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Chain's use of database to fire employees who don't check out angers advocates for immigrants You may have already seen the signs popping up at your local Dunkin' Donuts shop: ``We follow the law! This company hires lawful workers only. " The signs, which have begun appearing in shops around Boston, make public the company's participation, starting June 1, in a voluntary federal program that enables employers to quickly check the immigration status of new hires. Dunkin' Donuts is requiring all of its franchisees to participate in the Basic Pilot Program, which allows employers to verify a worker's status using...

I think we should keep track of those companies who are doing a splendid job of NOT hiring illegals! This morning in our local edition of The Arizona Republic Business section there was an article re: the firm stance that Dunkin Donuts/Baskin Robbins has taken with ensuring that NO illegal aliens are hired on at any of their franchises. They are utilizing the federal government's Basic Pilot program to conduct electronic background checks. Franchise owners who don't follow this policy are taken to court.

A spokesman for President Bush says a demand by Republicans for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to follow through on former White House insider Sandy Berger's promise to take a polygraph test regarding the classified documents he took from the National Archives will be studied. The response from Tony Snow came on a question from Les Kinsolving, WND's correspondent at the White House. "Congressman Tom Davis and 17 other Republican House members have called on Attorney General Gonzales, Department of Justice, to administer the polygraph test that Sandy Berger agreed to in paragraph 11 of his plea agreement. And my question,...

A private investigator who worked to get condemned inmates off death row pleaded guilty Monday to forging documents to support their appeals. Kathleen Culhane, 40, admitted that she forged documents to try to stop the executions of four condemned inmates since 2002, including Michael Morales, who was sentenced to death for the 1981 rape and murder of a Central Valley teenager. The plea agreement by the San Francisco-based investigator was entered in Sacramento County Superior Court and settles a case that the state attorney general called the largest fraud ever against the state's criminal justice system. "This case is not...

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department released a list of internal documents Thursday focusing on lawmakers' concerns and media questions about the firings of eight federal prosecutors, but the department resisted congressional demands for copies of the memos. The list of 159 e-mails and memos, spanning nearly three months, at the least demonstrates concern about how the dismissals were being publicly received before they erupted into a firestorm that has resulted in calls for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign. The small pile of documents, sent to Capitol Hill on Thursday night, also included e-mails about articles published in The Washington...

Testimony in the case of a Chinese-born engineer accused of stealing U.S. defense secrets revolved Thursday around whether he needed government approval to export a document on a quiet submarine propulsion system to China. Authorities believe Chi Mak, a naturalized U.S. citizen, stole thousands of pages of defense documents from his defense contractor employer, Power Paragon, and gave them to his brother, who passed them along to Chinese authorities over a number of years. He was arrested in 2005 in Los Angeles after FBI agents stopped his brother and sister-in-law as they boarded a flight to Hong Kong. Investigators said...

Captured Iraqi documents and intelligence interrogations of Saddam Hussein and two former aides "all confirmed" that Hussein's regime was not directly cooperating with al-Qaeda before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to a declassified Defense Department report released yesterday. The declassified version of the report, by acting Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble, also contains new details about the intelligence community's prewar consensus that the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda figures had only limited contacts, and about its judgments that reports of deeper links were based on dubious or unconfirmed information. The report had been released in summary form in February. The...

Scandal: Last we heard of Sandy Berger, Bill Clinton's national security adviser, he was being fined and placed on probation for stealing top-secret documents. Is there more to this tale of purloined papers? Rep. Tom Davis thinks there is. "I'm not convinced that he was acting alone," the Virginia Republican said on the Fox News special "Socks, Scissors, Paper: The Sandy Berger Caper" that aired Saturday night.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 22, 2007 — Mimicking the hijackers who executed the Sept. 11 attacks, insurgents reportedly tied to al Qaeda in Iraq considered using student visas to slip terrorists into the United States to orchestrate a new attack on American soil. Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, recently testified that documents captured by coalition forces during a raid of a safe house believed to house Iraqi members of al Qaeda six months ago "revealed [AQI] was planning terrorist operations in the U.S." At the time, Maples offered little additional insight into the possible terror plot....

WASHINGTON -- While reviewing national security documents from the Clinton Administration in preparation for his appearance before the 9/11 Commission hearings, the Clinton administration's former national security adviser, Mr. Samuel R. Berger, was observed stuffing them in his socks by employees at the National Archives. Soon he was accused of taking these documents -- memos, draft documents, e-mails, that sort of thing -- from the Archives in breech of the law, and he was duly charged. All of this took place a couple of years ago, and those of us who had followed the Clinton high jinks with more diligence...

Did the 9/11 Commission receive all the documents it requested? Davis Releases Berger Report January 9, 2007 By David Marin (202)225-5074 Washington, D.C. – Oversight and Government Reform Committee Ranking Member Tom Davis (R-VA) released the following statement today on a committee report that sheds important new light on Sandy Berger’s theft of classified documents from the National Archives. The report makes it clear that the full extent of Mr. Berger’s document removal can never be known, and consequently the Department of Justice could not assure the 9/11 Commission that it received all responsive documents to which Mr. Berger had...

Investigation into pilfered documents reveals former president signed letter President Bill Clinton signed a letter authorizing former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger's access to classified documents that later came up missing, according to a newly released investigation report by the National Archives and Records Administration. The sensitive drafts of the National Security Council's "Millennium After Action Review" on the Clinton administration's handling of the al-Qaida terror threats in December 1999 suspiciously disappeared after Berger said he intended to "determine if Executive Privilege needed to be exerted prior to documents being provided to the 9/11 Commission." Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft testified...

Former national security adviser Sandy Berger removed classified documents from the National Archives in 2003 and hid them under a construction trailer, the Archives inspector general reported Wednesday. The report was issued more than a year after Berger pleaded guilty and received a criminal sentence for removal of the documents. Inspector General Paul Brachfeld reported that when Berger was confronted by Archives officials about the missing documents, he said it was possible he threw them in his office trash. The report said that when Archives employees first suspected that Berger _ who had been President Clinton's national security adviser _...

A friend is attending the US bishops' meeting in Baltimore this week and sent along the following. (One must find ways to keep oneself amused... and awake.) These are all actual words used by the bishops from the last hour of the bishops’ meeting yesterday. Just combine any word from Column A with any word from Column B with any word from Column C. The system pretty much gives you an idea as to the content of most of the USCCB documents. Column A Column B Column C Thoughtful Scientific Collaboration Simultaneous Evolving Ministry Relevant Human Structure Universal Shifting Development...

A group of House Republicans called Wednesday for a congressional investigation into the improper handling of classified documents by President Clinton's national security adviser, Sandy Berger. Berger admitted last year that he deliberately took classified documents out of the National Archives in 2003 and destroyed some of them at his office. He pleaded guilty in federal court to one charge of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material and was fined $50,000. Ten lawmakers led by House Armed Services Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., and Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., released a letter calling for the House Government Reform Committee to...

As part of our Guest Essay series, I asked Joseph Shahda to write for us on the topic of translating Sadaam Hussien's captured documents. Mr. Shahda, who goes by the screen name "jveritas" on FreeRepublic.com, has had a article written about him in the Boston Globe: ( http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2006/03/18/us_puts_iraqi_documents_on_the_web/ ) "Joseph Shahda earns his living as an engineer. But in his spare time, he's an intelligence agent, working to ferret out the truth about the regime of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. When the US government on Thursday began publishing captured Iraqi government documents on the Internet, Shahda eagerly began to...

The Department of Transportation, acting through a Security and Prosperity Partnership "working group," is preparing in 2007 to issue North American biometric border passes to Mexican, Canadian, and U.S. "trusted travelers" according to documents released to WND columnist and author Jerome R. Corsi under a Freedom of Information Act request. "The FOIA documents show the organizational chart and the composition of a 'shadow Department of Transportation' which includes formal membership from Mexico and Canada's Departments of Transportation," asserts Corsi. "SPP has in effect created a fully-functioning trilateral Department of Transportation which will dictate policy to Mary Peters as soon as...

WASHINGTON The cooling-off period ends today on documents temporarily sealed by President Bush in the bribery case of Congressman William Jefferson. The Louisiana Democrat has been the focus of prosecutors and investigators who suspect him of taking 400-thousand dollars in bribes from a business executive. Bush placed materials seized from Jefferson's Capitol Hill office off limits for 45 days, but that time is up. A court will decide if the F-B-I's searches in May were an unconstitutional intrusion. Until a judge rules, prosecutors won't examine the materials agents seized.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 6, 2006 – A new policy directive and field manual released today establish crystal-clear guidelines on U.S. military detention and interrogation policies and further the Defense Department’s longstanding policy of humane treatment for all detainees, defense officials told Pentagon reporters today. DoD released two new documents today: DoD Directive 2310.01E, which provides overarching guidance on DoD’s detainee operations worldwide, and Army Field Manual 2-22.3, which lays out specific guidelines for those directly involved in detention and interrogation efforts. The new DoD directive, “The Department of Defense Detainee Program,” describes core policies critical to ensuring detainees are treated humanely...

Microsoft plans this week to charge a nominal fee for Office 2007 Beta 2 downloads. Consumers who download the 2007 Microsoft Office system Beta 2 will be charged US$1.50 per download, beginning Wednesday at 6 p.m. PDT, a Microsoft representative said.