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The state Office of Children and Family Services in 2004 had a backlog of requests for hearings from people accused of mistreating children. Three women had recently sued the agency over the delays that were costing them jobs working with kids because they couldn’t get their names cleared. The agency had a solution to the thousands of pending written requests that would come under scrutiny by the lawsuit, according to sworn testimony from state workers: Shred. For a month in 2004, the workers were under orders to take carts of the requests for name-clearing hearings and shred them after hours...

NEWARK -- The national health care bill signed into law by President Obama yesterday violates citizens’ civil rights by forcing them to buy health coverage, according to a lawsuit a physician advocacy group filed in federal court. The complaint, filed today in Newark by New Jersey Physicians Inc., seeks to overturn the new law and mirrors lawsuits filed by attorneys general of 13 states. Those suits accuse the Obama administration of abusing its authority by passing, but not properly funding the new law.

December 12, 2008, 0:00 a.m. Down on BrownerRegression we can’t afford. By Michelle Malkin Yet another Clintonite has been wheeled out of the political morgue to serve in the Obama administration. Carol Browner, a neon-green radical who headed the Environmental Protection Agency from 1993-2000, is widely rumored to be the president-elect’s choice for “energy czar.” But an ethical cloud still hangs over Browner’s EPA legacy. It doesn’t take a team of Ivy League lawyers to figure out that this is one more headache the Hope and Change crew doesn’t need. In the spirit of reaching across the aisle, let...

The myth that to delete data really securely from a hard disk you have to overwrite it many times, using different patterns, has persisted for decades, despite the fact that even firms specialising in data recovery, openly admit that if a hard disk is overwritten with zeros just once, all of its data is irretrievably lost. Craig Wright, a forensics expert, claims to have put this legend finally to rest. He and his colleagues ran a scientific study to take a close look at hard disks of various makes and different ages, overwriting their data under controlled conditions and then...

Last week the Archive of the Czech Security Forces posted data on the internet compiled by former Czechoslovakia’s military counter-intelligence. The data lists some 140,000 names of people who were either monitored by the military counter-intelligence or were agents, and it hasn’t taken long for the files to stir controversy. Czech TV reported that five of the country’s MPs, including Social Democrat and former Olympic ski jumper Pavel Ploc, were among those listed. He and the other deputies reacted quickly, denying cooperation of any kind with the Communist intelligence service, saying they were now considering legal action in response. The...

The Marine Corps is charging two of its own in connection with a theft ring that involved the stealing of secret files on potential terrorists. The widening investigation already has produced one conviction. Both Marines were called back to duty at Camp Pendleton and charged in late June with breaking military law, though the charges were not announced until yesterday. Gunnery Sgt. Eric L. Froboese and Master Sgt. Reinaldo Pagan, both reservists, were charged as part of a probe into the mishandling and compromise of classified information, the Marine Corps said. Pagan is charged with dereliction of duty and orders...

<p>THE office computer of suspended Power Authority Inspector General Daniel Wiese was "wiped totally clean" of e-mails and other records just days before being seized by investigators probing an alleged State Police dirty-tricks squad, The Post has learned.</p> <p>The computer, believed to contain sensitive details of Wiese's communications with State Police officials, was grabbed last month at the Power Authority's headquarters in White Plains under a subpoena issued by the office of Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, a source close to the authority said.</p>

Details of Hillary Clinton's firing from the House Judiciary Committee staff for unethical behavior as she helped prepare articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon have been confirmed by the panel's chief Republican counsel. Franklin Polk backed up major claims by Jerry Zeifman, the general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee who supervised Clinton's work on the Watergate investigation in 1974, reported columnist Dan Calabrese in a column republished by WND. Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat, called Clinton a "liar" and "an unethical, dishonest lawyer." He contends Clinton was collaborating with allies of the Kennedys to block revelation...

HillaryXFiles.com Leads Efforts to Release Clinton Secret FilesMon Jan 21, 1:44 PM ET To: POLITICAL EDITORS Contact: Bob Sturm, +1-703-396-6974; After 6 PM Eastern time, contact Vi Shields, +1-703-906-6542 or Bob Sturm, +1-703-368-1812, all of HillaryXFiles.com MANASSAS, Va., Jan. 21 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A new website, www.HillaryXFiles.com, will lead the charge for the release of the Clinton Secret Files -- the files about Hillary Clintons involvement in White House affairs that President Bill Clinton has refused to let the public see. The site features a petition demanding that the files be released so that voters will have the information they need...

After last week's release by Judicial Watch of internal documents of Hillary Clinton's Health Care Task Force, many of us waited to see the national news media cover their disturbing contents. No surprisingly, none of them did so. Despite the proposals to use smears against critics of the government and to turn the DNC into a domestic espionage unit for the White House against its opponents, the mainstream news media has shown little interest in even noting the fact that this evidence appeared in a microscopic sample of the three million documents that have been blocked from public scrutiny. Let's...

GREENSBORO, N.C. - Detailed schematics of a military detainee holding facility in southern Iraq. Geographical surveys and aerial photographs of two military airfields outside Baghdad. Plans for a new fuel farm at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. The military calls it "need-to-know" information that would pose a direct threat to U.S. troops if it were to fall into the hands of terrorists. It's material so sensitive that officials refused to release the documents when asked. But it's already out there, posted carelessly to file servers by government agencies and contractors, accessible to anyone with an Internet connection. In a survey...

SANTA ANA, Calif. - A Navy investigator testified Wednesday that a computer disk seized from the brother of a Chinese-born engineer accused of stealing U.S. defense technology secrets contained encrypted files. Nicholas Mikus, an investigative computer specialist for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, said the files could only be unlocked with a specific "key," a chain of 113 letters that was stored on a floppy disk. Mikus was the latest witness called by the government in its case against Chi Mak, an engineer accused of passing sensitive military information to the Chinese government for more than 20 years. Mak, a...

PARIS: Victor Hugo was a miserly money-grubber, poet Rimbaud "a monstrosity", and Verlaine "a worthless human being" - such are the verdicts on 19th-century French literary lions found in long-forgotten police files recently published in Paris. Even more startling than the unflattering portraits, says Bruno Fuligni, an employee at the National Assembly, or French parliament, who discovered the dust-covered files and compiled them into a book, is the vigour and thoroughness with which the most revered writers of that era were spied upon by snitches and secret police. "Beyond criminals and political figures, there are files on writers and artists....

Jefferson case informant files complaint with policeShe says odd 'things' occurred after FBI tip Tuesday, August 29, 2006 By Bruce Alpert WASHINGTON -- A Virginia woman told police that "things have been happening" since she went to the FBI 17 months ago with a complaint that led to the continuing corruption probe against Rep. William Jefferson, D-New Orleans. Lori Mody, who wore a hidden microphone to tape conversations with Jefferson, said in her July 24 complaint to the Fairfax County (Va.) Police Department that the toilet in a McLean, Va., home she is getting ready to sell broke between July...

WASHINGTON A government watchdog group asked federal regulators Thursday to determine if Rep. Gary Miller failed to pay taxes on several real estate transactions. A spokesman for Miller, R-Diamond Bar, did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment. The Los Angeles Times reported this month that Miller avoided paying millions of dollars in taxes on real estate deals under a tax break that protects people forced to sell their property. But local officials said they never made him sell his land, the newspaper said. In a complaint, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington asked the Internal Revenue Service to...

Atrocities against civilians and prisoners by Army soldiers during the Vietnam War were more common than originally disclosed to the public, according to a Los Angeles Times review of recently unsealed government files. Some 9,000 pages of archives - the largest collection of documented war crimes in Vietnam - include sworn witness testimony, investigative files and status reports for top military brass that detail 320 wartime atrocities substantiated by the Army. Still, few soldiers were held accountable for the war crimes, according to the newspaper. The abuse was not restricted to one rogue Army division, but was committed by every...

I got access to a computer at FBI headquarters recently and took the opportunity to see what they had on me. A lot, as it turned out. Up popped my name in an investigation of Scott Ritter, the former top Iraq arms inspector turned administration critic. I'd interviewed him on the telephone several times in the late 1990s. Scrolling down, I also saw a note on my 1972 membership in a group of graduate students and faculty who wrote scholarly articles against the war in Vietnam, evidently related to an investigation of Jane Fonda. There were also excerpts of articles...

In a filing Thursday at U.S. District Court in the I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby CIA/Leak case, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald -- in a 19-page affidavit -- offered few clues about the identity of the official or officials involved in the leak of former CIA employee, Valerie Wilson Plame's name to reporters, other than Libby himself. Libby, a former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, was indicted last year on charges that he lied about how he learned Plame’s identity and when he told reporters. The affidavit does not unravel the mystery of who Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward's "official"...

A Republican lawyer who works as legal counsel to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has filed an initiative that would raise the minimum wage--but also abolish the eight-hour day for overtime. Thomas Hiltachk filed the "Fair Pay Workplace Flexibility Act of 2006" with the Attorney General on Feb. 10. If it makes it to the ballot and is passed by voters, it would lift the state's minimum wage from the current $6.75 to $7.25 on July 1, 2007, and to $7.75 a year later. The initiative does not include automatic cost-of-living increases known as indexing. The initiative would also codify several rules...

Files 'lost' at bird flu centre By Charles Clover, Environment Editor (Filed: 02/12/2005) Confusion rose over the handling of bird flu in Britain yesterday when the Government said it had overlooked 2,000 birds processed by the quarantine centre where the first cases were found. Margaret Beckett, the Environment Secretary, said "misfiled" records showed that the birds from Tanzania had passed through the centre in July and August - two months before the disease was found. It had been thought previously that no shipments had passed through Pegasus Birds, in Essex, since March. She added in a Commons written statement that...