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Gov. David A. Paterson announced on Monday that the state would accelerate consideration and granting of pardons to legal immigrants for old or minor criminal convictions, in an effort to prevent them from being deported. Readers' Opinions Comment Post a Comment The move sets up a confrontation between the governor and federal immigration officials, who have taken more aggressive action to increase deportations in recent years. Immigration lawyers on both sides called the step extraordinary and said it could ultimately affect thousands of people in New York. “Some of our immigration laws, particularly with respect to deportation, are embarrassingly and...

Mikael Moore, the 31-year-old chief of staff for Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), went to work for her six years ago as a bottom-rung staff assistant. He rose to become her scheduler, communications director and, finally, 2 1/2 years ago, found himself to be a logical candidate to take over as the office's chief of staff. * What few people outside Waters's office knew was that Moore is her grandson. * Over the years, many congressional members and key officials in the executive branch have hired family members or helped them land jobs in government.

After graduating from college, I served four years as an infantry officer in the Army's 25th Infantry Division. I fired everything from 9mm pistols to .50-caliber machine guns, routinely qualifying as "expert" with an M16A2 rifle. It's not despite such experience, but precisely because of it, that I think the availability of guns in America is stunningly negligent public policy. And it may get worse. One needn't be a constitutional law scholar to discern the Founding Fathers' intent in the Second Amendment. The original draft presented to the first session of the first Congress read: "The right of the people...

<p>There's a rat at the White House, and we're not talking about a politician.</p> <p>A small, furry rodent was caught on camera scurrying near the Presidential podium just before a scheduled press conference on the state of the nation's economy by President Obama.</p>

Nelson, it turns out, wasn’t simply looking out for Buffett -- by every measure the most special interest in his state. He was looking out for himself. * “I did not vote no because of Berkshire Hathaway,” he said. “Nor did the fact that I and my wife have owned Berkshire stock for 30+ years have anything to do with my vote. It has never been an issue. It isn't now." * So which is it? Ben Nelson, pillar of conservatism? Or Ben Nelson, cesspool of sleaze? The two are not mutually exclusive.

<p>SouthParkStudios.com A message posted on SouthParkStudios.com, the Web site of Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s production company.</p> <p>An episode of “South Park” that continued a story line involving the Prophet Muhammad was shown Wednesday night on Comedy Central with audio bleeps and image blocks reading “CENSORED” after a Muslim group warned the show’s creators they could face violence for depicting that holy Islamic prophet. Revolution Muslim, a group based in New York, wrote on its Web site that the “South Park” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker “will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh” for an episode shown last week in which a character said to be the Prophet Muhammad was seen wearing a bear costume. Mr. Van Gogh was slain in Amsterdam in 2004 after making a film that discussed the abuse of Muslim women in some Islamic societies.</p>

APRIL 16, 2010 -- Illinois State Police trooper Matt Mitchell (center) walks out of St. Clair County courtroom after pleading guilty of reckless homicide in the traffic deaths of two Collinsville teens. (David Carson/P-D) BELLEVILLE — Illinois Trooper Matt Mitchell admitted Friday that he was criminally responsible for an on-duty crash that killed two sisters, and apologized for his recklessness. On Monday, he tried to take it all back. "I did not plead guilty because I felt that I did it," Mitchell said in an Illinois Court of Claims hearing here. "I did not think I could get a fair...

Family members of those killed or wounded in the shootings at Virginia Tech and Columbine High School signed advertisements running today that called on lawmakers to support closing the “gun show loophole.” The advertisements appeared close to the anniversary of both shootings, and as gun rights rallies were set to occur in and around Washington.In Virginia, a group called Virginians for Public Safety placed an advertisement in The Richmond Times-Dispatch asking that the state’s two Democratic senators, Jim Webb and Mark Warner, get behind closing the loophole. And the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence sponsored a newspaper ad in two...

The system that Lower Merion school officials used to track lost and stolen laptops wound up secretly capturing thousands of images, including photographs of students in their homes, Web sites they visited, and excerpts of their online chats, says a new motion filed in a suit against the district. More than once, the motion asserts, the camera on Robbins' school-issued laptop took photos of Robbins as he slept in his bed. Each time, it fired the images off to network servers at the school district. Back at district offices, the Robbins motion says, employees with access to the images marveled...

<p>Steven Rattner, the famed Wall Street deal maker and former Obama administration car czar, came under fire from his long-time business partners for what they called "unethical" efforts to win a $100 million investment for their private-equity firm, Quadrangle Group.</p>

After several days of hype and hand-wringing about liberal plans to infiltrate Thursday’s tea party rallies, the great 2010 Tax Day Tea Party Crash did not produce much of a bang in Washington. To be sure, a handful of obvious crashers engaged in some mostly non-confrontational back-and-forth with tea party activists at a Thursday evening rally that drew thousands to Washington’s National Mall near the Washington Monument. And some less overt crashers subtly mocked activists from amidst their ranks at both the evening rally on the Mall and an earlier event at Freedom Plaza near the White House. And there...

Cravenness and horse trading are too often the political reality in Washington, but a deal now in the works is particularly cruel. Congress is poised, finally, to give the tax-paying citizens of the District of Columbia what they have been so long and so unfairly denied: a representative with the power to vote. But the gun lobby has extracted too high a price: the scuttling of vital local gun controls intended to keep the capital city’s residents safe. * The legislation would intrude on home-rule prerogatives by repealing the district’s restrictions on semiautomatic weapons, rolling back requirements for registering most...

PITTSBURGH — A California man who spent nearly six years in prison for a 1980s marijuana-trafficking conviction got six months in federal prison for running a company that sold a male prosthetic called the Whizzinator that helped men cheat on drug tests. Gerald W. Wills, 67, of Los Angeles, sold the device and a product called Number 1 that could be used by either men or women, along with a synthetic urine to fill the devices. Wills' since-disbanded company, Puck Technology Inc., of Signal Hill, Calif., advertised the devices on the Internet as a way for pilots, truck drivers and...

The AARP, the Obama administration and lawmakers are trying to convince skeptical older voters of the benefits of healthcare legislation before they go to the polls in November. Their strategy involves selling seniors on the enhanced prescription drug and prevention benefits and easing their worries over the future of Medicare. Opinion polling has shown older voters who favored Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) over President Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential contest to be the most dubious about healthcare reform. A Gallup poll released two weeks ago found just 36 percent of people 65 or older thought the healthcare law is...

Sen. Arlen Specter says he has an agreement with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to become the next chairman of the Judiciary Committee, but three senior Democrats are blocking the deal. Specter (D-Pa.) has worked diligently behind the scenes to boost his seniority on the Senate Judiciary and Appropriations committees and hopes to settle the issue before the election. “The arrangement I had with Reid [D-Nev.] is that I would have the same seniority as if I had been elected as a Democrat in 1980,” Specter said in an interview with The Hill. “I would be behind [Judiciary Committee Chairman...

After decades of denying the facility’s existence, five former insiders speak out Back/Story AnnieJacobsen Built in Burbank, the OXCART needed cumbersome transport to Area 51, with road signs removed, road banks leveled and trees axed. Area 51. It's the most famous military institution in the world that doesn't officially exist. If it did, it would be found about 100 miles outside Las Vegas in Nevada's high desert, tucked between an Air Force base and an abandoned nuclear testing ground. Then again, maybe not-- the U.S. government refuses to say. You can't drive anywhere close to it, and until recently, the...

Rowan Towers at 620 West State Street, in Trenton, N.J., is shown on Wednesday, March 31, 2010. The building was the site of a party where police say a 15-year-old sold her 7-year-old sister to have sex with as many as seven men and boys. Police say the child later put on her clothes and two strangers walked the crying girl home. She was treated at a hospital. Police say the teenager, who stayed behind, also took money to have sex with others at a party in the Trenton apartment on Sunday. The older girl is charged with aggravated...

Handout / The ChronicleSchool board member Kim-Shree Maufas was in a meeting when the items were stolen. The 22-year-old daughter of a San Francisco school board member stole a district laptop and $250 from another school board member and a district staff member while her mother attended board meetings in the same building, district officials confirmed Friday.Francesca Maufas, the daughter of board member Kim-Shree Maufas, took the laptop and $90 cash from a third-floor office of a senior staff member during the school board's March 9 meeting at district headquarters, officials said. A surveillance camera captured the 22-year-old in the...

The shooting death of Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller may have contributed to a dramatic drop in the number of abortions performed in Kansas last year. The 9,472 abortions in 2009 were the lowest reported number since 1990, according to preliminary data released Friday by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. There were 1,171, or about 11 percent, fewer abortions last year than the year before, the largest one-year decline in more than a decade. “It really comes as no surprise when you lose an abortion provider very suddenly,” said Sarah Gillooly, public affairs manager for Planned Parenthood of...

A Leadville mother, detained in connection with a terrorist conspiracy to kill a Swedish cartoonist, was lonely in a new town and craved attention and new friendships, family members say. Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, 31 — questioned in Ireland for several days before reportedly being released Saturday — found new friends online as she began corresponding with a group of Muslims including, her family says, Colleen R. LaRose, 46, known as "Jihad Jane," and admitted terrorist conspirator and former DIA shuttle-bus driver Najibullah Zazi. "She couldn't do anything that would make people take notice," said her stepfather, George Mott, 51, himself a...