The White House issued a brief statement Friday withdrawing the nomination of corporate attorney Timothy Flanigan to be US Deputy Attorney General. Flanigan forwarded a letter to President Bush Friday requesting that the nomination be recalled, citing concerns about the timing of his confirmation. Flanigan's decision comes one week after the Senate Judiciary Committee postponed [...]

Attorneys for Tom DeLay, (R-TX) have filed a motion to dismiss grand jury indictments against the former House majority leader. DeLay's legal team alleges that Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle and his staff engaged in prosecutorial misconduct when they tried to coerce members of a grand jury into filing a second indictment against DeLay. [...]

Hamilton v. Morial, United States District Court for the Eastern District of Loiusiana, October 5, 2005 . Read the full text of the TRO here . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Friday that the date for the start of the trial of Saddam Hussein will not be changed from October 19, despite reports from a British official earlier this week that the trial might be postponed due to logistical issues, such as bullet-proof screen installations and the creation of [...]

A Turkish court Friday sentenced the editor of Agos , a weekly bilingual Turkish and Armenian-language newspaper, to six months in prison for "insulting and weakening Turkish identity in the media" in several articles he published last year. Hrant Dink's sentence was suspended and he will not actually have to serve time in jail unless [...]

President Bush Friday expressed confidence that US Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers will be confirmed as a justice, despite Republican senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) saying she will have to get past the "Souter factor" with conservatives who question her commitment to a clear conservative judicial philosophy. Meanwhile, Miers has been calling and meeting with conservatives [...]

In Friday's environmental law news, the US Environmental Protection Agency and Hawaii Department of Health have settled a case against the Hawaii Department of Transportation (DOT) for violations of the federal Clean Water Act at highways and airports. The DOT will pay a $1 million fine, another $1 million for a program to assess its [...]

Uganda's defense minister Friday released the names of five men wanted in connection for cruelties suffered at the hands of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) after receiving arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court . Amama Mbabazi said the ICC distributed the warrants to Uganda, the Congo and Sudan, where the men are thought [...]

President Bush's former chief procurement officer entered a not guilty plea at his arraignment Friday, in response to an indictment on charges that he made false statements and obstructed investigations into Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The charges against David Safavian are related to a governmental investigation into property that Abramoff was trying to acquire, which [...]

Former Adelphia Communications CEO John Rigas and his son, the company's former CFO, have been indicted for failing to pay $300 million in taxes, according to a federal grand jury indictment unsealed Friday. The IRS has said that the pair neglected to pay tens of millions of dollars in taxes and assisted family members in [...]