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vant to petitioner's constitutional and abuse of discretion
claims, we disagree with petitioner that the Court should take
judicial notice of the newspaper article as a legislative fact or
that it is admissible as an exception to the hearsay rule under
rules 803(17) and 803(24) of the Federal Rules of Evidence.
With respect to petitioner's argument that the Court should
take judicial notice of the newspaper article as a legislative
fact, legislative facts generally are those pertinent to legal
reasoning that assist a court in deciding questions of law,
policy, and discretion. See Nolan v. Ramsey, 597 F.2d 577, 580-
581 n.2 (5th Cir. 1979); see also Notes of the Advisory Committee
on the Federal Rules of Evidence, 28 U.S.C. app. at 738 (1988); 1
Weinstein & Berger, Weinstein's Evidence, par. 200[03], at 200-16
to 200-17 (1995). We do not find the newspaper article to be
pertinent to the legal reasoning involved in, or otherwise of
assistance to the Court's resolution of, the claims to which
petitioner contends that article is relevant. Accordingly, we
will not admit the newspaper article as a legislative fact.
With respect to petitioner's reliance on rules 803(17) and
803(24) of the Federal Rules of Evidence, we note at the outset
that the statement appearing in the newspaper article concerning
"back-to-back loan structures" was attributed by that article to
Price Waterhouse. Consequently, there are two layers of hearsay
that we face, viz., the statement made by Price Waterhouse to the
declarant in the newspaper article and that declarant's statement
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