A veteran Baton Rouge lawyer has been suspended indefinitely by the Louisiana Supreme Court for alleged misconduct and now faces disbarment.


Donald Ray Smith began practicing law in Louisiana in 1976. He's now accused of practicing law without a license and taking money from clients without performing his legal duties.

The Louisiana Supreme Court on Friday suspended Smith indefinitely based on the charges brought by the Office of Disciplinary Counsel, which prosecutes alleged attorney misconduct. Court records show Smith has yet to dispute the allegations brought by the ODC since prosecutors took the first of a series of complaints against him in June 2005.

Court records show Smith has been serving as an attorney in the state despite being ineligible to practice law in Louisiana since 2004.

Steele paid more than $37,000 to a Maryland company run by his sister, Monica Turner, for work related to his unsuccessful 2006 Senate campaign. If she was not reimbursed, both he and his sister would be violating campaign finance laws, said Steele.

"It was a legitimate reimbursement of expenses," Steele said on ABC's "This Week."

Steele became the first black national chairman in the RNC's history last month. He was the first black candidate elected to statewide office in Maryland in 2002, when he became lieutenant governor, and was chairman of the Maryland Republican Party and then chairman of GOPAC, an organization that recruits and trains Republican political candidates.

Steele's former finance chairman, Alan B. Fabian, claimed to federal prosecutors that Steele made the payment to the company, which was then out of business, as Fabian was seeking leniency on unrelated fraud charges, The Washington Post reported Saturday. Prosecutors gave Fabian no credit for cooperation when he was sentenced in October, the newspaper said.

The charges were made in a confidential sentencing memorandum sent by the U.S. Attorney's office in Maryland inadvertently along with other documents requested by the Post.

The Minnesota Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Franken's request for a certificate of election now, at least on an interim basis, so that Minnesota's empty seat can be filled without waiting the months it may take for the courts to resolve Coleman's separate lawsuit over the recount, which gave Franken a 225-vote advantage.

The justices took the case under advisement and didn't say when they might rule, but their many questions suggested they were skeptical of Franken's arguments.

GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Democratic Secretary of State Mark Ritchie have rejected Franken's demand for the certificate, which he would need under Senate rules to take the seat Coleman had to vacate early last month as the new Congress convened.

Franken lawyer Marc Elias told the court Thursday that citizens are being deprived of their right to have two senators as Congress decides critical questions. He suggested that Minnesota was obligated under the Constitution and federal statutes to have two senators in place when Congress convened early last month.

A smiling Khan emerged from his house and addressed reporters face-to-face for the first time since 2004 but indicated he would not be talking about Pakistan's secretive atomic program or about who was involved in leaking its secrets around the world.

"We don't want to talk about the past things," he said as the guards who have enforced his long isolation stood aside for a throng of TV crews and journalists.

Khan, the architect of Pakistan's nuclear program, took sole responsibility in 2004 for leaking the nuclear secrets but was immediately pardoned by former President Pervez Musharraf and placed under de facto house arrest. The government insists neither it nor the Pakistani military was aware of his activities.

The 72-year-old scientist, who has suffered a string of illnesses, began agitating for an end to the restrictions after last year's ouster of Musharraf. Over the past year, he has been allowed to occasionally meet friends outside his house and has often spoken to reporters over the phone.

The pink-eyed giant rat appears at union protests around the state. The case has pitted a local of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers against a central New Jersey town, and a ruling is expected Thursday.

Lawrence Township fined the union for using the rat in a 2005 protest. The township says the union violated an ordinance against balloons and other inflatable signs.

Union lawyers argue the law violates their right to free expression and suppresses protest.

The township claims the union's use of the rat is a form of commercial speech and is less deserving of First Amendment protections.