Tag Archives: DOJ

national news, political news

Reid to go 'nuclear' on Lynch nomination?

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U.S. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid is a lame-duck Democrat in a body controlled by Republicans.

He’s not going back into private life without a fight. He’s picked a doozy to wage with his GOP colleagues.

Frankly, it’s a fight worth having.

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/harry-reid-says-he-can-force-vote-loretta-lynch-nomination

Reid wants to force the Senate to vote on the nomination of Loretta Lynch to be the nation’s next attorney general. She’s been waiting seemingly since The Flood to get a vote by the full Senate, but Majority Leader Mitch McConnell keeps digging in, resisting the vote for this reason and that reason — none of which has any bearing on Lynch’s qualifications for the job to which she’s been nominated by President Obama.

She is highly qualified. She has deserved a full vote since the Senate Judiciary Committee recommended her appointment.

McConnell, though, is holding her hostage to other legislation.

Reid’s role as minority leader is supposed to put him in a subordinate capacity. However, he said this week that if he gets 51 senators to sign on, he can call for a full Senate vote and circumvent the authority reserved customarily for the majority leader.

He’s going to enrage McConnell if he manages to schedule the vote. A majority of senators already has said they plan to confirm Lynch as AG. The trick, then, is to get a majority to agree simply to a vote.

Lynch would succeed Eric Holder at Justice. Republicans already detest Holder. Every day Lynch is delayed from taking her job is a day that Holder remains at his post. Why in the world, if you’re a Senate Republican, do you want to keep someone on the job that you cannot stand?

Senate protocol and decorum are supposed to inviolable. A lot of it has been tossed aside in recent years as the parties have fought tooth-and-nail with each other. Democrats changed the filibuster rules in the previous Congress. And just recently, a group of Republicans sent a letter to the Iranian mullahs telling them the nuclear deal worked out could be tossed aside when the next president takes office in January 2017.

Decorum? Protocol? It’s gone, mostly.

Harry Reid’s set to play some hardball. If it gets Loretta Lynch confirmed as the next attorney general, well, let him throw the first pitch.

 

legal news, national news

'Don't hire prostitutes'

It’s come down to this.

The attorney general of the United States of America has issued a memo to staff lawyers and law enforcement officials under the Department of Justice authority urging them against hiring hookers.

How bizarre is that?

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/eric-holder-prostitution-memo-116865.html?hp=c3_3

The memo comes from outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder after a report found widespread sexual abuse among several agencies within the DOJ purview. As Politico reported: “Holder wrote that, despite prostitution being legal in parts of Nevada and abroad, department employees are expected to refrain, ‘not simply because it invites extortion, blackmail, and leaks of sensitive or classified information, but also because it undermines the Department’s efforts to eradicate the scourge of human trafficking.’”

As if the department’s legal eagles and investigators didn’t know all that?

I’m not sure if this isn’t somehow Holder’s swan song memo to employees. Whatever it is, doesn’t seem to be understood that the individuals who work for the Department of Justice should know better than to hire hookers to give them, um, pleasure?

We’ve seen report of agents consorting with “businesswomen” in Colombia, of them fooling around while serving on advance teams sent in ahead of the president.

Maybe it’s just me, but I expect better from the individuals hired to do dangerous, sensitive and life-threatening work.

As for the DOJ effort to “eradicate the scourge of human trafficking,” it’s clear that the agency cannot be credible in that effort if its team is engaged in the very behavior that promotes such tragic endeavors.

national news

Menendez indictment seems oddly 'normal'

My proverbial trick knee is throbbing again.

It’s sending me a grim message that the federal indictment of Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey on corruption charges signals a hunt for others who are might be involved in the same kind of cozy relationships alleged in the 68-page indictment against the Democratic lawmaker.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/robert-menendez-indicted-116581.html?hp=r1_3

You hear about these kinds of things occasionally involving senators and House members. They do favors for pals, develop relationships that raise a lot of questions — not to mention eyebrows.

Is Menendez alone in this? That trick knee of mine tells me “No. Not by a long shot.”

Menendez is the leading Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He’s stepping down from his leadership positions in the Senate until this matter gets resolved.

Also indicted is Dr. Solomon Melgen, a Florida ophthalmologist and longtime friend of Menendez. The indictment goes into great deal about the emails exchanged over several years between the men, suggesting alleged criminal activity, deal-making and favors.

It’s pretty salacious stuff.

I’m wondering this morning if all this will lead investigators down a lot of other paths, toward the doorsteps of other members of Congress.