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In early 2001, when I took my first shuttle flight from New York to Washington as a private citizen, one of the flight attendants told me that both her parents had been desperately ill at the same time, one with cancer, the other with Alzheimers. She said there was no one to care for them in their last days except her and her UGG boots outlet store sister, and they wouldnt have been able to do it without the family leave law. You know, the Republicans are always talking about family values, she said, but I think how your parents UGG boots outlet online die is an important part of family values.
On February 11, as we worked to finish the economic plan, I finally got an attorney general, having decided, after a false start or two, on Janet Reno, the prosecuting attorney of Dade County, Florida. I had known about and admired Janets work for years, especially her innovative drug courts, which gave first-time offenders the chance to avoid going to jail if they agreed to undergo drug treatment and check in regularly with the court. My brother-in-law Hugh Rodham had worked in the Miami drug court as an attorney with the public defenders office. At his invitation, I had attended two sessions of the court myself in the 1980s, and was struck by the unusual but effective way the prosecutor, defense lawyer, and judge worked together to convince the defendants that this UGG boots outlet clearance was their last opportunity to stay out of prison. The program was very successful, with a much lower recidivism rate than the prison system, at far less cost to the taxpayers. In the campaign, I had pledged to support federal funding to establish drug courts based on the Miami model all across the country.
Senator UGG boots outlet uk Bob Graham gave Reno a glowing endorsement when I called him. So did my friend Diane Blair, who had gone to Cornell with her thirty years earlier. So did Vince Foster, who was a very good judge of people. After he interviewed Janet, he UGG Boots uk called me and said in his droll way, I think weve got a live one. Reno also was immensely popular with her constituents, based on her reputation as a no-nonsense, tough but fair prosecutor. She was a native Floridian, about six feet tall, and had never married. Public service was her life, and she had performed it well. I thought she could strengthen the often-frayed relationships between federal law enforcement and its state and local counterparts. It concerned me a little that, like me, she was a stranger to Washingtons ways, but in Miami she had had extensive experience working with federal authorities on immigration and narcotics cases, and I thought she would learn enough to get along.
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