Embattled Gonzales
Embattled Gonzales
WASHINGTON — Support for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales sank further Thursday as Democrats proposed a no-confidence vote, and a fifth GOP senator, Norm Coleman, of Minnesota, called for his resignation. The White House shrugged off the no-confidence idea as merely symbolic, and President Bush continued to stand by his embattled friend. For all of the administration’s defense, several GOP officials acknowledged privately that Republicans were still reeling from testimony this week that Gonzales, when he was Bush’s White House counsel, pressured Attorney General John Ashcroft to certify the legality of Bush’s controversial eavesdropping program while Ashcroft lay in intensive care.
Going naked in Vermont
BRATTLEBORO, Vermont — Spring has arrived in this southeastern Vermont town known for its live-and-let-live culture. The trees are less bare, and some local residents are more so. Resident Theresa Toney said she was dining at a downtown restaurant when she spotted this spring’s first naked person. Vermont has no state law, and Brattleboro no ordinance, against public nudity, although police charged the man Wednesday with lewd and lascivious conduct.
No word on constable
HARLEYVILLE, S.C. — Authorities arrested two additional men as they searched for a missing constable whose empty cruiser was found in flames, police said Thursday. The constable, Robert Lee Bailey, 67, disappeared Monday night while patrolling the small community of Lincolnville, about 20 miles northwest of Charleston. His hat and gun were found in a yard, and his torched cruiser was discovered behind a church off nearby Interstate 26.
Wednesday evening, a group of children found Bailey’s badge and handcuffs case wrapped in a wad of burned rags in Harleyville, another 20 miles up the interstate, authorities said. The two men in custody were arrested on unrelated charges, but they are associates of Walter Fayall III, 24. who is considered a “person of interest” in Bailey’s disappearance. Fayall, 24, was arrested in Charlotte, N.C., Wednesday on federal weapons charges.
Associated Press