University Daily Kansan / Monday, January 30; 1989
Nation/World
7
States protest federal census
The Associated Press
RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina has joined Kansas and Pennsylvania in a federal lawsuit seeking to bar illegal immigrants from the census that will be used to determine how the U.S. House of Representatives' 435 seats are reapportioned.
If the suit fails, North Carolina could lose a 12th congressional seat it might otherwise gain from the 1990 census.
Neither side is arguing that illegal aliens should be excluded from census counts that help determine government policies, welfare needs and other matters.
The three states want the Census Bureau to exclude illegal aliens from the head count because they have
relatively few illegal aliens, while California, New York and Texas have many.
have many.
A state's population determines how many House seats it receives. Each congressman represents a district of an approximately equal number of people.
"Apportionment has nothing to do with political theory," said David W. DeBruin, a lawyer representing three dozen lawmakers from California, New York and Texas, in an announcement published yesterday. "It's political power."
A U.S. District judge in Pittsburgh heard preliminary arguments in the lawsuit Thursday. He is expected to rule in March on a motion by DeBruin's fellow defense lawyers to
dismiss the suit on the grounds that Kansas, North Carolina and Pennsylvania can't prove they would suffer if the Census Bureau counts illegal aliens for purposes of House apportionment. That argument led to the dismissal of a similar suit in 1980.
free persons" in the states and slaves would be counted as three-fifths of a person.
Regardless of how the judge rules, lawyers may pursue the case to the Supreme Court. Barring an early court injunction, the 1990 census will not be affected and will include the nation's 3 million to 5 million illegal aliens in its apportionment count. That's one reason California is expected to gain four House seats and Texas is expected to gain three.
The Constitution's first article says House seats shall be apportioned according to the "whole number of
In 1866, when Congress drafted the 14th Amendment, which made all persons born or naturalized in the United States citizens, it also decided to use the word "persons" rather than "citizens" or "voters" to describe the basis for reappointing House seats. a key reason, DeBruin said, was that New York state had many foreign-born non-citizens, and the state's delegation insisted on keeping the word "persons."
"The use of the broad word 'persons,'" in both article I and the 14th Amendment, "was both deliberate and anchored in practical politics," Defruin said in a court brief.
NATIONAL ASSEMBLY SEAT: A key rival of Pakistan's Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto won a seat in the National Assembly, election results indicated Sunday. He is expected to lead opposition forces in the legislature.
The official returns from the by-election Saturday gave Gholam Mustafi Jatiol's conservative Islamic Democratic Alliance seven seats in the Senate and Mattoo's left-leaving People's Party four seats.
Lawmakers from Bhutto's party and its allies still outnumber the nine-party Moslem alliance by two-to-one in the assembly, or lower house Parliament.
News Briefs
Sunday's results were not considered a defeat for Bhutto because all the Moslem alliance's victories remained confined to the wealthy and populous Punjab province, where it emerged strongest in November when Pakistan conducted its first free elections in 11 years.
PLO LEADER RELEASED! Faisal Husseini, the pro-PLO leader jailed without trial through most of the 13-month Palestinian uprising, was freed Sunday. He said that he envisioned direct talks soon between Israel and the PLO.
"I believe that they (the Israelis) have decided that their enemy is the PLO and who do
you make peace with but your enemy?" he said.
you make peace with but your enemy?" he said. Husseini, who met in jail recently with Israeli government officials, predicted there would be progress toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the next few months. But he refused to be specific.
He told reporters that he believed that the Palestine Liberation Organization would support a U.N. overseeen election referendum on statehood for the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip but not elections for local representatives as suggested by some Israeli leaders.
ARMY EXPANSION: As Congress ponders a recommendation to close 86 smaller military facilities, the Army is preparing to buy 200,000 acres adjacent to its main training area to accommodate modern tanks, planes and electronic gear that need more and more room for large-scale maneuvers.
Army officials say they need $29 million to expand the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, next to Death Valley in California. By comparison, the Base Alignments and Closing Commission has said $603 million can be saved annually by shutting the facilities it recommended.
has already sent the commission's recommendations on base closings to Congress, which take effect unless blocked by both houses. Senior lawmakers say rejection of the package is unlikely.
Likewise, Congress has not objected to the Army's plans to buy 200,000 acres adjacent to the 632,000-acre Fort Irwin.
Outgoing Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci
None of the bases recommended for closing were large enough for large-scale maneuvers, said Paul W. Johnson, deputy assistant Army secretary for installations and housing.
CUBAN MISSLE CRISIS: A Cuban official has disclosed that 270,000 Soviet and Cuban troops were ready to go to war with the United States during the 1962 Cuba missile crisis and that 100,000 casualties were expected, former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara said yesterday.
A Soviet general confirmed for the first time that one-third of his country's nuclear warheads designed to strike the United States were in Cuba at the time. However, he and another Soviet official said the warheads had not been mounted on missile launchers and were not ready for firing.
French fight use of language mix
The Associated Press
PARIS — One recent morning, a newscast on France Inter radio carried a story about “le dumpling” by the Japanese on European markets. The newspaper Liberation had a headline saying a top politician was in “les starting blocks” for coming elections. And in the afternoon, “un outsider” won the day's top horse race.
For years, the French government has battled the creeping invasion of English without much success. For each new French word coined, such as "logical" for computer software, or "certain" for cameraman, six English words are accepted by speakers of French.
"Franglais" is the name for English words that invade the French language. From morning to night, in the media and on the street, one hears "we marketing," "we marketing," "un leader," or "un self-made-man."
The Commissariat General de la Lange Francaise, which was established in 1984 with the job of "the defense of the French language," is the government's latest
attempt to combat Franglais. The Commissariat has just published the fifth edition of its dictionary of official neologisms.
The 2.393 French neologisms are mandatory for use in all ministries, official correspondence and documents. But getting the public informed is another matter. The Commission has no enforcement power.
"It is out of the question that we play the role of policing the language," said Bernard Billaud, the Commissariat's chief wordmaster. "Our role is to raise consciousness."
"All languages borrow words," Billaud said. "It is not so much a problem of borrowing words as it is a matter of naturalization of the word borrowed and the spirit of the word" to make it really French.
A lexicon of fewer than 2,500 neologisms is not a distinguished showing for almost 20 years of work by the Commissariat and its predecessors. But word-making is a long process.
the commissariat has decreed that "un bulldozer" will now be "un bouteur."
Hospital patient starts fire while playing with matches
The Associated Press
ST-JEROME, Quebec — A psychiatric patient playing with matches started a hospital fire yesterday that killed five people and forced hundreds to flee from the building, authorities said.
dawn hours in the emergency ward on the first floor of the Hotel-Dieu Hospital in St-Jerome, 25 miles northwest of Montreal.
The fire broke out during the pre-
The dead were not identified immediately, but two bodies were found in the emergency ward, authorities said.
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