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.”