Would you be outraged if the Department of Justice shut down The Foundry without any warning and blocked access for more than a year? That’s exactly what happened to a hip-hop blog called Dajaz1.com, which was falsely accused of criminal copyright infringement. The blog posted music from artists promoting their work. But federal authorities viewed it differently. They seized the domain name, then shared virtually no information with its owner for more than year. Only recently did they quietly drop the case. The government’s handling of this hip-hop blog is …
A career employee in the Voting Section of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has confessed to committing perjury, sources say. The employee, Stephanie Celandine Gyamfi, reportedly told investigators from the Inspector General’s Office that she perjured herself during an inquiry into Justice Department leaks during the previous administration. Despite the admission, she has not been fired for criminal malfeasance. Indeed, it appears she has not been disciplined in any meaningful way at all. The genesis of Ms. Gyamfi’s perjury is apparently rooted in political attacks on the Bush Justice Department. Throughout …
Silicon Valley is one of the few bright spots in the U.S. economy today, but a new report warns that Washington’s outdated regulation and antitrust policy threatens to stifle growth among innovative technology companies. The report, produced by the Progressive Policy Institute, analyzes the impact of acquisitions in the technology sector. It concludes that acquisitions lead to economic growth and job creation. There’s just one problem: Washington bureaucracy. The federal government’s process of approving acquisitions — a problem well-documented by Heritage’s James Gattuso — can slow down innovation, hamper growth …
The Department of Justice (DOJ) filed an appeal today with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals of a federal district court’s decision refusing to issue an injunction against major portions of Alabama’s new immigration law. On September 28, Judge Sharon Blackburn upheld most of Alabama’s law, including a requirement that police officers check the immigration status of individuals stopped, detained, or arrested when they have a reasonable suspicion that the individual is unlawfully present in the United States. The inherent right of state and local police officers to make immigration …
A conservative congressman today called on Attorney General Eric Holder to resign after new revelations surfaced about his knowledge of the botched Fast and Furious gun-running operation. Beginning in July 2010, Holder received at least five memos about the flawed operation, but told Congress this May he had just learned of Fast and Furious weeks earlier. “As our nation’s top enforcer of the principles of law and justice, Mr. Holder has lost all credibility and should step down immediately,” Rep. Raúl Labrador said in a statement this afternoon. Holder testified …
The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) stole a march on the Obama Administration this morning by filing a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court appealing the 11th Circuit’s Obamacare decision. The Department of Justice (DOJ) had announced on Monday that it was not going to ask all 11 judges of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to review en banc the August 12 decision of a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit that found the individual mandate unconstitutional. This opened up a path to an appeal by DOJ to …
Earlier this week at Heritage, a Bush-era deputy assistant attorney general shared the stage with a former president of the American Civil Liberties Union. It’s not exactly the type of combination you might expect talking about terrorism 10 years after 9/11. But for John Yoo and Nadine Strossen, it was an opportunity to discuss the future of national security. Yoo is the co-editor of a new book with Dean Reuter that features essays from 22 contributors spanning the ideological spectrum. The compilation, “Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American …
Officials from the U.S. federal government have admitted to arresting, then releasing mere hours later, a man who admitted to manufacturing hundreds of improvised explosive devices for a Mexican drug cartel, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. The man was arrested last week in Mexico, where authorities reportedly seized materials that could be used to manufacture 500 grenades. The U.S. Attorney’s office in Phoenix, AZ, declined to charge Jean Baptiste Kingrey, the Wall Street Journal reported, despite the strenuous objections of at least one agent from the …
At a time when the White House and Congress debate solutions for the country’s mounting debt, the Department of Justice is preparing to dole out millions for a taxpayer-subsidized program that puts violent criminals, like Chandra Levy’s killer, on the streets of American cities. States and localities have until mid-July to seek federal funding as part of the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program. The Department of Justice is expected to award an estimated $3.5 million this year. The program was created in the 1960s to assist state and …
Roger Clegg and I recently reported on the lawsuit filed in the first week of April on behalf of residents of Kinston, N.C., contesting the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Section 5 is the supposedly temporary “emergency” measure first passed in 1965 that requires states like Alabama to submit any voting changes, no matter how minor, to the Justice Department or a three-judge panel in the District of Columbia for approval before they can take effect. A second lawsuit was filed yesterday by Shelby County, Alabama …
