’ contemptuous action in court
the day he was found guilty, when he
thrust both middle fingers at a court
room camera.
Outside the courtroom, Klaas
palled Davis’ statement a “vile and sin
ister and evil act,” and that he had ex
pected trouble from the “gutless cow
ard.”
“I brought him down,” said Klaas,
who wants to be present when Davis is
executed. “He knows that as well as
everyDoay else, we nave oeen pursu
ing the death of Richard Allen Davis
for three years. I am his worst night
mare.”
After the outburst, Superior Court
Judge Thomas Hastings confirmed the
sentence of death the trial jury recom
mended Aug. 5. He could have reduced
it to life in prison without parole, but
said Davis’ conduct Thursday made
sentencing him to death “easy.”
Davis served eight years for kid
napping and assaulting a woman be
fore he was paroled. He kidnapped
Polly three months later.
“He victimizes little girls and little
women,” Klaas said. “He does it un
der the veil of darkness, at night, when
there’s nobody else present.”
Before the ruling, Klaas spoke, at
times movingly, at times angrily, re
membering his daughter as a loving
child who “deserves peace.”
As he ended his comments, he
snapped, “Mr. Davis, when you get to
where you’re going, say hello to Hitler,
say hello to (Jeffrey) Dahmer and say
hello to (Ted) Bundy.”
After the sentencing, Polly’s grand
father also lashed out at Davis.
“My wife became hysterical be
cause this man succeeded in what he
was trying to do, which was pierce my
son through the heart and pierce the
rest of the family,” Joseph Klaas said.
Ethics committee votes to continue
investigating Gingrich records
WASHINGTON (AP) — The
House ethics committee voted unani
mously Thursday to expand an inves
tigation of Speaker Newt Gingrich, to
include whether he provided “accurate,
reliable and complete information” to
the committee on the college course he
taught.
Reading the carefully worded text
of the committee statement, Rep. Pat
Schroeder, D-Colo., offered her trans
lation: “That says they think he lied,”
she said.
In a case steeped in election-year
politics, the subcommittee running the
probe said it also will examine whether
Gingrich used resources of a private,
tax-exempt foundation for official pur
poses, which is prohibited by House
rules. .
In the last two weeks, Democrats
have trooped to Housemicrpphones to
denounce Gingrich as unethical and
demand that the committee release a
summary of evidence prepared by
James M. Cole, the outside counsel
hired for the investigation.
If the subcommittee of two Demo
crats and two Republicans files
charges, the remainder of the ethics
committee — three more members
from each party — would decide
whether Gingrich violated House rules.
, Cole, hired last December, has been
investigating whether the course
Gingrich taught from 1993-95 was a
political activity that violated tax laws.
-• The course ■>— and a satellite
hookup that beamed the lectures to
Gingrich’s financial backers — was
tinancefl inrougn lax-exempi lounua
tl0I1“Certain facts have been discovered
in the course of the preliminary inquiry,
which the subcommittee has deter
mined merit further inquiry,” said a
written statement prepared by the sub
committee.
The committee had already alerted
reporters it would have an announce
ment in connection with the 20-month
Gingrich investigation when the
speaker released a letter asking the
panel to make its decision public. •
“The issuance of this interim report
is evidence that die subcommittee pro
cess is working,” Gingrich said. “I am
confident that at that time the charges
groundless.”