By Andrew Kreig / Project Director

Janny Scott, an award-winning New York Times reporter, took a leave of absence in 2008 to research and write A Singular Woman, the recently published biography of President Obama’s late mother, Stanley Ann Dunham. Based on the author’s nearly 200 interviews and unique access to many personal records held by Dunham-Obama friends and family, the book fills in many gaps of what is popularly known. Dunham died at age 52 after marriage to Barack Obama, Sr., of Kenya and Lolo Soetoro of Indonesia, each of whom she met as fellow students at the University of Hawaii’s East-West Center.

The author, at left, clearly has made vital contributions towards greater understanding of the president’s family. This is a first-of its kind book that doubtless will be much-cited and otherwise of historical importance. But in the end, A Singular Woman is a flawed and highly deferential account that leaves many mysteries remaining. Also, the book illustrates the limitations of biography that is based in significant part on the author’s currying access to the powerful.

By Andrew Kreig / Project Director

In a typical whitewash of misconduct by top officials, Virginia Bar Association issued merely a reprimand to a former Bush Department of Justice executive who lied about whether she used improper political criteria to hire the Department's attorneys. Alabama-based legal commentator Roger Shuler draws these apt lessons from what he calls “the farcical outcome” of the Virginia Bar's investigation of Monica Goodling, the DOJ's former principal deputy director of public affairs:

President Barack Obama might have secured a sense of justice regarding Osama bin Laden, but Americans should be deeply concerned about the administration's efforts to provide cover for Bush-era bad actors. State bar associations, in too many cases, are incapable of policing rogue lawyers -- and the public should have little, if any, confidence in these organizations.

Federal prosecutors this week dropped their embarrassing effort to create new law by executive branch fiat in order to prosecute a New Jersey mayoral candidate and his campaign manager. In a case closely covered by the Justice Integrity Project, authorities missed the deadline to appeal to the full U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals two previous rulings that federal bribery statutes are aimed at officials in office, not candidates.

With great fanfare in July 2009, federal prosecutors indicted Democratic Jersey City mayoral candidate Louis Manzo, his brother Ronald Manzo and several other candidates as part of an anti-corruption investigation launched by former New Jersey U.S. Attorney Chris Christie.

News coverage generated by the 46-defendant case helped propel the Republican Christie to New Jersey's governorship later that year, thereby enabling him to hire at least 10 former colleagues from the U.S. attorney's office for state jobs. See below for links to details on this and other recent news stories involving the justice system and related issues in politics and national security.

By Andrew Kreig / Project Director

Our guest on this week’s Washington Update radio show May 5 was information security expert William Eyre, Ph.D., left, author of The Real ID Act, a first-of-its-kind book describing government surveillance in the United States enabled by post-9/11 legislation. The book warns that federal laws and procedures disguised as anti-terrorism measures have far-reaching, sinister implications for ordinary citizens and for the nation’s democratic process.

The show broadcast live with my longtime co-host Scott Draughon may be heard nationwide by archive by clicking here on the My Technology Lawyer (MTL) radio network, and by archive. The interview began 17 minutes past the hour after host comments about the inside angle on national news. Among the topics were the curious choice as publicist for Republican Presidential candidate and brith certificate advocate Donald Trump, shown at right. As Trump makes news by raising a storm of questions regarding President Obama's birth certificate, his publicist apparently is Ari Emanuel, brother of longtime Democratic strategist Rahm Emanuel, who left his post as President Obama's chief of staff to become mayor of Chicago. See details below.

In a unique treatment of the question of Constitutional rights and rights destroying laws, the featured guest Eyre chronicled what he calls the government’s unconstitutional abridgement of individual rights in times of war and national emergency from 1798 to the present. The author emphasized the perpetual and Orwellian “Global War on Terror,” the war that will never end.  He examined also construction of privacy as a right and what he calls the ultimate in rights destruction: TSA’s molestation and naked picture-taking of citizens.  “The new surveillance system,” the author argued, “erodes personal privacy and creates a threat to privacy and autonomy from criminals, the government and (due to insider abuses of data) criminal members of the government.”

Drastic reform is required following the latest revelations of a breakdown in Alabama's Montgomery-based federal judicial district. Over the weekend, our Justice Integrity Project reported on the latest scandal at the federal courthouse in Alabama, at right. The Frank Johnson courthouse is named for a jurist giant who courageously oversaw the dawn of the Civil Rights era. Sadly, the courthouse is now run by those with scant understanding of public resentment for arrogant, incompetent and self-serving regional federal officials who are empowered by clueless if not sinister officials in Washington from both parties.

To recap, Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller and U.S. Attorney Leura Canary allowed court clerks in Alabama’s middle district to publish for months on the court’s electronic filing system secret records about dozens of law enforcement surveillances. Improper disclosures included details of a major political corruption case that’s rocked the state since a dramatic dawn raid by more than 100 police cruisers on an electronic bingo facility early last year. Later, authorities fanned out across the state again on Oct. 4 to arrest 11 defendants in a bribery plot to legalize the gambling. Suspects included gambling center owners Milton McGregor and Ronnie Gilley, who were accused of plotting to bribe four state senators. “More DOJ Abuses Revealed In Notorious Alabama Court” provides details. Last week, Gilley agreed to a plea deal.

The breach in security occurred in the same courthouse where a financially conflicted Fuller presided as the Bush Justice Department in 2006 framed former Gov. Don Siegelman, the state's leading Democrat, on corruption charges. Our four-part series earlier this month summarized specifics, such as the Republican Fuller’s enrichment via $300 million in Bush federal contracts that went to a closely held company the judge controlled. We described also why those who want an honest legal system in Alabama and elsewhere around the nation should fight President Obama’s nomination of Canary’s proposed successor, George Beck, left, because he is hopelessly conflicted from investigating the district's biggest case of the decade and its many offshoots.

By Andrew Kreig / Project Director

A federal prosecutor and federal trial judge face a new scandal for allowing court clerks in Alabama to disclose confidential records about dozens of sensitive law enforcement surveillance operations. The security breach occurred in the same courthouse where the Bush Justice Department obtained corruption convictions in 2006 against former Gov. Don Siegelman in a now-infamous political prosecution against the state's leading Democrat.

Chief U.S. District Judge Mark E. Fuller is a Republican who conducted the Siegelman trial while secretly being enriched on the side through his closely held company's receipt of Air Force contracts. Currently, he presides as chief judge over record-keeping at the middle district federal courthouse in Montgomery, at right.

U.S. Attorney Leura Canary, left, is in charge of federal criminal and civil litigation in the district. On Thursday, Canary and her DOJ colleagues obtained a guilty plea from Country Crossing developer Ronnie Gilley, a gambling entrepreneur who was indicted last fall with nine-other defendants in an alleged plot to bribe legislators. The plea was welcome news for authorities. A different federal magistrate-judge had harshly criticized them earlier this month for illegally suppressing evidence in the gambling case, which is separate from Siegelman's decade-long prosecution.

But the good news for prosecutors was soon superceded. The Smoking Gun investigative website reported on April 22:

In a shocking failure to protect sensitive details about dozens of ongoing criminal investigations, federal officials somehow allowed confidential information about sealed cases to be publicly accessible via the court system’s online lookup service, The Smoking Gun has learned. Over the past nine months, details of 40 separate sealed court applications filed by federal prosecutors in Alabama were uploaded to PACER, the web-based records system that counts nearly one million users, including defense lawyers, prosecutors, journalists, researchers, private investigators, and government officials.