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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Base commission to visit listed sites

Compiled from wire reports The Spokesman-Review

Washington The commission determining which military bases should be closed this year plans to assign each of its nine members to separate regions of the country and ask them to visit each facility on the closure list from that region, officials said Thursday.

Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn., met with Base Realignment and Closure Commission Chairman Anthony Principi on Thursday, and was told about the plan to divide up the panel’s work. Dodd said he told Principi he would like him to be assigned to the New England region, but those decisions have not been made yet.

Charles Battaglia, executive director of the base closure commission, said the regional concept is an attempt to meet the stringent time requirements for finalizing the list of recommended base changes.

The Defense Department is scheduled to release its list of proposed base closings in mid-May.

Judicial nominations may get confrontation

Washington Republicans took a step Thursday toward a Senate confrontation over filibusters of President Bush’s judicial nominees by advancing two of the White House’s favored candidates for prospective votes.

By sending Texas judge Priscilla Owen and California judge Janice Rogers Brown to the full Senate for confirmation, GOP senators now have two of the candidates they want to use to challenge the Democrats’ threat to filibuster U.S. Appeals Courts candidates.

“We have now the vehicle. We have two qualified women. They have met every test,” said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.

Owen is nominated for a seat on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans and Brown is nominated to serve on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia. Democrats blocked them from lifetime seats on the nation’s second highest courts during Bush’s first term, but they were renominated by the president after he was re-elected.

Bush says nomination of Bolton is politics

Washington President Bush prodded the Senate on Thursday to confirm John R. Bolton as U.N. ambassador and blamed politics for holding up the vote. Bush’s 2004 presidential challenger said Bolton, if approved, would be weakened by the allegations against him.

Two days after the Republican-led Senate Foreign Relations Committee abruptly postponed plans to vote on the nomination, Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said he strongly supports Bolton, but “I can’t speak for all of leadership” of the Senate GOP.

No top Senate Republican has voiced opposition to Bolton. But cracks in support by some GOP senators have put the nomination in question. The White House is lobbying three Republicans on the committee whose concern about Bolton’s nomination derailed Tuesday’s planned vote.

North Carolina State elects ‘pirate’ as prez

Raleigh, N.C. Aye, matey! The Pirate Captain is now the student government president at North Carolina State University.

Will Piavis ran under the name the Pirate Captain and won a runoff election, with nearly 59 percent of the vote. As the results were read, his supporters chanted his name and wore pirate hats from Long John Silver’s restaurant.

Piavis said the pirate persona was a good way to get students interested in campus politics, and he plans to continue using it.

But the new president is now sounding more politico than pirate. Piavis is reaching out to students turned off by his unusual campaign, urging them to get involved in student government.

Some were disturbed by what they saw as a lack of substance.

“He doesn’t really have any issues,” senior Alissa Tompkins said. “All his quotes in the paper were in pirate language that doesn’t make any sense.”