Attorney General
In 1993 during the administration Bill Clinton, Reno was nominated and confirmed as the first woman to serve as the United States Attorney General. Both of his previous choices, Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood, had problems when it was revealed both had employed illegal immigrants as nannies. Reno remained Attorney General for the rest of Clinton's presidency, making her the longest-serving Attorney General since William Wirt in 1829.
While Clinton could steer a middle ground between his Democratic supporters and the Republican Congress on monetary issues, Reno's job was at the center of a variety of intractable cultural conflicts. This made her a lightning rod for criticism of the Clinton Administration from activists who often denounced the federal government as a threat to their fundamental freedoms.
Read more about this topic: Janet Reno
Famous quotes containing the words attorney and/or general:
“I always was of opinion that the placing a youth to study with an attorney was rather a prejudice than a help.... The only help a youth wants is to be directed what books to read, and in what order to read them.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“There is a mortifying experience in particular, which does not fail to wreak itself also in the general history; I mean “the foolish face of praise,” the forced smile which we put on in company where we do not feel at ease, in answer to conversation which does not interest us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved but moved, by a low usurping wilfulness, grow tight about the outline of the face, with the most disagreeable sensation.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)