By Ross Parker ticklethewire.com President Trump is a media magnet, for better or worse. Debates on public policy and personal peccadilloes whirl so fast that it seems fair to step back and try to ignore the daily sensations and make a preliminary assessment of his successes and failures in the law enforcement and criminal justice…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, a former U.S. Attorney from Baltimore, is the canary in the coal mine for the Justice Department. In very short time, in that role, he’s already gasping for breath, having been put smack in the middle of the firing of FBI Director James Comey. The…
By Ross Parker ticklethewire.com Over the weekend NBC News and other media reported a story of the sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl in Chicago by a group of juvenile boys. The painful media “angle” of the report was that the offenders had broadcast the brutal assault to 40 Facebook viewers, none of whom had…
By Ross Parker ticklethewire.com The muddied area of the law in civil actions against police officers involved in a shooting is one where Justice Neil Gorsuch’s participation and vote could make a difference, most likely in favor of protecting the officers. The Supreme Court heard argument last week in County of Los Angeles v. Mendez,…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Acting Attorney General Sally Yates wasn’t going to be around very long at the Justice Department considering she was a holdover from the Obama administration. Nonetheless, she should be commended for standing up to President Donald Trump, who implemented an executive order that was poorly thought out and executed. Hopefully she…
By Ross Parker ticklethewire.com The mind numbing opiate epidemic is not news, but the number of overdose deaths keeps climbing, and DEA agents say that we are still on the uphill side of the worst drug crisis in U. S. history. Until the opiate epidemic invades you or your family or friends, it is easy…
By Ross Parker ticklethewire.com It was a tough year for law enforcement officers. Line of duty deaths, especially intentional killings of police, were up dramatically. Several categories of violent crime, including homicides, rose significantly after two decades of steady decline in crime statistics. Recruitment of new officers is becoming difficult, and officers confronting deadly situations…
By Greg Stejskal ticklethewire.com In the Spring of 1989, a drama fraught with irony began playing out in Austria. A Jewish American family, a mother and her two grown sons, were fighting extradition to the US. About 50 years before, Jewish families were desperately trying to leave Austria for safe havens like the U.S. The…
