‘Illegal’ immigration bill vetoed
Gov. Janet Napolitano vetoed a bill Tuesday that would have drawn Arizona deeper into the fight against illegal immigration by making it a crime for illegal immigrants to be in the state.
It was the first-term governor’s 115th veto, a record for Arizona. The GOP-dominated Legislature has yet to override any of the Democrat’s vetoes.
The vetoed bill also would have taken a tougher approach toward employers who hire illegal immigrants, provided money for local police to arrest immigrants and expanded the list of government benefits denied to immigrants.
“It offers no constructive new ideas and instead is filled with unworkable or unconstitutional provisions that I have previously objected to or vetoed,” Napolitano wrote in a letter to lawmakers.
Albany, N.Y.
Weld exits gubernatorial race
Former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld dropped out of the race for governor of New York on Tuesday, averting a potentially bruising and expensive primary for the Republican nomination.
The move came days after the state GOP establishment threw its support to Weld’s rival, former state Assembly Minority Leader John Faso. If Weld had stayed in the race, he would have faced Faso in a primary in September.
Weld grew up on Long Island, the scion of a wealthy family. He could have been the first man since Sam Houston to be the governor of two states; Houston was elected governor of Tennessee in 1827 and of Texas in 1859.
Andrews Air Force Base
CBS correspondent returns stateside
Wounded CBS war correspondent Kimberly Dozier is heading today to the same Maryland medical facility where ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff was taken after he was injured in Iraq.
Dozier, who survived a Baghdad bombing that killed two of her CBS colleagues and an Army captain, is officially in critical but stable condition. But her colleagues said she is alert, optimistic and eager to go home.
“The swelling on Kimberly’s face has decreased significantly, she had the first physical therapy session on her legs and she had her hair washed,” Linda Mason, a CBS senior vice president, said in a statement. “She is in good spirits.”
After her plane lands at Andrews Air Force Base, Dozier will be driven by ambulance to the National Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. – not far from her parents’ home in the Baltimore suburbs.
Dozier, a veteran reporter, was working on a Memorial Day story about soldiers serving in Iraq when the blast riddled her head and legs with shrapnel.
Gaylord, Mich.
Workers exhume misidentified body
The body of a young woman who was laid to rest under a grave marker with someone else’s name on it was exhumed Tuesday for another burial after a heartbreaking case of mistaken identity.
A city public works crew removed the casket holding the remains of Laura VanRyn from the Fairview Cemetery plot where the parents of Whitney Cerak had buried her, thinking the young woman was their daughter. Cerak actually had survived an April 26 van crash in Indiana that killed VanRyn and four others from Taylor University.
VanRyn, 22, will be given a private graveside service by her parents within a few days and will be reburied near relatives in Grand Rapids Township, about 180 miles away, funeral home owner Bob Zaagman said.
VanRyn and Cerak, now 19, were in a van that collided with a tractor-trailer. The coroner’s office mistakenly told the families of the two blond college students that Cerak was dead and VanRyn in a coma.