
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, August 30, 1994                   TAG: 9409020028
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: OWENSBORO, KY.                                 LENGTH: Medium

PRESIDENT'S WIFE BURNED IN EFFIGY

An effigy of Hillary Rodham Clinton was doused with gasoline and burned at a tobacco rally against President Clinton's health care plan. A congressman and a gubernatorial candidate were among those at the rally.

``Burn, baby, burn,'' chanted Stan Arachikavitz, president of the Kentucky Association of Tobacco Supporters.

``If we don't stand up for tobacco, we'll go down with it,'' U.S. Rep. Ron Lewis told the crowd of about 100 people gathered Saturday to protest administration plans to increase cigarette taxes to fund health care reform.

Lewis acknowledged Monday that he saw the effigy burn from a distance, but said he did not know that the event was planned. ``I had no idea there was going to be this effigy. I certainly wasn't in favor of that. If it had been my rally, I certainly wouldn't have done that,'' Lewis said.``he president thinks it's time to tone down the rhetoric,'' White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers said from Martha's Vineyard, Mass., where the Clintons are vacationing.

She said Clinton believes a higher tax on cigarettes is legitimate ``because of the impact of cigarette smoking on the health care system.''

Arachikavitz poured gasoline on the effigy, which hung from a wooden frame like a scarecrow in a dress, along with a tag reading, ``I'm Hillary.'' A country band played as two women set the effigy ablaze.

- Associated Press

Briefly ...

Kevin Elders, 28, the son of U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, was sentenced Monday in Little Rock, Ark., to 10 years in prison for selling one-eighth of an ounce of cocaine to an undercover policeman last year.

An Atlas rocket carried an $84 million military weather satellite into orbit Monday, the Air Force said, after a morning launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

President Clinton ordered striking Minneapolis-based Soo Line Railroad employees back to work Monday while federal mediators try to resolve a labor dispute that has threatened to spread to other lines.

by CNB