For more than three decades, Mr. Leonard has been a distinguished practitioner in the small circle of federal tax policy advocates. He served as chief counsel and staff director of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means from 1987 to 1993, as chief majority tax counsel of the Committee from 1981 to 1986, and as majority tax counsel from 1974 to 1980. During his 20+-year tenure on Capitol Hill, he was involved in all major tax and trade legislation considered by Congress. Since leaving the government, Mr. Leonard has represented major manufacturers, financial services companies and many other clients on a wide variety of policy matters.

Mr. Leonard received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and his J.D. from Vanderbilt Law School. He received his M.B.A. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Joining Mr. Leonard as senior policy counsel is Jayne T. Fitzgerald. Ms. Fitzgerald served as tax counsel on the Committee on Ways and Means from 1980 to 1985 and from 1992 to 1995 before moving to the private sector. She has extensive experience representing clients on tax, trade, pension and health matters before Congress and federal agencies. She received her B.A. summa cum laude and her J.D. magna cum laude from Georgetown University, where she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

Joel Jankowsky, chair of Akin Gump’s policy and regulatory practice, commented, “Without a doubt, Rob is one of the best-known and most highly regarded tax policy advocates in Washington. His long-time relationships with the chairmen and members of the House and Senate Committees who craft tax law – relationships that have been built on their recognition of the quality of his work – are of critical competitive importance to our ability to serve our clients.”

Akin Gump’s tax policy practice is anchored by former Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service Donald C. Alexander, and includes Jeff McMillen, the former staff director of the House Ways and Means Committee's Subcommittee on Select Revenue Measures, who served under Committee Chairman Bill Thomas (R-CA) and Subcommittee Chairman Jim McCrery (R-LA).

Mr. Leonard stated, “Akin Gump’s policy practice is one of the most prominent and diverse in the world. I have long respected the firm’s progressive approach to policy issues and client service. I am pleased to join a team of friends whom I respect and have worked with for many years.”

Mr. Jankowsky added, “We believe that Rob and Jayne will significantly enhance our bipartisan tax policy capability. We are very pleased to welcome them to Akin Gump.”

Akin Gump’s 50-member policy department – one of the largest and most diverse policy groups of any major law firm in the world – advises major corporations, coalitions of companies and trade associations, as well as nonprofit organizations, municipal governments, Native American tribes and foreign governments.

Founded in 1945, Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, a leading international law firm, numbers more than 900 lawyers with offices in Austin, Beijing, Dallas, Dubai, Houston, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, New York, Philadelphia, San Antonio, San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Taipei and Washington. The firm has a diversified practice and represents regional, national and international clients in a wide range of areas, including antitrust; appellate; banking and finance; capital markets; communications and information technology; corporate and securities; corporate governance; employee benefits; energy; entertainment and media; environmental; estate planning, wealth transfer and probate; financial restructuring; global security; government contracts; health; insurance; intellectual property; international trade; investment funds; labor and employment; land use; litigation; mergers and acquisitions; private equity; privatization; project development and finance; public law and policy; real estate development and finance; Russia/CIS; tax; and technology.

www.akingump.com

Blair's condemnation - delivered by his official spokesman and not by the great leader himself - came after he was roundly criticised for staying silent on the way Saddam was taunted and degraded before being hanged.

Blair's official spokesman said on Sunday that the execution was "completely wrong". He added that the hanging, which mobile phone footage showed was preceded by Saddam being taunted, "shouldn't have happened in that way".

Blair's condemnation, even if at second hand, came just hours after his chief political rival and anticipated successor as prime minister, Gordon Brown, said the events around Saddam's hanging were "deplorable" and "unacceptable". Blair has promised he will speak next week - in person - about the grisly events in Baghdad on December 30.

Blair had not officially vouchsafed an opinion on Saddam's hanging till now even though President Bush, Egyptian president Hosni Mumbarak and almost the entire British cabinet, starting with deputy prime minister John Prescott and foreign secretary Margaret Beckett have condemned it. Mubarak called the events around the execution "barbaric".

The prime minister's critics have questioned the extraordinary silence of a leader who has so far been quick to speak out about the deaths of footballers, pop stars, film actors, royal princesses and indeed any subject under the sun.

Liberal Democrat leader Menzies Campbell criticised Blair for not commenting, so far: "The prime minister's continuing silence is deafening. His unwillingness to condemn the shameful scenes surrounding Saddam Hussein's execution does him no credit."

Observers said Blair's refusal to discuss Saddam's controversial execution indicated how profoundly uncomfortable he was with the subject. Blair and much of Britain are totally opposed to capital punishment. Despite that, the UK has continued to insist the Iraqi authorities were justified in dealing with Saddam in any way they want.

On Sunday, Downing Street returned to the theme of crime and punishment by insisting that Saddam's crimes and the deaths of Iraqis at his hands should not be forgotten. Declining to confirm precisely when Blair would make his comments on Saddam's hanging, a spokesperson said, "In terms of what he will say next week, we don't think there are going to be any surprises on where he stands. He supports the inquiry by the Iraqi authorities. He does believe that the manner of execution was completely wrong, but this shouldn't lead us to forget the crimes that Saddam committed, including the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis."

Blair, who was on holiday in Miami when the hanging was carried out, has only said so far that he is in favour of an Iraqi inquiry into leaked video footage of Saddam's death.

US and Iraqi officials disagreed strongly over legal procedures and interpretations in the run-up to the December 30 hanging of Saddam Hussein, the New York Times reported Sunday. Disagreements were reported very soon after the hanging, but the latest revelations provides new insight into their extent and severity. In the face of Iraqi insistence on their right to execute the former Iraqi president in the wake of the rejection of his final appeal several days previous, American officials repeatedly counseled caution and the importance of adhering to demonstrated process, citing a requirement under the Iraqi constitution for the three-person Iraqi presidency to sign off on the execution and problems potentially associated carrying out the execution on Eid, contrary to Iraqi law. A US official told the Times that local American military and civilian leaders were also concerned about the message a rushed execution would send to the international community, essentially telling the Iraqis, "You have to do it by international law, you have to do it in accordance with international standards of decorum, you have to establish yourselves as a nation under law."

Iraqi officials responded by saying that the US-drafted governing statute of the Iraqi High Tribunal did not require any sign-off, and that the Iraqi law banning Eid executions had been suspended by the US under the Coalition Provisional Authority in 2003 not restored when the Iraqi parliament revived the death penalty afterwards. Discussions became heated before US Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad asked Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki one last time late Friday night to stop the execution. He refused, and Midhat al-Mahmoud, the chief judge of Iraq's Supreme Judicial Council, also declined to provide a written ruling authorizing the hanging as sought by the US. American suggestions that foreign journalists and UN observers witness the execution in the hopes of preventing its downward spiral into the revenge killing that was eventually captured in a grainy unofficial cell phone video were similarly rejected.

The Times quoted an unnamed American official as saying "It literally came down to the Iraqis interpreting their law, and our looking at their law and interpreting it differently...Finally, it was decided we are not the court of last appeal for Iraqi law here. The president of their country says it meets their procedures. We are not going to be their legal nannies.”

Smith, Shaw & Maddox, a more than century-old law firm practicing in Rome and Cedartown, announced last week a plan to restructure the company and change its name.

Effective immediately, the firm will practice under the name McRae, Stegall, Peek, Harman, Smith & Manning LLP — named after the current senior partners.

Founded in 1899, the firm had operated for many years under the names of former longtime firm principals Oscar Smith, Charles Shaw and J.D. Maddox.

In addition to the name change, the firm has added two new full-time attorneys and taken on one of its former attorneys as counsel to the firm.

After years of affiliation with Zartic, Jackson Baldwin Harris is back working as counsel with the law firm.

“Jack Harris is a talented attorney who has had a unique career experience for our region,” said Jo H. Stegall III, partner in the firm.

Harris practiced with Smith, Shaw & Maddox for 12 years and held a partnership in it for the last seven, until he resigned in September 1990 to become general counsel at Zartic.

He served the meat processing company for more than 16 years as general counsel, chief operating officer and management counsel. Harris is also owner and CEO of Westward Professional Management LLC, a specialty practice management consulting firm.

Harris is a Rome native and graduate of Darlington School, University of Georgia and the University of Georgia School of Law. He also has a long resume of community service in Rome. He and his wife, Shields, have three grown children and reside in Rome.

The firm also announced the addition of two associate attorneys who are Rome natives and recent law school graduates.

W. Jordan Knight earned his Juris Doctor in May 2006 from the Cumberland School of Law at Samford University. He is a member of the State Bar of Georgia and specializes in real estate, corporate law and civil litigation. He and his wife Ann live in Rome.

Emily Smith earned her Juris Doctor in May 2006 from Regent University in Virginia. She is a member of the State Bar of Georgia and Blackstone Legal Fellow. Her practice areas include civil litigation, constitutional law, municipal and government law, domestic law and employment law.

http://www.smithshaw.com

The new Xbox 360 will perform as an IPTV set-top box, which will enable users to download movies and TV shows through Internet network and watch them on TV.

HP will also debut TVs that can access movies, photos and music directly from computers or from the Internet.

"It’s the new CE - not consumer electronics," Jan-Luc Blakborn, HP’s director of digital entertainment, was quoted by AP. "We like to think of it as connected entertainment."

From the mobile industry, Sony Ericsson is unveiling a watch that can receive calls, check e-mails and play music. Nokia is taking a mobile tablet PC a phone that can be used as a credit card.

Korea’s top two electronics firms _ Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics _ are among key players in this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES), each occupying more than 2,000 square meters of space in central spots. Smaller firms such as LG.Philips LCD, Daewoo Electronics, Reigncom and Cowon also are taking part in the industry fest, which goes through this Thursday.

Believing that the transition from the high-definition to the full high-definition will be the main theme of the New Year, makers are bringing a wide range of "extreme quality" TVs and video players to the show. But LG is stealing the limelight with the first Blu-ray/HD-DVD dual player.

The industry has been divided into two sides _ Blu-ray team led by Sony and Samsung and HD-DVD group inspired by Toshiba and Microsoft. But LG is trying to break the wall and make the competition meaningless with the introduction of this all-around player, though it will carry a somewhat cumbersome price tag.

The breakthrough invention will be challenged by Warner Bros., which made a similar attempt from a different angle. The media giant is introducing the Total HD Disc that places both formats of movies on a single disk. The price, however, also remains as a key question mark.

Samsung’s showroom will be full of tech-savvy gadgets, and its main focus is large-screen TVs. The company was crowned as the world’s largest TV maker last year with the splendid success of Bordeaux brand, and is unveiling its sequel today. Its 102-inch full-HD TV will certainly be one of the main attractions of the show as well.

Committed to the Blu-ray side, Samsung is unveiling new, and cheaper Blu-ray player, which is expected to be priced at around $500. Another noteworthy products are a double-sided LCD display for mobile phones, a slim MP3 music player that has an external speaker, and a slide-up style mobile phone with a full qwerty keyboard.

Daewoo Electronics, the distant third after Samsung and LG, is taking a lineup of full-HD LCD TVs with a snowflake pattern embroiled on the frame. Sleek Blu-ray players and car

Diederich won't be in Washington tomorrow, but has submitted two briefs on behalf of the Rockland Coalition for Democracy and Freedom, the Rockland County Conservation Association and the Federation of New York Solid Waste Associations.

Christopher St. Lawrence, in his capacity as chairman of the Rockland Solid Waste Management Authority, and the authority's legal counsel, Bridget Gauntlett, will both attend the court session tomorrow.

The Rockland Solid Waste Management Authority has also filed a brief allowing it to weigh in on the case, United Haulers Association Inc., etc., v. Oneida-Herkimer Solid Waste Management Authority, and Oneida and Herkimer counties.

St. Lawrence, who is also supervisor of the town of Ramapo, said Friday that communities have the right to manage their waste and to require that it be sent to a specific location for transfer or landfill burial.

He said the health and safety of residents and the environment depended on a community's ability to manage its waste, without having a garbage hauler deciding where it would go.

Diederich represented the New York State Association for Solid Waste Management when United Haulers first sued Oneida-Herkimer Solid Waste Management Authority, and Oneida and Herkimer counties, which are located in upstate New York.

United Haulers argued that requiring garbage collectors to bring their trash to a specific location violated the U.S. Constitution's Interstate Commerce Clause.

The clause empowers the U.S. Congress "to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes." The interpretation of the clause has evolved over the years, but it has been used to prevent and break up monopolies.

The haulers argued that the counties and solid waste authority they sued were creating a monopoly in violation of the clause by requiring use of specific disposal facilities.

Diederich successfully argued that waste itself was not an article of commerce, whereas the management of that waste was. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled on the case in 2001.

A similar case then made its way through the Sixth Circuit Court, which is based in Ohio. In that case, National Solid Waste Management Association v. Daviss County, the court ruled last year that so-called "flow control" of trash did violate the Commerce Clause.

The U.S. Supreme Court will now attempt to rectify the differing views of the circuit courts, Diederich said.

He also said local residents should be allowed to democratically choose and decide whether their locally generated trash should go to a publicly managed local facility.

"I view this as a worldwide environmental issue," Diederich said. "If you view waste as valuable, you're encouraging more of it."

Instead, he said, it was the management of that waste that should be valued. That management, he said, should include both reducing waste and recycling what had to be collected.

Retired judge Stan Billingsley pores through news accounts daily to find the law behind the story. He's part of a new and growing medium that hopes to fill a gap in news coverage and encourage discussion of the law: legal blogs.

Last week, after studying case law and interviewing the lawyer for the Executive Branch Ethics Commission, Billingsley concluded on news.lawreader.com that the commission has no legal basis to continue legal proceedings against Dan Druen in light of Gov. Ernie Fletcher's pardon of him in the merit hiring investigation.

He's previously defended Chief Justice Joseph Lambert for writing a controversial footnote to a Supreme Court opinion and blasted a Western Kentucky judge for jailing illegal immigrants.

"We look at the law behind the issues," Billingsley said. "We are certainly not partisan in respect to political philosophy, but we do have the driving concept of, 'If you're going to state the law, state it correctly.'"

At least six Kentucky law blogs, or blawgs, have emerged in the last two years, regularly posting digests of court decisions, analyses of statutes and dissections of legal theories. Others are popping up around the country and internationally.

They provide online the kind of in-depth, regular legal analysis usually available only in limited-access media.

Blawggers say they also are motivated by loftier ambitions of improving their profession. Three Kentucky blawggers who were recently interviewed say that what they do is an extension of what civic-minded lawyers have always done: encourage a scholarly discussion of the law.

But now that debate occurs daily rather than in periodicals and journals.

Blawggers have attempted to distinguish themselves from their partisan political counterparts. Louisville personal-injury lawyer Michael Stevens, who publishes kentuckylawblog.com, recently wrote that he doesn't want to be called a blogger anymore because of the baggage associated with it.

Blogs, short for Web logs, are online diaries or journals that allow readers to respond to and comment on the writer's posts.

Blawgs mostly are geared toward lawyers and not a general audience -- unless, say, you have a strange fascination with the intricacies of divorce law. For that, go to Divorce Law Journal at http:// louisvilledivorce.typepad.com.

Billingsley started his free blog to drive traffic to his commercial Web site, lawreader.com, an online law library. It has a search engine for Kentucky's laws and rules of evidence, synopses of appeals court cases and examples of jury instructions, pleadings and other documents commonly filed by attorneys.

"We get the same comment time after time: 'Now I can compete with the big firms,'" Billingsley said. "A single practitioner cannot afford to maintain a big law library."

The Web site saves lawyers time, not to mention inconvenient trips to Frankfort, he said.

The local blawgs are generally light on political commentary, though they do analyze and digest court decisions. They've also defended judges who they say have been criticized unfairly.

"We are doing this for the love of the profession," said Diana Skaggs, who publishes Divorce Law Journal. "We are all aware of the undermining of the public confidence in the judiciary. We see the need for public confidence in our judiciary, and we have an excellent judiciary."

Billingsley defended Lambert last summer for tucking into an unrelated ruling a footnote that said the governor enjoys absolute immunity and may face prosecution only if impeached first. Billingsley disagreed with the footnote but said it's common for judges to comment on legal matters that are not directly related to the case at hand.

The blawggers frequently analyze the law behind major news stories. Billingsley, for example, posted Kentucky cases involving the Bible in the courtroom after a Mississippi jury consulted a Bible while deliberating whether to give the death penalty to a woman who murdered her husband.

Stevens links to court stories across the state -- appeals, court decisions and other law related news such as forums and local bar events. He says his site fills a void left by state bar publications that publish only monthly or quarterly.

"I enjoy thinking about the law, writing about the law and sharing this information with other lawyers," he said.

Blawgs have generated some controversy among those concerned that they constitute lawyer advertising, which is regulated by state bar associations. Lawyers are required to submit advertisements to the Kentucky Bar Association for review and pay a $50 fee, leading to initial fears that blawggers would have to pay $50 per post.

The bar's advertising commission has ruled that is not necessary, but it does require lawyer bloggers to register their "about" pages, which typically contain biographies and links to law firm Web sites.

Robert L. Elliott, a Lexington lawyer who is on the advertising commission, said law blogs "are kind of a new game in town." He said the bar has not yet developed hard rules for how to handle them.

Law blogs are not necessarily lawyer advertising, depending on their content, he said. But Elliott said some blawgs do appear to be nothing more than advertisements, though he declined to point to specific sites.

Lexington lawyer Benjamin Cowgill, who publishes Legal Ethics Newsletter at legalethics.info, said law blogs have no more ethical issues than lawyer Web sites. Cowgill's site triggered the bar association's review of its advertising regulations.

Cowgill says if Thomas Jefferson were alive today, he'd be a blawgger.

"He would be thrilled to live at a time when it is possible to share information with interested people throughout the world, simply by sitting down at his desk and writing at a keyboard," Cowgill wrote in an e-mail.