WASHINGTON

FEC ASKS APPEALS COURT TO RECONSIDER CAMPAIGN FINANCE LAW

The Federal Election Commission yesterday asked an appeals court to reconsider a decision ordering the FEC to write tougher rules to carry out a 2002 campaign finance law.

The commission could have taken the case to the Supreme Court, but instead decided to first ask the full federal appeals court in Washington to consider it. A smaller panel of appellate judges last month upheld U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly’s 2004 decision striking down several FEC rules interpreting the new law.

The law, approved by Congress and signed by President Bush in 2002 years after its sponsors began fighting for it, bans congressional and presidential candidates and national party committees from raising corporate and union money in any amount and unlimited donations from any source.

The law also bars the use of corporate and union money for election-time ads, among other new limits.

Judge Kollar-Kotelly struck down more than a dozen commission regulations that she said opened loopholes that savvy political players could exploit. The law’s sponsors, including Reps. Christopher Shays, a Republican of Connecticut, and Marty Meehan, a Democrat of Massachusetts, had sued to try to force the FEC to write stronger regulations.

– Associated Press

SOUTH

GUNMAN KILLS FOUR NEAR SMALL-TOWN CHURCH

SASH, Texas – A gunman killed four people near a small-town church, then killed himself early yesterday after a nine-hour standoff with police, authorities said.

Police said witnesses told them that A.P. Crenshaw, who lived across the street from the Sash Assembly of God church, exchanged words in the church parking lot Sunday night with church member Wes Brown, who asked Crenshaw to leave.

Crenshaw returned a short time later and shot Brown, 61, at close range, and then shot the pastor, James Armstrong, 42, the witnesses said. Deputies found both men dead in a grassy area next to the church parking lot, Fannin County Sheriff Kenneth Moore said. He said it didn’t appear that they were shot inside the church, as initially reported.

Crenshaw then drove to a nearby intersection, where he shot at a truck towing a horse trailer and then killed two women after they tried vainly to flee from the truck and hide, witnesses told police.

– Associated Press

IN NEW MEMOIR, SENATOR HELMS LIKENS ABORTION TO HOLOCAUST

RALEIGH, N.C. – Senator Helms, writing with the same passion that made him the archconservative of the U.S. Senate for 30 years, renews his criticism of abortion in a memoir being published this week, comparing it to both the Holocaust and the September 11, 2001, attacks.

“I will never be silent about the death of those who cannot speak for themselves,” the former senator wrote in “Here’s Where I Stand,” which is scheduled for release Tuesday.

The North Carolina Republican, known as “Senator No” for his consistent efforts to block what he considered liberal initiatives and unqualified foreign policy appointees, makes clear his views on abortion and other issues have hardly moderated since he left office in 2003.

He repeatedly introduced bills seeking to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion, and in his book he defends his criticized comparisons of abortion and the Holocaust.

“I reject that criticism because this is indeed another kind of holocaust, by another name,” he wrote. “At last count, more than 40 million unborn children have been deliberately, intentionally destroyed. What word adequately defines the scope of such slaughter?”

– Associated Press

KENTUCKY GOVERNOR SAYS HE WILL PARDON ADMINISTRATION MEMBERS

FRANKFORT, Ky. – Governor Ernie Fletcher, on the eve of an appearance before a grand jury investigating his administration’s hiring practices, said yesterday he would issue pardons to current and former members of his administration charged in the probe.

Mr. Fletcher also said he would appear before the grand jury but would not testify.

The grand jury was impaneled in June and has charged nine current and former members of Mr. Fletcher’s administration with misdemeanor violations of the state’s personnel law for basing hiring on political considerations rather than merit.

Mr. Fletcher said anyone responsible for violating the law would face the penalties that could be imposed by two administrative agencies that are also investigating.

A Democratic attorney general, Greg Stumbo, said in a statement that Mr. Fletcher has “slammed the door on the public’s right to know what wrongs his administration has committed.”

– Associated Press