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Serving the University community
Vol. 82 Mo. 162 USPS 045360 8 pages
College Station, Texas
Wednesday, June 18, 1986
eagcm nominates Rehnquist for top spot
■ WASHINGTON (AP) — Presi
dent Reagan on Tuesday announced
^■te retirement of Warren E. Burger
chief justice of the United States
Hnd said he will nominate Justice
^william Rehnquist to succeed him
become the 16th man to head
Supreme Court.
■ Upon Rehnquist’s confirmation by
Senate, Reagan said, he will
^■ominate federal appeals court
^■tdge Antonin Scalia to the Su-
^■rente Court, thus preserving a con
servative majority on the high court.
I If confirmed, Scalia, 50, would be
first American of Italian descent
t|> serve on the court. He also would
the youngest member of the pre
sent court, which in November
^■ould have become, without 78-
y< tr-old Burger’s retirement, the
^Bdest Supreme Court in history.
■ With Burger’s departure and Sca-
lia’s arrival, the court’s average age
would drop from 74 to 71.
Scalia’s presence is not expected
to alter the court’s ideological bal
ance, but his youth and his recog
nized intellect could give the court a
powerful conservative voice for de
cades to come.
If anything, Scalia is regarded as
even more conservative than Bur
ger, who is regarded as second only
to Rehnquist in his politically conser
vative views.
Burger’s retirement will not
change the court’s position on the is
sue of abortion, since he was one of
four court members who last week
voiced reservations about the court’s
landmark 1973 decision. His depar
ture still leaves five solid votes be
hind that ruling, which legalized
abortion.
Scalia is a Roman Catholic and the
father of nine children. A White
House official who participated in
the review of candidates for the post
said that, although he was familiar
with a number of Scalia’s decisions,
he did not know whether he ever
participated in an abortion case.
Burger’s retirement could pro
duce one significant change in life at
the Supreme Court — television
cameras and other electronic cover
age might be allowed. Burger is ve
hemently opposed to such coverage.
Rehnquist refused to say Tuesday
whether he would like to change
that, but electronic news coverage of
the judicial process has spread
through many state and local courts
in recent years.
Reagan made his surprise an
nouncement to a packed White
House press room, where reporters
had been told only to expect an im
portant announcement.
The president said Burger in
formed him three weeks ago that he
had decided to retire — effective
July 10 — after 17 years as chief jus
tice to devote full time to his work as
chairman of the commission that will
lead the nation’s celebration of the
200th anniversary of the Constitu
tion in 1989.
A senior White House official,
speaking on condition he not be
identified, said Reagan picked
Rehnquist from a list of about a
dozen potential candidates — all jur
ists -— which was prepared for him.
Reagan met with the justice about
two weeks ago and offered him the
job.
The president then selected Scalia
from among others on the list, the
official said.
The official, who is familiar with
the selection process and briefed re
porters at the White House after the
announcement, said Scalia was cho
sen largely because he is “one of the
principal exponents of the presi
dent’s philosophy of judicial re
straint.”
He described that philosophy as
an approach to law in which “the
courts do not assert their own au
thority to change or to modify or to
strike down those laws that are
adopted by the democratic branches,
by the Congress or executed by the
president, unless the Constitution
specifically so requires.”
The official insisted, however,
that “there was no litmus test” for
picking a justice on the basis of his
specific beliefs and that Scalia was
not subjected to any screening of his
opinions on abortion or school
prayer.
Scalia was named by Reagan to
the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in
Washington in 1982. He was chief of
the three-judge special court panel
Warren Burger
that ruled unconstitutional the
Gramm-Rudman deficit reduction
law. An appeal has been heard by
the Supreme Court and a decision is
pending.
Scalia would be Reagan’s second
appointee to the Supreme Court.
The first was Sandra Day O’Connor,
a law school classmate of Rehnquist.
Excedrin capsules
tampered with
in Washington
I
1 ! ! 8 i !-! 5 ! tSi
»■■■■■ B b ■ Sag
Where's The Silver Lining?
Photo by Anthony S. Casper
Rain hit the Bryan-College Station area again Tuesday, making the logy Building’s observation floor a cloudy one. A 60 percent chance of
view of South College Avenue from the Oceanography and Metero- rain is forecast for today.
Legislators aid in securing permission
Father gets OK to go to Moscow
1 DALLAS (AP) — Several calls to
embassies, a congressman and a sen
ator were needed before the father
of a girl hospitalized in Moscow fi
nally secured permission Tuesday to
fly to the Soviet Union to see his
daughter.
I Gordon Riggs, father of Lisa
Riggs, 17, traveled to Washington
Tuesday afternoon to secure a visa
and head for Moscow.
H His daughter, who was part of an
Irving high school tour of Eastern
block nations, suffered an asthma at
tack and cardiac difficulties after
climbing to the top of a circus arena
in Moscow. She was in satisfactory
condition, said .the girl’s mother,
Cheryl Riggs.
With help from a Texas congress
man and a direct call to the Ameri
can embassy, the girl’s parents fi
nally learned about their daughter’s
condition late Monday. Riggs also
received an emergency visa sooner
than usual with help from Sen. Phil
Gramm, R-Texas.
Riggs, a Dallas computer consul
tant with the Federal Reserve Bank,
said he would stay wuth his daughter
about a week, until she could travel.
“If she’s improving as rapidly as
we are told she is, he will be bringing
her home rather quickly,” Ms. Riggs
said.
The Riggs, who first heard of
their daughter’s plight Sunday af
ternoon, did not know how serious
the attack had been until late Mon
day. They said they were unable to
learn of anything through the State
Department.
“I’m still amazed at how I could
get through to the embassy and yet
the State Department, their emer
gency services, indicated that they
could not,” Riggs said. “I have a real
hard time understanding that—how
I can get through and the State De
partment emergency cannot. Its real
frustrating.”
A spokesman for Rep. Martin
Frost, D-Texas, said staff members
also had difficulty getting assistance
from the State Department.
“The State Department is telling
us they will not or cannot get
through,” spokesman Bob Mansker
said.
Peter Martinez, a spokesman for
the State Department, said he could
not comment on the incident be
cause he was not familiar with the
case.
“My experience has been there’s
almost always an explanation why
these things are the way they are,”
Martinez said. “They could have
called at a time the lines were not
jammed up or at a time when the So
viet bureaucracy is open.
AUBURN, Wash. (AP) — The
maker of Extra-Strength Excedrin
capsules asked stores nationwide to
stop selling them Tuesday after au
thorities here confirmed there was
cyanide in capsules found in the
home of a woman who died of cy
anide poisoning.
A relative found Sue Snow, 40, a
bank manager, collapsed in her
home June 11, said Police Officer
James Monnett. She died later that
day at a hospital.
There were 56 capsules left inside
a 60-capsule Excedrin bottle found
near where Snow collapsed, said
Christopher Rezendes, assistant di
rector of investigations for the
Seattle office of the federal Food
and Drug Administration.
Several of the remaining capsules
contained significant amounts of cy
anide, Rezendes said.
The bottle of poisoned capsules
was discovered Monday at the wom
an’s home as about 150 people at
tended a wake at the house, said
Jerry Christin, evidence and identifi
cation technician for the Auburn po
lice.
Christin said police had uncov
ered no evidence yet to indicate the
death was a suicide.
“We’re treating it as a homicide,”
he said. “That way we don’t overlook
anything.”
The King County medical exam
iner’s office confirmed Monday that
Snow died of acute cyanide poison
ing.
All Extra-Strength Excedrin cap
sules were pulled from about 50
stores in the Auburn area south of
Seattle after Mayor Bob Roegner de
clared a public emergency Monday.
The maker of Excedrin, Bristol-
Myers, recommended similar action
nationwide Tuesday.
“Although we believe this to be a
local, isolated incident, we are also
asking all stores throughout the
United States to quarantine Exce
drin capsules for the time being and
to remove Excedrin capsules from
store shelves until we have more in
formation on the situation in Au
burn,” Harry Levine, a vice presi
dent of Bristol-Myers, said in New
York.
“This applies to Excedrin capsules
only,” he said. The product also is
sold in extra-strength and regular
strength tablets.
Monnett said that as of late Mon
day no cyanide was found in any of
the bottles pulled from store shelves
in Auburn and tested by the FDA.
Authorities believe Snow, who was
married and had two daughters,
purchased the capsules in Auburn a
couple of days before she died. Po
lice say they have been unable to de
termine which store sold the cap
sules.
The batch was manufactured in
Morrisville, N.C., and bore the lot
number 5 H 1 02-Aug. 88, Rezendes
said.
Levine said the company had re
ceived no threats or communication
relating to the poisoning.
At least nine deaths have been
linked to drug-tampering since
seven people in the Chicago area
died in 1982 after taking Extra-
Strength Tylenol contaminated with
cyanide.
The February death of a New
York woman remains under investi
gation, while officials ruled the April
death of a woman in Pullman,
Wash., was not a case of consumer-
product tampering. A poisoning
case in Tennessee was ruled a sui
cide.
Son held
in Father’s
Day killings
HAWKINS (AP) — Chad
Beasley was bloodied, his eyes
swollen shut and his arm broken
when Steven Gage spotted him
on a highway.
According to Gage, when he
picked the 9-year-old up, the boy
said, “Paul shot his daddy and his
mother and his sister.”
The boy had just escaped a Fa
ther’s Day celebration that ex
ploded into blood, terror and
rage after a quarrel over a pay
ment for haying chores.
Paul Owen Beasley Jr., 27, was
charged with two counts of mur
der Monday in the deaths of his
mother, Ruth Johnson Beasley,
62, and his sister, Linda Beasley
Birkinbine, 37, of Euless.
Beasley was being held in lieu
of $ 1 million bond, said Teri Fox,
a Wood County sherifFs dis
patcher.
Both women died Sunday of
gunshot wounds to the face and
throat. They also had been
stabbed, officials said.
Beasley’s father, Paul Owen
Beasley Sr., 70, was in critical con
dition Tuesday at Tyler Medical
Center from a gunshot to the
head and a knife wound to his
neck, according to hospital offi
cials.
The suspect’s 2-year-old
nephew, Matthew Birkinbine,
was treated for a lacerated throat
and released Monday night.
Dates cited in cutting Broadway series
By Jeanne Isenberg
Staff Writer
I The Memorial Student Center’s Town Hall
committee, which brings concert and profes
sional theater entertainment to the A&M
community, announced in May that the tradi
tional Broadway series has been cancelled for
1986-87.
■ Jim Hurd, the program adviser for the
committee, said the shows for the season were
settled upon, but when the negotiations for
the show dates got under way, scheduling
conflicts, on top of Town Hall’s recent bud
getary problems, sparked the decision to
Ipancel.
I “We always get offens from tours for the
winter months,” Hurd said, “because every
one thinks the southwest is the place to be in
the winter — warm weather. As we negotiate,
we usually try to spread the dates around,
phis year, we couldn’t spread the dates.”
g Representatives for the touring companies
said they felt the decision was also based on fi
nancial problems. They said A&M’s losses on
theatrical performances last year led to a
much shrewder business policy.
E Betsy Frasier of Kolmar-Luth Associates,
which books “Jesus Christ Superstar,” said
conflicts with dates can often lead to the col
lapse of a series.
The first planned show, “Jesus Christ Su
perstar,” ended up on a date just before an
MSC Opera and Performing Arts Society
show, Hurd said. MSC OPAS shows are
booked further in advance than the Broad
way shows, he said.
The other three scheduled shows, “A
Christmas Carol,” “Biloxi Blues,” and “Of
Mice and Men,” all ran into similar date prob
lems, Hurd said.
“Biloxi Blues” not only had a scheduling
conflict with the Miss TAMU Scholarship
Pageant, it also would have been the most ex
pensive of the productions, he said. The
“name play,” written by Neil Simon, may have
drawn a crowd, but Hurd said Town Hall
learned from this year’s “42nd Street” that
A&M can’t always handle the big shows finan
cially.
“42nd Street” was the biggest show A&M
has ever done, he said, but it was a major fac
tor in the $61,000 deficit Town Hall accumu
lated this year.
The only show from the 1986-87 Town
Hall/Broadway series which still will be pre
sented is “Romeo and Juliet.” Hurd said it was
the least expensive show, with very affordable
tickets.
He added that the Shakespeare festival ati
A&M this spring did well and the show’s date
— Feb. 14 — couldn’t be better.
Although the traditional Broadway season
has been cancelled. Hurd said plans for an
“alternative season” already are underway.
He said the committee is considering acts
leaning toward the style of Las Vegas club
shows.
Johnny Mathis, New Orleans’ Preservation
Hall Jazz Band, the Mantovani Orchestra and
Kevin McCarthy in a one-man show titled,
“Give ’em hell, Harry!” about Harry S. Tru
man are just some of the acts Town Hall has
looked at so far.
The future for Broadway at A&M remains
up in the air, he said.
“We may combine Broadway with OPAS.
We may see demand for more theatrical pro
ductions, or see a lack of sufficient demand
for them.”
Hurd said the re-introduction of Broadway
in the 1987-88 season also depends on the
market — the quality of the shows touring and
the available dates. And if the “alternative sea
son” goes over well with the community, he
said, that could be a factor, too.
Hurd said he expects the committee to at
least break even this year, since smaller acts
will reduce both the production costs and the
theater costs.
He also said the concert season looks en
couraging for Town Hall. The committee is
trying a new promoter-oriented approach this
year, he said. Instead of the committee taking
the risks which accompany concert deals,
Hurd said Town Hall will use promoters to
negotiate and take the risks.
That means that although the committee
doesn’t have the potential to make a lot of
money from the acts, Hurd said, the kind of
major money losses suffered by Town Hall
last year should be a thing of the past.
“We always get offers from tours for the winter months. . . . As we
negotiate, we usually try to spread the dates around. This year, we
couldn ’t spread the dates. ”
—Jim Hurd, MSC Town Hall program adviser.