Gerald Ford

Three former presidents, including two Republicans, on Thursday urged the GOP-controlled Congress to ban from U.S. elections all "soft money," the term for vast but unregulated contributions to the political parties. Such donations--made mostly by big business to Republicans and by big labor to Democrats--totaled more than $260 million last year, and they are now at the center of congressional investigations into campaign fund-raising abuses.

One day after blistering congressional Republicans for messing with his education and crime proposals, President Clinton apparently threw in the golf towel and became--at least temporarily--one of them. "We're on the same side," Clinton said as he posed with former Presidents Gerald R. Ford and George Bush before teeing off here Wednesday. "We gotta hang together here."

Former President Gerald R. Ford, trying to shore up a traditional GOP stronghold, told a group of community bankers Tuesday that he hopes a new Congress will ease the regulatory burdens on banks. Ford, stumping for George Bush in his battle with Democratic challenger Bill Clinton for the nation's highest office, said bankers need to "get relief" for the heavy cost that increased regulation has put on financial institutions.

Former President Gerald R. Ford on Wednesday called for the removal from power of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein when allied forces prevail over Iraq's military forces. "How that should be accomplished, I think, is premature to say," Ford told a group of about 200 UC Irvine political science students. "But I think it is in the best interests of the Iraqi people. . . . My impression is that anything but him (Hussein) would be better."

The historian-as-flatterer staked out a point of view on a bright Maine morning. David Valdez slowly twisted his camera's lens, focusing on the President. He saw every tick, every emotion yet recorded a selective moment. On this warm summer day, when George Bush was managing a diplomatic crisis in the Middle East--and his vacation--Valdez, the President's personal photographer, faithfully trailed after him.

In a letter that is being displayed at a gay bar here, former President Gerald Ford has acknowledged the death of Oliver Sipple, saying he will be "forever grateful" for the former Marine's action in averting a 1975 assassination attempt. A similar letter was sent to Sipple's family in Detroit. "Everybody appreciates it (the letter)," said Clint Trow, bartender at the New Bell Saloon, one of the bars that Sipple used to visit daily. "Everyone has asked to look at it."

"Mass murder is going on out there all the time. And they don't have Charlie Manson to blame," Lynette (Squeaky) Fromme told the Tallahassee Democrat in an interview published Sunday. She told the newspaper her remarks were in reference to pollution and toxic waste. The planet is an organism and can take only so much sickness, said Fromme, 40, who for almost 14 years has been shuttled through the federal prison system for the attempted assassination of President Gerald R. Ford.