New York: The Holdout

For more than eight years, Robert M. Morgenthau has enforced federal laws in New York's Southern District with scrupulous impartiality. He has uncovered graft in Democratic as well as Republican city machines, convicted Wall Streeters for illegal Swiss bank dealings, and waged war against New York City's powerful Mafia. But Democrat Morgenthau is a political appointee. According to tradition, when the Republicans took office in Washington, Morgenthau was expected to join the country's 92 other U.S. Attorneys in offering his resignation. He did not, maintaining that he needed time "to complete major...