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WASHINGTON - The Justice Department has begun an internal investigation into its handling of information gathered in the government's domestic spying program. However, Democrats criticized the review as too narrow to determine whether the program violated federal law. The inquiry by Glenn A. Fine, the department's inspector general, will focus on the role of Justice prosecutors and agents in carrying out the warrantless surveillance program run by the National Security Agency. Fine's investigation is not expected to address whether the controversial program is an unconstitutional expansion of presidential power, as its critics and a federal judge in Detroit have charged....

Court rejects N.Y. Times on leak probe 47 minutes ago The Supreme Court ruled against The New York Times on Monday, refusing to block the government from reviewing the phone records of two Times reporters in a leak investigation of a terrorism-funding probe. The one-sentence order came in a First Amendment battle that involves stories written in 2001 by Times reporters Judith Miller and Philip Shenon revealing the government's plans to freeze the assets of two Islamic charities, the Holy Land Foundation and the Global Relief Foundation. Shenon and Miller called the two organizations for comment after being told by...

Six imams removed from a US Airways flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix are calling on Muslims to boycott the airline. If only we could get Muslims to boycott all airlines, we could dispense with airport security altogether. Witnesses said the imams stood to do their evening prayers in the terminal before boarding, chanting "Allah, Allah, Allah" -- coincidentally, the last words heard by hundreds of airline passengers on 9/11 before they died. Witnesses also said that the imams were talking about Saddam Hussein, and denouncing America and the war in Iraq. About the only scary preflight ritual the imams didn't...

THE E-MAIL did not have an urgent tag on it, but it certainly could have. It was from an upstanding owner, and he had a problem--a big problem. He was being audited by the Internal Revenue Service, which in itself is not big news. It happens to horse people all the time, simply because they are horse people. This owner had followed all the rules to assure that he was an active participant in his horse business, and he went into the audit with confidence. [snip] A call to Stanley Gillman, C.P.A., who writes the "Tax Matters" column in this...

In an eleventh-hour plea, a half-dozen congressmen are asking the Justice Department to review the federal law used to convict two Border Patrol agents of shooting a Mexican drug smuggler. Congressman Walter B. Jones, R-N.C., circulated a letter Thursday among his colleagues that slammed federal statute 924(c), which addresses discharging a firearm in relation to a crime of violence. Conviction under the statute carries a minimum 10-year sentence in federal prison. Jones and five other members of the caucus - including California Reps. Gary Miller, R-Brea, Dana Rohrbacher, R-Huntington Beach, and Ed Royce, R-Fullerton, - contend in the letter that...

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has launched a criminal investigation into the disappearance of U.S. Air Force Maj. Jill Metzger, who went missing for three days last month in Kyrgyzstan. FBI officials told FOX News that Metzger's disappearance is being investigated by the FBI, and the center of the investigation appears to be the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria. At the time of her disappearance, Metzer was newly married and on temporary assignment at a U.S. base in Kyrgyzstan. Metzger claims that while shopping at the TSUM department store for souvenirs before a scheduled...

VIRGINIA BEACH The city has reached a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department to resolve allegations that the math portion of the police entrance examination discriminates against blacks and Hispanics. [snip]Also, the city will offer to allow 124 applicants to resume participation in the hiring process. Those 124 failed the math test between 2002 and 2005, but would have passed under the new standards. The city also will create a $160,000 fund to compensate those applicants. Under the agreement, the city will eliminate the 70 percent passing score for the math part of the test. Under the new standards, an...

To many Americans, Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff are the faces of corruption in politics today. Sadly, if the media had done its job the past five and half years, the picture of campaign finance fraud would be a poorly dressed blond woman from Arkansas that used to be the First Lady, but never became the junior senator from New York. Few truly objective observers of politics on either side of the aisle would disagree with the premise that the Clintons have consistently drawn an excessive amount of media attention since their meteoric rise onto the national scene in the...

A survey of the major players in the case of Peter Paul shows just how deeply Bill and Hillary Clinton, their closest associates, and some of the most prominent officials in the Democratic Party, have allowed corruption to infect our political process. They may have impressive titles, but take those away and the Clinton Political Syndicate is nothing more than a gang of street thugs… with one key difference, the government will do nothing to stop them.

The Justice Department will take Google to court on March 13 in San Jose, California, in response to Google’s repeated refusal to comply with federal subpoenas demanding information regarding the search engine’s database, specifically information related to searches conducted using the engine and the web sites available to Google’s users. Google is the largest search engine in the world, and the only one that has not cooperated with the Justice Department so far. Google claims these demands are a violation of privacy, but the government has assured them that no individuals would be identified by name, only their searches would...

Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE) failed today to address rumors that Nevada Senator Harry Reid will step down next month as Senate Minority Leader. Reid has been stung by revelations that his political action committee (PAC) accepted more than $60,000 in contributions from Indian tribes linked to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Appearing on CNN's Late Edition, Biden avoided discussing either the Reid situation or any upcoming changes in Senate Democratic leadership. Reid is no stranger to scandal, having been the subject of a 1979 Justice Department probe into allegations that Reid — then Nevada Gaming Commission chairman — had received bribes...

ALBANY, Jan. 11 - The federal Justice Department has threatened to sue New York State over its failure to modernize its voting system, saying New York "is further behind" every other state in complying with new guidelines stemming from the 2000 presidential election dispute. The state has yet to decide what kind of new voting machines it will certify, leaving many local elections boards in uncertainty as they try to modernize their voting systems in time for next fall's primary elections. And the state missed the Jan. 1 deadline for creating a statewide database of registered voters, as required by...

Judging by press coverage, the greatest political fund-raising scandal since George Washington bought barrels of whiskey for voters in 1789, is the Abramoff Affair. But it’s not the biggest such scandal in history. It’s not even the biggest this week. I sing you a song of three scandals. One involves some 200 Members of Congress and Jack Abramoff. The second involves Al Sharpton. The largest involves Hillary Clinton. Democrat mouthpieces (excuse me, strategists) like Bob Beckel are trying to hang Abramoff around the necks of the Republicans. The mantra is, “21 of the 23 Members of Congress who accepted Abramoff...

MSNBC's Hardball show actually delivered some interesting news for once tonight, despite Chris Matthews' anti-Bush spin and uninformed sputtering over the NSA counterterrorism program. NBC's DOJ correspondent Pete Williams corrects Matthews' assertion (borrowed from the NYTimes' report yesterday) that top Justice Department officials opposed the NSA program. In response to Matthews' fulmination that "it wasn't like the President was even getting support from his own people," Williams reported: There does appear to be something here where both deputy AG Comey and AG Ashcroft were concerned about technical aspects of it and concerned about how it was being carried out--the sort...

HOW THE NYTIMES IS RINGING IN 2006 By Michelle Malkin   ·   December 31, 2005 10:45 PM Yes, it's New Year's Eve. And since there's no rest for the NYTimes, I'm not taking it easy tonight either. You see, NYTimes' reporter James Risen has been a busy bee over the holidays. The co-author of the infamous Chicken Little opus exposing the NSA special collection program to monitor international communications between suspected al Qaeda operatives and their contacts will be launching his new book, State of War, on January 3. Turns out the publisher of Risen's new book, which includes a discussion...

MACON, Miss., Dec. 28, 2005 — In overwhelmingly black and Democratic Noxubee County, Miss., everybody knows local Democratic Party chairman Ike Brown. Officials at the U.S. Justice Department know Brown too; they're suing him. Using the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the government has alleged that Brown and local elections officials discriminated against whites. It is the first time the Justice Department has ever claimed that whites suffered discrimination in voting because of race. "When I read the letter, it was junk, you know, bogus," Brown told ABC News. The Justice Department says Brown and local elections officials disenfranchised whites —...

The last remaining U.S. independent counsel, David Barrett, after spending $21 million over 10 years, on Jan. 12 finally will close down his investigation of former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros' lying to FBI investigators about hush money paid to an ex-mistress. The political significance is that the Barrett report's shocking allegations of high-level corruption in the Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department are likely to be concealed from the public and from Congress. A recently passed appropriations bill, intended to permit release of this report, was altered behind closed doors to ensure that its politically combustible elements never saw the...

CHICAGO, Dec. 13 (UPI) -- A group of U.S. victims of a Jerusalem terror bombing wants to seize Iranian antiquities at the University of Chicago for their pain and suffering. Two years ago, the group won a $71 million judgment against Iran for injuries in a 1997 Iranian-linked suicide bombing in Jerusalem. Iran has ignored the ruling, and the victims are now going after ancient clay tablets dating from about 500 B.C., held by the university's Oriental Institute. However, the institute is fighting the group, saying that setting a precedent by turning over the antiquities to the victims could endanger...

The rules of American democracy say every president may install his own team of like-minded people in the government - even at a place like the Justice Department, which is at its root a law-enforcement agency and not a campaign branch office. But the Bush administration seems to be losing sight of the fact that the rules also say the majority party of the moment may not use its powers to strip citizens of their rights, politicize the judicial system or rig the election process to keep itself in office.There are sections of the Justice Department that are supposed to...

Anti-Republican elements in the Justice Department (could those be the same ones who picked Fitzgerald as special prosecutor?) have leaked a 2003 memo “endorsed” by six lawyers and two analysts in the department’s voting section, which opines that the Texas legislature’s redistricting plan, since upheld twice by a three judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, may violate the Voting Rights Act, to the Washington Post.

Justice Department lawyers concluded that the landmark Texas congressional redistricting plan spearheaded by Rep. Tom DeLay (R) violated the Voting Rights Act, according to a previously undisclosed memo obtained by The Washington Post. But senior officials overruled them and approved the plan. The memo, unanimously endorsed by six lawyers and two analysts in the department's voting section, said the redistricting plan illegally diluted black and Hispanic voting power in two congressional districts. It also said the plan eliminated several other districts in which minorities had a substantial, though not necessarily decisive, influence in elections. {snip} The Texas case provides another...

"I think what we see here today, when a vice president's chief of staff is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice, it does show the world that this is a country that takes its law seriously; that all citizens are bound by the law. But what we need to also show the world is that we can also apply the same safeguards to all our citizens, including high officials. Much as they must be bound by the law, they must follow the same rules." – Independent Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, Friday, Oct. 28, 2005 Those were stirring words from...

  Department of Justice to investigate George Galloway     By : Fraser Nelson and Eddie Barnes October 30, 2005   GEORGE Galloway, the staunchly anti-war British MP, will be investigated by the United States Department of Justice for claims he lied to the Senate over Iraq oil money, The Business can reveal. The Charities Commission in England and Wales has also requested documents which the US Senate permanent sub-committee for investigations says prove that illegal Iraqi oil money was laundered through a charity of which Galloway was a trustee. A dossier is being sent to Sir Philip Mawer, Parliamentary Commissioner...

The U.S. Justice Department offered up $700,000 to help ease a backlog of so-called "cold cases" in Fulton County. The grant money will be used to hire two lab technicians at the GBI crime lab to work on more than 1,200 cold cases. U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson (R-Georgia) presented the grant money to Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard Thursday morning. At the same time, Howard announced major developments in six unsolved homicides that date back to 1988. An example of what the easing of the DNA backlog could do involves the death of Priscilla Culberson, whose raped, beaten, and...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 24 - A type of lightweight police vest used by tens of thousands of officers failed to stop a bullet in nearly 6 of every 10 tests, according to a Justice Department study released on Wednesday, and the study resulted in immediate changes in federal safety guidelines. Ballistic tests on 103 vests containing a fiber known as Zylon produced acceptable safety results for just four vests, department researchers said. "This confirms that these vests simply don't do what they claim to do, which is to stop bullets," said Ed Balzarini Jr., a lawyer from the Pittsburgh metropolitan region...

...President Bush has repeatedly drawn from the Federalist Society for cabinet members, senior aides and judges. And perhaps to deflect what many conservatives call unfair attacks by liberals, the nominees have repeatedly claimed to know little about the group's beliefs.... Then an old directory surfaced last week, listing Judge Roberts as part of one of the group's steering committees. The White House spokesmen clung to their line; since Judge Roberts had not, apparently, written a $25 membership check, he was not a formal member. Who cares? Lots of people, it seems, because a fight over the influence of the Federalist...

The US Justice Department filed a motion Friday to quash testimony by wife of bioweaponeer William Patrick III in the lawsuit: Steven J. Hatfill, M.D. v. Attorney General John Ashcroft, The Department of Justice; The Federal Bureau of Investigation (et al). Headed by former federal prosecutor Tom Connelly, pro bono attorney's for Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, the former person of interest in the anthrax letters case, have been quietly doing battle behind the scenes with attorney's for the US Justice Department, in the United States District Court for The District of Columbia. Dr. Steven Hatfill's life was publically dismantled, rendering...

...The truth... is that this is a debacle that some in the press corps have brought down upon themselves.... Liberal editorial pages were among the loudest in demanding that a special counsel be appointed to find the leaker. And only many months later, when Ms. Miller was in the dock, did New York Times editorials finally get around to admitting that the leak might not even be a crime. Their partisan loathing for Mr. Bush caused these editors to overlook the risks even to their own reporting self-interest. They have also left the press more vulnerable than it was before....

For decades, the most egregious workplace safety violations have routinely escaped prosecution, even when they led directly to deaths or grievous injuries. Safety inspectors hardly ever called in the Justice Department. Congress repeatedly declined to toughen criminal laws for workplace deaths. Employers with extensive records of safety violations often paid insignificant fines and continued to ignore basic safety rules.

Senators Byron Dorgan, John Kerry and Richard Durbin pulled a fast one last week on their congressional colleagues. They tried to bury forever documents alleging that senior government officials tried to transform portions of the IRS and the Justice Department into a goon squad for attacking political enemies and aiding political friends. Naturally, they didn’t declare their intentions openly. Instead, Sen. Dorgan attached an innocent looking amendment to the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill that will fund government operations after September 30. The last-minute amendment read: “At the end of the bill, add the following: “SEC. __ . (a) None of...

Government wiretaps, searches up 75 percent Increase follows expanded powers for terror investigation The Associated Press April 1, 2005 WASHINGTON - The government requested and won approval for a record number of special warrants last year for secret wiretaps and searches of suspected terrorists and spies, 75 percent more than in 2000, the Bush administration disclosed Friday.

The White House was "troubled," according to one source, about the reported actions -- or inactions -- of the Justice Department last week as Republicans in Congress made a last ditch attempt to rescue Terri Schiavo. "You actually had Arlen Specter and his Judiciary Committee out there trying to save this woman's life, and then you have Alberto Gonzales and his crew over at Justice basically putting up roadblocks," says a White House staffer. "This was not a good way for Gonzales to start his tenure there." Gonzales has been on the job at Justice for a little over two...

WASHINGTON, March 22 - Battle lines were drawn Tuesday in the debate over the government's counterterrorism powers, as an unlikely coalition of liberal civil-rights advocates, conservative libertarians, gun-rights supporters and medical privacy advocates voiced their objections to crucial parts of the law that expanded those powers after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Keeping the law intact "will do great and irreparable harm" to the Constitution by allowing the government to investigate people's reading habits, search their homes without notice and pry into their personal lives, said Bob Barr, a former Republican congressman who is leading the coalition. Mr. Barr...

The U.S. Justice Department believes that Satanism, Wicca and polytheism are religious beliefs. The federal government argued in the Supreme Court Monday that states must enable prison inmates to practice and observe such "religious" beliefs – no matter how unconventional they may be. But many states think the federal view will cause mayhem in prison systems throughout the nation. Ohio state officials argued that a law requiring them to give such special attention and benefits to these, and other, prison practitioners of religion is an unconstitutional endangerment of prison security. And at least one federal court has agreed so far....

Tommy Chong never was much of a stoner, but one of his most popular characters (“Man”) was. So when Tommy’s son Paris put Man’s face on the surfaces of seditiously shaped blown glass (bongs, pipes) and was blatantly entrapped into sending 5,000 bucks’ worth across state lines to undercover feds, Ashcroft’s Justice Department took the opportunity to send Tommy to the Wackenhut-managed Taft Correctional Institution for nine magical months, to punish him not only for financing and promoting his son’s glass-blowing studio but for, as the federal prosecutor put it, “glamorizing the illegal distribution and use of marijuana” in entertainment...

The Justice Department has backed away from a court battle over its authority to classify and restrict the discussion of information it has already released, handing a local advocacy group a victory by granting it explicit permission to publish letters written by two senators that contain the contested information. The case was considered a potential test of limits to the government's power to restrict access to information in the public domain on national security grounds. Former attorney general John D. Ashcroft had strongly defended the practice in this case by likening it to putting "spilt milk" back in a jar...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 16 - In a case representing a major test of the Bush administration's campaign against pornography, the Justice Department said Wednesday that it would appeal a recent decision by a federal judge that declared federal obscenity laws unconstitutional. The Justice Department said that if the judge's interpretation of federal law was upheld, it would undermine not only anti-obscenity prohibitions, but also laws against prostitution, bigamy, bestiality and others "based on shared views of public morality." In a ruling last month in Pittsburgh, Judge Gary L. Lancaster of Federal District Court threw out a 10-count criminal indictment that charged...

When a federal appeals court said the Justice Department cannot force cigarette manufacturers to turn over $280 billion in allegedly ill-gotten gains, it was not just a victory for the tobacco industry. It was also a victory for freedom of speech. On its face, the ruling had nothing to do with free speech. The question before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit was whether the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) allows the government to file a lawsuit demanding "disgorgement" of profits tied to a "pattern of racketeering activity"—in this case, an alleged conspiracy to mislead...

A former Justice Department official has accused the Supreme Court of abusing its limited authority over immigration law to become the "architect" on how illegal aliens enter and remain in the country, and whether they are entitled to public benefits.

The FBI's failure to roll out an expanded computer system that would help agents investigate criminals and terrorists is the latest in a series of costly technology blunders by government over more than a decade. Experts blame poor planning, rapid industry advances and the massive scope of some complex projects whose price tags can run into billions of dollars at U.S. agencies with tens of thousands of employees. "There are very few success stories," said Paul Brubaker, former deputy chief information officer at the Pentagon. "Failures are very common, and they've been common for a long time." The FBI said...

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has entered the fray over the Defense Department's relationship with the Boy Scouts of America, endorsing in a letter to the House speaker continued support of Scout troops who meet on military bases. At least three conservative Republican lawmakers have sent letters to Mr. Rumsfeld protesting a Bush administration partial legal settlement of a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union's Illinois chapter. The Justice Department, representing the Pentagon, agreed to warn military commanders not to officially sponsor Scout units. The ACLU contends the government sponsorship violates religious freedoms since the Boy Scouts require...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. intelligence officials have transferred detainees out of Iraq for interrogation, a move that experts say violates international law, The Washington Post reported in its Sunday edition. The CIA has invoked a confidential memo written by the Justice Department to justify secretly transferring as many as a dozen detainees out of Iraq in the last six months, the Post said. The CIA has hidden the detainees from the International Red Cross and other authorities, the Post said, citing an unnamed intelligence official. In a March 19, 2004, memo the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel said the...

The Justice Department has launched two internal investigations into the arrest of Oregon lawyer Brandon Mayfield, who was detained by the FBI earlier this year because of a faulty fingerprint analysis that wrongly linked him to the deadly terrorist bombings in Madrid, according to a report released Monday.Inspector General Glenn Fine is investigating the FBI's conduct in the case, including whether Mayfield was targeted in part because of his Muslim beliefs, according to a report to Congress released by Fine's office. Separately, the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility is examining the role of federal prosecutors in the case, the...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3 - Justice Department investigators have sought to have senior federal prosecutors take polygraph examinations in an effort to determine who leaked the name of a confidential informant in a Detroit terrorism case that has become a major embarrassment for the department, officials said Friday. At the same time, leading Congressional Republicans have raised concerns about the leak of the informant's name and about the department's handling of the case, which led a federal judge in Detroit this week to throw out the terrorism convictions of two Arab immigrants accused of being part of a cell there. In...

Better than a cuddle party, and cheaper too.

<p>Justice Dept demanding records on liberal Internet site that lists delegates to Republican National Convention... Developing...</p>

WASHINGTON (AP) - A year after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Justice Department obtained video surveillance tapes suggesting terrorists were targeting Las Vegas casinos but authorities never alerted the public as they discussed whether a warning might hurt tourism or increase the casinos' legal liability, internal memos show. The mayor of Las Vegas said Monday he was never told about the tapes uncovered in Detroit and Spain in 2002, and had been assured by the FBI there were no credible threats against his city. ``If I were told, I would certainly tell the public,'' Mayor Oscar Goodman said. But memos...

More Anti-terrorism Power Sought JUSTICE DEPARTMENT SAYS PATRIOT ACT NOT ENOUGH By Shannon McCaffrey KNIGHT RIDDER WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON - The Justice Department is seeking to expand its anti-terrorism powers again, adding, among other things, an FBI subpoena power so secret that even a lawsuit challenging it had to be kept under wraps. Experts say the changes, which are moving piecemeal through Congress in several bills, are among the most significant since Congress passed the USA Patriot Act in the frightening days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Some of the measures being sought have been recycled from a...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The American Civil Liberties Union disclosed on Wednesday it had secretly sued the government over a provision of the Patriot Act that allows the FBI to demand customer records from businesses without court approval. The ACLU said it initially filed the civil lawsuit under seal on April 6 because it could have been prosecuted for violating a gag order contained within the Patriot Act. It said it chose to make the case public after the government agreed on Wednesday it would not seek a penalty against the ACLU. But many details of the case, filed in...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Despite increasing concern about terrorist threats to the United States, the FBI before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks was hampered by a culture resistant to change, inadequate resources and legal barriers, the national commission investigating the attacks said on Tuesday. "From the first World Trade Center attack in 1993, FBI and Department of Justice leadership in Washington and New York became increasingly concerned about the terrorist threat from Islamic extremists to U.S. interests both at home and abroad," said the report, presented at a commission hearing. Attorney General John Ashcroft, his predecessor, Janet Reno, former FBI Director...