WASHINGTON

DODD: BOLTON WOULD LACK CONFIDENCE OF CONGRESS IF SENT TO U.N.

Anticipating President Bush soon will appoint John Bolton as U.N. ambassador, a leading Democrat said yesterday that Mr. Bolton would go without the confidence of Congress.

“He’s damaged goods. This is a person who lacks credibility,” said Senator Dodd, a senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He said Mr. Bush should think again before using a recess appointment to place Mr. Bolton at the United Nations while the Senate is on its traditional August break.

“That’s not what you want to send up, a person who doesn’t have the confidence of the Congress and so many people who’ve urged that he not be sent up to do that job,” said Mr. Dodd, a Democrat of Connecticut, on “Fox News Sunday.”

As Mr. Bush left church yesterday, a reporter shouted a question, asking whether the president would be appointing Mr. Bolton. Mr. Bush smiled and refrained from answering.

Two administration officials said on Friday that the president would appoint Mr. Bolton before leaving tomorrow to spend August at his Texas ranch. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because Mr. Bush had yet to made the announcement.

– Associated Press

MIDWEST

MINNESOTA TO DROP DWI LIMIT TO 0.08%, MAKING NATIONWIDE STANDARD

TRIMONT, Minn. – It was only a broken headlight on a beat-up pickup truck, but it led Martin County Deputy Matthew Owens to turn around and stop it for a check. The pickup’s driver reeked of alcohol and a test showed he had a 0.12% blood-alcohol level, enough for a drunken-driving offense – even on one of the last nights in the last state in the country to have a 0.10% minimum for driving while intoxicated. Minnesota’s DWI limit drops to 0.08% today, giving America a uniform standard.

“It’s taken a long time, but at least we can all be glad that we finally have this sensible national level,” said John Moulden, former president of the National Commission Against Drunk Driving.

Even though Minnesota has a reputation for being tough on drunken drivers – automatically revoking driver’s licenses when a person is arrested or refuses a breath test and making it a felony to get a fourth DWI offense in 10 years – the state lagged when it came to adopting the limit of 0.08%.

The National Commission Against Drunk Driving estimates a 180-pound man’s blood-alcohol level will reach 0.08% after he drinks four 12-ounce beers or four 1.25-ounce drinks of 80-proof liquor in an hour on an empty stomach. For a woman, it could take just three drinks. The lower limit reduces drunken driving deaths on average by 5% to 8%, according to an analysis by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

– Associated Press

NORTHEAST

PROFESSORS TO CALL ON HARVARD TO RELEASE HARPER LETTER

A group of Harvard professors is expected to issue a statement today calling on the school’s embattled president, Lawrence Summers, to release a letter from a disaffected black alumnus who resigned from the university’s governing board last month.

A trial lawyer and Midtown Manhattan resident, Conrad Harper, who was the first black member of the seven-person Harvard Corporation, the school’s most powerful governing body, told The New York Sun on Friday: “The reason for my resignation is that I can no longer support President Summers.” But in a brief phone interview with the Sun yesterday from Cape Cod, where he is vacationing, Mr. Harper repeated his refusal to release the letter of resignation or to discuss its contents. “It’s in Harvard’s domain,” he said.

Harvard has also declined to release Mr. Harper’s letter. “We regard all corporation communications as confidential,” the school’s vice president of community, government, and public affairs, Alan Stone, said.

A professor of human behavior and development at the Harvard School of Public Health, Felton Earls, who is also a member of the research advisory board of the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African and African American Research, told the Sun yesterday: “We are concerned that, with a university of this stature and with a decision of this magnitude, that the faculty and students certainly have a right to know in full why a member of the corporation, which is so fundamentally important to the university, resigned.” Dr. Earls said that today’s statement would be signed by a broad-based group of faculty members, although he said he could not offer further details regarding the number of professors who will sign the statement.

– Special to the Sun