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The great Arkansas railway mystery
Twelve years ago, two teenagers were murdered on a rural railroad track. Right-wing conspiracy theorists who blamed then-Gov. Bill Clinton for the killings have now lost a $600,000 libel suit in the case.
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[08/18/99]

Hungary's gentleman bandit
In a country rife with corruption, a chivalrous, whiskey-drinking criminal has captured the popular imagination.
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As Columbine High goes back to school, parents and students wrestle with how to remember while also trying to move on.
By Dave Cullen
[08/17/99]

How not to stifle a racist
The California Supreme Court may have been well-meaning when it banned racial slurs in a hostile workplace, but in the process it damaged the Bill of Rights.
By Debra Dickerson
[08/16/99]

Iowa GOP Straw Poll results
Results from Iowa

[08/16/99]

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Attorneys for Eliza May, the former executive director of the Texas Funeral Service Commission, filed a motion Wednesday morning asking the court to find the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination in contempt for not telling the truth in a sworn deposition, part of a case involving a possible funeral-home oversight scandal.

May says that the Service Corporation International, the world's largest funeral company, got her driven out of state government after her commission recommended last August that the company be fined $445,000 for violating a casketload of state regulations. She was fired by the commission in February. May filed a whistle-blower lawsuit against the state, the company and CEO Robert Waltrip in March, claiming that the company and state officials worked together to thwart her agency's investigation into the company.

The contempt motion puts the spotlight on Bush's sworn affidavit, filed on Aug. 5, in which he said that he has "had no conversations with SCI officials, agents or representatives" about the state's investigation. The affidavit was filed by Texas Attorney General John Cornyn along with a motion to quash a subpoena issued to Bush by May's attorneys.

Since the affidavit was filed, Bush's flat denial has been contradicted several times, even by Bush himself. According to reporters who were with Bush in Iowa last week, when Bush was asked if he talked to Waltrip about the investigation, Bush responded, "I did not. I had only a brief exchange with him that lasted only a few seconds." Bush's press secretary, Linda Edwards, has also described their meeting as an "exchange."

The American Heritage Dictionary defines the word "conversation" thusly: "an informal spoken exchange."

In their 16-page motion, May's attorneys point out that in the Aug. 16 Newsweek, Johnnie B. Rogers, Waltrip's attorney, discusses an April 15, 1998, meeting in the office of Joe Allbaugh, Bush's chief of staff. According to Rogers, while he and Waltrip were in Allbaugh's office, Bush stuck his head into the room. "Hey, Bobby, are those people still messing with you?" Bush asked Waltrip. When Waltrip indicated that they were, Bush asked Rogers, "Hey, Johnnie B. Are you taking care of him?" Rogers replied, "I'm doing my best, governor."

May's attorneys are claiming that Rogers' statement, combined with statements made by Edwards, and a sworn interrogatory issued on June 11 by Waltrip's attorneys, show that "the governor had what was undeniably a conversation about the dispute arising from the Texas Funeral Service Commission investigation of SCI." They add that Bush gave "testimony that was deliberately misleading and deceptive."

In a prepared statement Wednesday, Bush spokeswoman Edwards called the motion for contempt "nothing more than a publicity stunt and an example of the frivolous misuse of the civil justice system. This is clearly an attempt to draw Gov. Bush into something he has not been involved in. Gov. Bush stands by what he said in his affidavit, which is what he has said all along -- that he was not involved in the case and has no personal knowledge of the facts of the case."

Next page | The coming courtroom showdown