Free Republic

Litigator David Boies and the law firm he founded, Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP, have stopped doing legal work for Theranos Inc. after disagreeing about the strategy for handling ongoing government investigations of the blood-testing company, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Boies, 75 years old, has been one of the country’s best-known litigators since the late 1990s. He became Theranos’s outside counsel after being approached in 2011 by two investors in the Palo Alto, Calif., startup. He fiercely defended Theranos against questions about its technology and operations. Those efforts included threatening to take legal action against The...

Vice President-elect Joe Biden has picked former Al Gore aide Ron Klain to be his chief of staff... Klain is the latest ex-Clinton administration official selected for a high-profile job in the coming Barack Obama presidency.

A couple long-time friends and readers brought this to my attention from 1994:In a city where name recognition is synonymous with success, Ron Klain has made a virtue of being unknown. As Attorney General Janet Reno’s chief of staff, he is all but invisible to the public but recognized in Democratic circles as the man to have on your side in a political or legal fight. A rare mix of top-flight lawyer and savvy politician, Klain shepherded the nominations of Reno and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg through the Senate and steered the omnibus crime bill through the...

Aragoncillo admits spying for Arroyo foes Estrada, Lacson named co-plotters vs President NEWARK, New Jersey—A Filipino-American intelligence analyst admitted Thursday that for five years he passed top secret information gleaned from White House and Federal Bureau of Investigation computers to conspirators he said were trying to overthrow President Macapagal-Arroyo. Leandro Aragoncillo, 47, a naturalized US citizen who was born in the Philippines, pleaded guilty to a four-count indictment. The conspirators used code words to refer to various people, including calling Ms Arroyo "The Penguin," Aragoncillo admitted. Aragoncillo, shackled at the feet and wearing green jail garb, himself did not...

The media didn't talk about it but in the 2000 election contest the Democratic strategy if they couldn't get the vote count to go their way was to tie the results up in the court so that Florida wouldn't be able to field electors. This would have cut 25 electors from Bush's total and given Gore the election. The Florida state legislature was dominated by the Republican party who let it be known that they could appoint the electors and with the Supreme Court decision the Democrats effort to win the election by disenfranchising Florida was shelved. In the primary...

Ted Cruz sparred with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews over his proposal for judicial retention elections during an interview on “Hardball” Wednesday night, at one point debating the judicial propriety of allowing ballots to be recounted in Florida during the historically close 2000 presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore. The Texas Republican senator and presidential candidate said he is “reluctant to call for elections,” adding that it “makes him sad” but that he has done so because “a majority of the justices are not honoring their judicial oaths.” “Is that the solution? Elections?” Matthews countered. “Look, if unelected judges...

Washington · Otto Reich, President Bush's chief adviser on Latin America, said on Thursday that the administration will step up efforts to pressure the Fidel Castro regime, aid dissidents and hasten the political transformation of the island. "I know that President Bush is interested in doing more to accelerate the process of change in Cuba, and it's safe to say that in the next few weeks and months you will see some additional steps," Reich said. "It's been very difficult for this president to implement this policy for Cuba and the Western Hemisphere because up to this week he was...

"Elizabeth Drew@ElizabethDrewOH 3H...Admin officials told Bibi that if he's reelected, his egregious ambo to US Ron Dermer, co-plotter with Boehner, has to go"

NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- Former Credit Suisse First Boston star banker Frank Quattrone surrendered to federal authorities Wednesday morning and will face criminal charges, prosecutors said. James Comey, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, will unveil the charges at a 1 p.m. ET press conference. Quattrone, a former star banker for CSFB, allegedly advised his colleagues in late 2000 to destroy documents while regulators were investigating the ways Wall Street investment banks were doling out shares of lucrative initial public offerings. The former banker is charged in a three-count criminal complaint with obstruction of justice, document destruction...

In the California governor's race, Steve Poizner goes very, very hard at Meg Whitman on immigration, drawing a sharp difference on an issue that plays in his favor in a Republican primary, but which Republicans worry could backfire in a general election.

PALM BEACH COUNTY, FL---Our news partners at the Sun Sentinel report: U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, who represents Broward and Palm Beach counties, plans to resign from Congress. He plans to announce his plans at a news conference Wednesday at 10 a.m. in Boca Raton. A Democratic source with knowledge of Wexler's plans said he is likely to take a public policy job that deals with the Middle East. Wexler, a senior member of the House Foreign Relations Committee, has long been involved in issues involving Israel and Turkey.

Wealthy Democratic political gadfly Connie Milstein, who calls herself "an ordinary Park Avenue matron," will now have to change her tune. Sources tells us the heiress to the Milstein real-estate fortune has just gone to contract to buy a Fifth Avenue duplex apartment with a $15.7 million asking price. Milstein made a name for herself in 2000 during the Bush-Gore election when she was caught on camera bribing homeless potential voters with cigarettes in exchange for a vote for Gore. She was eventually fined $5,000 for her spirited activism. Unlike the homeless, Ms. Milstein has signed on to take a...

COMMENTARY GOP Was the Real Victim in Fla. Vote By JOHN R. LOTT Jr. and JAMES K. GLASSMAN John R. Lott Jr. and James K. Glassman are resident fellows at the American Enterprise Institute. Lott has taught statistics and empirical methods at the University of Chicago and University of Pennsylvania. November 12 2001 Last week, detailed statistics were released on voting in Florida during the presidential election. The data for the first time include all of the state's precincts, with not just information on race but on party affiliation. At first glance, the numbers confirm the disturbing claims, repeated often ...

Here's an excerpt.. But if spoiled ballots do indicate disenfranchisement, then the new data show that, by a dramatic margin, the group most victimized in the Florida voting was African American Republicans.

comprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots from last year's presidential election reveals that George W. Bush would have won even if the United States Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount of the votes that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered to go forward. Contrary to what many partisans of former Vice President Al Gore have charged, the United States Supreme Court did not award an election to Mr. Bush that otherwise would have been won by Mr. Gore. A close examination of the ballots found that Mr. Bush would have retained a slender margin over Mr. ...

Fresh from huffily telling an African student questioner that she, Hillary R. Clinton, was U.S. Secretary of State, not her husband, Clinton continues to set an example of how not to make friends and influence people in foreign lands, following the lead of her boss, President Barack Obama (D). Clemente Lisi of the NY Post reports on her most recent arrogant, defamation of the country she represents while uttering a slanderous lie. Clinton caused another firestorm during her trouble-plagued Africa tour last night by drawing comparisons between political corruption in Nigeria and President Bush's contested election win nine years ago...

Someone with better access to Florida's election data that I am can now settle a question leftover from the 2000 Election. As you'll recall, the tv networks called Florida for Gore before the polls had even closed in the Central Time Zone part of the state, depressing the amount of votes Bush likely would have received. Now that the 2004 Election is over, it's possible to extrapolate how much that early call may have cost Bush. 1. Take the Florida counties that are in the Central Time Zone. Count the total number of votes cast in the presidential elections in...

<p>One of the Democratic Party's top fund-raisers threw his support yesterday behind the presidential bid of Sen. John Kerry after being courted by all the top contenders.</p> <p>New Yorker Robert Zimmerman, a managing director of Al Gore's 2000 campaign in New York, said he's not worried about polls that show Kerry (D-Mass.) slipping.</p>

Election Day is November 5, 2002. Please, Florida, do not forget the HATRED FOR THE CONSTITUTION the Supreme Court of Florida exhibited in November and December of the year 2000. From the SCOFFLAWS website, there is a clear chance for you to replace three of the seven Kangaroo Court Justices: Merit retention is a system of selecting Justices established by the voters when they amended the Florida Constitution in the 1970s. Under merit retention, the Governor appoints new Justices from a list of three to six names submitted by a Judicial Nominating Commission. The Governor must select from the list....