Abraham

A memorial service for writer and director Abraham Polonsky is scheduled at noon today in the USC United University Church, 817 W. 34th St., Los Angeles. Polonsky, who was blacklisted during the anti-Communist era, died Oct. 26 at the age of 88.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham will issue a departmentwide memo declaring that discrimination against employees will not be tolerated, an aide said. Allegations of racial profiling of Asian American employees first arose after nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee was accused of spying for China. The agency's internal watchdog recently reported finding no evidence to support claims that four Asian American workers were treated unfairly.

It is common to refer to the Supreme Court by the name of its chief justice. But merely having the title isn't enough to make a chief the court's dominant legal presence. For instance, folks don't talk much about the Waite court that existed from 1874 to 1888 (during which Morrison Remick Waite presided), or the White court that ran from 1910 to 1921 (during which Edward Douglass White Jr. served at the helm). On the other hand, the great chiefs, such as John Marshall and Earl Warren, attained greatness for their courts and themselves by authoring momentous decisions that shaped the basic contours of the American system.

Michael Abraham, former women's basketball coach at Cal State Northridge, entered a plea of not guilty to federal charges of conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine in federal court in Omaha, Neb., on Monday. A trial date of March 1, 1999, was set. Abraham was arrested Oct. 27 in the Northridge gymnasium and subsequently resigned as coach. Federal authorities did not seek to detain Abraham and he returned to Portland, Ore., where he is staying with his family.

Proposition 187 architect Harold Ezell purports to be a great admirer of Abraham Lincoln ("Rage and Raves," Jan. 11). This is the same Lincoln who opposed not only slavery, but the anti-immigrant Know Nothings of his day, despite their protestations of patriotic intent to save the nation from foreigners. "Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid," Lincoln wrote in 1855. "As a nation we began by declaring that, 'All men are created equal.' . . . When the Know Nothings get control, it will read, 'All men are created equal, except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics.

Abraham Kaplan, 75, a professor of philosophy who earned Time magazine's 1966 accolade as one of the 10 best college professors in America. Kaplan was born in Odessa, Russia, immigrated to the United States with his family and became a naturalized citizen in 1930. He studied at the College of St. Thomas and earned a Ph.D. at UCLA, where he later taught for several years. He also taught at the University of Michigan and most recently at Haifa University in Israel.

Abraham Ehrlich, 74, founder of Encino-based Western General Insurance Co. The New York City native served in World War II and came to the Los Angeles area in 1948. After working for the U.S. Postal Service and in real estate, he settled into the insurance industry. In 1954, Ehrlich co-founded All Motorists Insurance Agency. Running the agency by day, he studied law at night and became a licensed attorney.

The Civil War may have ended nearly 126 years ago, but according to Jason Robards some Southerners are still fighting the War Between the States. And most of those Southerners still hate president Abraham Lincoln. They even hate the actors who play Honest Abe, Robards discovered. In Madison, Ga., where tonight's "The Perfect Tribute" on ABC, was filmed, the locals generally greeted him with contempt, said Robards, who plays Lincoln.

Abraham S. Bolsky, builder of many Los Angeles landmarks and a humanist who served several of its charities, died Thursday at St. Joseph's Medical Center in Burbank. The president of Tishman Construction Corp. of California and executive vice president and director of the national Tishman Realty & Construction Co. was 68. He died of heart failure, said company spokesman Bernie Roswig.

Abraham Pais, an American physicist and science historian who wrote one of the most acclaimed biographies of Albert Einstein, has died. He was 81. Pais, who was born in 1919 in Amsterdam, died Friday in Copenhagen of heart failure, colleagues at the University of Copenhagen's Niels Bohr Institute said.