By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Some conservative politicians — mostly Republicans but some Dems — are beating their chest over pornography. The politicians including Sen. Orin Hatch (R-Utah) signed a letter earlier this month that was sent to Attorney Gen. Eric Holder Jr. complaining about the Justice Department shuttering its Obscenity Prosecution Task Force. The unit…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com WASHINGTON — No body armor, no cash. That’s what the Justice Department is saying. USA Today reports that the Justice Department is threatening to withhold millions of federal dollars from local police departments that don’t require uniformed officers to wear body armor. The threats come in wake of a spike in…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com WASHINGTON — Because Congress has blocked Gitmo detainees from being prosecuted in civilian court, Atty. Gen. Eric Holder Jr. said Monday that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others will stand trial in a military court in Gitmo. The announcement marked a sharp reversal of his announcement in November 2009…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com The Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section which blew the case against Sen. Ted Stevens, may be screwing up a big public corruption case in Montgomery, Ala. Both cases involve allegations of withholding evidence from the defense. The Associated Press reports that an angry U.S. Magistrate Judge Wallace Capel Jr. is fed…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com WASHINGTON — No surprise, politics is surfacing inside the beltway. The Justice Department on Friday expressed disappointment in a Congressional committee which issued a subpoena for documents from ATF on a controversial gun program, saying it had already told the committee it planned to cooperate. “We are therefore surprised and disappointed…
By Charlie Savage New York Times WASHINGTON — Within months after the Bush administration relaxed limits on domestic-intelligence gathering in late 2008, the F.B.I. assessed thousands of people and groups in search of evidence that they might be criminals or terrorists, a newly disclosed Justice Department document shows. In a vast majority of those cases,…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com WASHINGTON — The Justice Department won a legal battle against one of its own. A D.C. federal judge on Thursday dismissed a whistleblower lawsuit by ex-Detroit federal prosecutor Richard Convertino against the Justice Department. The lawsuit alleged that the Justice leaked damaging information about an internal Justice probe into Convertino. U.S….
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Like the JFK assassination, the mystery and the persistent questions about anthrax killings in 2001, won’t go away. The latest is a detailed article in the magazine WIRED, by Noah Shactman, who writes that scientists involved in helping the FBI crack the deadly mystery still have lingering doubts and questions about…
