Dems to question Roberts on torture memo, president
Washington – Democrats plan to question Supreme Court nominee John Roberts about a disavowed Justice Department memo he did not write that critics say led to torture in foreign prisons, top Senate Judiciary Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont said Monday.
Leahy said he gave Roberts a copy of the so-called “Bybee memo” during a meeting Monday. Then-Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee argued in the Jan. 22, 2002, memo that the president has the power to issue orders that violate the Geneva Conventions as well as international and U.S. laws prohibiting torture.
“It will be raised, partly on the question of to what area – if any – can a president be considered above the law,” Leahy told reporters. Leahy said he did not want Roberts to avoid questions on the document during his confirmation hearings, which will begin Sept. 6, by saying that he had not read it.
Bybee, now a federal judge on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, wrote the now-disavowed memo soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Critics in Congress and many legal experts say the original document set up a legal framework that led to abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, in Afghanistan and at the U.S. prison camp for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Monday’s meeting came as the National Archives released more documents from Roberts’ time as a lawyer in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. Leahy said he would continue to push the White House to release all of Roberts’ documents and memos.
HARTFORD, Conn.
Arrest warrant sought for jailed ex-governor
Connecticut’s top state prosecutor is seeking an arrest warrant for former Gov. John G. Rowland, his attorney said Monday.
Rowland has been in a federal prison in Pennsylvania since April after pleading guilty to a charge he conspired to trade his office for favors and to commit tax fraud.
Rowland became a target of state prosecutors because of consulting work he accepted after he resigned from office last year. Investigators are looking at whether the work violated the state’s “revolving door” laws.
FRANKFORT, Ky.
Governor to pardon aides in hiring probe
Gov. Ernie Fletcher, on the eve of an appearance before a grand jury investigating his administration’s hiring practices, said Monday he would issue pardons to current and former members of his administration charged in the probe.
Fletcher also said he would appear before the grand jury but would not testify.
The grand jury was impaneled in June and has charged nine current and former members of Fletcher’s administration with misdemeanor violations of the state’s personnel law for basing hiring on political considerations rather than merit.
Fletcher said anyone responsible for violating the law would face the penalties that could be imposed by two administrative agencies that also are investigating.
PARIS
6 African immigrants die in apartment fire
Six people, including a 6-year-old, were killed when fire raced through an abandoned Paris apartment building where African immigrants lived, firefighters said today, only days after a blaze killed 17 Africans in another rundown building.
Three people were seriously injured in the fire, which tore through the six-story building late Monday in central Paris where Ivorian immigrants were living, firefighters said. About 11 people, including five firefighters, suffered minor injuries.
About 130 firefighters were called in to battle the blaze, thought to have started on the second floor of the building.
Pierre Aidenbaum, the district mayor, said a dozen families from Ivory Coast lived in the building, where the conditions were known by authorities to be “absolutely inadmissible and dangerous.”
PARIS
Chirac tells Iran censure is coming
President Jacques Chirac of France on Monday issued a stark ultimatum to Iran, warning that it would face censure by the U.N. Security Council if it did not reinstate a freeze on sensitive nuclear activities under an accord reached in Paris in November.
In his annual speech to France’s ambassadors at the Elysée Palace, Chirac made clear that he was losing patience with Iran, even as he urged its leaders to accept an offer of incentives by France, Britain and Germany in exchange for an indefinite freeze of its uranium conversion and enrichment activities.
CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico
Marine shot, killed in road-rage incident
A U.S. Marine was shot and killed Monday in this border city after a fight with a motorist, authorities said.
The 23-year-old Marine got into a heated argument with the driver of a white sport utility vehicle, who pulled out a gun and shot him, said Claudia Banuelos, a spokeswoman for state investigators in Chihuahua state, which includes Juarez.
A spokeswoman with the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, confirmed a U.S. Marine had been killed Monday, but would not release his name.
The Marine was accompanied by three other men who told authorities they too were Marines visiting Juarez for the day, Banuelos said.
Banuelos said the group had just left a nightclub and was walking in the street when the sport utility vehicle raced by, almost hitting them.
“The tourists were angry and apparently threw a glass bottle at the car, prompting the driver to get out,” she said.
