Janet Reno, First Woman to Serve as U.S. Attorney General, Dies

anet Reno, who rose from a rustic life on the edge of the Everglades to become attorney general of the United States — the first woman to hold the job — and whose eight years in that office placed her in the middle of some of the most divisive episodes of the Clinton presidency, died on Monday at age 78.
She died at her home in Miami-Dade County from complications of Parkinson’s disease, according to her sister, Margaret Hurchalla. The disease was diagnosed in November 1995.
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Ms. Reno’s tenure as attorney general was bracketed by two explosive events: a deadly federal raid on the compound of a religious cult in Waco, Tex., in 1993, and the seizing in 2000 by federal agents of Elián González, a young Cuban refugee who was at the center of an international custody battle and a political tug of war.
In those moments, and others in between, Ms. Reno was applauded for a straightforward integrity and a willingness to accept responsibility, but she was also fiercely criticized. Republicans accused her of protecting President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore when, in 1997, she refused to allow an independent counsel to investigate allegations of fund-raising improprieties in the White House.
After leaving office, she mounted a surprise though unsuccessful bid in Florida to unseat Gov. Jeb Bush, the brother of President George W. Bush, in 2002, amid the resentment of Cuban-Americans in South Florida over her negotiating for the return of Elián to Cuba.

Ms. Reno was never part of the Clinton inner circle, even though she served in the Clinton cabinet for two terms, longer than any attorney general in the previous 150 years. She was a latecomer to the team, and her political and personal style clashed with the president’s, particularly as she sought to maintain some independence from the White House.

Her relations with the president were further strained by her decision to let an independent inquiry into a failed Clinton land deal in Arkansas, the so-called Whitewater investigation, expand to encompass Mr. Clinton’s sexual relationship with the White House intern Monica Lewinsky, an episode that led to his impeachment.

Mr. Clinton and his allies thought that Ms. Reno was too quick to refer to special counsels in the Lewinsky matter and other cases of suspect administration behavior. The president let her dangle in the public eye for weeks before announcing in December 1996, after his resounding re-election, that she would remain for his second term.

Ms. Reno was never a natural fit in Washington’s backslapping, highly competitive culture. At weekly news conferences in the barrel-vaulted conference room outside her office in the Justice Department building on Pennsylvania Avenue, she was fond of telling reporters that she would “do the right thing” on legal issues and judge them according to “the law and the facts.”

Imposing at 6-foot-1, awkward in manner and blunt in her probity, she became a regular foil for late-night comics and a running gag on “Saturday Night Live.” But she got the joke, proving it by gamely appearing on the show to lampoon her image.

The comedy could not obscure her law-enforcement accomplishments. Ms. Reno presided over the Justice Department in a time of economic growth, falling crime rates and mounting security threats to the nation by forces both foreign and domestic.

Candidates sprint across US as campaigns react to email case news

Arriving here after midnight, Donald Trump promised a raucous crowd that he would end trade deals supported by “crooked Hillary,” scrap the Affordable Care Act and dramatically restrict the arrival of refugees in communities that don’t want them.
“When I’m elected president, we will suspend the Syrian refugee program, and we will keep radical Islamic terrorists the hell out of our country. We’ll keep them out,” the Republican nominee told hundreds of people packed into a barn at the Loudoun County fairgrounds, with even more listening from outside.
The stop was Trump’s fifth since Sunday afternoon, several of them in Democratic strongholds he is trying to wrest away from Hillary Clinton in hopes of creating a path to victory on Tuesday.
After starting his day in Iowa, where polls show him ahead, Trump stumped in Minnesota, Michigan and Pennsylvania, all states that have gone for Democrats for more than a quarter century. Until recently, polls had showed Clinton with a comfortable lead in Virginia as well.
Clinton, meanwhile, campaigned in Pennsylvania, where she maintains a lead, and in Ohio and New Hampshire, two battleground states that could go either way. Clinton has maintained a narrow lead nationally and has several more plausible scenarios than Trump for winning in the Electoral College.
The candidates’ frenzied pace Sunday came as news broke that, after an expedited review of newly discovered Clinton emails, FBI Director James B. Comey had affirmed his decision that she should not face charges related to her use of a personal server as secretary of state.
During Trump’s Michigan rally — a state a Republican presidential candidate last carried in 1988 — he said Clinton was “being protected by a rigged system, it’s a totally rigged system.”
“Hillary Clinton is guilty,” Trump said. “She’s knows it. The FBI knows it. The people know it. Now it’s up to the American people to deliver justice at the ballot box on November 8th.”
Comey’s announcement on Oct. 28 that the FBI was scrutinizing newly discovered email reinvigorated Trump’s campaign in the closing stretch of the race, and polls in multiple battleground states have tightened since then.
Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri reacted to the FBI news on the campaign’s flight to a Cleveland rally, telling reporters: “We are glad to see that ... [Comey] has confirmed the conclusions he reached in July, and we are glad that this matter is resolved.”
Clinton is using the closing days of the race to try to both shore up support in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania where she has been leading and to tip the balance in other swing states.
Clinton appeared Sunday night in New Hampshire, where the race has tightened considerably.
“This election is a moment of reckoning,” Clinton told her crowd in Manchester. “It a choice between division and unity. ... What’s really on the ballot is what kind of country we want for our children and grandchildren.”
Clinton was introduced at the rally by Khizr Khan, the Gold Star father of slain U.S. Army Capt. Humayun Khan, who died while serving in the 2004 Iraq War.
Khan, who spoke at the Democratic National Convention and was later criticized by Trump, posed a pointed set of questions to Trump about whether his son, a Muslim, and other minorities would have a place in his America.
“Would anyone who isn’t like you have a place in your America, Mr. Trump?” Khan said. “On Tuesday, we’re going to prove America belongs to all of us.”
Clinton said that Khan’s family “exemplify the values that make America great.”
Folk singer James Taylor performed at the rally ahead of Clinton’s appearance.
Clinton appeared earlier Sunday at a rally in Cleveland, where she was introduced by Cleveland Cavaliers basketball star LeBron James, part of an effort to spark enthusiasm in Ohio, a state where polls have showed Trump leading.
“I want an America where everyone has a place, where everyone is included,” Clinton said there. “And I know there is a lot of frustration, even anger, in this election season. I see it, I hear it, you know, I’m a subject of it. I get it. But anger is not a plan. Anger is not going to get us new jobs.”
The more optimistic look toward the future was a script her campaign had hoped to use as a springboard past the exceptional rancor of the last several months of her contest with Trump, but it had been muted somewhat by the uncertainty surrounding the renewed FBI inquiry and the tightening polls.
Sunday’s event was Clinton’s last scheduled visit to Ohio, where she trails despite heavy emphasis on turning out black voters in Cleveland. James was part of that effort, as were husband and wife singers Jay-Z and Beyoncé, who performed a get-out-the-vote concert with Clinton on Friday night.
In attempt to cobble together the 270 electoral votes needed to win, Trump has new targets in his sights in historically Democratic states including Michigan, Minnesota and New Mexico.
Once thought to be safe for Democrats, Michigan has become a last-minute battleground, with Clinton heading to Grand Rapids on Monday, the campaign announced this weekend. President Obama, who won Michigan twice, will campaign in Ann Arbor on Monday. And former president Bill Clinton made a stop in Lansing on Sunday after visiting churches in Flint.
Clinton began her day Sunday by campaigning in Philadelphia after attending a get-out-the-vote concert in the city on Saturday night. And she will return to the state for two rallies on the eve of Election Day, a sign that the Keystone State is among the battlegrounds where her lead over Trump has dwindled in recent days.
Her campaign announced that rock star Bruce Springsteen would join her at a Philadelphia rally that will also include President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama.
Clinton also deployed a full slate of high-level surrogates around the country on Sunday, including Obama, who appeared in Kissimmee, Fla., and poked fun at Trump.
“Apparently his campaign has taken his Twitter,” Obama told the crowd at Osceola County Stadium. “In the last two days, they had so little confidence in his self control, they said we’re just gonna take away your Twitter. Now, if somebody can’t handle a Twitter account, they can’t handle the nuclear codes.”

US election daily dig: Is George W Bush voting for Hillary?

The polls are tightening, the appeals to unenthusiastic voters are becoming more desperate - and speculation is mounting about one previously solid group of Republican voters.

The latest

Just when you thought this election could not get any stranger comes the news that George W Bush could be voting for a Democrat. And not just any Democrat.

The revelation came from Texas land commissioner and Trump supporter George P Bush who suggested at a small Republican gathering that his grandfather George HW and uncle George W could both be casting ballots for Hillary Clinton.

Rumours that Bush Senior was a secret supporter of the wife of the man who beat him in 1992 have been circulating for a few weeks, after he reportedly spilled the beans to a member of the Kennedy clan. The 92-year-old was apparently not impressed by Trump's mockery of his son Jeb in the primaries.

But this is the first time we've heard that George W Bush might back Clinton too - like father, like son, it now appears. When Jeb Bush was asked about his brother's intentions, he simply said: "Secret ballot."