Federal Government

Attorneys wonder if law firm break-in was politically motivated

Attorneys at a Texas law firm are wondering if a recent break-in could have been politically motivated. Hence, the partners of Schulman & Mathias have contacted not only Dallas police about the burglary at their firm but also the FBI, according to a Fox 4 News video and the Raw…

Jul 8, 2013 4:05 PM CDT

Post office photocopies envelopes of all mail sent in the US, says NY Times

It isn’t just when using the Internet and making cellphone calls that Americans should assume what used to be considered private information may be known by corporate and/or government entities. In what started as an effort to combat anthrax threats, the U.S. Postal Service photocopies the envelopes of all mail…

Jul 3, 2013 6:40 PM CDT

Drunken Twitter rants threatening the president can lead to prison time

Threatening the president can lead to a prison sentence of up to five years under a federal law that does not require proof of intent to carry out the deed. That has posed problems for some Twitter users and blog writers who unwisely post threats. The New York Times writes…

Jul 3, 2013 2:12 PM CDT

Snowden blasts US, threatens new leaks; handy map shows his narrowing asylum options

Stranded at a Russian airport with a revoked U.S. passport and no exit visa from Russia, accused American spy Edward Snowden has blasted the Obama administration in a statement released through WikiLeaks, indicates he might make further disclosures and is pondering his narrowing asylum options. Snowden, a former contract worker…

Jul 2, 2013 9:22 PM CDT

As private employers face surge in intern suits, DOJ puts more unpaid lawyers to work

Assistant U.S. attorneys working for the Department of Justice start at salaries of at least $44,581. But in a practice that has been fueled by the federal budget cuts known as the sequester, the DOJ is also using a number of unpaid lawyers to do essentially the same work, Pro…

Jul 1, 2013 5:11 PM CDT

Judicial emergencies worsen as partisanship stalls nominations in the Senate

You are under consideration for a seat on the federal bench. Your family is supportive, even though your income will be much reduced. Your firm partners are anxious to prevent the loss of client relationships and are initiating an immediate succession plan a year or more before the earliest chance…

Jul 1, 2013 9:40 AM CDT

July 7, 1865: Lincoln assassination co-conspirators hanged

In the early morning hours of April 15, even as President Abraham Lincoln lay dying from a gunshot wound to the head, local police in Washington, D.C., arrived at a boardinghouse in the city’s Northwest quadrant in search of John Wilkes Booth. Booth and other Confederate sympathizers had been known…

Jul 1, 2013 6:00 AM CDT

Google asks intelligence court to relax gag orders on secret data requests

Citing its First Amendment rights, Google has asked the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to relax long-standing gag orders restricting what can be said about the information the court requests. In a Tuesday motion (PDF) that seeks a declaratory judgment, the Internet search-engine Goliath says it wants to publish data…

Jun 18, 2013 9:29 PM CDT

Man can challenge constitutionality of state’s ‘rain god’ license plate, 10th Circuit

An Oklahoma man can sue the state over its Indian ‘rain god’ license plate on First Amendment grounds, a federal appeals court has held. Keith Cressman, a Bethany pastor, claims that the license plate violates his religious rights as a Christian. U.S. District Judge Joe Heaton had dismissed the suit…

Jun 14, 2013 8:18 PM CDT

Obama leads by a mile in women judicial picks, study says

President Barack Obama has successfully appointed more women to the federal bench than any president in history, a new study shows. Forty-two percent of Obama’s judicial appointees have been women, according to a study (PDF) by the liberal-leaning Alliance For Justice. That’s a rate almost double that of former President…

Jun 14, 2013 6:15 PM CDT

ACLU sues Obama administration over NSA phone-records ‘dragnet’

In the first step in a process that could eventually lead to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the legality of a sweeping telephone records review revealed last week by a former National Security Agency contractor, the American Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday sued the Obama administration over its “dragnet”…

Jun 11, 2013 9:25 PM CDT

Lawmakers: US has gotten cellphone info for 7 years, ‘lawful’ program prevented terrorist attack

Responding to news reports about a secret federal court order under which the U.S. government apparently collected cellphone records for tens of millions of Verizon customers, federal lawmakers said Thursday that the National Security Agency program has been ongoing for seven years and thwarted at least one terrorist attack. Sen.…

Jun 6, 2013 6:30 PM CDT

Court-martial begins in WikiLeaks case for soldier Bradley Manning

A military trial opened Monday at Fort Meade, Md., for a soldier accused of providing to WikiLeaks a massive trove of classified documents that some consider more momentous than the Pentagon Papers provided to the New York Times nearly 40 years ago concerning the Vietnam War. Pfc. Bradley Manning is…

Jun 3, 2013 7:40 PM CDT

Activist ex-prosecutor ‘indicts’ Obama, Holder, Justice Roberts and others

Claiming that a so-called citizens grand jury has the power to indict and try top U.S. officials, a former federal prosecutor well-known for his conservative activism and views has convened such a panel in Ocala, Fla. It has now “indicted” a number of top members of the Obama administration, including…

May 30, 2013 4:12 PM CDT

FBI distributed child porn for several weeks as a sting after seizing service, court records say

The FBI seized and operated a child-pornography service for about two weeks last year as it worked to identify some 5,000 customers. Court records in one Washington state man’s case and an affidavit by a Washington state-based FBI special agent working on a Nebraska-based investigation say the FBI continued to…

May 29, 2013 3:50 PM CDT