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- NATION, Page 17Grapevine
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- JUST SAY MAYBE. In its rush to push through antidrug
- legislation last January, Congress adopted an amendment
- extending random drug tests to its own employees. Six months
- later, only three Congressmen -- Pennsylvania's Bob Walker,
- Texas' Joe Barton and Florida's Clay Shaw -- have tested their
- staffs or submitted to tests themselves. Reason: cheapness.
- Members have to pay for the test out of their own pocket.
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- NICE WAGE IF YOU CAN GET IT. While the President was vetoing
- a bill to raise the minimum wage from $3.35 to $4.55 an hour,
- one of his top campaign strategists, Paul Manafort, was
- testifying before Congress that the $1,000 an hour he earned
- for peddling influence at HUD is not all that much. Manafort
- collected $326,000 for obtaining a federal grant for a useless
- rehabilitation project that will cost $47 million.
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- STOP, OR I'LL SHOOT! Got an AK-47 that needs testing? Call
- Congressman Pete Stark, author of gun-control legislation, who
- invited a number of lawmakers to join him in the hideaway
- shooting gallery in the basement of the Rayburn House Office
- Building. They blasted away with an Uzi at a watermelon (the
- range also has "bad guy" targets) to get an up-close and
- personal feel for the eleven automatic and semiautomatic models
- that would be outlawed if Stark's bill passes.
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- BRADLEY'S VISION THING. Is Bill Bradley trying to tell us
- something? The first thing a presidential candidate does is
- forget micro-problems, like Third World debt, and get a
- sweeping vision -- something on the order of, say, the New
- Frontier. The latest clue that the techno-speaking Senator may
- have begun running for President in 1992 is a new, improved
- stump speech that has as its mantra "Big Ambition," meaning that
- the U.S. must be bolder in adapting to major changes in the
- world and domestic economies.
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- KU KLUX REDUX. Top Republicans, including George Bush, could
- not stop former Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon David Duke from
- winning a seat in the Louisiana legislature. The party had
- better find a strong G.O.P. candidate for the U.S. Senate now.
- Duke is threatening to run against Senator Bennett Johnston in
- 1990.
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