Judge orders DOJ official to cooperate in tobacco settlement FOIA lawsuit News
Judge orders DOJ official to cooperate in tobacco settlement FOIA lawsuit

[JURIST] A federal judge on Thursday ordered [opinion text, PDF] Associate Attorney General Robert McCallum [official profile] to comply with discovery requests related to a lawsuit filed by legal watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) [advocacy website] against the Department of Justice seeking to reveal why the government suddenly lowered its demands for relief [JURIST report] in its landmark civil racketeering case against the tobacco industry [DOJ backgrounder]. In June 2005, CREW submitted Freedom of Information Act requests asking for relevant communication records between the White House and the DOJ and between McCallum and his former law firm Alston & Bird, where McCallum represented several tobacco companies, and filed a lawsuit [complaint, PDF; CREW case materials] earlier this year when those requests were not answered by the DOJ.

US District Judge Emmet Sullivan said that given the volume of materials provided by the DOJ to Congress on a yearly basis, the DOJ should have promptly responded to the document requests. Sullivan also ruled that McCallum must submit to deposition requests in the case, which will hinder his nomination as ambassador to Australia, which has been blocked by Sen. Rick Durbin [Reuters report] pending the outcome of an investigation [JURIST report] by the DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility into allegations of improper conduct in the decision to reduce damages sought in the tobacco case. AP has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

UN General Assembly approves Palestine partition plan

The UN General Assembly approved UN Resolution Resolution 181 (II) on November 29, 1947, recommending that the British Mandate for Palestine be split into a Jewish state, an Arab state, and an international zone for Jerusalem. The vote in the assembly was 33 for to 13 against, with 10 abstentions. The resolution sparked a war between Palestinian Arabs and Jews in 1947 and a wider war after Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon invaded the new State of Israel in 1948. Read Resolution 181 (II).

UN divided Palestine between Arabs and Jews

On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab territories, leading to the establishment of a Jewish state the following year. Read UN General Assembly Resolution 181.

Defense Secretary Robert McNamara resigns during Vietnam Conflict

On November 29, 1967, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara announced that he was resigning from his office to accept an appointment as head of the World Bank. The announcement came as the Vietnam Conflict was becoming increasingly unpopular in the United States and abroad.