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DeLay: Sorry for Schiavo rhetoric

By wire services
Published April 14, 2005

WASHINGTON - House Majority Leader Tom DeLay apologized Wednesday for using overheated rhetoric on the day Terri Schiavo died, but refused to say whether he supports impeachment of the judges who ruled in her case.

DeLay backtracked as White House spokesman Scott McClellan said President Bush considers the Texas Republican, who is battling ethics allegations, a friend, but suggested that the majority leader is more of a business associate than a social pal.

DeLay addressed remarks he made after Schiavo died on March 31. "I said something in an inartful way and I shouldn't have said it that way and I apologize for saying it that way," DeLay said.

Shortly after Schiavo's death, Delay said it represented a failure of the legal system. DeLay's statement also said, "The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior."

Asked Wednesday if he favors impeachment for any of the Schiavo judges, he referred reporters to an earlier request he made to the House Judiciary Committee to look into "judicial activism" and Schiavo's case in particular.

WASHINGTON - President Bush's drive to make John R. Bolton the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations got sidetracked Wednesday as Senate Democrats forced a delay until next week of an important confirmation vote.

In buying time, they hoped to win over a pivotal Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island.

Chafee said Wednesday he is leaning toward supporting Bolton, which would all but assure Bolton's confirmation.

WASHINGTON - Stephen Johnson, President Bush's nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency, won overwhelming approval Wednesday from a Senate committee - but still could have his confirmation blocked by a Senate Democrat.

Johnson, the acting EPA administrator, cleared the way last week for Wednesday's committee vote by agreeing to Democrats' demands that he cancel plans for a controversial study using children to measure the effect of pesticides.

By a 17-1 vote, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee sent Johnson's nomination to the full Senate for consideration. But the lone dissenter, Sen. Thomas Carper, D-Del., said the Bush administration was still blocking his requested studies on how to cut pollution from power plants.

Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Bill Nelson, D-Fla., had demanded the cancellation of the pesticide study. Over the study's two years, EPA planned to give $970 plus a camcorder and children's clothes to each of the families of 60 children in Duval County in what critics noted was a low-income minority neighborhood.

WASHINGTON - The Senate on Wednesday confirmed rocket scientist Michael Griffin to serve as the next administrator of NASA.

He is the head of the space department at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory. He will be NASA's 11th administrator, succeeding Sean O'Keefe.

[Last modified April 14, 2005, 01:17:13]