Tom Pennington / Getty Images file

Actress Eva Longoria speaks on stage during the final day of the Democratic National Convention at Time Warner Cable Arena on Sept. 6, 2012 in Charlotte, N.C.

It wasn't long ago that Eva Longoria was more likely to share a dais with fellow actresses like Teri Hatcher or Felicity Huffman than with a former president of the United States, business leaders, or heads of foundations. But the “Desperate Housewives” star is now turning heads as a political power broker and prominent Latino issues advocate.

On Thursday, Longoria will participate in a panel discussion moderated by President Bill Clinton at the annual gathering of the Clinton Global Initiative America in Chicago. Sharing the stage with Sara Martinez Tucker, CEO of the National Math + Science Initiative; Hamdi Ulukaya, founder and CEO of Chobani, Inc. (the yogurt chain); and Laysha Ward, president of community relations for Target Corp., Longoria will take part in a session about achieving economic and social mobility.

She will also release a report commissioned by her eponymous foundation evaluating the factors that contributed to the success of recent Latina college graduates who grew up in disadvantaged environments.

The 38-year-old actress and executive producer isn’t just fundraising or glad-handing; her influence extends to policy and strategy. After serving on President Obama’s commission to create a new National Museum of the American Latino, Obama asked Longoria to be co-chair of his inaugural committee. It paid off: She was able to persuade the president last year to issue a directive for helping the children of illegal immigrants gain citizenship.

“I always knew that the end goal of my journey in life was not to be famous, was not to be an actress. I feel like I haven’t even tapped into the potential that I have as a human being,” Longoria said in a keynote speech at the Lozano Long Conference at the University of Texas last year. “When it comes to my identity, I’ve found out over the years that I’ve just constantly negotiated my position and my space as a Latino, as a woman. And I’ve built my own cultural wealth by discovering my roots, exploring my roots and by staying curious about the world.” (Longoria was traveling out of the country and unavailable for an interview for this story.)

The role of skillful political operator is one she readily gravitated toward in her ongoing quest to bring attention to issues close to her heart — immigration reform, the United Farm Workers and the education and empowerment of U.S. Latinas. Volunteerism and charity work have been an important part of Longoria’s life since growing up on a ranch in Corpus Christi, Texas, near the Mexico border. Through her childhood, she told Newsweek, her mother insisted that she spend her free time in soup kitchens and donate regularly to the Salvation Army and Goodwill.

“At the foundation of her being and what she wants to accomplish with her life is that she’s been there,” said Henry Muñoz, the finance chairman of the Democratic National Committee who has worked with Longoria on several issues and projects. “She doesn’t forget where she came from, and what members of her family and people she grew up with experienced. I see her activism, her community engagement and her involvement as just as important to her as being an actress.” 

After she graduated from Texas A&M University-Kingsville and moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting, Longoria quietly began working with organizations like the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and Padres Contra el Cancer (Parents Against Cancer). Inspired by her sister who has developmental disabilities, Longoria also co-founded Eva’s Heroes to help young adults with special needs.

“The way Eva has described it to me, she looks at that period as a learning period,” said Maggie Neilson, co-founder of Global Philanthropy Group, the Los Angeles firm that oversees Longoria’s foundation. “She talks about the mentors who helped her get educated about the historic and other issues important to her community. She very smartly wasn’t someone who went on blast early on. She took the time to really learn. That’s why I think today a lot of people are surprised by the depths of her knowledge. She really took a long time to know what she cares about and understand it.”

The end of “Desperate Housewives” opened up Longoria’s schedule to become more actively involved in President Obama’s re-election.

Longoria was the first person Munoz reached out to when he began developing The Futuro Fund, which raised $30 million for Obama’s re-election campaign and created a resourceful fundraising network that will impact elections to come, he said.

“I’ve seen Eva in meetings with the President, for example, where this is not a celebrity interaction with people of substance,” Munoz said. “This is a serious policy discussion about the impact of an issue on a community. She is my friend. But that aside, she is a very serious, important and nationally recognized activist for the Latino community and for the community of women.”

She has also dedicated herself more fully in The Eva Longoria Foundation, the non-profit organization she launched last year that invests in educational and entrepreneurial opportunities for U.S. Latinas. In May, she graduated from Cal State Northridge with a master’s degree in Chicano studies and political science.

“That gave her the additional information and knowledge with which to work on her non-profit issues and on the presidential election,” Neilson said. “To me, it all kind of makes sense and none of it is new. It’s all just culminated in the last 18 months. She just didn’t have quite as big of a toolbox and platform from which to make a difference and she also didn’t have quite as much time. The stuff she’s been doing all along has just now come to the forefront.”

Longoria wants other Latinos to follow in her footsteps and seize the power the country’s largest minority group demonstrated in the November election that it now has.

 “We have to think about what these changes mean for our community,” Longoria told the University of Texas audience. “I find a lot of people are scared of this change. Where is this xenophobia coming from? I think there’s a Taco Bell on every corner. I don’t understand it. I think we also have to think about who has to gain from this xenophobia. It’s time for Latinos to stop being a number and start being a market, to stop being the largest minority in the United States and start being the most influential group in the country.”

Related:

• Clinton and Christie vie for 2016 spotlight in Chicago
• Hillary Clinton makes Twitter debut

An effort to place military sex assault cases in the hands of an independent prosecutor was thwarted late Tuesday when Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin sided with the top brass – and against a fellow Democrat.

Levin (D-Mich.) will strip a proposal by Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) from the policy-setting Defense Authorization Act and replace it with a measure that instead requires senior military officers to review decisions when commanders refuse to prosecute a case.

Gillibrand’s proposal - which had 27 co-sponsors, including 4 Republicans – came in response to complaints that the U.S. military has repeatedly failed to deal with the issue of sex assaults. The military has resisted efforts to involve outsiders in its handling of such cases.

Aides for Gillibrand told NBC's Capital Hill correspondent Kelly O'Donnell that the move was "a real setback."

She is expected to make another attempt to introduce her proposal when the defense bill comes up for a final vote later this summer.

Levin, who is not seeking re-election, is expected to accept an amendment from Senator Claire McCaskill to prevent commanders from overturning jury verdicts.

The intra-party showdown is an example of the generational and gender divide on this issue - even as it has gained more attention and support with the additional women now in the senate. 

Last month, a Pentagon report revealed that the number of service personnel who made an anonymous claim that they were sexually assaulted but never reported the attack skyrocketed from 19,000 in FY11 to 26,000 in FY12.

Embarrassingly, the report was published just a day after it was revealed that the Air Force's sexual-abuse prevention chief has himself been charged with sexual assault.

Last week, a female midshipman who accused three U.S. Naval Academy football players of raping her last year said her client was actually disciplined for drinking while her alleged attackers went unpunished.

Related: 

• Gillibrand, McCaskill grill military leaders over handling of sexual assault
• Lawyer for female midshipman says client was punished after sexual assault claim
• Air Force's sex-abuse prevention honcho charged with sexual battery

This story was originally published on Wed Jun 12, 2013 6:31 AM EDT

A secret National Security Agency program to collect vast amounts of phone records has foiled multiple attempted terrorist attacks inside the United States, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee told reporters on Thursday. 

Sen. Dianne Feinstein did not specify how many attempted attacks had been prevented, or the nature of the threats, but the California Democrat said there had been more than one. 

The remarks were made to reporters following a meeting with senators who were concerned over a report in a British newspaper that the NSA had requested phone records from a division of telecommunications giant Verizon. According to Feinstein, 27 senators attended the meeting and voiced concerns about the policy. 

"We are always open to changes. But that doesn't mean there will be any. It does mean that we will look at any ideas, any thoughts, and we do this on everything," she said. 

Earlier in the day Feinstein defended the surveillance as a legal and long-standing government program. 

“It began in 2009 – what appeared in the Guardian today, as I understand it, is simply a court reauthorization of a program. The court is required to look at it every three months,” she said.

And while Republican Senator Rand Paul called the surveillance of Verizon phone records described in the report “an astounding assault on the constitution,” other GOP lawmakers including Senator Lindsey Graham disagreed.

“I have no problem. I am a Verizon customer. You can have my phone number, and put it in a database,” Graham said. “If they get a hit between me and some guy from Waziristan,” officials should investigate, he said.

House Speaker John Boehner said President Obama should “explain to the American people why the administration considers this a critical tool in protecting our nation from the threats of a terrorist attack.”

The practice was first revealed by the British newspaper The Guardian on Wednesday, which obtained and published a highly classified court order that requires the production of “telephony metadata” by the telecommunications giant.

The order, marked "Top Secret" and issued by the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, instructs Verizon Business  Network Services, a subsidiary that provides internet and telecommunications services for corporations, to hand over data including all calling records on an "ongoing, daily basis.”

“On its face, the order reprinted in the article does not allow the government to listen in on anyone’s telephone calls,” the official said.

The NSA, Department of Justice, and Federal Bureau of Investigation have issued no formal comment on the report or purported practices described in it.

While declining to say how long the particular order referenced in the Guardian article has been in place, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said that a “robust legal regime” reviews government powers under the Patriot Act “to ensure that they comply with the Constitution.”

“This strict regime reflects the president’s desire to strike the right balance between protecting our national security and protecting constitutional rights and civil liberties,” Earnest said.

Attorney General Eric Holder said he could not discuss the report regarding NSA information gathering today while appearing in a previously scheduled open budget hearing. Members of Congress have been “fully briefed” on the issue, he said.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid urged caution, saying the program “isn’t anything that’s brand new.”

“It’s gone on for some 7 years,” Reid said. “We’ve tried often to make it better and make it work.”

Signed by Judge Roger Vinson of the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in April, the order requires the “production of certain call detail records,” and is set to expire on the evening of July 19, 2013. The order pertains to information including the phone numbers making and receiving the call, as well as the time the call was made and how long it lasts. It does not include the “name, address, or financial information of a subscriber or customer,” according to the order.

The order “does not require Verizon to produce telephony metadata for communications wholly originating and terminating in foreign countries,” according to the document.

Earlier on Wednesday, an Obama administration official defended the policy of gathering phone records from American citizens while neither confirming nor denying a report that the National Security Agency is collecting information regarding communications by Verizon customers.

Such information has been “a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats,” the senior Obama administration official said.

Getty Images file

This undated photo provided by the National Security Agency (NSA) shows its headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland.

While not confirming any particulars of the report, the administration official said that data such as that described in the article “allows counterterrorism personnel to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities, particularly people located inside the United States.”

Verizon said it had no comment Wednesday on the accuracy of the story published by the Guardian or the document the report was based on, the company’s chief counsel Randy Milch said in note sent to the company’s employees.

“Verizon continually takes steps to safeguard its customers’ privacy,” Milch said in the note. “Nevertheless, the law authorizes the federal courts to order a company to provide information in certain circumstances, and if Verizon were to receive such an order, we would be required to comply.”

The disclosure of the order, which has not been independently verified by NBC News, comes after the Obama administration has taken fire for a Justice Department subpoena of Associated Press phone records.

Holder told NBC News Wednesday that he has no intention of stepping down from his job despite calls by some congressional Republicans for his resignation, citing the AP seizure.

Senator Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon, called the collection of call data as described in the Guardian report “an outrageous breach of Americans’ privacy” in a news release Thursday. “This bulk data collection is being done under interpretations of the law that have been kept secret from the public. Significant FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] court opinions that determine the scope of our laws should be declassified.”

Verizon had 98.9 million wireless customers at the end of the first quarter this year, according to an earnings report released in April, as well as about 11.7 million residential and 10 million commercial lines. It is not clear whether other parts of Verizon might have received similar orders. The order explicitly prohibits any person from disclosing that the NSA or FBI Investigation has sought records under the order.

“Now that this unconstitutional surveillance effort has been revealed, the government should end it and disclose its full scope, and Congress should initiate an investigation,” Michelle Richardson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement. “This disclosure also highlights the growing gap between the public’s and the government’s understandings of the many sweeping surveillance authorities enacted by Congress.”

The law on which the order explicitly relies is the "business records" provision of the USA Patriot Act.

Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado, both Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a March 2012 letter to Attorney General Eric Holder that most Americans would “stunned to learn the details of how these secret court opinions have interpreted section 215 of the Patriot Act.”

“As we see it, there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows,” the senators wrote in the letter. “This is a problem, because it is impossible to have an informed public debate about what the law should say when the public doesn’t know what its government thinks the law says.”

Former vice president Al Gore called the practices described in the order “obscenely outrageous” in a message posted on Twitter Wednesday night. “In digital era, privacy must be a priority,” Gore wrote. “Is it just me, or is secret blanket surveillance obscenely outrageous.”

The order is the first concrete evidence that U.S. intelligence officials are continuing a broad campaign of domestic surveillance that began under President George W. Bush and caused great controversy when it was first exposed, according to Reuters.

NBC News' Chuck Todd, Peter Alexander, Andrew Rafferty Alastair Jamieson and the Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Related:

• A new controversy facing the Obama administration
• Holder says he has no intention of stepping down
• Holder undergoes marathon House grilling on IRS and leaks probe

This story was originally published on Thu Jun 6, 2013 6:23 AM EDT

Hailing her longtime role as a “trusted adviser,” President Barack Obama formally named U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice as his next national security adviser on Wednesday.

Obama tapped Rice, a target of Republican criticism in recent months, to succeed Tom Donilon; the president also nominated Samantha Power, a longtime foreign policy adviser, to take over Rice’s role at the United Nations.

“I am absolutely thrilled that she'll be back at my side leading my national security team in my second term,” Obama said of Rice, a longtime confidant whose role in publicly explaining the administration’s initial assessment of last year’s terror attack in Benghazi, Libya, has made her a lightning rod for criticism.

Charles Dharapak / AP

President Barack Obama stands with U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, his choice to be his next national security adviser, right, current national security adviser Tom Donilon, who is resigning, second from right, and Samantha Power, his nominee to be the next UN Ambassador, left, Wednesday, June 5, 2013, at the White House.

“I'm deeply honored and humbled to serve our country as your national security adviser,” Rice said at a White House event to formally announce the shake-up, just the latest instance of staff turnover on Obama’s foreign policy and national security teams in his second term.

Rice also told Obama she was “deeply grateful for [his] enduring confidence,” a seeming nod toward the whirlwind of controversy around her role in the Benghazi explanation, which helped scuttle her chances of becoming secretary of State.

Republicans who targeted Rice over the handling of the 2012 attacks in Benghazi reacted with the knowledge they have no role in confirming her for the post. “Obviously I disagree [with Obama’s] appointment of Susan Rice as Nat'l Security Adviser, but I'll make every effort to work [with] her on [important] issues,” Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, one of Rice’s foremost critics on Benghazi, wrote on Twitter.

Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican with designs on seeking his party's presidential nomination in 2016, was sharply more critical.

"I can’t imagine that we would be keeping Ambassador Rice in any significant position, much less promoting her to an important position," he said on Fox News.

Power is not without controversy, either. She stepped down from the Obama campaign after referring to Hillary Clinton, then Obama’s opponent in the Democratic primary, as a “monster.”

But her nomination might not be held up by concerns about Rice and Benghazi. 

"I support President Obama's nomination of Samantha Power to become the next U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations," McCain said in a separate statement. "I believe she is well-qualified for this important position and hope the Senate will move forward on her nomination as soon as possible."

Republicans have vocally criticized Rice for emerging on the Sunday morning talk show circuit on the weekend following the Benghazi attack, where she asserted that the attacks were the spontaneous outgrowth of protests related to an anti-Islamic video. In the months since then, senior Republicans have demanded more information about how the talking points provided to Rice were drafted; many in the GOP have suggested the talking points were motivated by electoral politics, since the attack occurred during the height of last fall’s presidential campaign.

The furor was enough to prompt Rice to withdraw her name from consideration to become Obama’s next secretary of state earlier this year.

Had the president nominated Rice to become secretary of state, she would have been forced to undergo bruising confirmation hearings; her new appointment as national security adviser does not require Senate confirmation. She complained about the “very prolonged, very politicized, very distracting and very disruptive” process of confirmation hearings.

Last month, Vice President Joe Biden praised Rice and her role in the Obama administration, saying she had "the absolute, total, complete confidence of the president."

NBC News' Chuck Todd, Alastair Jamieson and Ian Johnston contributed to this report.

This story was originally published on Wed Jun 5, 2013 7:21 AM EDT

Alex Wong / Getty Images file

Former U.S. Deputy Attorney General James Comey testifies during a hearing before the House Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee May 3, 2007 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.

The man poised to be the next head of the FBI is a former prosecutor respected by both sides of the aisle who may be best known for his role in a Hollywood-esque Washington showdown that thwarted the reauthorization of a controversial surveillance program.

President Barack Obama intends to nominate former Deputy Attorney General James Comey, 52, to succeed Robert Mueller as FBI director, sources confirmed to NBC News on Wednesday. Though Comey served under President George W. Bush, he has won praise from Democrats for his time at the Department of Justice, especially after details emerged of his dramatic effort to stop the reauthorization of a warrantless eavesdropping program in March 2004.

That night, Comey raced to George Washington University Hospital after getting word that White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and Bush Chief of Staff Andrew Card Jr. were heading to the bedside of ill Attorney General John Ashcroft. Comey ran up the stairs into Ashcroft's hospital room out of fear that his ailing boss could be coerced into approving the program's continuation, he recalled in a 2007 congressional hearing.

But when Card and Gonzales arrived, Comey told Congress, Ashcroft explained his opposition to the program and said any reauthorization would require Comey's signature since he was the acting attorney general at the time. The men left, and soon after Bush agreed to change the program.  

“I was angry. I had just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man, who did not have the powers of the attorney general because they had been transferred to me," Comey said in his testimony.

Comey first caught the attention of the White House in 2001 when he successfully prosecuted 14 men after being asked to take over the case of a 1996 terrorist bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 U.S. troops. Following that case he was appointed to one of the Justice Department's most high-profile jobs -- United States attorney for the Southern District of New York.

While in New York he oversaw cases against terrorism suspects, WorldCom executives and Martha Stewart. 

He rose quickly in the department and served as deputy attorney general from 2003 to 2005. Since then, Comey has served as general counsel of defense contractor Lockheed Martin and later at investment firm Bridgewater Associates. This year he joined Columbia University's law school as a senior research fellow and joined the board of international banking giant HSBC.

A 2001 New York Times profile of the Yonkers, N.Y.-born attorney describes Comey as a workhorse who rose by taking on any case colleagues did not want. The paper reported that he and a fellow lawyer went by the motto: "We'll take any dog."

Along with his work ethic, Comey's height, 6-foot-8, also makes him particularly memorable to those he has come across in his many years as a litigator.

After making a name for himself trying criminal cases as an assistant United States attorney in Manhattan the late '80s and early '90s, Comey briefly went into private practice and went on to head the United States attorney’s office in Richmond, Va. 

It was in Virginia where he developed Project Exile, an initiative that began in 1997 and is credited with dramatically decreasing the amount of gun violence in Richmond. The idea was to stiffen sentences for firearms prosecutions and run advertisements letting residents know of the harsher penalties. The program's success has led other cities to adopt similar measures.

If confirmed by the Senate, Comey will take over the agency from Mueller, who has headed the FBI for 12 years. Mueller's departure has been marked by questions over how thoroughly the FBI investigated Boston bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev after being alerted by foreign agencies of possible ties to Islamic militants.

Mueller is expected to leave his post by September.

Related stories:

• Obama to nominate former Bush official to head FBI
• Mueller outlines FBI reforms, rejects separate terrorism agency

In a Supreme Court test of whether a company can be granted a patent on the genes in the human body, a majority of the justices indicated during Monday's oral arguments that the court is likely to rule that a human gene can’t be patented. 

It would be one thing, several of the justices said during Monday’s oral arguments, for a company to seek a patent on a test for breast cancer that was developed by analyzing a human gene, but it would be going too far to be awarded a patent on the gene itself.

"What's the difference between snipping off a piece of the liver or kidney, and seeking a patent on that, and seeking a patent on a piece of a gene?" asked Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Justice Samuel Alito made a different analogy, to someone seeking a patent on a plant found in the Amazon rain forest that bore leaves containing a cancer cure. "You could patent the process used to get the chemical out and the use of the result, but you cannot patent the plant," he said. 

Stelios Varias / Reuters file photo

The U.S. Supreme Court in Washington

The case, Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, involves a test that has helped guide more than a million women in their medical decisions. The test can determine whether the composition of their genes makes them more likely to get breast or ovarian cancer.

Myriad Genetics, a Utah company, owns patents on two parts of human genes known as BRCA 1 and BRCA 2, named for the first two letters of the words breast and cancer.

Women with mutations in those genes face up to an 85 percent risk of getting breast cancer and up to a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer. Because of the patents, Myriad has a monopoly on performing all diagnostic tests related to BRCA 1 and BRCA 2.

In the past three decades, the federal government has granted nearly 3,000 similar patents on genetic material. Without such protection, Myriad argues, companies would be less willing to spend the money required for making genetic discoveries.

"Countless companies and investors have risked billions of dollars to research and develop advances under this promise of stable patent protection," according to Gregory Castanias, a Washington, D.C, lawyer who argued the case for Myriad.

The idea of patenting DNA material has provoked a strong debate among scientists, and many have lined up on opposite sides of the case.

"Human genes should not be patented," says James Watson, the Nobel Prize winner and co-discoverer of the double helix structure of DNA.

"Life's instructions ought not be controlled by legal monopolies created at the whim of Congress or the courts," he says.

But a group of researchers at the University of Maryland is among those arguing just the opposite. "The costs are outweighed by the benefits stemming from the fruits of increased inventive activity," they say in their friend-of-court brief.

In the 220 years since Thomas Jefferson wrote the cornerstone of U.S. patent law, the courts have agreed on a general principle: patents protect inventions, not products of nature. A central issue in this case is whether Myriad has obtained a patent on something already in the body or has created something new.

The ACLU, representing a group of scientists, doctors, and cancer patients, claims that Myriad has merely removed from the body something that was already there -- the DNA sequence making up the BRAC 1 and BRAC 2 genes. Because it is a creation of nature, the ACLU says, it cannot be protected by a patent, even though Myriad claims that removing it is what makes it useful.

"Gold does not become patentable once taken out of a stream because it can be used in jewelry. Kidneys do not become patentable once taken out of a body because they can be transplanted," says the ACLU's Christopher Hansen.

Myriad's exclusive patent, says the ACLU, creates a monopoly that denies women the ability to seek a second opinion, based on another test of the genetic material, and dissuades other laboratories from pursuing research on the patented genes.

The ACLU also contends that because the test costs roughly $3,000, many women cannot afford it or lack the necessary insurance coverage. If the gene was not under patent protection, the ACLU says, competition would make the test cheaper.

But Myriad argues that removing the gene sequence from the body requires breaking chemical bonds that lock it into place, thereby creating a new chemical entity.

The resulting genetic materials, the company says, "were never available to the world until Myriad's scientists applied their inventive faculties to a previously undistinguished mass of genetic matter."

Myriad cites a line of cases finding patent eligibility for naturally occurring substances that were isolated and purified, including aspirin, vitamin B12, and adrenaline derived from cows.

As for availability, the company says the cost of the test is covered by private insurance, Medicare, and Medicaid. It also says many other labs provide second opinions regarding the company's test results and that thousands of researchers have done studies on the gene sequence involved, unimpeded by the patent.

The Obama administration has urged the court to be deeply skeptical of Myriad's broad claim of what can be patented. The Justice Department's brief in the case says the public interest has consistently been given precedence by the Supreme Court "in avoiding undue restrictions imposed by patents that effectively preempt natural laws and substances."   

NBC's Tom Curry contributed to this report.

This story was originally published on Mon Apr 15, 2013 4:17 AM EDT

Anna Pierre's introduction to North Miami politics has included intimidation and voodoo tactics.

On Easter Sunday somebody placed voodoo artifacts outside the door of her campaign office.

"I wish I knew," said Pierre, when asked if she had any idea who did it.

She said thinks one of her opponents may be behind the intimidation.

Pierre, who is not related to current Mayor Andre Pierre, is running for mayor.

She says the tactics against her have also included nasty phone calls and sign stealing.

The voodoo items placed outside her campaign office have included candles, food and dolls with pins stuck in them.

"At first it bothers me," she said. "Not that I am scared, but to see how dirty, how low can people go."

More news from NBCMiami.com

Voodoo is practiced by people in Haiti, and around the world, including the U.S. Voodoo has a spooky reputation, but it is a bona fide religion.

There is a huge Haitian population in North Miami.

Pierre said she's famous in her birth country of Haiti, recording a hit pop song before coming to America.

Her popularity there, she says, is helping her gain support here as she runs for mayor.

"The voodoo stuff, I don't know who's doing it, but I'm not afraid," she said. "It's just intimidation to ...  slow me down. But you know what? I'm not going to slow down until the finish line."

CHICAGO -- Wendy and Randall Casey don't talk much over breakfast these days. Or lunch. Or even dinner.

Truth be known, even though the mother and son share a home in Dixmoor, Illinois, they usually just pass each other in the night. After all, one doesn't want to reveal too much campaign strategy to your opponent.

"Our relationship hasn't been as strong as it normally was," Wendy Casey conceded, in a room festooned with family photos of Randall at a much younger age. "We just interact, saying, 'Good morning,' and, 'Good evening,' when he comes in from work."

The two Caseys are running against each other for village president in Dixmoor. Although Randall said he prefers to put it this way: "I'm not running against my mom. I'm running for the people of Dixmoor."

By all counts, the poor south suburban community could use some help. Abandoned buildings stand like rotting trees citywide. The elder Casey says a fire engine was recently repossessed. The community famously missed payroll for city employees not once, but twice.

Against that backdrop, mother and son say they both want the job. And they both want to win.

"I feel, in my honest opinion, that he is not mature mentally to take on the responsibility of running a community," she says. "If I win, I think he will be very supportive."

More news from NBCChicago.com

Randall prefers not to talk about the contest against his mother, saying he doesn't want what some might perceive as a humorous sideshow to detract from the genuine problems Dixmoor faces.

"I don't want to embarrass the people of Dixmoor," he said. "The people of Dixmoor have had enough embarrassment."

Indeed, Dixmoor seems almost comically at odds with itself. Incumbent mayor Keevan Grimmett was thrown off the ballot earlier this year after he was accused of being effectively homeless and living in his city hall office.

"He has no gas, no electricity, and no running water," the elder Casey said.

'The town is split'
Grimmett denies that, and after an appeal managed to get reinstated to the ballot.

"I have all the amenities that anyone would have," he said. "And I guess the biggest thing I have is a lot of electricity for the village of Dixmoor."

The town could use more than electricity. Stories of unpaid bills are legendary. A would-be community center, started with a federal grant, sits half finished and open to the elements, seemingly abandoned. Per capita income for the town's 3,500 residents is just under $13,000. Warring factions have led to walkouts by trustees during village board meetings.

"The town is split," agrees write-in candidate David McWilliams, a local merchant. "I'm here to pull both sides together."

At times, it's difficult to tell the players without a scorecard. Trustee Dorothy Armstrong is also seeking the post. Michael Smith, a former trustee, is running for his old job on the village council. He lost it after he was accused of stealing gasoline, and it was Smith who initiated the investigation of the mayor's residency.

Even Randall Casey brings a complicated linage. His father, Donald Luster, is a former mayor who was forced to step down after he was convicted of fraud. Luster has endorsed his son.

Wendy Casey says if her son wins, she will be respectful.

"I will hold him accountable," she says.

For now, that accountability includes collecting rent from her son, once a month.

"Of course," she says. "I can't let him live here rent-free. I wouldn't be a good mother if I did that."

New York State Assembly

New York State Assemblyman Eric Stevenson

A Bronx legislator was charged Thursday with taking $22,000 in bribes after a fellow lawmaker trying to save his own skin wore a wire for the feds, blowing open the latest corruption case to rock New York politics.

The arrest of Assemblyman Eric Stevenson – who allegedly drafted a bill at the behest of four businessmen lining his pockets -- comes just days after six other politicians were arrested in an unrelated graft case.

And there may be more arrests to come.

Assemblyman Nelson Castro, who helped prosecutors go after Stevenson, said in a statement that he has been cooperating for four years in “various investigations aimed at rooting out public corruption.”

Castro, who will not face charges, resigned his seat Thursday under the terms of his deal with prosecutors. Stevenson’s office said he had no comment, and his lawyer could not be reached.

In a statement dripping with disgust, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said the new allegations revealed that the state capital was overrun with crooks.

“It becomes more and more difficult to avoid the sad conclusion that political corruption in New York is indeed rampant and that a show-me-the-money culture in Albany is alive and well,” Bharara said.

Castro was just a fledgling assemblyman when he was secretly indicted in 2009 on a perjury charge stemming from a civil case, he said. He began cooperating with prosecutors after that, according to court documents that did not refer to him by name.

A criminal complaint said that in meetings at a diner, a steakhouse and a hotel room, a group of businessmen bribed Castro and Stevenson to help them open day-care centers for senior citizens.

Stevenson, a two-term Democrat, allegedly agreed to use his influence with a utility company and the city Buildings Department to expedite the opening – and his law-making abilities to crush any competition.

He was captured on tape making a deal to draw up legislation that would impose a moratorium on new centers, effectively giving the gang of four a monopoly, the complaint says.

"You can write down the language, basically what you want," he allegedly told a go-between for the businessmen, an unnamed wannabe pol who also ended up cooperating with the probe.

Stevenson eventually introduced the moratorium bill, which Bharara called “a fairly neat trick that offends both the core principles of both democracy and capitalism.”

He also was caught talking about the payoffs – sometimes referred to as “blessings” -- on tape, prosecutors said.

"Are they putting together a nice little package for me?" he allegedly asked the informant on Dec. 27, going on to discuss his mounting expenses. "I got my inauguration...I gotta feed all the people."

Despite the indiscretions, Stevenson was apparently aware that authorities could be monitoring him.

He warned about "recorders" and refused to accept cash in a restaurant where he spotted surveillance cameras, waiting until he was outside to put the padded envelope in his front pocket, the complaint said.

During the Dec. 27 rendezvous, Stevenson and the informant chatted about a rogue's gallery of state legislators who had ended up in jail -- and how pervasive misdeeds are in the capital, according to the court papers.

"Bottom line, if half of the people up here in Albany was ever caught for what they do, they would probably be in the same place," he was quoted as saying, discussing how former state controller Alan Hevesi had aged while locked up.

That was three months before another state lawmaker, Sen. Malcolm Smith, would join the ranks of Albany power brokers accused of abusing the public trust.

On Tuesday, Smith, a New York City councilman and four other politicians were charged in a bribery scheme aimed at getting Smith a spot on the GOP ballot in the city mayoral election.

A University of Illinois at Chicago study last year found that New York ranked first in the country for public corruption, racking up 2,522 convictions between 1976 and 2010.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

Related:

Lawmaker accused of bribes in NYC mayoral race plot

Bruce Smith / AP

Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, with his fiancee Maria Belen Chapur, right, addresses supporters in Mount Pleasant, S.C., on April 2, after winning the GOP nomination for the U.S. House seat he once held.

As political comebacks go, Mark Sanford's could be pretty epic.

Nearly four years after a vanishing act that led to revelations of an extramarital affair with an Argentine woman, the former South Carolina governor has won the GOP nomination for a House seat he once occupied.

And during his victory speech, his former mistress — now his fiancee — stood smiling at his side.

If he achieves his quest for redemption by defeating Democratic nominee Elizabeth Colbert Busch, Sanford will join a string of politicians who have bounced back from disgrace or disaster for impressive second acts:

Richard Nixon

He was the king of the comeback.

Nixon was the Republican vice presidential candidate in 1952 when allegations he profited from a political slush fund threatened to get him tossed from the ticket. He took to the airwaves to clear his name, making an emotional defense in which he talked about his family finances and talked about his kids' dog, Checkers.

AP file

President Richard Nixon

The speech was a massive success, and he survived the tempest to become President Eisenhower's No. 2. But after eight years as veep, Nixon was defeated by John F. Kennedy in a squeaker of a presidential election and then couldn't get elected governor of his home state.

"You won't have Nixon to kick around any more," he bitterly declared.

Wrong. Nixon, of course, made a second big rebound, defeating George McGovern in 1972 to become the nation's 37th president. After resigning in disgrace, Nixon slowly refashioned himself as an elder statesman and foreign policy expert but never fully escaped the shame of Watergate.

Marion Barry

Charles Dharapak / AP file

Former Washington D.C. Mayor Marion Barry

The onetime activist and hostage-siege survivor served three terms as mayor of Washington, D.C., but was dogged by corruption scandals and finally undone by a 1990 sting operation that caught him on tape smoking crack cocaine in a hotel room with an informant.

A national punchline, he didn't run for a fourth term as mayor, but he did make a bid for a city council seat, losing to an elderly woman soon after being sentenced to six month in federal prison. And just two months after his release, he began pursuing a political resurrection — with surprising success.

He was elected to the City Council and served as mayor again from 1995 to 1999. In 2004, after a stint as a consultant, he ran for the Council again and won. In recent years, he's faced a tax lien, a a stalking arrest and rebukes by his colleagues, but he remains in office.

John Quincy Adams

Library of Congress via Reuters

President John Quincy Adams

He won the White House in 1824 by a one-vote margin in the House of Representatives, which was called on to pick the next commander-in-chief after Andrew Jackson received the most popular votes but fell short of the electoral college threshold.

Adams' father had managed only one term as president, and the son wouldn't do any better. Four years later, a mud-slinging Jackson drubbed him out of office in a landslide, amid accusations that Adams was a pimp and his wife was an adulteress.

But the sixth POTUS was not the retiring type. Just two years later, he ran for Congress, won and served nine distinguished terms. He died in office, after suffering a stroke on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Jerry Brown

His two terms as governor of California in the '70s and '80s were eclipsed by his failures: three unsuccessful presidential bids and two dead-end Senate campaigns.

Nick Ut / AP

California Gov. Jerry Brown

He was written off by some as a flake — "Governor Moonbeam," they called him, after a nickname given him by girlfriend Linda Ronstadt — who traveled the globe searching for spiritual fulfillment.

After six years of self-exile, Brown began working his way back from a political no-man's land. As a two-term mayor, he tried to revitalize the gritty city of Oakland, then served two years as state attorney general before he replaced Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor in 2011.

He's gotten high marks and during his state of the state address in January he declared, "California is back." Looks like Jerry Brown is, too.

Bill Clinton

Monica who?

Clinton was originally dubbed the Comeback Kid after he finished second in the 1992 New Hampshire primary despite accusations of infidelity and draft dodging — but his real rehabilitation wouldn't come until after he was president.

Seth Wenig / AP

President Bill Clinton

The 1998 scandal over his sexual liaisons with White House intern Monica Lewinsky threatened to drive him from the Oval Office; he became the second president in history to be impeached.

Yet despite all the jokes about thongs and cigars, Clinton ended his term with his highest-ever approval rating — above 65 percent — and remains a hugely popular figure.

He created a global charitable foundation and helped free two Americans held in North Korea. His nomination speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention stole the show and while his days as an elected official are over, he could end up back in the White House one day.

Related:

Sanford nomination gives Democrats hope in special election