NATION/WORLD
The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, January 13, 1999 - 5
'Trial
Freshman Senate
launches
White House
denies charges
8 new
Senators
WASHINGTON (AP) -Talk about
hitting the ground running. Eight fresh-
men have launched their Senate careers
by plunging directly into the presidential
impeachment trial even before moving
into- their permanent offices.
"It's kind of like playing in the World
Series without having gone through the
rest of the season, let alone going
through spring training," said one of
them, Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R-Ill.)
"It's a quick way to make you
understand that you're a part of one of
the most important bodies in the
world," said another newcomer, Sen.
George Voinovich (R-Ohio). "I get
goose bumps thinking about it."
Normally, Fitzgerald, Voinovich and
their six newly minted colleagues
would be spending a relatively leisure-
ly January focusing on hiring staft
house-hunting and learning the ways
of the Senate.
Instead, they have stepped
straight into the vortex of a consti-
tutional, political and media mael-
strom, their schedules bulging with
meetings, interview requests and
time for poring over stacks of legal
documents.
"It's intense" said Sen. Evan Bayh
(D-Ind.), his state's former governor.
"It's more than I was used to as gover-
nor, except in truly critical moments. I
assume this is more than normal, but I
have nothing to compare it to."
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24
EDWARDS
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TRIAL
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Justice.
House officials have until noon
today to turn over the written record
in Clinton's impeachment case.
Democratic sources, who spoke on
condition of anonymity, said they
would carefully scrutinize the sub-
mission to make sure it did not
include material that is irrelevant to
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the two articles of impeachment
passed by the House.
Presidential allies are prepared to
object if they believe the House has
included material that was not part of
the two articles, these sources said.
They added that Abbe Lowell,
the lead lawyer for House
Judiciary Committee Democrats
during proceedings in the House,
had met with Senate Democratic
#CH aides recently and would be
reviewing the material.
The White House worked against
AP PHOTOS today's deadline for submission of
. Besides its own trial brief. One outside
nning (R- adviser, speaking on condition of
ho), and anonymity, said it was being draft-
ed to suggest that House
bout the Republicans drew conclusions from
ation and the evidence that went far beyond
served on prosecutor Kenneth Starr's own
ittee that analysis of the evidence.
eachment The adviser said the brief, which
must still be approved by the presi-
his." dent, is expected to highlight contra-
in nublic dietory testimony and try to make n
vich, who strong case that the key witnesses in
who was the case - Monica Lewinsky, Betty
Currie and Vernon Jordan - all
made statements that support
Clinton's denials of wrongdoing.
For instance, House prosecutors
and Starr both concluded, from
Lewinsky's testimony, that Currie's
retrieval of presidential gifts was an
act of obstruction by the president.
But White House lawyers will argue
that Currie testified Clinton never
asked her to pick up the gifts and that
Lewinsky testified Clinton never told
her directly he was retrieving the gifts
and that she just assumed the Oval
Office secretary was acting on orders
from the president.
The adviser said the White House
brief also is unlikely to attack
Lewinsky's credibility, instead dis-
missing contradictions between her
testimony and the president's as dif-
fering recollections.
"The brief will argue Clinton
admitted to an intimate relationship
with Lewinsky and that in any rela-
tionship there is room for differing
recollections," the adviser said.
Republican members of the
House Judiciary Committee will
present the case for Clinton's
removal from office. Pending last
minute changes, Rep. Henry Hyde
(R-111.) will make brief opening
comments, followed by Rep. James
Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), who will
speak for about an hour.
Other Republicans, including
Reps. Asa Hutchinson (R-Ark.),
James Rogan (R-Cal.) and Ed Bryant
M-Tenn ) will detail the evidence
after which Rep. Bill McCollum (R-
Flo.) is expected to deliver a summa-
ry.
How busy are they? Voinovich
canceled plans to return to Ohio last
weekend to attend swearing-in cere-
monies for state officials. Fitzgerald
did the same, and has so far limited
most interviews to Chicago-area
news organizations to avoid being
overwhelmed. And Sen. Blanche
Lincoln (D-Ark.), a former House
member who returned to Arkansas
two years ago, has been staying with
friends because she has had little
time to search for a home for her
family.
Unfailingly, the freshmen speak of
the responsibility they bear and the
awe they feel as jurors as the Senate
considers whether to remove
President Clinton from office.
Only one other group of senators
has performed this task: In 1868,
when President Andrew Johnson was
acquitted by a single vote.
"You really think: 'What will my
grandchildren read about this?,"'
Lincoln said.
Fven so, she is among four of the
eight newcomers who previously served
in the House and had at least indirect
knowledge of what it would be like
serving in the new chamber
Lincoln, they are Sens. Jim Bu
Ky.), Mike Crapo (R-Ida
Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).
"I'd rather be talking a
issues I ran on, like educa
crime,' said Schumer, who s
the House Judiciary Comm
issued the articles of imp(
against Clinton last month.
"I don't like having to do t
Three of the others served
office at home: Bayh; Voino'
was governor; and Fitzgerald,
a state senator.
.Muslims continue to fast for Ramadan
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CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - There are memories in a
tear that rolls down Youssef Ibrahim's weathered
cheek The retired 67-year-old carpenter, smiling,
remembers his first Ramadan with his wife.
His shy, 19-year-old bride chased him out of the
kitchen and, laughing, chided him for getting in her
way. He waited patiently for her to join him before
breaking his fast and then gently kissed her hand in
*anks for the meal.
Now, more than 40 years later, it is another
Ramadan, the month when Muslims fast during day-
light to mark God's revelation of their holy book, the
Koran, to Prophet Mohammed. Ramadan began Dec.
20 in Egypt with the sighting of the new moon and
will end next week when a new crescent appears, start-
ing the next month in the lunar calendar.
Ibrahim's wife has been dead seven years, and he is
kneeling in a dusty courtyard in Cairo's City of the
dead, shivering from the evening chill. The walls of
as wife's brick tomb are crumbling, its door covered
in dust.
He waits for the call to prayer, when he will break
his fast by her gravesite, a somber ceremony he began
when she died.
"I miss you, Jehan. I miss you."
The call to evening prayer envelops Cairo. Different
lives converge at this moment, brought together by
faith and family.
Another day of'fasting is over, sacrifice replaced by
indulgence, the illicit - at least in terms of food -
now licit.
Rutted dirt roads wind through the City of the Dead,
home to not only the deceased, but to thousands of the
poor who live in the mausoleums for lack of any alter-
native.
Televisions cast a surreal glow over the tombs. On
screen, a young Egyptian actress, singing off-key,
dances her way through the nightly television show
"Ramadan's Riddles?'
Cairo's streets - almost always jammed with traf-
fic - are suddenly still as most people already have
rushed home to eat.
After hours on his feet standing guard outside one
of Cairo's riverfront hotels, police officer Sayed
Abdullah is seated on a rickety wooden chair. His
meal of a "ful" sandwich, an Egyptian specialty of
mashed beans, is balanced in his lap.
Eating slowly to avoid going back on duty, he
watches the odd car whiz by. A driver late for the
Ramadan meal races by blowing his horn, hoping to
get home before the choicest cuts of lamb or chicken
are snapped up.
"Look at that madness, that stupidity," says
Abdullah, shaking his head. "Always a rush, always
the horn. Why not just drive slowly and enjoy the
quiet. What if they crashed or killed someone?"
"Is ... a meal worth a life?" he asks.
That is a question Khalid Nassar is asking him-
self as an irate driver zips by, missing him by inch-
es.
Seated in the middle of a bridge exit ramp, next to
a tray of strategically placed broken eggs, Nassar is
weeping and doing his best to look pitiful.
"Ramadan is about helping the poor, and I'm poor,"
says Nassar, an admitted convert.
He explains his game: he begs for spoiled eggs from
grocers, then breaks them on the pavement in hopes
people will think he has accidentally dropped his fam-
ily's food.
"God says that we must first try to help ourselves
before turning to Him," he said. "That's all I'm trying
to do here, help myself."
But Nassar's hopes for sympathy and charity fail.
No one stops to give money. Perhaps everyone is too
rushed.
Instead, Nassar gets an insult.
"You idiot," yells the driver of a car swerving
around him. "You'll be killed, God willing."
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Crunch for raising campaign
ioney begins with new year
Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON - On New Year's
Day, when most folks were focused on
1999, Brian Kennedy was casting his
sights ahead to 2000.
Kennedy is no millennium kook; he
a political aide to Republican presi-
ential hopeful Lamar Alexander. And
for Kennedy and others like him, the
chime of midnight was as distinctive as
the jingle of a cash register - and as
loud and clear as a starting bell.
Welcome to Campaign 2000. Entry
fee: $55,000 a day.
A serious run for president will like-
ly cost $20 million or so, which for
practical reasons must be raised almost
entirely in 1999. And so Alexander,
er two years of unofficial campaign-
ing that followed his 1996 run, on
Friday became the latest in a flurry of
candidates to lay the legal groundwork
for a White House bid by establishing a
campaign exploratory committee.
In the two weeks bracketing New
Year's Day, nearly a half dozen candi-
dates or possible candidates took the'
first steps toward running, underscoring
'ow a drastically compressed political
lendar, and its fund-raising demands,
are driving this presidential contest.
"We're talking about a five- or six-
week campaign at the most," Kennedy
said of the rapid-fire regimen beginning
in February 2000 with the Iowa caucus-
es and New Hampshire primary.
Which means the run-up in 1999 -
and the capacity to raise $55,000 a day
from now until Dec. 31 - may prove
more important than ever.
"The old rules are gone," said Tad
Devine, a veteran Democratic strategist,
speaking of the days in the '70s and
'80s when the nominating season
unfolded with all the languor of winter
melting into spring. Back then, a candi-
date like Jimmy Carter in 1976 or Gary
Hart in 1984 could use a strong show-
ing in Iowa or New Hampshire as a
springboard, gathering momentum and,
especially, money to propel them
through the contests in the weeks and
months that followed.
But in 2000, "anyone who wants to
be competitive is going to have to have
their money banked by the end of this
year, said Dan Schnur, a California
Republican strategist.
Blink and you might miss the whole
thing.
I
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