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Between clashes with Congress on Operation Fast and Furious and U.S.-based trials for Sept. 11 suspects, the attorney general advanced civil rights priorities and reached several landmark settlements.

The move allows legally married same-sex couples to apply for Veterans Affairs benefits like health care and disability payments.

Attorney General Eric Holder is instructing his prosecutors to concentrate instead on cartels, criminal enterprises and those who sell the drug to children.

The attorney general laid out changes and ideas that would shorten prison terms for nonviolent offenders and send more of them to treatment programs rather than prison.

Eric Holder, the nation's top law enforcement officer, is calling for a sea change in the criminal justice system. The attorney general is joined by a bipartisan group of lawmakers who want to overhaul prison sentencing policies.

The U.S. wants Russia to send the "NSA leaker" home for prosecution. In a letter to his Russian counterpart, Attorney General Eric Holder gives what he says are assurances that Edward Snowden should not be "treated as a refugee or granted asylum."

The attorney general says Justice wants continued authority over Texas election law despite a Supreme Court ruling last month striking down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act.

Since the Zimmerman verdict, countless black men have recounted stories of being treated with suspicion — a list that now includes both the president and the attorney general.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was speaking at the NAACP's annual convention in Orlando, Fla., a short distance from where unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin was shot and killed last year. More than two dozen states have laws that allow people to use deadly force to defend themselves if they believe they are under attack.

"It's time to question laws that senselessly expand the concept of self-defense and sow dangerous conflict in our neighborhoods," the attorney general said Tuesday. Such a law hovered over the trial of George Zimmerman for the death of Trayvon Martin.