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Associate Attorney General Thomas J. Perrelli, the No. 3 official in the Obama Justice Department, was consulted and ultimately approved a decision in May to reverse course and drop a civil complaint accusing three members of the New Black Panther Party of intimidating voters in Philadelphia during November's election, according to interviews. The department's career lawyers in the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division who pursued the complaint for five months had recommended that Justice seek sanctions against the party and three of its members after the government had already won a default judgment in federal court against the...

Fla. school likely named for Mourning over Reno By MATT SEDENSKY Associated Press Writer Advertisement Buy AP Photo Reprints Your Questions Answered Ask AP: Following Sotomayor, movie closed captions MIAMI (AP) -- Former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno appears to have lost in an unlikely matchup with former NBA star Alonzo Mourning. A committee charged with deciding what to call a new high school in North Miami was considering naming it after one of the two, and last week chose the athlete and his wife.

MIAMI - Miami-Dade officials have decided to name a new high school after former NBA star Alonzo Mourning. The Miami-Dade School Board voted today to name the new North Miami school after Mourning, rather than former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno.

U.S. Attorney General-designate Eric Holder was prepared to be bombarded during his Senate confirmation hearings Thursday with a host of questions about a variety of topics, including his role as acting attorney general during a special investigation into the 1993 Branch Davidian debacle. While he fielded questions about waterboarding terrorist suspects and the 2001 pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich, Senate Judiciary Committee members didn’t get around to asking about the Branch Davidian investigation. Former Attorney General Janet Reno recused herself from a special investigation that was conducted by former U.S. Sen. John Danforth into how the fire started in...

In the summer of 1984, 10th-grader Irwin Nanofsky and a friend were driving down the Apalachee Parkway on the way home from baseball practice when they were pulled over by a police officer for a minor traffic infraction. After Nanofsky produced his driver’s license the police officer asked permission to search the vehicle. In less than two minutes, the officer found a homemade pipe underneath the passenger’s seat of the Ford Aerostar belonging to the teenage driver’s parents. The minivan was seized, and the two youths were taken into custody on suspicion of drug possession. Illegal possession of drug paraphernalia...

Earlier this year, Eric Holder--along with Janet Reno and several other former officials from the Clinton Department of Justice--co-signed an amicus brief in District of Columbia v. Heller. The brief was filed in support of DC's ban on all handguns, and ban on the use of any firearm for self-defense in the home. The brief argued that the Second Amendment is a "collective" right, not an individual one, and asserted that belief in the collective right had been the consistent policy of the U.S. Department of Justice since the FDR administration. A brief filed by some other former DOJ officials...

...More specifically, they protested some of Obama's top advisors: Gregory Craig...and Erich Holder...Both of these gentlemen had key roles in “legally” perfuming the shanghaiing of Elian Gonzalez. At the time, Craig served as lawyer for Elain's father, (i.e Fidel Castro), and Holder served as Deputy Attorney General under Janet Reno... FReep this Digg!!!

.O. Woman Gets New Gun To Replace One Taken During Katrina By The confiscated gun has yet to be returned, says Cong. Steve Scalise and the Gun Owners of America Wednesday, October 22, 2008 A New Orleans woman whose gun was confiscated by law enforcement officers in the days after Katrina, and who was injured during the incident at her home, got a brand new 38-caliber revolver Wednesday, courtesy of the Gun Owners of America. 61-year-old Patricia Konie says getting a new gun is a great idea because now she's more afraid of police than she was before. Konie says...

After entering the House of Representatives in 1995, Georgia Republican Bob Barr acquired a reputation as one of the most conservative members of Congress. It was Barr who in 1996 wrote the Defense of Marriage Act, which said states didn't have to recognize gay marriages performed in other states; it was Barr who protested when he learned the military allowed soldiers to practice Wicca. A former federal prosecutor, a firm social conservative, and a strong supporter of the War on Drugs, Barr doesn't fit most people's image of a civil libertarian. But in his eight years in Congress (he failed...

ACLU wants to help defend alleged Sept. 11 mastermind By Carol Rosenberg McClatchy Newspapers The American Civil Liberties Union, which for years has scorned Pentagon military commissions as "kangaroo courts," announced Friday it will try to provide top civilian defense attorneys for alleged terrorists facing trial at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba -- with special emphasis on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Former Attorney General Janet Reno is among top lawyers who have endorsed the $8.5 million effort, which will help coordinate and defray the attorneys' expenses. ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said a...

The Government has raised the number of detainees at Gitmo that they will be seeking the death penalty for to the enormous and shocking number of seven. The ACLU are quick and ready to defend these warriors! Backed by a slate of prominent legal figures, including former Attorney General Janet Reno and former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director William Webster, the ACLU has assembled a team of top civilian attorneys to supplement the military defense counsel assigned to represent Guantanamo’s “high-value detainees.” … The effort significantly adds to the legal forces that over the past seven years have challenged the...

Obama and the Bombmaker's Church By Jeffrey Lord Published 3/18/2008 12:08:35 AM There's more. Let's move on from the tale of Senator Barack Obama's pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, to another tale of Obama's United Church of Christ -- a denomination that he and I share. Does the name Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional -- Armed Forces of National Liberation -- ring a bell? You may remember this charming group by its initials, FALN. A so-called revolutionary group determined to bring about Puerto Rican independence through violence....

"Waco Siege, a fifty-one-day siege by federal agents of the Branch Davidian religious group's commune headquarters outside Waco, Texas, in early 1993. The siege, which began after a botched and bloody attempt on 28 February 1993 to arrest the group's leader, David Koresh, on a weapons charge, ended in the deaths of four federal agents and seventy-eight Branch Davidians. The stalemate ended when U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno ordered the use of force on April 19. Soon after federal agents moved, fire engulfed the compound, killing seventy-two, provoking controversy over the use of force in dealing with dissident sects....

Former Attorney General Janet Reno said the U.S. government must be careful to avoid selectively using facts when prosecuting suspected terrorists. Reno, who served as attorney general under President Bill Clinton, said prosecutors often allow prejudices to skew their use of facts. "But what I've discovered (from being a prosecutor and attorney general) is that we get tunnel vision," Reno said. "We want the facts to be something and we wish them into being." Reno made her comments while speaking to an audience of mostly students and professors at the S.J. Quinney College of Law on Tuesday. Her speech focused...

Hillary Clinton's campaign, anticipating probable defeat here in New Hampshire on January 8, is gearing up for an extended trench-warfare battle against Barack Obama. The former First Lady is planning to fight Obama in South Carolina on January 26, and in the gargantuan nationwide primary on Tuesday, February 5 -- with contests in 19 states, including New York, California, New Jersey, Georgia, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and Colorado. If she remains competitive, Clinton's plan is to continue to compete in Louisiana on February 9, in Virginia and Maryland on February 12, in Wisconsin on February 19, in Ohio on March 4 --...

As the presidential candidates engage in furious pre-caucus spin, one of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's most prominent Iowa supporters said Wednesday that she's already accomplished what she needs to in Iowa, and can declare success even if she finishes in third place. Asked if the order of finish matters, Former governor Tom Vilsack, D-Iowa, deflected the question. "She absolutely had to be competitive and she's accomplished that," he said. "Obviously everybody's interested in winning, and I think we're going to do well. It's tight. There's no question about that." In May, Vilsack was quoted in the Washington Post, saying, "There's...

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was praised in the wake of the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto for demonstrating her command of the players and the issues at stake in Pakistan, even as another candidate, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, was criticized for stumbling over details. But in two confident television appearances, on CNN and ABC, Clinton made an elementary error about Pakistani politics: She described President Pervez Musharraf as a "candidate" who would be "on the ballot." In fact, Musharraf was reelected to the presidency in October. The upcoming elections are for parliament, and while Musharraf's party...

The Politico notes that Bill Clinton has fallen back on Bubbalistic campaigning in Iowa. The homespun wisdom of the former Rhodes scholar comes along with his wife's various regional accents, but as Ben Smith notes, usually much farther away from the press: Before he was a silver-haired elder statesman, ex-president, and globe-trotting do-gooder, Bill Clinton was Bubba. And out in rural Western Iowa, Bubba is back. ... While his speech differed little from the one he gives in upscale audiences, his presence there indicates both the potential his wife’s campaign sees in the West and the fact that the former...

<p>Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign has revised its list of Tennessee supporters on its statewide steering committee to remove the names of two convicted felons.</p> <p>The original list of more than 100 committee members had included former state House Majority Leader Tommy Burnett and West Tennessee Democratic Party activist Gladys Crain.</p>

WHAT SHE’S GOT Cash and Bonds: $30.1 million Life Insurance: $140,000 Retirement Funds: $33,000 Alternative Investments: $248,000 Houses: $5.9 million Mortgages: $1.5 million WORTH: $39.9 MILLION 2006 Income: $12.1 million WHERE SHE GOT IT When Bill Clinton first ran for President in 1992, Hillary provided most of the couple’s income working for the Rose law firm in Little Rock; he earned only $35,000 a year as governor of Arkansas. Although she takes in $165,200 a year as a senator, these days Bill is breadwinner-in-chief. His presidential pension is $201,000 a year, and he grabbed a $12 million advance for his...