A Brooklyn attorney, Carrie Goldberg, has asked the U.S. Department of Education and the Department of Justice to open a joint investigation into the New York City Department of Education, alleging an “epidemic” of administrative malpractice when it comes to sex crimes in city schools.
Two weeks ago, Ferguson officials and the U.S. Department of Justice announced that they’d come to an amicable deal over police reform, which would bring law enforcement in the Missouri city more in line with the constitution and avoid a lengthy battle in court. So much for all that: after Ferguson welched on the deal this week, the DOJ announced its plans to sue.
In avoidance of a long and expensive court fight with the U.S. Department of Justice, the city of Ferguson has agreed to a package of federally recommended reforms to the ways in which its police department operates. The agreement comes after the release of a DOJ report last year that laid out the racial unfairness and misconduct of the city’s cops in harsh detail.
Human beings need sleep. Homeless people are human beings. Therefore, homeless people need sleep and shouldn’t be banned from getting it in what is often the only place they can: outdoors. That’s the simple argument the Justice Department is making in a case out of Boise, Idaho, one of the many U.S. cities with inadequate shelter space that have nonetheless attempted to bar unhoused people from sleeping outside.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch just announced a federal civil rights investigation into the Baltimore police department in response to the death of Freddie Gray. A similar investigation by the DOJ into the Ferguson police department uncovered systematic racism and well-documented examples of police brutality.
Two Ferguson police officers have reportedly resigned and a court clerk has been fired for sending or receiving racist emails, according to the St. Louis Dispatch. The dismissals come just two days after the Department of Justice released a damning report exposing the Ferguson Police Department as fundamentally racist.
In the Age of Edward Snowden, few people expect anything but widespread surveillance. Important fact, though: the culprits aren't just the NSA. Often it's just plain old regular federal law enforcement behind the veil. And as a story at the Wall Street Journal yesterday highlighted, courts only lightly get to supervise.
Eric Holder "told me that he will leave office sometime this year," Jeffrey Toobin writes in the latest issue of The New Yorker. Holder, the first African-American attorney general in U.S. history and a favorite punching-bag of conservatives, has long been rumored to be on his way out at the Justice Department.
The website belonging to the United States Sentencing Commission is down this morning, following a hack by Anonymous overnight. The site, which normally bears information about sentencing guidelines for federal crimes, instead showed a nearly 10 minute long YouTube video and the same message typed below it.
Bad news: The federal government has once again made it harder to find the best online shopping spots for all your counterfeit sports jersey and fake Louis Vuitton bag holiday shopping needs. Why? Because they want your family's holiday gift-giving experience to be authentic.
Fans of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and his Mustache of Justice might want to send him some "Good Luck With Your Subpoena" greeting cards: Earlier today Rep. Darrell Issa told Fox News Sunday that he's curious about what Holder knew regarding the Failed Fast and Furious gun trafficking sting, when Holder knew it, and who authorized the sting in the first place.
