WASHINGTON

GONZALES SAYS HE SUPPORTS FEDERAL ASSAULT WEAPONS BAN

Attorney General nominee Alberto Gonzales told the Senate yesterday that he supports extending the expired federal assault weapons ban. Mr. Gonzales also said he wants Congress to get rid of a requirement that would eliminate part of the Patriot Act this year, despite complaints that it is too intrusive. “I believe the USA Patriot Act has greatly improved our nation’s ability to detect and prevent terrorist attacks,” Mr. Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee in written answers to questions left over from his confirmation hearing. Mr. Gonzales, who served as President Bush’s lawyer during his first term, is expected to be confirmed when the Senate returns after Bush’s inauguration on January 20. He would be the nation’s first Hispanic attorney general and replace John Ashcroft. Democrats, including Senator Schumer of New York, pressed Mr. Gonzales for written answers to several of their questions during his daylong confirmation hearing. Those answers were delivered yesterday to the committee, which planned a meeting today to consider nominations. Congress let the 10-year-old assault weapons ban expire in September. Mr. Gonzales also said he supports the reauthorization of the Patriot Act, the post-September 11 law that expanded the government’s surveillance and prosecutorial powers against suspected terrorists, their associates, and financiers. More than a dozen provisions of the law are set to expire by late October 2005 unless renewed by Congress.

– Associated Press

MAN THREATENS TO BLOW UP VAN NEAR WHITE HOUSE

A man upset over custody of his child threatened to blow up his van a block from the White House yesterday, prompting a standoff with police, the FBI said. Portions of several streets were closed, creating traffic gridlock in downtown Washington. A motorcade carrying President Bush was diverted to a different White House entrance. Mr. Bush was returning from a speech elsewhere in the city. Debra Weierman, spokeswoman for the FBI’s Washington field office, said the man claimed to have 15 gallons of gasoline. He said he would “blow it up if he doesn’t get his child back,” she said. Police attempted to negotiate with the man, whose name was not disclosed. His red van has Michigan license plates. The standoff began at about 3:30 p.m. at the corner of 15th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, along the parade route that Mr. Bush will travel after his inauguration Thursday. Nearby buildings were evacuated as a precaution and police moved in vehicles to block the van but continued talking to the man into the evening, said Sergeant Joe Gentile of the District of Columbia’s Metropolitan Police Department.

– Associated Press

WEST

SCHWARZENEGGER DENIES CLEMENCY TO KILLER

SAN FRANCISCO – Governor Schwarzenegger and the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday turned back a plea for mercy for a man convicted of murdering two women in 1981 over a drug deal, clearing the way for California’s first execution in three years. Donald Beardslee, 61, is scheduled to die by injection today at one minute past midnight. “The state and federal courts have affirmed his conviction and death sentence, and nothing in his petition or the record of his case convinces me that he did not understand the gravity of his actions or that these heinous murders were wrong,” Mr. Schwarzenegger said in his written denial. Beardslee’s lawyers claimed he suffered from brain maladies when he killed Stacey Benjamin, 19, and Patty Geddling, 23, to avenge a soured $185 drug deal. His two appeals before the Supreme Court included claims that the lethal injection he is due to receive at San Quentin State Prison constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment, and that jurors were unfairly influenced when they rendered the death verdict. The court denied his appeals without comment.

– Associated Press