Cruz: Campaign giving a form of speech
BARRINGTON, N.H. — Unlimited political cash gives rank-and-file conservative activists greater sway in picking their representatives, including the president, said U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz to New Hampshire voters on Sunday.
Cruz, a first-term senator who represents Texas, said deep-pocketed donors should have the same right to write giant campaign checks as voters have to put signs in their front yards. Both, Cruz said, were examples of political speech, and he added that “money absolutely can be speech.”
“I believe everyone here has a right to speak out on politics as effectively as possible,” Cruz said told a voter who asked him about the role of the super-rich in politics.
Cruz, a Tea Party favorite, has been courting party activists and donors to help him counter deep-pocketed potential Republican presidential contenders such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.
Man, 71, arrested in 2000 LA murder
NEW ORLEANS — Robert Durst, a wealthy eccentric linked to two killings and his wife’s disappearance, was arrested on a murder warrant this weekend at a New Orleans hotel.
FBI agents arrested Durst on Saturday on a warrant from Los Angeles for the murder of Susan Berman in Hollywood 15 years ago, FBI spokesman Laura Eimiller said.
Durst was ordered held without bond during a brief appearance Sunday pending another hearing set for this morningcq AR. His lawyer, Chip Lewis, said Durst will waive extradition and be transported to Los Angeles.
Durst, 71, has never been charged in connection with the unsolved 2000 murder of Berman, a journalist and author who had become his spokesman. She was killed at her home, with a bullet to the back of her head, as New York authorities prepared to question her in the 1982 disappearance of his wife, Kathie.
After Berman’s death, Durst moved to Texas, where he lived as a woman before Lewis helped win his acquittal in the 2001 dismemberment death of his Galveston neighbor, Morris Black. Durst said that that killing was in self-defense.
Captain dies when tug sinks; crew lives
BROOKHAVEN, N.Y. — The captain of a sinking tugboat died after he panicked and jumped into icy waters off New York’s Fire Island without putting on his immersion suit, while three crew members managed to hang on to life rings, the survivors told the Coast Guard.
The Sea Bear was behind two other tugboats heading back to base when it started sinking in stormy weather Saturday afternoon. Coast Guard Petty Officer Morgan Gallapis said one of the crew members in the water made an emergency cellphone call to the Coast Guard.
When the Coast Guard arrived at the scene, the boat already sunk and the three crew members were holding on to two life rings in the water a mile off a section of Fire Island known as The Pines.
The three crew members were treated for hypothermia but otherwise had no physical injuries.
The body of the on-duty captain, Donald Maloney, was found shortly after 5 p.m.
Suffolk County police said Maloney had not been able to put on an immersion suit as the boat was sinking in 37-degree waters.
The other crew members told the Coast Guard that Maloney “had a panicked and jumped into the water without putting on his immersion suit,” Coast Guard Petty Officer Sabrina Laberdesque said Sunday.
Police identified the three survivors as Lars Vetland, 43, of Staten Island; Jason Reimer, 38, of Leonardo, N.J.; and Rainer Bendixen, 22, of Bay Head, N.J.
Alabama grandma’s trial turns on word
GADSDEN, Ala. — One word on a 911 recording is seen as pivotal in the trial of an Alabama woman accused of making her granddaughter run until she died.
With 9-year-old Savannah Hardin lying unconscious after an afternoon of running and a 911 operator listening over the phone, Joyce Hardin Garrard asked for something — either a cigarette or a blanket. The request, depending on exactly what she said, could be considered callousness or compassion.
Garrard, who is on trial for capital murder, says she is innocent.
On the Feb. 17, 2012, recording, played in court Tuesday, Garrard is heard in the background as the girl’s stepmother, Jessica Mae Hardin, talked for more than 11 minutes with Lori Beth Beggs, a 911 operator in Etowah County.
Nearly three minutes into the recording, with Savannah still unresponsive, Garrard makes a request.
“Give me a smoke,” Beggs testified the woman said. The defense maintains that she said: “Give me a throw,” referring to a small blanket.
The trial continues today.
— COMPILED BY DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE STAFF FROM WIRE REPORTS