Exceptionalism

As a rule, Leslie Milke, coach of the Northridge women's basketball team, does not take players who only have one year of eligibility remaining. She made an exception 2 years ago. Chris Cavalin, Milke believed, had not received a fair shake at Chapman College where she was recruited by a coach who lost his job, leaving her to play for someone else. "We felt she was a good kid who kind of got a raw deal over there," Milke said. "I felt bad for her.

Now that Congress has failed to override President Bill Clinton's veto of the estate-tax-repeal bill, we can expect the ultimate question of death and taxes to be a running theme of the fall 2000 campaign. The fight about the tax is being carried forward in standard Republican-Democrat terms, focused on mutual recriminations. Statistics and percentages are flying in all directions.

* These students from Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties were among those selected statewide as 1991 Exceptional Scholars by the Youth Opportunities Foundation. Colleges listed are those declared by students in YOF applications. LOS ANGELES COUNTY NAME HIGHSCHOOL COLLEGE Ian Bartos Agoura Stanford Susan Pintel Agoura Claremont Veronica Guzman Alhambra UCSD Sophia Ortiz Alverno USC Mark A.

Timothy McVeigh has decided he's in no rush to die after all. Scheduled for execution June 11 for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people and maimed scores of others, McVeigh now seeks a delay and a new hearing, based on the claim that federal investigators committed a "fraud upon the court." He is within his rights to do so, and those rights must be respected. The integrity of our judicial system demands it.

Jeffrey Jordan might be the most talked about walk-on player in college basketball history. That's because the 6-foot-1 guard for Illinois is the son of Michael Jordan. Yes, the Michael Jordan. The younger Jordan made his college debut Sunday. He played three minutes and missed his only shot attempt in a 63-55 victory over Northeastern.

A proposal to exempt 80% of public companies from having auditors certify their internal controls "simply goes too far," former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker and former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt told regulators. In a Feb. 13 letter to the SEC, a group including Volcker and Levitt said the proposal would undercut the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act by failing to safeguard against future accounting and company fraud.

Mickey Conroy, a state Assembly member from Orange County, has been accused of sexual harassment. While the merits of a lawsuit brought by a former aide will have to be decided in court, the legislator and his chief of staff already have been reprimanded, properly, by an Assembly committee for a procedural violation. The harassment suit was brought by a woman who says the lawmaker kissed her several times, made repeated sexual comments and finally fired her after she complained.

Michael Wu's American dream was both modest and ambitious. The 26-year-old immigrant from Taiwan had been trying to become a citizen since 1985. But because of mental disabilities caused by a condition known as Down's syndrome, the San Diego resident was unable to pass the naturalization test despite his best efforts in six attempts. Rep. Bill Lowery, a San Diego Republican, introduced a bill to exempt Wu from the test.