Attorney General

WASHINGTON - President-elect Barack Obama wants to nominate former top Justice Department official Eric Holder Jr. to be his attorney general, and his transition team is trying to gauge whether there is sufficient bipartisan support for him in the Senate, sources close to the transition confirmed yesterday. Those sources said internal vetting is still being completed and that top transition team members and Democratic allies of Obama are working to make sure that Holder would not face any significant obstacles during the Senate confirmation process.

Attorney Stephen L. Miles, whose "let's talk about it" television commercials have made him a household name in Baltimore, said yesterday that he may run for Maryland attorney general in 1994.Also yesterday, former Deputy Attorney General Eleanor M. Carey said she plans to make a second run for the job as the state's top lawyer.Mr. Miles, 49, said he has been approached by Democratic leaders who are seeking potential candidates to run for the post amid broad speculation that Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr. will run for governor in the election -- almost two years from now."

MEXICO CITY -- President Carlos Salinas de Gortari removed yesterday his attorney general, a man whose agency has come under increasing attack for alleged human rights violations.The move came just days before the U.S. Congress is to take up a key procedural vote in the proposed free-trade agreement with Mexico.The human rights record of the nation's highest law enforcement agency had come under criticism in Congress, especially the role of its Federal Judicial Police, Mexico's FBI. The police had been linked to rapes and murders, including the death of a prominent human rights activist in the state of Sinaloa.

Spurned by voters in last fall's divisive Howard County Circuit Court general election, Donna Hill Staton will return to the public legal sector -- this time as a deputy attorney general for Maryland.Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr. will announce today his appointment of Hill Staton to be one of his two deputies, he said yesterday. The other is Carmen Shepherd.Hill Staton will be the first black woman to serve in that position when she starts in April. Her predecessor and the first African-American in the position, Norman E. Parker Jr., left in December to work for a private law firm.

Lawyer Dick Bennett cruised Baltimore in his family station wagon, stopping at heavily for tressed liquor stores and pizza delivery places in neighborhoods much different from his own.At each, he posed the same questions to people behind the counter or bulletproof glass: Have you ever been robbed? A victim of teen-age thugs?This resident of tony Ruxton was not trolling for clients. It was stories he was after, firsthand accounts of crime that might helphim in his quest to be Maryland's chief attorney.

CHICAGO -- When President Bush nominated Michael B. Mukasey to be attorney general, presidential candidates offered reactions that broke down mostly on party lines - Republicans positive, Democrats guarded. Republican Rudolph W. Giuliani, whose campaign counts Mr. Mukasey as an adviser, gushed that "he will meet and exceed all expectations." Democrat John Edwards was a harder sell. "We need to hear more about how Judge Mukasey will repair the serious damage caused by his predecessors," he said.

The state attorney general and a key state legislator intend to try to reform how Maryland regulates the title insurance industry, including barring those who have taken clients' money from returning to the business."

Maryland Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr. should reorganize his office to fight crime better in this "dangerous" state, according to radio commercials paid for by a Republican opponent.In an ad running on stations statewide this week, challenger Richard D. Bennett says Mr. Curran should reassign his staff lawyers immediately. "Maryland is now the second most dangerous state in the nation. Mr. Attorney General, you and I both know crime doesn't wait for politics. Do it, and do it now," he says.

Doris Elliott Beer, a former employee in the office of Maryland's attorney general and a volunteer, died of kidney failure Wednesday at her granddaughter's home in Gordonsville, Va. She was 89. The longtime Guilford resident, who had lived in Gordonsville since 1996, was born Doris Elliott in Baltimore. She was raised in Forest Park and was a 1931 graduate of Forest Park High School. She earned her bachelor's degree in 1934 from the State Normal School, now Towson University. During the 1930s, she worked as a model in New York and Chicago before returning in 1939 to Baltimore.