"One step further"

In the wake of President Clinton's veto of a bill banning partial-birth abortions, all the nation's Roman Catholic cardinals for only the second time in history presented a united front in condemnation: "Your action ... takes our nation to a critical turning point in its treatment of helpless human beings inside and outside the womb," said the cardinals' April 16 letter. "It moves our nation one step further toward acceptance of infanticide." The only other time all the nation's cardinals spoke together regarding presidential action was in 1994, when they wrote Mr. Clinton warning against U.S. involvement in the Cairo U.N. population conference. Meanwhile, on April 19, the ACLU petitioned the California Supreme Court to consider reversing its recent 4-3 opinion that reinstated a 1987 law passed by the state legislature requiring minors to get their parents' permission to have an abortion. And in Michigan, yet another trial for "Dr. Death" Jack Kevorkian took several new turns, as the infamous doctor stormed out of the courtroom during a week of testimony that saw a coroner announce that neither Marjorie Wantz, 58, nor Sherry Miller, 43, who suffered from pelvic pain and multiple sclerosis, respectively, was terminally ill when Mr. Kevorkian helped kill them in 1991. After ending up with acquittals in two other cases, Michigan prosecutors this time are trying Mr. Kevorkian under common law, and believe chances for a conviction are much higher. In California, the Menendez brothers-Erik, 25, and Lyle, 28-avoided the death penalty; both received life in prison without parole April 17 for the grisly shotgun slaying of their parents more than six years ago. The two had gained a hung jury in their first trial in 1994, after claiming their parents had abused them. The second time around, prosecutors were able to convince a jury that the two sons were, in fact, money-hungry murderers. Also in California last week, the body of 7-year-old Jessica Dubroff was committed to the earth in the town of Pescadero. The little girl who died along with her father and flight instructor in a Wyoming crash, as she tried to become the youngest to fly cross-continent, was buried on April 15 beneath a pile of flowers and balloons from mourners.

Slight drop

The number of diagnosed cases of AIDS in the United States dropped 7 percent in 1995 to 74,180 new cases, from a figure of 79,897 in 1994, said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Washington, D.C., led the nation in new cases at 185.7 AIDS cases per 100,000 residents, while North Dakota had the lowest rate at 0.8. Asians reported the lowest ethnic rate at 6.2 cases per 100,000 people, followed by whites at 15.4, Hispanics at 46.2, and blacks at 92.6. Meanwhile, the CDC last week also announced on April 15 that a second outbreak of the lethal Ebola virus was diagnosed in two monkeys on a Texas ranch. A strain of Ebola killed 245 people in Zaire last year by causing internal bleeding. As in the earlier U.S. incident, in which Ebola Reston was discovered in monkeys at a facility near Washington, D.C., the two Texas monkeys were imported from the Philippines.

Safer bet

Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.) withdrew his support April 18 from legislation to study the effects of legalized gambling after the Republican co-sponsor, Ted Stevens of Alaska, "gutted" the bill to please gambling lobbyists. The key issue: giving the study commission the power to subpoena gambling industry documents. The battle exposes a serious chink in the Republican coalition. Ralph Reed, director of the Christian Coalition, also had objected to Sen. Stevens's version of the bill in a letter this week to Stevens and in another last week to Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.). "We believe removal of all subpoena powers would severely limit the commission's effectiveness and render it useless," Mr. Reed wrote to Mr. Stevens. The issue is a delicate one for Mr. Dole. He collected $478,000 for his campaign last year at a fund-raiser hosted outside Las Vegas by Steve Wynn, owner of Mirage casinos.

Renegade Republicans

Five Republican senators April 18 defied Majority Leader Bob Dole and gave Democrats the margin of victory in rejecting a free-market proposal aimed at controlling health care costs. The rejected proposal for tax-free Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs) was offered as an amendment to health legislation guaranteeing that employees who have been covered by health insurance continue to have access to it if they change or lose their jobs, even if they have pre-existing health problems. The MSA provision is popular among House Republicans, whose version of the Senate health bill contains tax deductibility for MSAs. The White House and congressional Democrats, who supported MSAs two years ago as part of President Clinton's bid to nationalize the health care industry, now oppose the reform. Meanwhile, Mr. Dole and his House counterpart, Speaker Newt Gingrich, found themselves on the defensive over a White House proposal to mandate an increase in the minimum hourly rate the federal government permits private businesses to pay their employees. Twenty liberal Republicans April 17 broke ranks and signed on to an increase even greater than the Democratic 90-cent increase plan. Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) claimed that increasing the minimum hourly wage from $4.25 to $5.25-a pay increase for 40-hour-per-week workers of less than $175 per month to just under $11,000 per year-would guarantee that flipping burgers would provide "enough to support a family." Conservatives such as House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas), an economist, noted that minimum wage increases reduce the number of entry-level jobs for teenagers-more than 80 percent of the minimum-wage workforce-who generally work for spending money and job experience, not family support.

Offense, the best defense

As the trial of President Clinton's former business partners James and Susan McDougal and Jim Guy Tucker entered its seventh week, Democrats in Washington adopted a new Whitewater damage-control strategy. After The New York Times April 17 editorialized that court-appointed Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr step aside from the investigation, Democrats quickly turned up the heat. The central charge: that Mr. Starr, whose private practice law firm represents tobacco companies, has a conflict of interest in investigating the anti-tobacco President Clinton. Political gadfly James Carville, a consultant to the White House, took it a step further, revealing in an interview with The New Yorker that he regards Mr. Starr as "a right-wing guy who just hates Clinton." Arkansas Sen. David Prior, a close friend of the president, criticized Mr. Starr's lack of a "fair image," as did the Times, which suggested "voters are bound to be confused about the integrity of Mr. Starr's decision on whether to prosecute the Clintons and their close associates." Jack Levin, a senior partner at Kirkland & Ellis, Mr. Starr's law firm, complained: "Repeating the phrase 'conflict of interest' over and over has become a substitute for rationally reviewing the real facts." Meanwhile, the judge in the Little Rock trial met April 16 with Mr. Clinton's representatives to confirm April 28 as the date the president will testify by videotape. In Congress, Democrats ended a filibuster that had kept a special Senate Whitewater committee at bay for more than 45 days. After blocking a vote April 15 for the sixth time since the end of February to extend the stalled Senate investigation, Sen. Alfonse D'Amato (R-N.Y.) announced his Banking Committee would conduct the investigation, which Democrats had no power to prevent. By April 17, Democrats relented and allowed a voice vote extension of the special committee's authority through June 14, with hearings to resume April 24 (see Cal Thomas column, p. 19). Whitewater Committee Chairman Alfonse D'Amato, R-N.Y., said that if important and substantial issues remain to be explored by the time of the deadline, Republicans would seek an accommodation from Democrats, which party leaders said they would resist.

No peace, no safety

Ending imminent hopes of a long-term settlement, a bombing attributed to the Irish Republican Army rocked an affluent western London residential area on April 17, damaging an empty house; no one was injured. In February, the IRA scrapped a 17-month ceasefire by exploding a bomb in east London that killed two people. Meanwhile, masked gunmen in Cairo, Egypt, killed 18 Greek tourists and wounded more than 20 in a barrage of automatic-weapon fire; the suspected Islamic militant gunmen escaped the hotel murder scene. That the hotel is frequented by Israeli tourists caused some to suspect the shooting was linked to the battle between Israeli forces and Lebanon's militant Islamic Hezbollah.

OKC remembered

National, state, and local officials joined mourners April 19 and recalled the first anniversary of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City-where 168 people were murdered in the worst domestic act of terrorism in United States history. "In America, terror will not triumph," Vice President Al Gore told an applauding crowd gathered at an Oklahoma City memorial. All but forgotten: the April 19, 1992, ATF-botched assault on Waco's Branch Davidian compound, where some 90 died. Government prosecutors believe the incident fed into alleged bomber Timothy McVeigh's desire to blow up a federal building. A small memorial was conducted last week at the compound by about 50 former followers of David Koresh. Meanwhile, FBI officials announced April 15 that the cabin of Unabomber suspect Theodore Kaczynski was filled with bomb-making chemicals, metals, and the original draft of the Unabomber manifesto, amounting to "a fully equipped laboratory."

Netherland neverland

Scoring another potential first among nations of the world, the Dutch parliament voted 80-61 on April 16 to endorse same-sex marriages and 83-58 to give homosexuals equal adoption rights. But the proposals must now pass a resistant Dutch cabinet. After supporting liberal abortion, euthanasia, drug, and prostitution laws, some Dutch officials worry legalizing marriage between homosexuals would further harm the Netherlands' international reputation. The British royal family reeled once more on April 16 as Prince Andrew and his estranged wife Sarah announced they were divorcing after two years living apart. They then appeared along with about 30 other couples in a London courtroom to begin the process. With their decision, Queen Elizabeth now has two children seeking divorce (Charles and Andrew), one already divorced (Anne), and another, Edward, who is about to marry.

Judge not

Sen. Bob Dole in a speech April 19 to the American Society of Newspaper Editors continued to hone his election-year message with an attack on President Clinton's judicial selections. "Many of the judges Mr. Clinton has appointed," Mr. Dole told the journalists, "are precisely the ones who are dismantling those guardrails that protect society from the predatory, the violent, the anti-social elements in our midst." Democrats pointed out Mr. Dole supported 182 of 185 of Mr. Clinton's nominees.

"Shared values"

President Clinton last week toured the Far East in a media-friendly blitz of apparent goodwill. On April 15 Mr. Clinton and South Korean president Kim Young Sam agreed to extend an invitation to North Korean officials for the two Koreas to enter into peace talks, with the United States and China as participants. A day later, the president apologized to the Japanese parliament for the rape last year of a 12-year-old Okinawan girl by three U.S. servicemen, who now each face 6 to 7 years in a Japanese prison. "We are gratified that justice has been done," Mr. Clinton told the Japanese legislators, adding that the two countries are bound "by shared values and a shared vision." Meanwhile, Japanese officials on April 18 celebrated a newly issued report by the U.N. Human Rights Commission that barely mentioned the country's extensive use in World War II of "comfort women," who were forced to act as prostitutes for Japanese soldiers. A Japanese official said the U.N. report leaves the country no obligation to issue payments of reparation currently being sought by many of the women.