white house photo

Responding to mounting criticism of the Justice Department’s decision to spy on journalists, President Obama ordered a review of the procedures of investigating reporters, The New York Times reports.

Among the concerns, Obama said, is the potential for the probes to discourage investigative reporting.

“Journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs,” Obama said in a wide-ranging address on counterterrorism policy Thursday. “Our focus must be on those who break the law.”

Obama asked Attorney General Eric Holder to review the issue and return with results by July 12.

Steve Neavling

Not much is known about the janitor charged Thursday with sending ricin-laced to a federal judge in Washington state.

According to the Washington Post, Matthew Ryan Buquet is a short, balding 37-year-old and a registered sex offender.

“He sticks to himself,” Scott Ward, who lives across the hall from Buquet’s apartment, told the Washington Post. “He doesn’t talk, really. He’s kind of quiet.”

Buquet became a registered sex offender after being convicted in 1998 of molesting a 10-year-old girl. He also served 18 months in prison.

Steve Neavling

Abdulbaki Todashev says his son loved life in America and would never kill anyone.

His son, Ibragim Todashev, was fatally shot in his Orlando apartment by an FBI agent while being questioned about his ties to Boston bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

“I absolutely refuse to believe my son could have attacked a policeman, to be quite correct, several policemen,” he said Thursday in a telephone interview with The Los Angeles Times Chechnya.

The FBI, he insisted, “killed him for nothing.”

But federal authorities believe Ibragim Todashev may have been involved in a triple shooting with Tsaraev prior to the marathon bombing.

Eric Holder Jr./ticklethewire.com file photo

WASHINGTON –– Attorney General Eric Holder signed off on a controversial search warrant that identified Fox News reporter James Rosen as a “possible co-conspirator” in violations of the Espionage Act and authorized seizure of his private emails, a law enforcement official told NBC News on Thursday.

The disclosure of the attorney general’s role came as President Barack Obama, in a major speech on his counterterrorism policy, said Holder had agreed to review Justice Department guidelines governing investigations that involve journalists.

“I am troubled by the possibility that leak investigations may chill the investigative journalism that holds government accountable,” Obama said. “Journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs.”

Rosen, who has not been charged in the case, was nonetheless the target of a search warrant that enabled Justice Department investigators to secretly seize his private emails.

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