Rep. Lewis passed over for powerful chairmanship

Republicans passed over  Rep. Jerry Lewis in favor of a veteran Kentucky lawmaker Wednesday to chair the powerful House Appropriations Committee. The party’s steering committee rejected Lewis’s request to waive term limits that bar him from reclaiming the post he held when Republicans last held the majority. The decision deprives Lewis of a position that [...]

US school for disabled forces students to wear packs that deliver massive electric shocks

Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI)  has filed a report and urgent appeal with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture alleging that the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center for the disabled, located in Massachusetts, violates the UN Convention against Torture. The rights group submitted their report this week, titled “Torture not Treatment: Electric Shock and Long-Term [...]

Atheists meet with White House officials

The White House has been known to confer with religious leaders on important political and social issues — for instance, a meeting on torture with several religious denominations in June or Obama’s meeting with Buddhist leader the Dalai Lama just last week. On Friday, however, White House officials met with 60 members of atheist advocacy [...]

Report to Congress about the USA PATRIOT Act

The U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, released a new report Report to Congress on Implementation of Section 1001 of the USA PATRIOT Act. This report details “Section 1001 of the USA PATRIOT Act (Patriot Act), Public Law 107-56, directs the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the U.S. Department of [...]

Justice Lawyers Try to Define Cyber War

Run for the hills! The Department of Justice‘s lawyers are trying to figure out just what would constitute an act of war during a cyber attack. OK, it may not be that bad, but the specter of a room full of government lawyers trying to decide what constitutes an act of war when it occurs [...]

Government posting wealth of data to Internet

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Friday is posting to the Internet a wealth of government data from all Cabinet-level departments, on topics ranging from child car seats to Medicare services. The mountain of newly available information comes a year and a day after President Barack Obama promised on his first full day on the [...]

Smith & Wesson Executive Indicted

A Smith & Wesson Holding Corp. sales executive and a former Secret Service official were among 22 officials at companies that supply law enforcement and the military who were charged with violating U.S. anti-bribery laws. Amaro Goncalves, vice president of sales at Smith & Wesson, and R. Patrick Caldwell, chief executive officer of Protective Products [...]

Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio Investigated by Federal Grand Jury

PHOENIX —  Two officials said Thursday night they have been subpoenaed to answer questions next week before a federal grand jury about a high-profile Arizona sheriff who gained attention for aggressively cracking down on illegal immigration. In statements read by a county spokesman, Maricopa County Manager David Smith and Deputy County Manager Sandi Wilson said they [...]

Jury selection begins in trial of Ohio DEA agent

CLEVELAND — Jury selection began Wednesday in the trial of a federal drug agent charged with framing 17 people in a case that could influence the way confidential informants are handled. Prospective jurors crowded the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver Jr. for the opening of the government’s case against Lee Lucas, 41. Lucas, [...]

Federal Agencies Need Not Confirm or Deny Electronic Surveillance under FOIA

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed that the National Security Agency and the Department of Justice do not need to confirm or deny the existence of electronic surveillance records under the Freedom of Information Act. The appellate court found that federal agencies are allowed to file “Glomar” responses, which were [...]

Ex-Air Force spouse gets 30 years for killing boy

A former U.S. Air Force spouse convicted of beating his 8-year-old stepson to death while living near Kadena Air Base in 2007 has been sentenced to 30 years in prison by a federal judge. Roberto DeLeon, 28, was found guilty in October of murdering Jordan Peterson and had faced a maximum of life in prison. [...]

More than 12% of youths in juvenile prisons are sexually abused while in custody

More than 12% of youths in juvenile prisons are sexually abused while in custody there, according to a Justice Department study out Thursday, and the vast majority of cases involve female staff and boys under their supervision. In the worst facilities surveyed — in Indiana, Maryland, North Carolina and Texas — more than 30% of [...]

Iraqis outraged as Blackwater case thrown out

In this Oct. 2007 image, Mohammed Hafiz holds a picture of his 10-year-old son, Ali Mohammed, who was killed when guards employed by Blackwater allegedly opened fire at Nisoor Square in Baghdad. Iraqis responded with bitterness and outrage Jan. 1 at aU.S. judge’s decision to throw out a case against Blackwater guards accused in the [...]

Record High Federal Prosecutions in 2009

FY 2009 Federal Prosecutions Sharply Higher Analyzing data from the United States Department of Justice, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University has released this report showing a 9% increase in federal prosecutions compared to last year. At a total of 169,612, the swell in prosecutions is attributed to “an unusual flood of [...]

America’s Secret ICE Castles

“If you don’t have enough evidence to charge someone criminally but you think he’s illegal, we can make him disappear.” Those chilling words were spoken by James Pendergraph, then executive director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement‘s (ICE) Office of State and Local Coordination, at a conference of police and sheriffs in August 2008. Also present [...]

FBI Linguist Leaked Classified Docs to Blogger

An Israeli-American attorney who worked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a translator pled guilty yesterday to unlawfully disclosing five classified FBI documents to an unidentified blogger last April, who then published information from the documents on his blog, the Department of Justice announced. In a signed plea agreement (pdf), Shamai Leibowitz stipulated that [...]

Retired Army Major Sentenced to 57 Months in Prison for Role in Bribery Scheme Involving DOD Contracts in Kuwait

A retired major in the U.S. Army today was sentenced to 57 months in prison for his role in a bribery scheme related to Department of Defense (DOD) contracts awarded in Kuwait, announced Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division Lanny A. Breuer and Assistant Attorney General of the Antitrust Division Christine A. Varney. Christopher [...]

Intelligence Improperly Collected on U.S. Citizens

WASHINGTON — In February, a Department of Homeland Security intelligence official wrote a “threat assessment” for the police in Wisconsin about a demonstration involving local pro- and anti-abortion rights groups. That report soon drew internal criticism because the groups “posed no threat to homeland security,” according to a department memorandum released on Wednesday in connection [...]

Arizona Dictator Sheriff Joe Arpaio Approaching Retirement

The day after the federal government told Maricopa County Sheriff Joseph M. “Joe” Arpaio that he could no longer use his deputies to round up suspected illegal immigrants on the street, the combative Arizona sheriff did just that. He launched one of his notorious “sweeps,” in which his officers descend on heavily Latino neighborhoods, arrest [...]

No laughing matter for CIA

The top lawyer at the Central Intelligence Agency, General Counsel Stephen Preston, recently introduced himself during an American Bar Association conference on national security as “the chief legal officer of a well-understood and enormously popular agency, the object of universal praise and appreciation.” He was greeted with laughter, reports The Washington Post. We imagine that [...]

ACTION ALERT: Force DEA to Tell the Truth About Medical Marijuana

In a significant reversal, the American Medical Association on November 10 acknowledged the medical value of marijuana and called for the U.S. government to reconsider marijuana’s current classification as a Schedule I substance (drugs that the government says have “no currently accepted medical use”). However, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) still claims on its website [...]

New DOJ Report: Gang Information Management System Needed

Review of the Department’s Anti-Gang Intelligence and Coordination Centers The U.S. Department of Justice Office of Inspector General just released this report which examines the intelligence and coordination activities of the National Gang Intelligence Center and the Gang Targeting, Enforcement, and Coordination Center. Additionally, the review “assesses the effectiveness of their contributions to the Department’s [...]

Justice Department issued secret subpoena for news site’s traffic

The Department of Justice earlier this year served and shortly thereafter withdrew a grand jury subpoena that sought information about all visitors to the journalism website Indymedia.us for one day, and also contained a gag order “not to disclose the existence of [the] request,” CBSNews.com reports. In the Jan. 23 subpoena the Justice Department demanded [...]

New Audit Report on FBI’s ‘Sentinel’ Case Management System

Sentinel Audit V: Status of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Case Management System This Department of Justice, Office of Inspector General audit report is the fifth in a series of reports assessing the FBI’s ‘Sentinel’ case management system. “The objectives of this current audit, the fifth in our ongoing review of Sentinel’s progress, were to: [...]

FBI Demands Tattoo Shops Rat On Customers

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, in league with the Bureau of Justice Assistance (part of the Department of Justice), has launched a program that harks back to East Germany’s Stasi. In Philadelphia, the FBI has instructed tattoo shops to rat out their customers if they demand privacy, insist on paying with cash, engage in “suspicious [...]

Is VOIP Now the Go-To Tool For Gov’t Spying?

There’s an interesting article this week about a new Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General (IG) report on the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and some of the issues the Bureau faces in reviewing and processing evidence. One of the areas that is apparently singled out in the IG report is the review – or [...]

Feds issue new medical marijuana policy (to Good Ol’ Boy Hoops)

WASHINGTON – Pot-smoking patients or their sanctioned suppliers should not be targeted for federal prosecution in states that allow medical marijuana, prosecutors were told Monday in a new policy memo issued by the Justice Department. Under the policy spelled out in a three-page legal memo, federal prosecutors are being told it is not a good [...]

Telephone Company Is Arm of Government, Feds Admit in Spy Suit

The Department of Justice has finally admitted it in court papers: The  nation’s telecom companies are an arm of the government — at least when it comes to secret spying. Fortunately, a judge says that relationship isn’t enough to quash a rights group’s open records request for communications between the nation’s telecoms and the feds. [...]

IG Report on the U.S. National Central Bureau of INTERPOL

United States National Central Bureau of INTERPOL The U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Inspector General has just released this report which addresses the United States National Central Bureau (USNCB) of INTERPOL. “Our objectives for this audit were to evaluate the USNCB’s efforts to ensure sharing of INTERPOL information among federal, state, local, and tribal [...]

The Justice Department wages war on pain relief

No good deed goes unpunished when a private citizen is up against the federal drug warriors–those members of the Department of Justice who have been seeking, with increasing success in recent decades, to effectively control the practice of pain relief medicine. But a current drama being played out in federal court in Kansas portends an [...]

The Atlantic Interviews Radley Balko

Radley Balko is a senior editor at Reason Magazine whose award-winning investigative work focuses on criminal justice and civil liberties. His blog, The Agitator, is one of the most carefully curated resources for stories on the same subject. Q. In your work, you’ve frequently reported on police abuses and the appropriate role of law enforcement [...]

House GOP Wants Cuts To Drug War

When President Obama’s drug czar declared an end to the war on drugs, Republicans were apparently listening closely. House GOP leadership now wants to cash in the peace dividend. Republican Leader John Boehner (Ohio) and Whip Eric Cantor (Va.) released a set of proposed budget cuts Thursday that included trimming $220 million from drug war [...]

FISA Surveillance Down, NSL Requests Up in 2008

During calendar year 2008, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved 2,083 applications for authority to conduct electronic surveillance and physical search of suspected foreign intelligence and terrorist targets under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, according to a new annual report to Congress (pdf) from the Department of Justice.  The Court made substantive modifications to two [...]

OIG Report on the FBI’s Terrorist Watchlist Nomination Practices

This U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General report reviews the FBI’s Terrorist Watchlist nomination practices. “The federal government’s consolidated terrorist watchlist was created in March 2004 by merging previously separate watchlists that were once maintained by different agencies throughout the federal government. The watchlist is managed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation [...]

DEA AGENT CHARGED WITH OBSTRUCTING JUSTICE, PERJURY IN CONNECTION WITH MANSFIELD, OHIO DRUG INVESTIGATION

CLEVELAND (AP) – A federal drug enforcement agent has pleaded not guilty to a federal indictment that accuses him of framing 17 people during controlled drug buys through an informant. Lee Michael Lucas, 41, of Cleveland appeared Wednesday before U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver on charges, including obstruction of justice and violating civil rights. Lucas [...]

WHITE HOUSE CZAR CALLS FOR END TO ‘WAR ON DRUGS’

Kerlikowske Says Analogy Is Counterproductive; Shift Aligns With Administration Preference for Treatment Over Incarceration WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s new drug czar says he wants to banish the idea that the U.S.  is fighting “a war on drugs,” a move that would underscore a shift favoring treatment over incarceration in trying to reduce illicit drug [...]

Arrests of U.S. border agents on the rise

WASHINGTON — A rising number of U.S. border enforcement officers are being arrested on corruption charges as Mexican drug cartels look to bribes as a way to get around tougher enforcement, border officials say. Investigators arrested 21 U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers on corruption charges in the fiscal year that ended last September, up [...]

Congressman Lewis paid $30,000 in legal defense fees in March

Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Redlands, paid more than $30,000 in March to a law firm defending him in a federal probe into his alleged ties with lobbyists and defense contractors, campaign records shows. It brings the total of what Lewis has spent on legal fees since the investigation kicked off in 2006 to nearly $1.2 million. [...]

Humboldt cities take on military recruiting — and U.S.

ARCATA – David was sitting in a coffee shop when he first got the idea to take on Goliath. The “David” in this story has a last name of Meserve. The “Goliath” is less metaphorically known as the United States government. And the tale revolves around a first-of-its-kind effort by two small Humboldt County cities [...]

DOJ Prosecuted Texas Sheriff in 1983 For Waterboarding Prisoners

In 1983, the Department of Justice prosecuted a Texas sheriff and three of his deputies for waterboarding prisoners to get them to confess to crimes. The deputies were sentenced to four years in prison and Parker pleaded guilty to extortion and federal civil rights violations and received a 10-year sentence. Parker admitted that he had [...]

New guidance from Justice on processing FOIA requests

The Justice Department’s Office of Information Policy issued new guidance Friday further implementing the attorney general’s memo that gives direction to federal agencies regarding the Freedom of Information Act. The guidance applies to all federal agencies and stresses “that the FOIA is to be administered with the presumption of openness.” It also says the “combined [...]

GAO Report on DEA’s Post-9/11 Drug Control Responsibilities

Drug Control: Better Coordination With the Department of Homeland Security and an Updated Accountability Framework Can Further Enhance DEA’s Efforts to Meet Post-9/11 Responsibilities “Given the global context of the war on drugs-coupled with growing recognition since September 11, 2001 (9/11), of the nexus between drug trafficking and terrorism-the mission of the Drug Enforcement Administration [...]

Glenn Beck and Penn Jillette on MIAC report

See also: The Radical Polarization of Law Enforcement

The Radical Polarization of Law Enforcement

The Radical Polarization of Law Enforcement Patriots, Christians and concerned citizens are increasingly in the cross hairs of the U.S. intelligence community, and battle lines are being quietly drawn that could soon pit our own law enforcement and military forces against us. A February 20 report entitled “The Modern Militia Movement” was issued by the [...]