[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 4]
[House]
[Page 4674]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                 APPOINT U.S. ATTORNEY WITH D.C. ROOTS

  (Ms. NORTON asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, Wilma Lewis, the first woman in the history 
of the Nation's capital to be U.S. attorney, is leaving the office she 
has served with great distinction. From prosecution of hard-core street 
crime to complex white-collar violations, U.S. Attorney Lewis has left 
an extraordinary record.
  She and her predecessor, Eric Holder, who went on to become Deputy 
Attorney General, had more in common than their background as the first 
African Americans to be appointed. They were both longtime 
Washingtonians who were also very able lawyers.
  Most of the jurisdiction of the U.S. attorney here is D.C. criminal 
and civil law that elsewhere lies with a local prosecutor. Mayor 
Williams, Council Chair Cropp, and I have written President Bush to ask 
that he appoint as U.S. attorney a distinguished lawyer with deep roots 
in the D.C. community, as Ms. Lewis and Mr. Holder had. That is the way 
to be sure that not only Federal law is carried out, but that crime 
keeps coming down, as U.S. Attorneys Lewis and Holder assured.

                          ____________________