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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Twenty or 21 women were brought back to the hotel in Colombia by U.S. Secret Service agents and members of the U.S. military in an incident last week involving alleged misconduct with prostitutes, U.S. Senator Susan Collins said on Tuesday. Collins was briefed by the director of the Secret Service, Mark Sullivan, on Monday evening. "There are 11 agents involved. Twenty or 21 women foreign nationals were brought to the hotel, but allegedly Marines were involved with the rest," the Republican senator said in comments emailed to Reuters by her spokesman. (Reporting By Susan Cornwell; Editing by...

While we’re on the subject of the Muslim Brotherhood, this February 16 report from Steve Emerson at the Investigative Project on Terrorism will be an eye-opener. As I mentioned in my column over the weekend, the FBI — following the administration’s lead — is purging its training materials of publications that are deemed offensive to Muslims (you know, crazy stuff like claims that passages in the Koran and Hadith promote violent jihad, Islamic supremacism, killing of apostates, oppression of women, etc.). So what are the criteria the Bureau uses to figure out what materials are offensive? And who decides? You’ll...

ICE Long Beach shootout: As immigration cauldron boils, ICE agents buckle The Long Beach, Calif., shooting that left one Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent dead and another wounded comes as the Obama administration has moved to improve morale among embattled ICE agents. By Patrik Jonsson, Staff writer / February 18, 2012 ATLANTA The internecine shootout that ended with one Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent dead and another critically wounded in Long Beach, Calif., on Thursday comes on the heels of an Obama administration effort to relieve dysfunction and morale problems within a frontline agency tasked with enforcing the nation's border...

Three immigration officers were involved in a shootout at the Long Beach Federal Building Thursday evening, police said. Two officers were pronounced dead at the scene and a third was sent to a nearby hospital, according to aerial communications from Long Beach Police. The third victim, repeatedly referred to as a man, was reportedly shot in the upper body. He is being treated at St. Mary's Medical Center, and his vital signs were positive, said Francine Marlenee, speaking on behalf of the hospital. One of the agents is believed to be the suspected gunman, police said. But the suspect's condition...

Border Patrol agent Brian Terry’s family broke its silence on Wednesday, and is now calling on Attorney General Eric Holder to admit he’s at fault for Operation Fast and Furious. Terry was murdered with Operation Fast and Furious weapons on December 15, 2010 — nearly a year ago — and Holder refused to apologize to his family during his Senate Judiciary Committee appearance on Tuesday. “Mr. Holder needs to own Operation Fast and Furious,” Terry’s family said in a statement. “In the end, Mr. Holder may chose not to apologize to the Terry family for the role that ATF and...

Forty two years ago, Oakland mayor-to-be Jean Quan was a U.C. Berkeley student-activist rallying for a movement dubbed the Third World Liberation Front of 1969. That movement would later give birth to the university's Ethnic Studies Department and influence universities across the country to integrate such a unique discipline. The department studies represent the history and experiences of marginalized people, especially people of color. Quan went on to become many things: union organizer, Oakland Board of Education member, Oakland City Council member, Chabot Space & Science Center board chair. As she tells on her own website jeanquan.org, in the beginning...

(excerpted) Authorities had been collecting marijuana plants on Round Mountain at the end of Rabbit Lane, according to a sheriff's report. "We could hear the rounds pass by and hit," Fontes said. Officers initially thought the shots came from the growers, Fontes said, but later discovered it was Speyrer who lived in a nearby home. According to the report, when officers noticed Spreyer in the area, they approached her and ordered her to get on the ground. Here's what the report states happened next: "Why do I have to get on the ground," the senior asked. "You shot at us,"...

Multiple sources have confirmed the fact that all three individuals arrested – James Stewart, Victoria Bloch and Sharon Palmer – are being charged with ‘conspiracy’ related to the sell of unpasteurized raw milk products. This reportedly includes sections of the California Penal Code Section 182a. Additional charges may also be pending, including a charge of ‘mislabeling cheese’ for Sharon Palmer, was arrested during a raid of Healthy Family Farms. As video of the raid on Rawesome Foods (also raided in 2010) demonstrates, Feds not only seized cash and raw milk supplies (much of which was also dumped out) but also...

ATF field agents working in Mexico broke ranks with their supervisors Tuesday during a rancorous five-hour House committee hearing, saying they were kept in the dark about a controversial undercover operation in which hundreds of guns ended up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent Carlos Canino, the ATF acting attache to Mexico; Darren Gil, former attache; and Jose Wall, senior agent in Tijuana, told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee they had serious concerns about the alarming rate of guns found in violent crimes in Mexico whose source was “Operation...

In the wake of the recent memo from the Obama administration which announced “prosecutorial discretion” in dealing with illegal aliens, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents across the country have been speaking out what many of them are calling a “backdoor amnesty.” On Wednesday, ICE Union president Chris Crane told PRNewswire: “Any American concerned about immigration needs to brace themselves for what's coming. This is just one of many new ICE policies in queue aimed at stopping the enforcement of U.S. immigration laws in the United States. Unable to pass its immigration agenda through legislation, the Administration is now implementing it...

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Wednesday that Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and his fellow agents were not under orders to refrain from using lethal force in the gunbattle that led to Agent Terry’s death in December. Testifying to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Miss Napolitano said agents are allowed to use lethal force “if you are under threat of serious injury or death.” She said she herself has asked if the agents involved in the December shootout with bandits on the border in Arizona had their hands tied by orders, and she said the answer is “absolutely not.

The United States will discuss the idea of US armed agents operating inside Mexico, which is being rocked by deadly drug violence, when President Barack Obama meets his Mexican counterpart Felipe Calderon, a senior US official said Wednesday. Obama welcomes Calderon to the White House on Thursday. "It's a top priority for the US government to ensure that measures are being taken to protect our personnel," the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told journalists in a phone briefing. "That will continue to be a topic of conversation between both governments and will undoubtedly be a topic that gets discussed...

Americans A-OK with TSA? Don’t bet on it December 1, 2010 BY JACOB SULLUM jsullum@reason.com According to the Transportation Security Administration, Americans have no problem with the new airport screening procedures. So they should stop complaining. That self-contradictory reassurance, which would be unnecessary if it were true, seemed slightly more plausible after chaos failed to ensue from protests by Thanksgiving travelers who refused to walk through the TSA’s full-body scanners last week. But there are reasons to question the TSA’s portrait of placid passengers happily baring all for the sake of homeland security. First of all, the TSA’s numbers are...

Amidst all of the criticism of the Transportation Security Administration over its implementation of President Obama's plans for invasive image scanners or pat-down procedures that involve touching airline passengers' private parts an inspector general's report has been released blasting the training procedures for the agents. "At one airport. TSA officials allow TSOs to bypass the use of the Online Learning Center and provided little time for training because of staffing challenges," said the newly released report. "One lead TSO indicated that he had not accssed the Online Learning Center since 2005." The report, dated October 2010 and released just a...

As nearly 2 million holiday travellers pack Bay Area airports starting Friday, local prosecutors have a warning for overzealous security agents performing the new federal pat-down: touch passengers the wrong way, and we’ll throw you in jail. Although authorities in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties said they have not received any criminal complaints since the pat-downs began this month, the searches can involve touching of the genital and breast areas, which critics say is akin to sexual assault. The Transportation Security Administration says the pat-downs are rare and most commonly used when travellers opt not to travel through the...

SAN MATEO COUNTY, Calif. (KGO) -- The San Mateo district attorney's office has a warning for all TSA personnel at SFO -- anyone inappropriately touching a passenger during a security pat down will be prosecuted.

Chapter 1Chapter 2Prepare yourself for a surprise ending. Do that now to avoid confusion later. Around 1990, I met with an industrial engineering professor who had been working for years with artificial intelligence technology. We had a long chat about the possibility of completely automated factories. This was still a decade before frequent online purchasing and customer management systems. But it seemed reasonable to contemplate a future in which everything from initial customer contact, sales, accounting, instructions to the factory floor, robotic manufacturing on demand, packaging, right out to the shipping dock would be fully automated. Even if you've never...

The importance of issue #1. Configuration Files and Processing should not be underestimated. The configuration system is used to attach application components to the generic HLL processing system. It makes sense to create a powerful configuration system that is easy for application developers to use and quite flexible so that it does not impede creative development. And when the project begins building tools to further simplify the development process, they will (in part) simplify the construction of configuration files that, in effect, define HLL applications. A powerful configuration processing system will facilitate powerful but easy to use tools. (For...

Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner was convicted today in a federal court in Boston on charges that he pocketed a $1,000 bribe in his district office in 2007 and later lied about it to federal agents who were interviewing him. A US District Court jury delivered its verdict this afternoon, just a few hours into its first full day of deliberations, finding Turner guilty of attempted extortion and providing false statements to FBI agents.

I will never forget the first time I paid a player. There are moments you will always remember, like your first kiss or your first home run or the day you met your wife. For me, the first time I broke an NCAA rule to try to land a client is just as indelible. It was before the 1990 football season, and I flew from Los Angeles to Denver and drove to the University of Colorado to try to meet with Kanavis McGhee. He was a big, pass-rushing linebacker who was expected to be a high pick in the 1991...