Hospitalized Ford shows improvement
Rancho Mirage, Calif. Former President Ford was out of bed, chatting and eating well as he remained in the hospital for a 10th day, a spokeswoman said Monday.
Ford, 92, was admitted to a hospital near his home in the California desert on Jan. 14. He was initially expected to be released five days later.
“The doctors are assessing him for discharge on a day-to-day basis,” his chief of staff, Penny Circle, said in a statement. “He’s not quite ready for release from the hospital.”
His condition is not life-threatening, she said.
The nation’s oldest living former president was hospitalized briefly last month for routine tests. At the time, he had a bad cold.
Sainthood sought for Thurgood Marshall
New York Episcopalians from a church where the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall worshipped are asking their denomination to name him a saint.
Marshall, who died in 1993, was a towering figure in the civil rights movement and the first black justice to sit on the nation’s highest court.
Members of St. Augustine’s Church in Washington, D.C., will seek initial approval for the honor Friday from delegates to the convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington.
“His Christian faith was deep inside his being, and it was this faith which was the foundation and source of his energetic pursuit of justice,” said the Rev. Thomas Smith, retired rector of St. Augustine’s.
If approved, Marshall’s name would be added to the Book of Lesser Feasts and Fasts, a primary worship book for the New York-based denomination. A feast day in his honor would be celebrated May 17, the anniversary of his victory in Brown v. Board of Education.
Congressman says he welcomes inquiry
Washington In his first extensive public comments about being implicated in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, Rep. John Doolittle, R-Calif., said he has done nothing wrong and challenged the Justice Department to investigate him.
Doolittle also criticized ethics reforms being proposed by fellow GOP leaders in the House, saying they are being done for the sake of appearances.
“I think the system’s working,” Doolittle said in a prerecorded interview broadcast Monday on Sacramento talk radio station KFBK-AM.
Doolittle disputed reports that he is among the handful of lawmakers whose ties to Abramoff are being examined by federal investigators. He said he has never been contacted by them.
“If there’s any truth to that, then come investigate me, come contact me because I know what the truth is, and I’ll come out with a clean record,” Doolittle said.
Doolittle accepted campaign money from Abramoff and used the lobbyist’s luxury sports box for a fundraiser without initially reporting it. Doolittle’s wife and one of his former aides also worked for the lobbyist.