Section A · Page 7
The University Daily Kansan
Tuesday, February 29, 2000
Nation
McCain, Bush focus on religious issues
The Associated Press
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — The day before Virginia's GOP primary, John McCain accused some in his party of pandering to Christian-right leaders. The biting remarks were designed to appeal to moderates voting in three states today, as well as in crucial contests next week.
His rival for the presidential nomination, George W. Bush, said McCain was trying to divide the party along religious lines.
McCain said, "I am a Reagan Republican who will defeat Al Gore. Unfortunately, George Bush is a Pat Robertson Republican who will lose to Al Gore."
Virginia Beach is headquarters for Robertson's Christian Coalition.
After discussing education with teachers in Bellevue, Wash. Bush
said he was the candidate who wanted to stick to issues while McCain wanted to divide people into camps.
"Ronald Reagan didn't point fingers." Bush said. "He never played to people's religious fears like Sen. McCain has shamelessly done."
The GOP race has focused on religious issues in recent days, with Bush expressing his regrets on Sunday to
McCain: Accused some of pandering to Christian-right leaders
Catholic leaders for a visit to Bob Jones University, a South Carolina
school accused of religious bigotry.
My co-worker did not punish me for
Bush criticized McCain for his campaign's telephone calls to Catholic voters to tell them about Bush's visit to the university. McCain representative Dan McLagan said calls such as those made before Michigan's primary also were being made in Washington state.
Aides described McCain's speech yesterday as a call to the grass roots of the party. While McCain met with reporters to make it clear his remarks were aimed not at conservative voters but at a handful of political players — he specifically criticized Robertson and Jerry Falwell. The tone of his speech sent a shock through the party.
McCain said he had been consider ing such a speech since a hard-hitting campaign in South Carolina
where he complained he was unfairly attacked. Aides said both Falwell and Robertson had criticized McCain and supporters in public statements.
"Neither party should be defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of intolerance whether they be Louis Farrakhan or Al Sharpton on the left, or Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell on the right," McCain said in his speech.
Coalition, which Robertson founded, called McCain's remarks "a transparent effort to divide one American from another on the basis of religion" and predicted the group's conservative message would draw record numbers of voters to the polls. There was no immediate response from Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority.
McCain said he wanted to make it clear to Christian voters that he had a conservative record on social issues and they could feel comfortable backing him, despite leaders of the movement who had called him unacceptable.
Accompanying McCain was former rival Gary Bauer, highly regarded among religious conservatives.
"If this were an attack on Christian conservative voters, I wouldn't be here," Bauer said.
Albright shuns native country
Albright rejects Czech candidacy
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said she was flattered by suggestions she seek the presidency of her native Czech Republic, but her spokesman said she had dismissed it without serious consideration.
Some Czechs are speaking of her as a possible successor to President Vaclav Havel, who must retire in 2002. Havel, a playwright-turned-politician, helped lead the "Velvet Revolution" that in 1989 persuaded communist rulers to resign, and he also has raised Albright's name.
But State Department spokesman James P. Rubin sought to dampen the speculation Sundav.
"From time to time, senior Czech officials have approached the secretary about this possibility," he said. "She has dismissed it, although she is certainly flattered that Czechs would consider her for the post of president of her native land. She has never given this any serious consideration."
Albright, 62, plans to be in the Czech Republic on March 5-8. The visit coincides with the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the birth of national hero Tomas Masaryk, who served as the first president of the Czechoslovak Republic after the collapse of Austria-Hungary in 1918.
Havel's chief policy adviser, Pavel Fischer, told Time magazine it was not impossible that Havel and Albright would discuss the presidency during the visit.
Albright was born Marie Korbelova in Prague in 1937. Her father was a Czech diplomat who took his family to London as Germany took over their homeland at the start of World War II. The
family then moved to Denver in 1948 rather than serve under a communist Czechoslovak government.
Havel first brought up the presidency idea in 1998. After returning to Prague from an official visit to the United States, he expressed regret that he hadn't asked whether she would be available to succeed him.
The U.S. Constitution
Constitution bars Albright or any other foreignborn citizen from the American presidency, but there appears to be no legal bar to keep an American citizen from assuming the presidency of another country.
Albright: Said she would not seek the presidency in Czech Republic
Leap Day shouldn't cause major computer glitches
The Associated Press
RICHMOND, Va. — When Y2K was the worry of the day, dozens of city-dwellers moved to the Blue Ridge Mountain community of Floyd County, Va., to stock up, bunker down and wait it out.
But because 2000 dawned without major computer glitches, the approach of Leap Day didn't cause much concern — even here.
No one was stocking up for Feb. 29 at the Floyd Country Store on Friday, and worry was running low at the hardware store, too.
"A couple of people came in discussing it," said David Thompson, a hardware store employee. "There was one scare and everybody realized there wasn't nothing to that one, so I think they're letting it all pass."
yesterday that computers at six local observatories failed to correctly recognize Feb. 29. The agency expects they will be fixed later in the day.
Computers have long had trouble registering Feb. 29 — treating it as March 1, or March 1 as Feb. 30. There are greater risks of programming errors this year because 2000 is an exception to an exception. An extra day is added every four years, except for years that end in "00" unless divisible by 400. So 2000 is a leap year, but 1900 is not.
Any glitches tied to Leap Day likely will be minor. In Japan, the Meteorological Agency reported
The Feb. 29 problem is different from Y2K, which stemmed from a programming shortcut of using only two digits for a year. Left uncorrected, the Y2K bug could have fouled computers that control power grids, air traffic and phone networks. The leap year problem could simply throw off computer's calendars by a day.
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