By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com DETROIT — Having immunity has its benefits. U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn of Detroit has dismissed a lawsuit by a suburban Detroit insurance company that was trying to get the government to pay up after an FBI agent smashed up a stolen $750,000, 1995 F50 Ferrari that was in government custody,…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com You’d think just two weeks after the 10th Anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, people would be conscious about bringing guns to airports. You’d think. But nooo. As part of ticklethewire.com’s occasional check up on guns at airports, we found that 20 firearms were found at airport checkpoints in the U.S….
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Atty. Gen. Eric Holder Jr. is an honorable man. So I believe him when he tells Congress he didn’t know about ATF’s Operation Fast and Furious until the controversy exploded in 2011. The problem is that he needs to take responsibility for it. Period. He’s the top dog. People in his…
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. New York Times GAINESVILLE, Fla. — After decades of new laws to toughen sentencing for criminals, prosecutors have gained greater leverage to extract guilty pleas from defendants and reduce the number of cases that go to trial, often by using the threat of more serious charges with mandatory sentences or…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com The war of letters between Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif) and Atty. Gen. Eric Holder Jr. continues. The latest: Issa released on Monday a letter he sent to Holder sharply chastising him. Issa’s letter was in response to one Holder wrote Friday to Issa saying his his Congressional testimony on Operation Fast…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com The U.S. Justice Department can feel proud that an appeals court Thursday essentially upheld its right to screw the families whose relatives were allegedly murdered by Boston gangster James J. “Whitey’’ Bulger. Bulger was working as an FBI informant and running wild, and a Boston federal judge back in…
By Danny Fenster ticklethewire.com The former Miss Iceland Anna Bjornsdottir was splitting her time between Iceland and Santa Monica, Calif. when, at home in Iceland, she saw a photo of her Santa Monica neighbors, Carole and Charlie Gasko, flash across the TV screen, according to CBS Boston. The Gaskos’ were actually mob boss Whitey Bulger…
By Danny Fenster ticklethewire.com Italo Campagna was serving as a juror in Miami an ongoing federal criminal trial when he slipped the defendant’s father a piece of paper outside the courthouse with a telephone number on it. Later that afternoon, Campagna, 55, met with the defendant’s brother, who had contacted him, and arranged to meet…
