WASHINGTON—Political appointees in the Justice Department have overruled career workers at least three times on high-profile matters, including a Georgia law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says that is what appointees are paid for: to consider the advice of professional staff and then exercise their best judgment.

NEW ORLEANS—A number of Hurricane Katrina refugees stuck in hotel rooms and unfamiliar surroundings across the United States are in no mood to party and they're decrying this city's plans to hold Mardi Gras celebrations in two months.
"This is not the time for fun, this is the time to put people's lives back on track," said Lillie Antoine, a 51-year-old refugee stuck in Tulsa, Okla.

Tavis Smiley, radio and television host and the keynote speaker at the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle's sixth annual Benefit Breakfast, delivers his address to the more than 1000 people in attendance Dec. 9 at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center.

OLYMPIA—Gov. Christine Gregoire is calling for a new rating system for child care centers and preschools so parents can make informed decisions about where to send their tykes.
The governor also is proposing a new cabinet-level agency to pull together a half-dozen child-care and early-learning programs now scattered across state government.

OLYMPIA—Thousands of secretaries, bus drivers and other school workers have joined the Service Employees International Union

CHICAGO—Kevin Brown's most feared opponent on the sandlot or basketball court while he was growing up

Local author Edwina Martin-Arnold reads from her new novel, "Chocolate Friday," at The Bookworm Exchange in Columbia City on Dec 9.

LOS ANGELES—It is one of those indelible images from the late 1960s that remains locked in the minds of those who were there.
It's a comedy album photograph of a nearly naked Richard Pryor, dressed in a loincloth, with bones through his nose and beads around his neck like a stereotypical African bushman from an old "Tarzan" movie.

OAKLAND, Calif.--They weren't your average thugs. Dressed in bow ties and dark suits, the group of nearly a dozen men entered a corner store and smashed bottles of liquor, wine and beer with metal pipes, shattering refrigerator cases and leaving behind a terrified clerk along with piles of broken glass.

No one was held up. Nothing was stolen. The vandals just wanted to leave a message: Stop selling alcohol to fellow Muslims. Followed by an identical attack at another West Oakland store the same evening, the episode highlighted tensions -- and different interpretations of doctrine -- between Black Muslims hoping to reclaim troubled parts of the city and Middle Eastern shop owners, many of them also of Muslim faith.

Members of the singing group African Gospel A Cappella — originally from Liberia — perform at Africa AIDS Response, an annual benefit concert for Portland's sister city of Mutare, Zimbabwe. The concert, sponsored by AIDS Action Project Northwest, was held Dec. 1 at the Tiffany Center.