Free Republic

Mika Brzezinski is appalled to learn that the Bush Justice Department had a hiring preference for politically simpatico people. Meanwhile, Joe Scarborough says his MSNBC staff is Republican-free. Oh, and Mika apparently believes Joe mischaracterizes her as a liberal. The jumping off point on today's Morning Joe was Mika's reading of a news item on an article in today's New York Times about an internal Justice Department report concluding that "senior aides to former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales broke Civil Service laws by using politics to guide their hiring decisions." Scarborough saw this as SOP in Washington, which in...

Internal investigation concludes that former attorney general aides Monica Goodling and Kyle Sampson broke department policies and federal civil-service laws. Former White House liaison, Monica Goodling, was singled out for violating federal law and Justice Department policy by discriminating against job applicants who weren't Republican or conservative loyalistsWASHINGTON -- Top aides to former Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales employed a political and ideological litmus test to weed out candidates for career and other positions at the Justice Department, an internal department report concluded Monday. The audit by the department's Office of Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility concluded that...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Justice Department approved Sirius Satellite Radio's $5 billion buyout of rival XM Satellite Radio on Monday, saying the deal was unlikely to hurt competition or consumers. The deal was approved despite opposition from consumer groups and an intense lobbying campaign by the land-based radio industry. The buyout received shareholder approval in November. The companies said the merger will save hundreds of millions of dollars in operating costs—savings that will ultimately benefit their customers. The Justice Department, in a lengthy news release explaining its decision, said the two companies compete not just with each other but also...

Earlier this year I published a post (What Is Bush Thinking? Ask Fred on 2nd Amend. Rights) that revealed that the Justice Department of the Bush Administration had applied a “friend of the court” request to the Washington, DC gun control case that had been taken up by the Supreme Court. For years, DC had banned gun ownership (leading to its position as the murder capitol of the USA), but a federal appeals court finally threw out the ban. The case was appealed by DC to the Supreme Court, and gun owners have been hoping and expecting that our 2nd...

When their forensic test proved to be flawed, the FBI and the Justice Department fell short. THE POST'S John Solomon and "60 Minutes" teamed up this week to report that hundreds of defendants have been convicted with the help of a forensics test considered so shoddy that the FBI stopped using it more than two years ago. Yet, shockingly and inexcusably, the agency failed to unequivocally alert defense lawyers and judges about the serious problems with this test. The Post-"60 Minutes" investigation centered on comparative analysis of lead in bullets, a technique first used after the assassination of President John...

United States Marine Colonel James E. Sabow was murdered sometime between 0835 and 0900 on January 22, 1991. The murder occurred in the backyard of his home on the El Toro MCAS during the height of Desert Storm. Security on the base was much tighter than usual, yet, somehow the assailant or assailants managed to carry out the homicide. The Department of Defense (DoD), despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, has maintained that Colonel Sabow committed suicide. Colonel Sabow flew more than 200 missions in Vietnam. He had a reputation of being a no-nonsense, by the book officer. One would...

This is something I wish my dad lived to see. Today, our friend, former Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Convertino, was acquitted on all charges--Trumped Up Charges!--contained in a politically-motivated, baseless, and terrorist-pandering federal indictment against him. Readers of this site know I've been writing about Rick and his fight against Islamic terrorism (and the Justice Department that loves Islamofascism) since 2003, when I first wrote of his situation in a New York Post column. And I've been writing about the Federal attempt to mob-lynch him. In yet another deserved defeat for the "Justice" Department and FOUR(!) years of wasted time...

Despite being warned months ago that a shady Chinese fundraiser ran an illegal enterprise, Hillary Clinton gladly accepted his hefty donations and now federal authorities have launched an investigation into his businesses. The New York senator disregarded valuable information about Norman Hsu’s questionable business dealings and proudly crowned him a “HillRaiser” because he pledged to raise at least $100,000 for her 2008 presidential campaign. Hsu has raised $1.2 million for Clinton and other Democrats and his decades-long legal problems evidently don’t bother the recipients of the cash. So what if Hsu is a fugitive wanted on a 15-year-old warrant for...

Republican lawmakers are urging the Justice Department not to participate in a convention held by the Islamic Society of North America — a group named as an unindicted co-conspirator in an ongoing terrorism-financing case. In a letter to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, Reps. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and Sue Myrick of North Carolina called the Justice Department's involvement a "grave mistake." "In light of the threat that our nation ... is currently facing from radical jihadists, and because of the president's commitment to fighting the war on terror on...

MANASSAS, Va., Aug. 27 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The following is an open letter to President Bush from Richard A. Viguerie, author of Conservatives Betrayed (Bonus Books, 2006), suggesting 10 persons for consideration as replacements for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales: Dear Mr. President: I know you and I have had our differences in the past, but the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales gives you a great opportunity to energize the Republican Party, the conservative movement, and your approval ratings all at the same time. As I explained in a news release, the Democrats will not be appeased by the nomination of...

Topic for discussion: Would the Bush appointment of Utah Senator Orin Hatch to replace Attorney General Gonzales, help or hurt Mitt Romney's visibility in the Presidential Election? Hatch is listed as a possible candidate for the job. Bush already has a Mormon in his cabinet, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt. Hary Reid is also a highly visible LDS political figure. Is the Mormon issue only important in the Presidential race? ________________________________________________________________________ Portfolio.com thinks Hatch would not want the job, they may be right. "If Orin Hatch was willing to give up his Utah Senate Seat for a year...

A veteran California senator recently forced to resign as chair of a powerful military committee for abusing the position to enrich herself has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. At a pep rally in Washington this week, longtime Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein enthusiastically announced that her good friend Hillary would shatter a great barrier to become the nation's first female president. A former San Francisco mayor, Feinstein was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1992 and she is one of California's most powerful and popular politicians as well as one of the wealthiest members of Congress with a net worth of...

The Bush administration's vow this week to block contempt charges from Congress could prove to be a successful strategy for protecting White House documents about the multiple firings of U.S. attorneys, Democratic legal scholars and legislative aides said yesterday. This week, Bush administration officials disclosed that they will never allow a U.S. attorney to pursue contempt charges on behalf of Congress, noting that the Justice Department cannot be required to act against a decision by the president. But administration officials and other legal scholars, including some Democrats, noted that Justice Department lawyers in the Clinton administration made a similar argument...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Internet search leader Google Inc. is trying to convince federal and state authorities that Microsoft Corp.'s Vista operating system is stifling competition as the high-tech heavyweights wrestle for the allegiance of personal computer users.

A group of Democratic senators plans to introduce legislation reversing a new law allowing U.S. attorneys to live outside the districts they are appointed to serve. Sens. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), Charles Schumer (N.Y.), Max Baucus (Mont.) and Jon Tester (Mont.) plan to drop a bill Monday that will undo a provision inserted into last year’s Patriot Act reauthorization. That language, included at the Department of Justice’s request, allows U.S. attorneys to live outside their districts if the attorney general gives them dual or additional responsibilities. The senators’ planned bill would require that U.S. attorneys reside in the district they are...

If anyone watched the Fox News report titled, "Socks, Papers, Scissors" hosted by David Asman, the conclusion was that the Justice Department was aware that Berger stole and destroyed some of the most sensitive documents in the National Archives - and yet failed to notify the 911 Commission priof to Berger testifying. Berger was sworn in under oath - and gave his testimony to the commission who was unaware of what he did? It wasn't until much later that they were told - after the report was printed and distributed. A commission member said he was shocked to hear that...

Congressional Democrats are in full cry over the news this week that the Administration's decision to fire eight U.S. Attorneys originated from--gasp--the White House. Senator Hillary Clinton joined the fun yesterday, blaming President Bush for "the politicization of our prosecutorial system." Oh, my. As it happens, Mrs. Clinton is just the Senator to walk point on this issue of dismissing U.S. attorneys because she has direct personal experience. As everyone once knew but has tried to forget, Mr. Hubbell was a former partner of Mrs. Clinton at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock who later went to jail for...

The Justice Department’s inspector general has prepared a scathing report criticizing how the F.B.I. uses a form of administrative subpoena to obtain thousands of telephone, business and financial records without prior judicial approval. The report, expected to be issued on Friday, says that the bureau lacks sufficient controls to make sure the subpoenas, which do not require a judge’s prior approval, are properly issued and that it does not follow even some of the rules it does have. Under the USA Patriot Act, the bureau each year has issued more than 20,000 of the national security letters, as the demands...

The Justice Department is completing rules to allow the collection of DNA from most people arrested or detained by federal authorities, a vast expansion of DNA gathering that will include hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, by far the largest group affected. The new forensic DNA sampling was authorized by Congress in a little-noticed amendment to a January 2006 renewal of the Violence Against Women Act, which provides protections and assistance for victims of sexual crimes. The amendment permits DNA collecting from anyone under criminal arrest by federal authorities, and also from illegal immigrants detained by federal agents. Over the...

WASHINGTON - Bush administration officials are scrambling to demonstrate that they're addressing sharp jumps in violent crime in some cities, in an attempt to reclaim a traditionally Republican issue amid criticism from some Democrats, mayors and police chiefs. Senior Justice Department officials sought Tuesday to highlight the administration's multipronged programs for combating growing gang violence and outbreaks of juvenile crime. The renewed emphasis comes as some experts, as well as politicians, cite federal cuts in city and state law enforcement funding as a possible contributor to spikes in murders, robberies and assaults in medium-sized cities. While criminal justice experts stress...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- A federal court in Chicago has allowed the Justice Department's antitrust lawsuit against the National Association of Realtors to proceed, the department said Tuesday. The court rejected the association's argument that last-minute changes to its policies prevented judicial scrutiny, the department said. In denying the association's motion to dismiss the case, the court said that "NAR has failed ... to demonstrate that this case should be dismissed at the outset," according to the Justice Department. In September 2005 the department's antitrust division filed a lawsuit charging that NAR rules limit competition from real-estate brokers who use the...

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.