Campaign Money Changed Hands At The White House
PoliticsNow Shuts Down Abruptly
White House Quietly Eyeballing CPI Changes
Henry Espy Cleared On Final Charge
Campaign Money Changed Hands At The White House
WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, March 5) -- The first lady's chief of staff, Maggie Williams, accepted a $50,000 donation from California businessman Johnny Chung, TIME's Michael Weisskopf reports. Williams accepted the check and immediately turned it over to the Democratic National Committee, according to Weisskopf. Whether Williams solicited the donation may be subject to interpretation, he believes. Williams acknowledged she suggested Chung donate money after he repeatedly asked how he could help the president. "It's not clear and how you define terms such as solicitation really is at the center of the legal case here," Weisskopf told CNN. "Certainly accepting a check -- a donation for partisan purposes -- in the White House is itself illegal."
Clinton Clamps Down On Guns
WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, March 5) -- President Bill Clinton this morning announced new rules that would require legal aliens to reside in a state 90 days before they could buy a gun. He also threw his support behind a bill that would bar overseas visitors from carrying firearms. The moves come almost two weeks after a shooting spree at the Empire State Building in New York.
PoliticsNow Shuts Down Abruptly
WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, March 5) -- PoliticsNow, a leading political Web site, was shut down abruptly Tuesday by its partners. "So Long... PoliticsNow is offline," the site's home page announced. The site was sponsored by The Washington Post Company, ABC News and National Journal Inc. "The partners decided to focus their political coverage on their own individual online sites, initiatives and efforts," said Evans Witt, the site's executive editor.
White House Quietly Eyeballing CPI Changes
WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, March 5) -- The Clinton Administration has begun to consult ever so quietly with both parties in Congress to see if some consensus can be reached on how to adjust the way the federal government calculates inflation. A downward adjustment could save the federal government hundreds of billions of dollars over time, but it is opposed by senior citizens' groups and many Democrats, who say any decision should be based on economics, not politics.
Henry Espy Cleared On Final Charge
OXFORD, Miss. (AllPolitics, March 5) -- A federal judge has acquitted Henry Espy on the last charge remaining against him regarding his failed 1992 congressional campaign. Espy was up on a conspiracy count; prosecutors alleged that Crop Growers Insurance Inc. had given Espy's campaign a $20,000 contribution in order to curry favor with his brother, then-Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy.
Sides Clash In Immigration Dispute
WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, March 5) -- A House panel heard two radically different explanations Tuesday for why 180,000 immigrants didn't receive the criminal background checks they should have before they became citizens last year. Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris Meissner says it was an administrative problem and that the INS's systems were overwhelmed. But Rep. Harold Rogers (R-Ky.), chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee, charged that the INS wanted to push as many people as possible through the immigration process and into voting booths, where, presumably, they'd vote for Democrats. "The INS," Rogers said, "is out of control."
Poll: Ferraro Would Beat D'Amato
NEW YORK (AllPolitics, March 5) -- A poll out today suggests that 1984 Democratic vice-presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro would beat New York GOP Sen. Alfonse D'Amato 55-34 percent if the election were held today. The poll, conducted Feb. 24-March 2 by Quinnipiac College in Hamden, Conn., showed many potential Democratic candidates leading D'Amato in 1998, but Ferraro did the best. The poll had a margin of error of +/- 3 percentage points.