Bork Levels Charge of Brutality

--Robert H. Bork, whose nomination to the Supreme Court was rejected by the Senate, said he once urged the White House to work harder for his confirmation and accused Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) of waging a fight of “brutality” against him. Bork, who said he felt he could not reply earlier to opponents because he was a sitting judge, has resigned from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. He faced reporters at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research in Washington, a conservative think tank that will be his base for speeches and writings. He also plans to write a book on the nomination process. Bork said he and the Reagan Administration were caught off guard by the intense opposition to him. Asked if the White House dropped the ball, Bork said: “I don’t really know all the things the White House did or did not do. I did at one point urge the White House to become more active in what became the first national political campaign” in a judicial nomination. In a lecture later at Grove City College in Grove City, Pa., Bork said that Kennedy waged an unfair campaign against him. “Even for a political campaign, it set record lows in mendacity, brutality and intellectual vulgarity,” Bork said.

--The last resident of the small Memphis, Tenn., motel where an assassin’s bullet killed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 ignored a state deadline to move out and compared her protest to King’s civil rights battles. Jacqueline Smith, 37, has been ordered to leave the Lorraine Motel so the state can turn it into a museum. Smith, a former receptionist and maid who has lived at the Lorraine for 11 years, said the motel should be turned into a shelter for the homeless. “We need to educate and house the poor people at the Lorraine,” she said. “This is what Dr. King was campaigning for when he died.” Eviction proceedings will begin this week if Smith stays at the Lorraine, said Barbara Devor of the state attorney general’s office. A group of citizens in 1982 bought the motel at a foreclosure auction, and the state has since taken title.

--Sue Bolich has resigned as Miss Minnesota-USA because of misdemeanor theft charges. The 24-year-old contestant did not arrive in El Paso to begin preparations for the March 1 Miss USA pageant and notified pageant officials that she did not wish to compete, said contest spokeswoman Stacy Sacco. Bolich was arrested Jan. 22 at an Edina, Minn., department store and accused of stealing $370 worth of clothing. Jolene Stavrakis, first runner-up in the Minnesota pageant, will replace Bolich, Sacco said.