There was a scheduling conflict, so a certain McLennan County rancher will not show up on Monday in Waco, Texas, for jury duty after all.
"The president has other commitments," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.
No problem, said Judge Ralph Strother of the state District Court, though US President George W. Bush's name had popped up on a random list of Texans summoned for jury service. Strother said he had now given Bush, who owns a 640 hectare ranch outside Crawford, a choice of six other dates from next month to June next year.
Does Strother expect him to show up?
Why, yes, the judge said, the White House assured him that "the president considers it an important civic responsibility and duty."
And, he said he was told, "the president didn't want to be treated differently than anybody else."
But to actually sit on a jury and hear a murder case, say, or perhaps just a civil suit?
"I'd be a little surprised," the judge admitted.
Would he ever lock up the president for being a no-show?
"It didn't cross my mind," said the judge, a Republican who has won two elections to the bench since first being appointed in 1999 by Bush, who was then governor.
Has a celebrity ever sat on one of his juries?
"Not anybody of that magnitude that I recall," Strother said. "And I think I would recall."
Asked about the jury summons, McClellan said at the daily White House briefing that the document had not actually been received by Bush but that news accounts of his name's coming up had prompted the White House to call the judge to reschedule.
It seems to be the first family's time. Just a month ago, Strother said, one of the president's daughters, Barbara, turned up on the jury list and also needed a postponement. Then, he said, on Thursday morning he was glancing at next week's list of 600 jury panelists and did a double take.
"Can you believe this?" he recalled exclaiming. "Now the president's name is on there."
Karen Matkin, the district clerk in Waco, said 27,600 people were randomly selected for service in the county every year from about 150,000 voters and licensed drivers.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
Conflict with Taiwan could leave China with “massive economic disruption, catastrophic military losses, significant social unrest, and devastating sanctions,” a US think tank said in a report released on Monday. The German Marshall Fund released a report titled If China Attacks Taiwan: The Consequences for China of “Minor Conflict” and “Major War” Scenarios. The report details the “massive” economic, military, social and international costs to China in the event of a minor conflict or major war with Taiwan, estimating that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could sustain losses of more than half of its active-duty ground forces, including 100,000 troops. Understanding Chinese
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
RSS