 |
Around the Nation
|
|
|
Around the Nation
|
Clinton's lawyer, David Kendall, asked a federal judge to require Starr to show why he and his staff should not be held in contempt for improper violations of grand jury secrecy.
Kendall told reporters Starr's office "engaged in illegal and partisan leaking," citing a weekend report in The New York Times that said Starr had concluded a grand jury has the constitutional authority to charge Clinton with a crime while he remains in office.
Starr released a statement saying he was "deeply troubled" by the Times report.
"This office has no desire to inject itself into the constitutional process under way in the Senate," the independent counsel said, adding that he was investigating to determine whether anyone in his office improperly disclosed information to the newspaper.
Starr, asked outside his home if he planned to seek an indictment of the president, said, "It is premature for us to be commenting at all on this, so we're not going to comment."
U.S. District Judge Norma Holloway Johnson last year appointed an investigator to look into Kendall's previous allegations that Starr's office was responsible for leaks of grand jury material in the investigation of whether Clinton illegally tried to cover up his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
Starr contended the White House and defense lawyers were the prime suspects.
The federal grand jury secrecy rule bars prosecutors, grand jurors and court personnel from disclosing grand jury information. An appeals court in Washington, D.C., said last year that protected information "includes not only what has occurred and what is occurring, but also what is likely to occur," including the investigation's strategy.
However, witnesses who testify before a grand jury are allowed to disclose what is said inside the grand jury room.
The news report that Starr has concluded Clinton can be indicted in office drew criticism from senators as the Senate tries to find a way to end impeachment trial.
"I thought that the timing was extremely unfortunate and that it was inappropriate to come out while the Senate is concluding the president's trial," said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine).
Legal scholars differ over whether a sitting president can be indicted. The Constitution makes clear that federal officials ousted through impeachment can be charged with a crime, but it does not spell out whether removal from office must come first.
Indicting a president would "seriously interfere with the ability of the president to govern," said New York University law professor Burt Neuborne. "The time to indict him is after he leaves office."
The Supreme Court ruled in 1997 that sitting presidents can be forced to face civil lawsuits over their unofficial acts. And some federal judges and members of Congress have been prosecuted while in office.
But Yale University law professor Akhil Reed Amar contends the president is unique because he is the sole head of the executive branch of government. If Starr obtained an indictment of Clinton, "he would be claiming for himself the power to imprison the chief executive officer," Amar told Congress last fall.
University of Colorado law professor Robert Nagel suggested a president could be charged and perhaps even forced to go to trial while in office, but there was a "strong argument" that he could not be imprisoned until after leaving office.
Pepperdine University law professor Doug Kmiec said he believes the Constitution does allow a sitting president to be indicted. However, once a prosecutor has referred a case to Congress for impeachment, Kmiec said he believed it would be unwise to pursue it in criminal court as well.
"I think he's made his choice of avenues. I think he should rest with it," Kmiec said.
The two companies announced a deal to offer local and long-distance telephone service, cable TV and high-speed Internet access over Time Warner's cable systems in 33 states.
Combined with earlier moves - notably AT&T's purchase of cable TV company Tele-Communications Inc. - the deal will allow AT&T to offer these services to 40 percent of U.S. households, or 35 million homes, within five years, the companies said.
It also marks another big step by AT&T back into the business of local phone service, which it left after being broken up by the government in 1984.
AT&T and Time Warner will form a joint venture, which will begin offering the new service in one or two cities by the end of 1999. It will begin broader commercial operations next year.
Customers will pay about 20 percent less for the venture's package of long-distance and local phone service than what other vendors could potentially offer, AT&T Chief Executive C. Michael Armstrong told industry analysts yesterday.
"We will be the low-cost provider compared to any other way to deliver these services and we will be putting together more bundles on top of what we're announcing today," Armstrong said.
While AT&T's moves are among the most ambitious, it will face some major competitors.
Big cable companies, such as Cox Communications, are also starting to offer local phone service over their cable lines. Satellite television companies such as DirecTV are partng with regional phone companies to provide a bundle of similar services. Numerous high-tech companies are developing technologies to offer phone service over the Internet.
Nonetheless, shares of yesterday's dealmakers rose on the news. AT&T was up $3 to $93.75 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Time Warner was up $1.37 1/2 to $68.87 1/2.
AT&T will own slightly more than three-quarters of the joint venture and Time Warner the rest. AT&T estimates it will spend $600 million on the venture in the first two years. In addition, it will spend between $300 and $500 to equip each home to handle telephone services over cable lines.
Time Warner will get monthly fees from the venture ranging from $1.50 to $6 per home over six years.
The companies expect the arrangement to generate annual sales of $4 billion after three years.
AT&T has been spending furiously to break into the $110 billion local phone market, while its share of the long-distance business is slipping to rivals like MCI Worldcom and Sprint.
In addition to the acquisition of TCI, the nation's second-largest cable company, AT&T spent $11.3 billion last year on Teleport Communications, a smaller local phone company.
AT&T's acquisition of TCI is expected to be completed this spring. AT&T is talking with other cable operators about deals, but declined to elaborate.
U.S. District Judge Lowell Reed, issuing the injunction six hours before his earlier temporary restraining order would have expired, said the Child Online Protection Act could have the effect of hindering constitutionally protected speech and issued a preliminary injunction that shields Website operators from prosecution.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against the law on behalf of 17 clients.
"We're thrilled that the judge has realized at this stage that our clients have some very credible fears," ACLU spokeswoman Emily Whitfield said.
Justice Department spokeswoman Chris Watney would say only that the department will review the decision.
The law, the second major effort by Congress to protect children on the Internet, would require commercial Web sites to collect a credit card number or some other access code as proof of age before allowing Internet users to view online material "harmful to minors."
Violators would face penalties of up to six months in jail and $150,000 per day in fines.
Supporters say the measure is a sensible way to keep Internet pornography away from children. Unlike the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which the Supreme Court struck down, the new law applies only to commercial Web sites.
Reed had temporarily blocked enforcement of the law in November. In a six-day hearing before Reed late last month, the Justice Department argued that the law would act as a "brown paper wrapper" protecting children from pornographic material.
The government also maintained that requiring Web sites to install checkpoint areas in front of pornographic material would be easy and inexpensive and would not hurt their businesses.
The ACLU argued that the law, signed by President Clinton in October, violates the First Amendment's free speech guarantee and could be used to unfairly prosecute gays and lesbians, AIDS activists or doctors distributing gynecological information.
The ACLU also says checkpoints could be costly and would deter people from visiting affected Web sites, putting some out of business.
The owner of a chain of gay- and lesbian-themed bookstores that does a portion of its business online expressed relief at the judge's decision.
Norman Laurila, founder and owner of A Different Light, which has bookstores in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, had been making plans to take down the company's Web site if the law was permitted to take effect.
Laurila said he feared prosecution or having to defend against a civil lawsuit.
"I'm not ready to go to jail. I have stores to run," said Laurila, whose Web site offers 21,000 titles, many with sexually explicit themes.
02-02-99
| Previous Article | Next Article |
should be sent to: daily.letters@umich.edu | should be sent to: online.daily@umich.edu |