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Our Lady of Good Counsel   by Zsolt Aradi The majesty of the Roman countryside has remained unchanged for centuries. Just to the south of the city rise the famous Castelli Romani, the Roman Castles, the popular name given to the hills and townships in Rome's immediate neighborhood. These hills are studded with the palaces of the once rich nobility of Rome who leave the city whenever the depressive and humid scirocco hits the Eternal City. The Castelli Romani are still a part of Rome, yet once we enter that district around Palestrina, popularly called Ciociaria, we are in a...

Dawn Johnsen, nominee to head the White House Office of Legal Counsel, faces criticism from a pro-life group for her opposition to the federal partial-birth abortion ban and her comments characterizing pregnant mothers as “inevitable losers in the contraceptive lottery” and comparing pregnancy to slavery or being hit by a drunk driver.

Blagojevich general counsel resignsAssociated Press - December 30, 2008 8:14 PM ET CHICAGO (AP) - Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's chief lawyer has quit the administration to go back to private practice. William Quinlan resigned today as general counsel, a state government job. Quinlan is the latest top adviser to Blagojevich to resign since the Chicago Democrat was arrested on federal corruption charges earlier this month. Other recent departures include former chief of staff John Harris, who was arrested along with Blagojevich, and Deputy Gov. Bob Greenlee. Blagojevich has been accused of trying to sell President-elect Barack Obama's former U.S. Senate...

Tampa, Fl -- The lawyer from South Carolina that has represented the pair flew in to help the suspects find new council. He met with the family to come up with a strategy for the release of Youssef Megahed and Ahmed Mohamed. They were arrested in August for carrying explosives in their car. He predicts the government will fight hard to keep the men detained. He says had the men been of any other ethnicity they would have been ticket for speeding and continued on. Andy Savage, Attorney “The Justice Department now in these types of cases, no matter how...

WASHINGTON — In a broadly worded legal opinion, the Justice Department has concluded that President Bush's former top lawyer, and possibly other senior White House officials, can ignore subpoenas from Congress to testify about the firings of U.S. attorneys. The three-page opinion raises questions about whether the Justice Department would prosecute senior administration officials if Congress voted to hold them in contempt for not cooperating with the investigation into the firing last year of eight top prosecutors. The opinion was prepared this week by the department's Office of Legal Counsel, in response to questions from former White House Counsel Harriet...

The state Legislature's legal adviser says the University of California regents have violated state open-meeting laws by voting behind closed doors on executive pay packages. In a 12-page opinion, the Office of Legislative Counsel wrote that the state Education Code requires regents' committees to meet in public whenever they take action on compensation proposals involving the president, chancellors and certain other top executives. The regents have held at least a dozen such meetings in private during the past five years, UC records show. --snip-- "It is our opinion that a standing committee of the Board of Regents of the University...

WASHINGTON, April 8, 2006 – U.S. soldiers who served in Iraq three years ago when it was liberated from Saddam Hussein's regime and are back again during its reconstruction said today the country had made and continues to make great progress. But speaking today with military analysts during a conference call from Iraq, they urged U.S. media outlets and politicians to have patience with the mission, noting that Iraq's reconstruction will be a long, arduous, multiyear task. "One of the biggest differences in Baghdad, and throughout Iraq... is that the Iraqi military is doing really well, and they're taking over...

In Monday's edition of the NEW YORK SUN, reporter Brian McGuire and contributor R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., break the first look at the long-anticipated report from Independent Counsel David Barrett, whose investigation lasted 10 year and cost taxpayers $23 million. The SUN outlines the report's details surrounding the alleged illicit activity and cover up that involving former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Henry Cisneros before and during his time in the Clinton Administration. The Sun reveals that the Barrett report connects the dots that allege that senior officials of the Clinton Administration hindered investigations by the IRS in both...

BY GLENN HARLAN REYNOLDS Sunday, October 23, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT The Bush administration has made two kinds of mistakes with the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. One kind is substantive, the other procedural. The substantive mistakes have to do with Ms. Miers's qualifications, including her current position. It's entirely possible, of course, that if confirmed, Ms. Miers will become a stellar Supreme Court justice; history has produced surprises before. Earl Warren, after all, was a politician, and expected to be easily manipulated by the court's brighter intellects. William J. Brennan Jr. was a state judge of...

WASHINGTON - The prosecutor in the CIA leak probe repeatedly asked New York Times reporter Judith Miller how Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff handled classified information in their discussions, and asked whether Cheney knew of their conversations. In a first-person account released Saturday on The Times' Web site, Miller recounted her recent grand jury testimony, which focused on her conversations in 2003 with Cheney's closest aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Miller said she "didn't think" she heard covert CIA officer Valerie Plame's name from Libby. "I said I believed the information came from another source, whom I could...

NEW YORK (AP) - A month of deliberations in the trial of a lawyer and two others accused of helping terrorists appears to be taking its toll on jurors, leading two of them to ask to speak with the judge Tuesday. The text of what was said in the two jurors' separate meetings with U.S. District Judge John Koeltl was sealed. The proceedings were witnessed by a lawyer for the government and a lawyer for the defense teams, and raised the possibility of a mistrial. After the two jurors met with the judge, the three defendants and their lawyers gathered...

The Los Angeles Board of Education has chosen a Pasadena assistant city attorney as its new special counsel, a lawyer with the backing of union leaders and the school board president but far less experience than others seeking the job. According to several sources familiar with the selection process, the school board voted 4-3 in a closed session to offer Maribel S. Medina the position, which could pay up to $240,000 a year. Medina specializes in land-use, environmental and real estate law. The vote to hire Medina is the latest in a series of board decisions that have caused some...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush on Wednesday named Harriet Miers, a longtime Texas associate, as White House counsel. Miers succeeds Alberto Gonzales, nominated by Bush to be attorney general, said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. "Harriet Miers is a trusted adviser on whom I have long relied for straightforward advice," Bush said in a statement. "Harriet has the keen judgment and discerning intellect necessary to be an outstanding counsel," the president said. "She is a talented lawyer whose great integrity, legal scholarship and grace have long marked her as one of America's finest lawyers." Formerly Bush's personal lawyer in Texas,...

Statement from Tom Josefiak, General Counsel to Bush Cheney '04, Regarding A Court Filing Today in Washington, DC(title edited for length) ARLINGTON, VA -- Tom Josefiak, General Counsel to Bush Cheney '04 issued the following statement today:"Today, the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign moved forward on President Bush's commitment to shut down illegal activities of those soft money 527s that engage in federal elections.  Over five months ago, we filed administrative complaints with the FEC to stop certain 527 organizations from their stated goal of spending more than $300 million in banned soft money on the presidential election.  To date, the FEC...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 — Although Vincent W. Foster Jr., the Clinton administration's deputy White House counsel, killed himself more than 10 years ago, the controversy provoked by his death has yet to run its course. The Supreme Court heard arguments on Wednesday on whether the Freedom of Information Act obliges the government to make public the graphic photographs that the police took of the death scene in Fort Marcy Park in McLean, Va. The question was whether the release of the photographs, sought by a California lawyer who questions the official conclusion that the death was a suicide, would be...

<p>White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales yesterday ordered White House employees to hand over documents related to the leak of a CIA officer's name and said no one can claim attorney-client privilege, as Hillary Clinton did during the Whitewater probe.</p> <p>Faced with a subpoena for Whitewater documents from Independent Counsel Ken Starr, then-First Lady Hillary Clinton in 1997 fought all the way to the Supreme Court to avoid handing over notes of her conversation with a White House lawyer, which she claimed were privileged.</p>

By Art Moore © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com Could the U.N. use military force to prevent the United States and Britain from waging war on Iraq without a Security Council mandate? United Nations headquarters in New York Some anti-war groups are urging the world body to invoke a little-known convention that allows the General Assembly to step in when the Security Council is at an impasse in the face of a "threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression." The willingness by the U.S. and Britain to go to war with Iraq without Security Council authorization is the...

HOW MOM TEACHES DAUGHTER TO YELL AT DAD J. Grant Swank, Jr., POB 1984, Windham ME 04062 Pastor, New Hope Church, Windham ME It is very, very subtle — over time, involving complicated life situations, supported by fem bonding, allowing for anti-male emotions, pulling from the baser nature of the female, and so forth. Writing about this subject can be raw and refined. The refined part has to do with psychology and ethics. The raw part has to do with real life — madness, meanness, and basically lack of respect for father / husband. So let’s start with the bottom...

<p>PLYMOUTH TOWNSHIP -- Anti-abortion activists have launched a small but vocal movement to excommunicate pro-choice Attorney General Jennifer Granholm from the Roman Catholic Church.</p> <p>Since early June, a group of 10-30 protesters have picketed outside of Our Lady of Good Counsel Church in Plymouth Township, where the Democratic nominee for governor is a member. Foes say Granholm is a heretic because she is Catholic yet adamantly pro-choice.</p>