News release: "The Federal Trade Commission today announced a law enforcement crackdown on scammers trying to take advantage of the economic downturn to bilk vulnerable consumers through a variety of schemes, such as promising non-existent jobs; promoting overhyped get-rich-quick plans, bogus government grants, and phony debt-reduction services; or putting unauthorized charges on consumers’ credit or debit cards. Dubbed “Operation Short Change,” the law enforcement sweep announced today includes 15 FTC cases, 44 law enforcement actions by the Department of Justice, and actions by at least 13 states and the District of Columbia."

News release: "Widespread racial profiling by law enforcement agents as a result of Bush-era policies remains a pervasive problem throughout the United States, according to a report out today by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Rights Working Group (RWG). Government policies are a major cause of the disproportionate stopping and searching of racial minorities by law enforcement agencies, according to the report, which was submitted today to the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD)."

• The ACLU and RWG's report to CERD
  
• The Bush administration's final submission to CERD

Best Practices for Government Libraries - 2009 - Change: Managing It, Surviving It, and Thriving On It - "The 2009 edition includes 60 articles and other submissions provided by more than 50 contributors from librarians in government agencies, courts, and the military, as well as from professional association leaders, LexisNexis Consultants, and more." Compiled by Marie Kaddell, LexisNexis.

New York Times: "Google handles roughly two-thirds of all Internet searches. It owns the largest online video site, YouTube, which is more than 10 times more popular than its nearest competitor. And last year, Google sold nearly $22 billion in advertising, more than any media company in the world."

A Guide to the Preservation of Federal Judge' Papers, Second Edition
Federal Judicial History Office, 2009, 89 pages (Forthcoming)

An Update on the Credit Crisis Litigation: A Turn Towards Structured Products and Asset Management Firms, June 15, 2009: "In this NERA paper, co-author Vice President Dr. Faten Sabry provides an update on credit crisis-related securities litigation. The paper highlight emerging trends in a number of areas, including filings, percentage of cases involving directors and officers, types of defendants and plaintiffs, and recent decisions with emphasis on cases involving complex financial products such as CDOs and CDS."

News release: "[On June 23, 2009] The Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, one of 12 Presidential libraries administered by the National Archives and Records Administration, will be opening approximately 154 hours of Nixon White House tape recordings and approximately 30,000 pages of textual materials from the Nixon Presidency."

Criminal Justice Surveys and Public Opinion Polls: Ken Strutin's article examines key sources for surveys and public polling concerning the criminal justice system. In addition to overview studies about the application of surveys to criminal justice, the selected topics include: crime, criminal histories, death penalty, public defense, sentencing, sex offenses, treatment, and reentry.

News release: "The CIA informed the American Civil Liberties Union that it would delay by one week its release of a reprocessed version of the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) report on the CIA's interrogation and detention program [The heavily redacted version of the report released last year is available here.] The CIA turned over a heavily redacted version of the report in May 2008 as part of an ACLU Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, but on May 28, 2009, informed the court that it would review the same report with a view toward disclosing more information.In a letter to the ACLU, the government said it "will need additional time to make a final determination as to what additional information, if any, may be disclosed from the report."

Marketing Yourself with Webinars - Attorney Wells H. Anderson recommends presenting periodic webinars as an effective, direct and efficient technique to attract new clients and professionals who refer business to you.

Federal Trade Commission, 16 C.F.R. Part 255 Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising..."In order to limit its potential liability, the advertiser should ensure that the advertising service provides guidance and training to its bloggers concerning the need to ensure that statements they make are truthful and substantiated. The advertiser should also monitor bloggers who are being paid to promote its products and take steps necessary to halt the continued publication of deceptive representations when they are discovered..."

TIME: "In a complex settlement agreement, which took three years to hammer out and spans 135 pages excluding attachments, Google will be allowed to show up to 20% of the books' text online at no charge to Web surfers. But the part of the settlement that deals with so-called orphan books — which refers to out-of-print books whose authors and publishers are unknown — is what's ruffling the most feathers in the literary henhouse. The deal gives Google an exclusive license to publish and profit from these orphans, which means it won't face legal action if an author or owner comes forward later. This, critics contend, gives it a competitive edge over any rival that wants to set up a competing digital library. And without competition, opponents fear Google will start charging exorbitant fees to academic libraries and others who want full access to its digital library. "It will make Google virtually invulnerable to competition," says Robert Darnton, head of the Harvard University library system."

Secrecy News: "The rise of “the wall” between intelligence and law enforcement personnel that impeded the sharing of information within the U.S. government prior to September 11, 2001 was critically examined in a detailed monograph (pdf) that was prepared in 2004 for the 9/11 Commission. It is the only one of four staff monographs that had not previously been released. It was finally declassified and disclosed earlier this month. In April 2004, Attorney General John Ashcroft testified (pdf) that the failure to properly share threat information in the summer of 2001 could be attributed to Justice Department policy memoranda that were issued in 1995 by the Clinton Administration. That is an erroneous oversimplification, the staff monograph contends: “A review of the facts… demonstrates that the Attorney General’s testimony did not fairly and accurately reflect” the meaning or relevance of those 1995 policy documents. For one thing, those policies did not even apply to CIA and NSA information, which could have been shared with law enforcement without any procedural obstacles."

New on LLRX.com - FOIA Facts: The Detainee Photo Issue - Is it What it Seems? - Scott A. Hodes comments on the Obama administrations' decision to continue to fight the release of detainee photos.

New on LLRX.com: Bridging the DiGital Divide: Custom Search Engines Put You in Control - Law librarian, legal research expert and blogger John J. DiGilio's new column focuses on technology trends that leverage the web to achieve more efficient and effective results. Here John recommends using customized search engines to manage the sites you search.

News release: "United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) policy permits officials to search the laptops and other electronic devices of travelers without suspicion of wrongdoing, according to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed today by the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU filed the FOIA request with CBP, a component of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), to learn how CBP's suspicionless search policy, first made public in July 2008, is impacting the constitutional rights of international travelers."

"The entire 2006 edition of the United States Code is now available from the U.S. Government Printing Office. The 2006 edition contains the laws enacted through the 109th Congress (ending January 3, 2007, the last law of which was signed January 15, 2007). In addition, PDF files have been made available for the U.S. Code, 2006 edition only. The U.S. Code is the codification by subject matter of the general and permanent laws of the United States, based on what is printed in the Statutes at Large. It is divided by broad subjects into 50 titles and published by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the U.S. House of Representatives. The online version of the United States Code, 2006 Edition is available through GPO Access."

The Decline and Fall of the Dominant Paradigm: Trustworthiness of Case Reports in the Digital Age, by William R. Mills, New York Law School Law Review, volume 53, 2008/2009.

U.S. Courts: "Bankruptcy filings for the 12-month period ending March 31, 2009, were up 33.3 percent over bankruptcy filings for the 12-month period ending March 31, 2008, according to statistics released today by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. March 2009 bankruptcy filings totaled 1,202,503, compared to the total 901,927 bankruptcy cases filed in the 12-month period ending March 31, 2008. The largest percentage increase occurred in Chapter 11 filings, a 69.1 percent increase over March 2008 Chapter 11 filings."

"The American Civil Liberties Union today released a report summarizing the civil liberties and civil rights record of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who was nominated by President Obama to replace retiring Justice David Souter as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. The report was prepared in accordance with ACLU policy, and will be made available to the public and members of the Senate. The ACLU does not endorse or oppose candidates for elective or appointive office."

"In cases where the DEA is the lead investigative agency, there are significant geographic variations in the rates at which individuals convicted of criminal offenses get sent to prison. According to Justice Department data obtained and analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse and just published on TRAC's DEA website, in the Northern District of West Virgina (Wheeling) 65.6% of convictions in such cases resulted in prison terms in 2008. In New York West (Buffalo) the rate was 71.1%. On the other hand, in nine districts fully 100% of all convictions in such cases resulted in prison terms. These were: Alabama Middle (Montgomery), Illinois South (East St. Louis), Illinois Central (Springfield), Michigan West (Grand Rapids), Nebraska (Omaha), North Dakota (Fargo), Oklahoma East (Muskogee), Rhode Island (Providence) and Wisconsin West (Madison). Nationally, the rate was 94.6%...For district-by-district DEA enforcement information go here and click on "District Enforcement." There you'll find data on DEA referrals, charges, convictions, prison sentences and much more, for specific districts and the U.S. as a whole."

Timothy L. Coggins, Legal, Factual and Other Internet Sites for
Attorneys and Legal Professionals, XV RICH. J.L. & TECH. 13 (2009).

Follow up to previous postings on GM bankruptcy and auto industry, this press release: "Penske Automotive Group, Inc., an international automotive retailer, announced today that is has signed a Memorandum of Understanding ("MOU") with General Motors regarding the Saturn brand. Under the terms of the MOU, if the transaction is completed, Penske Automotive Group would obtain the rights to the Saturn brand, acquire certain assets including the Saturn parts inventory, and have the right to distribute vehicles and parts through the Saturn Dealership network. General Motors would continue to provide Saturn Aura, Vue and Outlook vehicles, on a contract basis, for an interim period."

• May 04, 2009 - How Would Medicare Part B Premiums Be Affected If There Is No Social Security COLA?
• April 30, 2009 - The 2009 H1N1 \"Swine Flu\" Outbreak: An Overview - See also related postings.
• April 29, 2009 - U.S. Foreign Aid to the Palestinians
• April 27, 2009 - Federal Tort Claims Act
• April 27, 2009 - The 2010 Decennial Census: Background and Issues
• Major U.S. Arms Sales and Grants to Pakistan Since 2001 (fact sheet), updated June 3, 2009.
• Political Turmoil in Thailand and U.S. Interests, May 26, 2009.
• Defense: FY2010 Authorization and Appropriations, May 8, 2009.
• Medical Marijuana: Review and Analysis of Federal and State Policies, March 31, 2009

Follow up to previous postings on GM bankruptcy: "The United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York is pleased to announce a pilot project to make digital audio recordings of court proceedings relating to Chrysler LLC, 09-50002, and General Motors Corporation, 09-50026, publicly available online. The audio files are accessible through the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system. Registration for PACER access may be obtained at www.pacer.psc.uscourts.gov"

Federal Justice Statistics, 2006 - Statistical Tables, 5/09: "Describes criminal case processing in the federal justice system, including arrest and booking through sentencing and corrections. These statistical tables present the number of suspects arrested and booked by the U.S. Marshals Service, suspects in matters investigated and prosecuted by U.S. attorneys, defendants adjudicated and sentenced in U.S. district court, and characteristics of federal prisoners and offenders under federal supervision."

News release: "According to the FBI's Preliminary Annual Uniform Crime Report released June 1, 2009, the nation experienced a 2.5 percent decrease in the number of violent crimes and a 1.6 percent decline in the number of property crimes for 2008 compared with data from 2007. The report is based on information that the FBI gathered from 12,750 law enforcement agencies that submitted six to 12 comparable months of data to the FBI for both 2007 and 2008."

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Office of Inspector General’s (OIG) Semiannual Report to Congress for the period from October 1, 2008 through March 31, 2009.

News release: "The eRulemaking Program, a federal-wide E-Government project led by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, has launched Regulations.gov Exchange. Regulations.gov is the one-stop, online source for citizens to search, view and comment on regulations issued by the U.S. government. In the past, the paper process limited the public’s ability to find rules and comment. Today, the public can explore new features for Regulations.gov, post opinions, engage directly with other users and with eRulemaking program staff. Regulations.gov Exchange will be open for public participation from May 21 – July 21, 2009."

News release: "In an effort to better protect financially distressed homeowners, the Federal Trade Commission has initiated a rulemaking proceeding involving foreclosure rescue and loan modification services. The FTC is seeking public comment to determine whether certain practices by companies providing these services are unfair or deceptive and should be reined in by proposed rules that would set standards to protect consumers."

• Mortgage Acts and Practices: Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and Request for Public Comment (R911004): Text of the Federal Register Notice
  
• Mortgage Assistance Relief Services: Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and Request for Public Comment (R911003): Text of the Federal Register Notice
  
• Related postings on financial system

"After several months of declines since reaching all-time highs in September, new immigration prosecutions in February were up 22% from the previous month. According to timely case-by-case data obtained and analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), these 8,179 cases represent an increase of about 90% from a year ago, and 250% from February 2004. While immigration cases still account for more than half (53%) of all new federal prosecutions, new filings rose in nearly every other category as well, including drugs (up 49%), weapons (up 19%), white collar crime (up 24%) and government regulation (up 42%). Overall, new criminal cases are at the second-highest level recorded, up 27% from January and up 39% from a year ago."

Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board (ISPAB), Toward A 21st Century Framework for Federal Government Privacy Policy, May 2009

Law Library of Congress: Supreme Court Nominations - Sonia Sotomayor

Navigating the Enterprise 2.0 Highway: Heather Colman provides an overview of Hicks Morley's implementation of ThoughtFarmer, an Enterprise 2.0/wiki style intranet platform, one year ago. Despite a few growing pains, she describes how the application was successful at meeting the primary objectives to decentralize content updates and increase knowledge sharing and collaboration within the firm.

American Lawyer: "Mortgage-related lawsuits are on the rise, with homeowners and investors alike suing over allegedly being duped by the mortgage industry. According to a litigation report from MortgageDaily.com, an online mortgage news analyst, the number of mortgage-related lawsuits filed in the first quarter of this year jumped to 81, a more than 50 percent increase from the 50 cases tracked during the same quarter in 2008."

Anatomy of a Patent Case, George F. Pappas, 2009, 154 pages

Inquiring Minds Want to Know: Do Justices Tip Their Hands with Questions at Oral Argument in the U.S. Supreme Court? Timothy R. Johnson, University of Minnesota; Ryan C. Black, Washington University, St. Louis - Department of Political Science; Washington University, St. Louis - Center for Empirical Research in the Law; Jerry Goldman; Sarah Treul - Washington University Journal of Law & Policy, Vol. 29, 2009

9 Sites That Find People and Their 'Sensitive' Information: "Here are the best sites for locating people, as well as the best sites (like Glassdoor and Criminal Searches) for finding sensitive (but public) information about them," Mark Sullivan, PC World

In interview, retired justice says a woman should be the choice, Tony Mauro, The National Law Journal

United States v. the Council for Tobacco Research-USA, et al. Appellate Ruling, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, May 22, 2009

Follow up to previous articles on Google Book Search: "The University of Michigan today announced that it has expanded its historic agreement with Google Inc. to create digital copies of millions of U-M library books and journals. The amended agreement, which strengthens library preservation efforts and increases the public's access to books, is possible because of Google's pending settlement with a broad class of authors and publishers. The U-M library is the first in the nation to expand its partnership with Google."

News release: "The Office of Information Policy is planning to publish the 2009 edition of the Department of Justice Guide to the Freedom of Information Act through the Government Printing Office (GPO) in June. The 2009 Guide will contain detailed discussions of the FOIA’s exemptions, as well as its procedural requirements, and FOIA litigation considerations. The 2009 Guide will also discuss proactive disclosures, FOIA fees and fee waivers, exclusions, discretionary disclosures and waiver, FOIA attorney fees, and reverse FOIA cases...The Office of Information Policy will send one courtesy copy of the Guide to the Chief FOIA Officer and principal FOIA contact at each agency."

News release: "The American Civil Liberties Union and the Public Patent Foundation, a not-for-profit organization affiliated with Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law (PUBPAT), filed a lawsuit today charging that patents on two human genes associated with breast and ovarian cancer stifle research that could lead to cures and limit women's options regarding their medical care. Mutations along the genes, known as BRCA1 and BRCA2, are responsible for most cases of hereditary breast and ovarian cancers. The lawsuit argues that the patents on these genes are unconstitutional and invalid. ">News release: "The American Civil Liberties Union and the Public Patent Foundation, a not-for-profit organization affiliated with Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law (PUBPAT), filed a lawsuit today charging that patents on two human genes associated with breast and ovarian cancer stifle research that could lead to cures and limit women's options regarding their medical care. Mutations along the genes, known as BRCA1 and BRCA2, are responsible for most cases of hereditary breast and ovarian cancers. The lawsuit argues that the patents on these genes are unconstitutional and invalid."

Criminal Justice Reform Resources 2008-2009: Ken Strutin's guide focuses on select current reports, surveys, legislative proposals and scholarship regarding criminal justice reform. It is only a small sampling of the increasing volume of publications on vital matters of interest to criminal practitioners and the public. Therefore, only a few themes are covered: criminal justice, discovery, forensics, juvenile justice, prosecutorial misconduct, public defense, sentencing and wrongful conviction.

"The United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York is pleased to announce a pilot project to make digital audio recordings of court proceedings relating to Chrysler LLC, 09-50002, publicly available online. The audio files are accessible through the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system. Registration for PACER access may be obtained at www.pacer.psc.uscourts.gov."

• All documents in the Chrysler bankruptcy case should be filed and viewed on http://ecf.nysb-mega.uscourts.gov/.
  
• The lead case is: In re Chrysler LLC, 09-50002; parties filing documents (e.g., notices of appearance) should do so in the lead case only.
  
• Additional case and claims filing information can be found on the Chrysler page
  
• Related postings on Chrysler
Permanent Link

News release: "Citizens for Responsibility of Ethics in Washington (CREW), along with 36 other organizations, has sent a letter to the White House urging that the White House's Office of Administration (OA) once again become an agency subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), as had been the case in previous administrations."

Progressive Librarians Guild Calls for Elsevier to End Corrupt Publishing Practices and for Library Associations to Take Advocacy Role on Behalf of Scientific Integrity

News release: "The Federal Trade Commission is asking a federal court to shut down a telemarketing campaign that has been bombarding U.S. consumers with hundreds of millions of allegedly deceptive “robocalls” in an effort to sell them vehicle service contracts under the guise that they are extensions of original vehicle warranties. In two related complaints filed in federal court, the Commission took action against both the promoter of the phony extended auto warranties, as well as the telemarketing company that it hired to carry out its illegal, deceptive campaign."

Unified Agenda, May 2009 Edition: "The Unified Agenda summarizes the rules and proposed rules that each Federal agency expects to issue during the next six months."

Can Collaboration Solve Copyright Status Questions? The WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry - As Roger V. Skalbeck documents, one of the underlying obstacles to reproducing older books is a central place to look for information about what is protected by copyright and what may have passed into the public domain is lacking. Responding to this need, OCLC recently introduced a beta service, the WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry (CER). It could be a very valuable resource for recording and sharing copyright status information."

News release: "The Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division today announced the details of its newly formed initiative aimed at preparing government officials and contractors to recognize and report efforts by parties to unlawfully profit from the stimulus projects that are being awarded as part of The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Consistent with its mission to protect the welfare of the American economy by promoting open and fair competition, the Department’s Antitrust Division launched an initiative to help government agencies insulate procurement, grant and program funding processes from collusion and fraud, as well as to ensure that those who abuse those processes are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law...The Antitrust Division’s Recovery Initiative involves training procurement and grant officials, government contractors, and agency auditors and investigators, on techniques for identifying the "red flags of collusion" before stimulus awards are made and taxpayer money is unnecessarily wasted. The initiative makes available to agencies Antitrust Division competition experts who can evaluate procurement and program funding processes. These Division experts will make recommendations on "best practices" that may be adopted by the agencies to further protect processes from fraud, waste and abuse and maximize open and fair competition. Finally, the initiative commits the Antitrust Division to playing a significant role in assisting agencies investigate and prosecute those who seek to or succeed in defrauding the government’s efforts to maximize competition for stimulus funds."

News release: "The Federal Trade Commission has charged a home mortgage lender and its owner with violating federal law by charging Hispanic consumers higher prices for mortgage loans than non-Hispanic white consumers – price disparities that cannot be explained by the applicants’ credit characteristics or underwriting risk. The FTC seeks to bar future violations and obtain redress for consumers...According to the FTC’s complaint, the defendants violated the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) in pricing mortgage loans. They allegedly gave loan officers and branch managers wide discretion to charge, in addition to the risk-based price, “overages” through higher interest rates and higher up-front charges. The defendants allegedly paid loan officers a percentage of the overages as a commission and failed to monitor whether Hispanic consumers were paying higher overages than non-Hispanic white borrowers."

LLRX Book Review by Heather A. Phillips - Just and Unjust Warriors: the moral and legal status of soldiers - Heather A. Phillips describes how though a series of eleven well-written and closely reasoned original essays this book question the treatments of many of the foundations of classical just war theory, such as a non-volunteer army, the use of private contractors as soldiers, the harmlessness of those not actively engaged in combat, the symmetry of combatants, proportionality and extreme emergency.

A Current Glance at Women in the Law 2008 - Women in the Legal Profession, American Bar Association Market Research Department.

Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George W. Bush

"A total of 1,891 applications to federal and state judges for orders authorizing the interception of wire, oral or electronic communications were reported in 2008. No applications were denied. This is a 14 percent decrease in the total of applications reported, compared to 2007. Fewer states—22 states compared to 24 in 2007—reported wiretap activity and the number of applications approved by state judges, 1,505, was down 14 percent from 2007. Federal judges approved 386 applications, down 16 percent from 2007. Orders for 28 wiretaps were approved for which no wiretaps actually were installed. Additional data on applications for wiretaps for the period January 1 through December 31, 2008, is available online in the 2008 Wiretap Report."

Follow up to Authors, Publishers, and Google Reach Landmark Settlement, from the Authors Guild: "The court overseeing Authors Guild v. Google extended the time for authors and publishers to opt out of the settlement by four months, to September 4th (Judge Chin's order). The fairness hearing will be on October 7th."

News release: "In anticipation of President Obama’s 100th day in office, U.S. Senator Russ Feingold today released a "100 Day Rule of Law Report" to examine the new administration’s efforts to reverse the Bush administration’s eight year assault on the rule of law. Feingold assessed the steps the Obama administration has taken thus far to address recommendations made by forty organizations and experts in connection with a Senate Constitution Subcommittee hearing chaired by Feingold on September 16, 2008, entitled Restoring the Rule of Law. President Obama received high marks for several actions he has taken in his first 100 days in office, including his executive orders to close the facility at Guantanamo Bay, ban torture and increase transparency. However, Feingold’s review finds the Obama administration’s invoking of the state secrets privilege “troubling.”

E-Discovery Update: E-Discovery in the $50,000 Case - Conrad J. Jacoby's focus for this column is smaller legal disputes that may involve electronic evidence, including divorce proceedings and child custody matters, as well as criminal cases, all of which may require review of cell phone call records, SMS and e-mail exchanges.

"In 2008, OCLC conducted focus groups, administered a pop-up survey on WorldCat.org—OCLC’s freely available end user interface on the Web—and conducted a Web-based survey of librarians worldwide. The report, Online Catalogs: What Users and Librarians Want, presents findings from these research efforts in order to understand:

• The metadata elements that are most important to end users in determining if an item will meet his or her needs
  
• The enhancements end users would like to see made in online library catalogs to assist them in consistently identifying appropriate materials
  
• The enhancements librarians would recommend for online library catalogs to better assist them in their work
  
• The findings indicate, among other things, that although library catalogs are often thought of as discovery tools, the catalog’s delivery-related information is just as important to end users.

FOIA Facts: DOJ AG Issues New Guidelines Establishing a System for Improving Transparency: Scott A. Hodes highlights the areas of this new DOJ guidance that are of the most interest to the FOIA community.

Unclassified and Redacted - Inquiry Into the Treatment Of Detainees In U.S. Custody, November 20, 2008 (Released, April 22, 2009) (263 pages, PDF)

FIT for Purpose – The New FLARE Index to Treaties: Dr. Peter Clinch and Steven Whittle describes the background development, various ways in which the service can be used, and technical issues of this fully searchable database. Launched in March 2009, it indexes and lists over 1,500 of the most significant multilateral treaties concluded from 1856 onwards. It was conceived to fill a gap in the range of information finding tools available on the internet for the international lawyer.

News release: "On April 17, 2009, HHS issued guidance specifying the technologies and methodologies that render protected health information unusable, unreadable, or indecipherable to unauthorized individuals, as required by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act passed as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). This guidance was developed through a joint effort by OCR, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)."

Follow up to previous postings on Google Book search, "The [Internet] Archive is one of many Internet content providers that have an interest in opposing the proposed [Google Book]Settlement Agreement because it effectively limits the liability for the identified uses of orphan works of one party alone, Google Inc., and provides for a Books Rights Registry, the interests of which are represented solely by identified rightsholders, to negotiate their exploitation. All other persons, including Internet content providers such as the Archive, would not be able to use orphan works broadly without being exposed to claims to infringement."

News release: "A national survey of American white collar workers found that while technology is widely embraced among working professionals, significant gaps exist among generations regarding its use and application in the workplace. The newly released Technology Gap Survey found generational differences in the effect of technology on workplace etiquette, the blurring boundaries between personal and professional tasks, and the impact of technology overload. The survey – commissioned by LexisNexis, a leading provider of content-enabled workflow solutions – examined the impact of technology in the workplace. It compared technology and software usage among generations of working professionals, including Boomer (ages 44-60), Generation X (ages 29-43) and Generation Y (ages 28 and younger)."

News release: "After a thorough scientific review ordered in 2007 by the U.S. Supreme Court [Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497], the Environmental Protection Agency issued a proposed finding Friday that greenhouse gases contribute to air pollution that may endanger public health or welfare...EPA’s proposed endangerment finding is based on rigorous, peer-reviewed scientific analysis of six gases – carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride – that have been the subject of intensive analysis by scientists around the world. The science clearly shows that concentrations of these gases are at unprecedented levels as a result of human emissions, and these high levels are very likely the cause of the increase in average temperatures and other changes in our climate."

• Statement of President Barack Obama on Release of OLC Memos: "The Department of Justice will today release certain memos issued by the Office of Legal Counsel between 2002 and 2005 as part of an ongoing court case. These memos speak to techniques that were used in the interrogation of terrorism suspects during that period, and their release is required by the rule of law. My judgment on the content of these memos is a matter of record. In one of my very first acts as President, I prohibited the use of these interrogation techniques by the United States because they undermine our moral authority and do not make us safer. Enlisting our values in the protection of our people makes us stronger and more secure. A democracy as resilient as ours must reject the false choice between our security and our ideals, and that is why these methods of interrogation are already a thing of the past."
• ACLU: In response to litigation filed by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the Justice Department today released four secret memos used by the Bush administration to justify torture. The memos, produced by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), provided the legal framework for the CIA's use of waterboarding and other illegal interrogation methods that violate domestic and international law. The ACLU has called for the Justice Department to appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate torture under the Bush administration."
• The Torture Timeline, By Annie Lowrey, Foreign Policy

"Despite reforms enacted by Congress and an order from the last administration to do a better job, federal agencies continue to give those seeking information a frustrating and oftentimes unsatisfying experience, an analysis of federal agency FOIA reports shows. Backlogs persist despite fewer FOIA requests, agencies continue to miss the statutory response deadline in a majority of cases, and agencies said they rejected a highest percentage of requests since performance reporting began, according a quantitative review by the Sunshine in Government Initiative of federal agency FOIA reports."

"Today, EPIC filed a Freedom of Information Act request demanding disclosure of records detailing airport scanners that take naked pictures of American travelers. Security experts describe the "whole body imaging" scanners as virtual strip searches. The Transportation Security Administration plans to make the scans mandatory at all airport security checkpoints, despite prior assurances that whole body imaging would be optional. EPIC's request seeks documents concerning the agency's ability to store and transmit detailed images of naked U.S. citizens. For more information, see EPIC's Whole Body Imaging page and EPIC's FOIA Litigation Manual."

Internally Displaced Persons: Guide to Legal Information Resources on the Web - Elisa Mason's guide highlights information resources focused on the arena of human rights and humanitarian law norms that are evolving to address the broadening scope of protection issues that encompass millions of internally displaced around the world.

Public Law 111–5, 111th Congress, 123 STAT. 115, Feb. 17, 2009 [H.R. 1] American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. 407 pages, PDF

News release: "Fewer than one-third of the adult population have a health care power of attorney or other advance directive. While many of us may be afraid to talk about death, it is critically important to name someone to make health care decisions for you if and when you are no longer able to speak for yourself. Secondly, talk about your end-of-life values and goals with that person and other loved ones. This will help ensure that loved ones aren’t burdened with “guessing” end of-life care wishes in the event of a sudden change in health or a life threatening accident.

The National Healthcare Decisions Day initiative takes place on April 16. It is part of a collaborative effort of national, state and community organizations committed to ensuring that all adults have the information they need to be proactive in communicating and documenting their healthcare decisions. The American Bar Association has a 10-point toolkit for consumers that helps make the process easier to navigate. And the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization provides state-specific forms for use.

To help educate consumers, the ABA Commission on Law and Aging has developed free resources to help you make, discuss and document future healthcare wishes and decisions, including a fact sheet titled 10 Myths and Facts About Health Care Advance Directives. Additional resources on advance planning and end-of-life legal issues can be found at ABA Law Info: Your Gateway to Information on Legal Topics that Affect Your Life.

News release: "Acting Archivist of the United States Adrienne Thomas announced [April 10, 2009] that 245,763 pages of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush Presidential records will be opened for research on Monday, April 13, 2009, at their respective libraries. These records, which were still pending with the George W. Bush Administration as of January 20, 2009, today cleared the review process established by President Barack Obama under Executive Order 13489.

• "On Monday, April 13, 2009, the Ronald Reagan library will open 244,966 pages of records processed in response to hundreds of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. These records include the Presidential Briefing Papers collection, Office of Speechwriting research material, and approximately 13,000 pages of declassified records on numerous foreign policy topics. To date, more than ten million pages of Presidential records have been processed at the Reagan library."
  
• On Monday, April 13, 2009, the George H. W. Bush library will open 797 pages of records that deal with Saudi Arabia. To date, more than six million pages of Presidential records have been processed at the Bush library..."

News release: "Organizations representing booksellers, librarians, publishers, and writers today launched the latest phase in their five-year campaign to restore the reader privacy safeguards that were stripped away by the USA Patriot Act. Since 2003, the Department of Justice has used its expanded power under the Patriot Act to issue more than 200 secret search orders under Section 215 and more than 190,000 National Security Letters (NSLs). Despite several efforts to reform the Patriot Act, the FBI can still search any records it believes are "relevant" to a terrorism investigation, including the records of people who are not suspected of criminal conduct."

Fact Sheet: "The increased efforts and reallocation of personnel recently announced by the Department of Justice builds on the foundation of expertise and experience gained from ongoing efforts to combat Mexican drug cartels in the United States and to help Mexican law enforcement battle cartels in its own country."

News release: "Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau announced today a 118-count indictment of a Chinese citizen and his company for charges relating to the misuse of Manhattan banks and the proliferation of illicit missile and nuclear technology to the Government of Iran. The Chinese company, known as LIMMT, is a major supplier of banned weapons material to the Iranian military."

News release (includes links to declassified documents): "As a special tribunal in Peru pronounced former president Alberto Fujimori guilty of human rights atrocities, the National Security Archive today posted key declassified U.S. documents that were submitted as evidence in the court proceedings. The declassified records contain intelligence gathered by U.S. officials from Peruvian sources on the secret creation of “assassination teams” as part of Fujimori’s counterterrorism operations, the role of the Peruvian security forces in human rights atrocities and Fujimori’s participation in protecting the military from investigation."

Follow up to April 5, 2009 posting Senate Staff Working Draft of Cybersecurity Act of 2009, see this related CRS report: Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI): Legal Authorities and Policy Considerations, March 10, 2009

News release: "The Federal Trade Commission today announced a crackdown on fraud and deception by mortgage modification and home foreclosure rescue companies. The FTC is seeking to halt the proliferation of these mortgage relief scams – which target distressed and vulnerable consumers who are delinquent or facing foreclosure – through increased law enforcement, consumer outreach, and close coordination with federal, state, and non-profit partners...The FTC announced five law enforcement actions against operations using deceptive tactics to market their mortgage modification and home foreclosure relief services, including firms that marketed their “services” by giving the false impression they were affiliated with the federal government. This brings to 11 the number of loan modification and mortgage foreclosure rescue scams brought by the FTC in the last year. More than 20 state law enforcers also have taken actions against companies engaged in these types of deception, including 22 brought by Illinois Attorney General Madigan."

nixontapes.org: "For the first time, the recordings from the Nixon White House Cabinet Room are made available to the public in an accessible format. These recordings include every meeting, tour group, briefing, and private conversation that occurred in the Cabinet Room, as captured on the Nixon recording system between February 16, 1971, and July 11, 1973. Remarkably, these audio files were originally released by the National Archives and Records Administration's (NARA) Archives II at College Park, Maryland, in 2002, but were made available to onsite researchers only, and only in analog cassette format. With the assistance of the National Security Archive, these files are now available here, on nixontapes.org, and at the time of the creation of this page, these tapes, in whole or in part, are not available anywhere else outside of the reading room at NARA's Archives II."

"The Flare Index to Treaties [was recently launched] by the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (IALS). The Index is a searchable database of basic information on over 1,500 of the most significant multilateral treaties from 1856 to the present, with details of where the full text of each treaty may be obtained in paper and, if available, electronic form on the Internet. The Index includes only those treaties where there are three or more parties to the instrument. The selection has been based on entries in Multilateral Treaties: index and current status, compiled and annotated within the University of Nottingham Treaty Centre by M.J. Bowman and D.J. Harris (London: Butterworths, 1984, ninth supplement, 1992) and International Legal Materials (Washington, D.C., American Society of International Law, 1962-). The Index is freely available on the Web and was conceived and compiled by Dr Peter Clinch, Cardiff University. Both the MS Access database into which data have been keyboarded and the web-based search interface were devised by Steven Whittle, Information Systems Manager, IALS. Funding for the project was made available through a successful bid to the University of London Vice Chancellor's Development Fund."

The Third Branch: "The Judicial Conference, in its continuing efforts to ensure appropriate public access to court files, has voted to make federal court sealed cases more readily apparent. The Conference, acting at its March 17 meeting, voted to have Internet lists of civil and criminal cases in district courts include a case number and generic name, such as “Sealed vs. Sealed,” for each sealed case. Such lists for each of the 94 district courts are generated by the Judiciary’s Case Management/Electronic Case Files system and are accessible through the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system."

Competitive Intelligence - A Selective Resource Guide: Sabrina I. Pacifici's completely revised and updated pathfinder focuses on leveraging selected reliable, focused, free and low cost sites and sources to effectively profile and monitor companies, markets, countries, people, and issues. This guide is a "best of list" of web, database and email alert products, services and tools, as well links to content specific sources produced by governments, academia, NGOs, the media and various publishers.

Burney's Legal Tech Reviews: Verizon Wireless USB760 Modem and the Cradlepoint CTR500 Mobile Broadband Travel Router - For consistent, resilient mobile internet connectivity, Brett Burney recommends these three small, versatile products that are cost effective and reliable.

News release: "The National Institute of Justice (NIJ), Office of Justice Programs (OJP), U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), has released the publication High-Priority Criminal Justice Technology Needs. This publication is a description of the research, development, evaluation, and testing process that NIJ goes through to ensure their research portfolios are aligned with the needs of the criminal justice community. The publication also summarizes the high-priority needs for the criminal justice field in the area of technology. These needs are organized into five functional areas—Protecting the Public; Ensuring Officer Safety; Confirming the Guilty and Protecting the Innocent; Improving the Efficiency of Justice; Enabling Informed Decision-Making."

"The automatic declassification provisions of Executive Order 12958, as amended, require the declassification of nonexempt historically-valuable records 25 years old or older. By 31 December 2006 all agencies were to have completed the review of all hardcopy documents determined to be historically valuable (designated as "permanent" by the agency and the National Archives) and exclusively containing their equities. As the deadline pertains to CIA, it covers the span of relevant documents originally dating from the establishment of the CIA after WWII through 1981.

CIA has deployed an electronic full-text searchable system it has named CREST (the CIA Records Search Tool), which has been operational since 2000 and is located at NARA II in College Park Maryland. On this Agency site, researchers can now use an on-line CREST Finding Aid to research the availability of CIA documents declassified and loaded onto CREST through 2008. Data for the remaining years up to the present (CREST deliveries have been ongoing) will be placed on this site at later dates.

Search the CREST web database here. Note: it does not contain actual images of the documents as the regular Electronic Reading Room search does. Rather, it contains details on the files to speed FOIA requests.

How Does Law Protect in War? Cases, Documents and Teaching Materials on Contemporary Practice in International Humanitarian Law by Marco Sassòli and Antoine A. Bouvier, in co-operation with Susan Carr, Lindsey Cameron and Thomas de Saint Maurice, Geneva, 2006 (Second Edition). Volume I: Outline of International Humanitarian Law Possible Teaching Outlines and Volume II: Cases and Document.

Show Us the Data: Most Wanted Federal Documents A Report By Center for Democracy & Technology & OpenTheGovernment.org, March 2009 - "In the past few months, President Obama and his appointed officials have indicated that policies around open government and information disclosure will change drastically. While each administration adopts its own standards for the management of unclassified federal documents, change at the agency level does not take place instantly nor will such change be universally accepted."

The Top Ten Most Wanted Government Documents

1. Public Access to All Congressional Research Service Reports- Legislative Branch
   
2. Information About the Use of TARP and Bailout Funds - Executive Branch
   
3. Open and Accessible Federal Court Documents Through the PACER System - Judicial Branch
   
4. Current Contractor Projects - Executive Branch
   
5. Court Settlements Involving Federal Agencies - Judicial Branch
   
6. Access to Comprehensive Information About Legislation and Congressional Actions via THOMAS or Public Access to Legislative Information Service - Legislative Branch
   
7. Online Access to Electronic Campaign Disclosures - Legislative Branch
   
8. Daily Schedules of the President and Cabinet Officials - Executive Branch
   
9. Personal Financial Disclosures from Policymakers Across Government - All Branches
   
10. State Medicaid Plans and Waivers - Executive Branch and State Agencies

"AALL's Research Instruction and Patron Services Special Interest Section (RIPS-SIS) is proud to announce the release of the 2009 National Legal Research Teach-In Resource Kit on March 23, 2009. Each year in conjunction with National Library Week, RIPS creates a Teach-In Resource Kit which contains fresh materials for use in your institution's promotional and instructional activities. This year's kit includes legal research word search puzzles, illustration charts for secondary sources, presentations on the Bluebook, administrative law, and statutory research, various research assignments, and many other useful materials. The 2009 Teach-In Kit is now available here. Kits from previous years are available here. Our thanks to all this year's contributors. Thanks also to this year's Teach-In Kit Committee, Gail Partin, Jennifer Murray, David Lehmann, and Shawn Nevers, and to RIPS webmaster, Uwe "Ed" Beltz." [via Gail Partin]

"GPO is releasing the Public Printer's Letter to President Obama regarding transparency and open Government. The letter offers GPO's support in helping to implement the President's initiative leveraging the Federal Digital System (FDsys). Five goals with accompanying actions were provided that GPO is prepared to undertake to help implement the President's initiative."

News release: "In celebration of Sunshine Week, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today launched a sophisticated search tool that allows the public to closely examine thousands of pages of documents the organization has pried loose from secretive government agencies. The documents relate to a wide range of cutting-edge technology issues and government policies that affect civil liberties and personal privacy.

EFF's document collection -- obtained through requests and litigation under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) -- casts light on several controversial government initiatives, including the FBI's Investigative Data Warehouse and DCS 3000 surveillance program, and the Department of Homeland Security's Automated Targeting System and ADVISE data-mining project. The documents also provide details on Justice Department collection of communications routing data, Pentagon monitoring of soldiers' blogs, mismatches in the Terrorist Screening Center's watchlist, and FBI misuse of its national security letter subpoena authority.

The new search capability enables visitors to EFF's website to conduct keyword searches across the universe of government documents obtained by EFF, maximizing the value of the material."

Researching Australian Law: This comprehensive guide by Nicholas Pengelley and Sue Milne includes primary and secondary research resources in the following areas: Parliaments and Laws, Finding Australian Legislation, Finding Australian Cases, Treaties, Journal Literature, Legal Encyclopedias, Law Reform, Government Information, Dictionaries, Directories, Legal Research Guides, Publishers, Current Awareness, Discussion Lists, Information Brokerage and Major Texts.

Follow up to March 19, 2009 - New Attorney General Guidelines on FOIA Released - CJR: "In a bit of Congressional commemoration, Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont and John Cornyn, his Texan Republican colleague, have introduced S. 612, new legislation that would require any new b(3) exemptions to specifically reference the Freedom of Information Act, so that these exemptions would be easier to spot. The senators have frequently collaborated on legislation designed to improve FOIA, and this is the third consecutive Sunshine Week in which Cornyn and Leahy have introduced this legislation. In 2007, it passed the Senate unanimously...Because the law only applies to future b(3) exemptions that Congress might write, it does nothing to address those already in the US Code. Like Title 7, Chapter 77, Sec 4608, Subsection G, Paragraph 1, which protects certain information about honeybee handlers, or Title 7, Chapter 80, Section 4908, Subsection c, which does something similar for watermelon producers and handlers submitting information quantifying the size of their business in order to participate in the National Watermelon Promotion Board."

Sunshine Week 2009 Survey of State Govt. Info. Online, Published: March 14, 2009, Last Updated: March 18, 2009

New on LLRX.com - New Economy Analytics, Resources and Alerts: This guide by Marcus P. Zillman is designed to bring together the latest resources and sources on the Internet covering new economy analytics, resources and alerts.

National Security Archive: "Attorney General Eric Holder today released new guidelines for federal agencies on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that reinforce the presumption of disclosure articulated by President Obama in his day one Memorandum on FOIA, issued January 21, 2009. Attorney General Holder’s memorandum provides practical guidance for implementing the presumption of disclosure, including by encouraging discretionary releases of records and releasing portions of records even when other portions are being withheld. It states that the Department of Justice will only defend withholdings in court when there is a reasonably foreseeable risk of harm to an interest protected by one of the FOIA exemptions or the law requires the information to be withheld. It states that this policy will be applied to pending litigation “if practicable” and “where there is a substantial likelihood that application of the guidance would result in a material disclosure of additional information.”

News release: "During the House Financial Services Subcommittee meeting today, American International Group’s Impact on the Global Economy: Before, During, and After Federal Intervention, Rep. Barney Frank discussed the AIG employee contracts."

• 2008 Employee Retention Plan
  
• Confirmation and Acknowledgement
  
• Schedule to the Master Agreement
  
• Related postings on AIG and on the financial system

News release: "The Federal Trade Commission announced the fourth in a series of public hearings exploring the evolving market for intellectual property. These hearings, to be held April 17, 2009, in Washington, DC, will explore how corporations, inventors, and patent intermediaries value and monetize patents, strategies for buying and selling patents, and the role of secondary markets for intellectual property. Some of the most significant recent changes in markets for intellectual property have occurred through the emergence of new business models involving the buying, selling and licensing of patents. The April 17 hearing also will showcase some of the recent academic scholarship about the development and functioning of markets for intellectual property and the policy implications surrounding them."

News release: "The Judicial Conference of the United States today adopted a revised Code of Conduct for United States Judges that will take effect July 1, 2009, the first substantial Code revision since 1992. At its biannual meeting, the Conference also voted to ask Congress to create 63 new federal judgeships — 12 in the courts of appeals (nine permanent and three temporary) and 51 in the district courts (38 permanent and 13 temporary)."

"The unprecedented bet that many banks made on mortgages, real estate development and other real estate related lending during the middle part of this decade has produced a payoff no one imagined just a few years ago -- a huge increase in loan defaults, a soaring number of foreclosures and a plunge in bank profits. And now, a new analysis of bank financial statements by the Investigative Reporting Workshop [American University School of Communication], sheds new light on just how dangerous conditions have become in many banks across the nation. We also created a search tool that permits you to check the financial health of any bank in the nation. And we have provided detailed information about the banks that have received bailout money from the federal government. This project was done in cooperation with msnbc.com. See the full story." [thanks Peggy Garvin]

• Search for a Bank
  
• Search TARP Recipients or find TARP recipients by state
  
• Methodology
  
• Related postings on financial system

Prepared Testimony of Doug Shulman, Commissioner Internal Revenue Service, Before the Senate Finance Committee on Tax Issues Related to Ponzi Schemes and an Update on Offshore Tax Evasion Legislation, March 17, 2009

News release: "The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) today released a new report, Mortgage Loan Fraud Connections with
Other Financial Crime: An Evaluation of Suspicious Activity Reports Filed By Money Services Businesses, Securities and Futures Firms,
Insurance Companies and Casinos, that shows subjects reported for suspected mortgage loan fraud may also be involved in other financial crimes such as check fraud, money laundering, stock manipulation, structuring to avoid currency transaction reporting requirements and others. From depository institution Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs), FinCEN identified approximately 156,000 mortgage fraud subjects, and found that 2,360 were reported for suspicious activity in 3,680 of the other SAR types."

News release: "The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) today asked the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to reverse its decision withholding government organizational information on the grounds that the release would violate the privacy of individual employees. TRAC's appeal to OPM concerned a February 23 ruling by Gary A. Lukowski, the manager of OPM's Workforce Information and Planning Group, that contended the release of the requested information about how an agency is organized into units and subunits "would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy." In its appeal, TRAC said it was impossible for the requested structural information to invade personal privacy because "these records contain no information about any individual." TRAC also noted that the OPM action directly contradicted President Obama's January 21 Transparency and Open Government memorandum pledging his administration to "an unprecedented level of openness."

March 16, 2009 letter from Attorney General Cuomo to Edward M. Liddy, Chairman & CEO of AIG, concerning bonuses: "The Office of the New York Attorney General has been investigating compensation arrangements at AIG since last Fall. We were disturbed to learn over the weekend of AIG's plans to pay millions of dollars to members of the Financial Products subsidiary through its Financial Products Retention Plan. Financial Products was, of course, the division of AIG that led to its meltdown and the huge infusion of taxpayer funds to save the firm. Previously, AIG had agreed at our request to make no payments out of its $600 million Financial Products deferred compensation pool."

WSJ: Cough It Up, Bernie: Feds Look to Seize Homes, Boats, Pianos...

News release: "Incisive Media, a global leader in specialized business news and information, today announced plans to merge two of the nation’s most respected legal publications, The National Law Journal and Legal Times. The combined organization, which will operate under The National Law Journal brand, will offer print and online national legal news and analysis from an award-winning team of journalists in seven bureaus around the country. The new publication will continue to deliver insider coverage of Washington, D.C. news, commentary and legal analysis to readers within the Beltway and across the country, including front-page news from the capital and a weekly Washington section. The first print edition of the expanded National Law Journal will be available in May."

Columbia Journalism Review: In just the last two years, Malamud, as the sole staffer of Public.Resource.Org, a 501c3 nonprofit based in Sebastopol, California, has posted over 80 million pages of legal documents on his Web site, many of them federal appeals court decisions. He’s also freed from private control the only remaining copy of a massive Navy-created database of legal decisions, placed building codes from all fifty states online, and convinced the Oregon legislature to cease claiming copyright over the state’s laws. It’s all been done by pointing out that documents created at public expense are, under U.S. law, considered the property of the public." Now he is campaigning for the position of Public Printer with a "platform for revitalizing the GPO and rebooting .gov spelled out in in a detailed series of policy papers submitted to the Presidential Transition Team."

News release: "n a filing today with the federal District Court for the District of Columbia, the Department of Justice submitted a new standard for the government’s authority to hold detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility. The definition does not rely on the President’s authority as Commander-in-Chief independent of Congress’s specific authorization. It draws on the international laws of war to inform the statutory authority conferred by Congress. It provides that individuals who supported al Qaeda or the Taliban are detainable only if the support was substantial. And it does not employ the phrase "enemy combatant."

• Memo Regarding the Government’s Detention Authority
  
• Declaration of Attorney General Eric Holder

News release: "The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) today won the fifth annual Rosemary Award for the worst Freedom of Information Act performance by a federal agency. The FBI’s reports to Congress show that the Bureau is unable to find any records in response to two-thirds of its incoming FOIA requests on average over the past four years, when the other major government agencies averaged only a 13% “no records” response to public requests...During fiscal year 2008, the FBI gave “no records” responses to 57% of the requests it processed, more than any other major agency. The Bureau only provided documents (most redacted) in less than 14% of cases—the lowest percentage of requests granted among the major agencies in the federal government. In 2007, the FBI responded with “no records” in 70% of its FOIA requests. In 2006, “no records” peaked at 74%; and in 2005, at 66%—the four-year average."

News release: "The American Civil Liberties Union released a comprehensive report today examining widespread abuses that have occurred under the USA Patriot Act, a law that was rushed through Congress just 45 days after September 11. In the almost eight years since the passage of the controversial national security law, the Patriot Act has led to egregious government misconduct."

Mother Jones: "By slipping a simple, three-sentence provision into the gargantuan spending bill passed by the House of Representatives last week, a congressman from Silicon Valley is trying to nudge Congress into the 21st Century. Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) placed a measure in the bill directing Congress and its affiliated organs—including the Library of Congress and the Government Printing Office—to make its data available to the public in raw form. This will enable members of the public and watchdog groups to craft websites and databases showcasing government data that are more user-friendly than the government's own."

Post-Conference Workshop on Competitive Intelligence, April 2, 2009 - 1:30 PM – 4:30 PM, Sabrina I. Pacifici, Law Librarian, & Founder/Editor/Publisher, LLRX.com and beSpacific.com

LLRX.com: Guide to International Refugee Law Resources on the Web - This updated research guide by Elisa Mason directs readers to some of the key texts and resources available on the Web that can help shed light on, and provide a context for, many of the issues currently being deliberated in the refugee law arena. The guide covers international and regional instruments, human rights and humanitarian law, international bodies (especially the UNHCR), national legislation, case law, and periodicals.

LLRX.com - Knowledge Discovery Resources 2009: An Internet MiniGuide Annotated Link Compilation - Marcus P. Zillman's compilation is dedicated to the latest and most reliable resources for knowledge discovery available through the Internet. This wide ranging selection of resources provides specialized tools, applications and sources relevant to researchers from many disciplines.

US Courts: "Bankruptcy filings in the federal courts rose 31 percent in calendar year 2008, according to data released today by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. The number of bankruptcies filed in the twelve-month period ending December 31, 2008, totaled 1,117,771, up from 850,912 bankruptcies filed in CY 2007. Filings have grown since CY 2006 when bankruptcy filings totaled 617,660, in the first full 12-month period after the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA) took effect. An historic high in the number of bankruptcy filings was seen in calendar year 2005, when over 2 million bankruptcies were filed."

OECD: "Every year, the 8th of March marks a major day of global celebration for the economic, political and social achievements of women - and offers an occasion to present the work of the Development Centre in the area of gender equality."

US Courts: "President George W. Bush appointed 328 persons to Article III judgeships, the third most of any president."

News release: "The Department of Justice today released two previously undisclosed Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memoranda and seven previously undisclosed opinions...The two memoranda memorialized that certain legal propositions in ten OLC opinions issued between 2001 and 2003 no longer reflected the views of OLC and "should not be treated as authoritative for any purpose." They further explained that some of the underlying opinions had been withdrawn or superseded and that "caution should be exercised" by the executive branch "before relying in other respects" on the other opinions that had not been superseded or withdrawn...the Department has released the six of those underlying opinions from 2001-2003 that are not classified and that had not previously been disclosed."

• Memorandum Regarding Status of Certain OLC Opinions Issued in the Aftermath of the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 (01-15-2009)
  
• Memorandum Regarding Constitutionality of Amending Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to Change the "Purpose" Standard for Searches (09-25-2001)
  
• Memorandum Regarding Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities within the United States (10-23-2001)
  
• Memorandum Regarding Authority of the President to Suspend Certain Provisions of the ABM Treaty (11-15-2001)
  
• Memorandum Regarding the President's Power as Commander in Chief to Transfer Captured Terrorists to the Control and Custody of Foreign Nations (03-13-2002)
  
• Memorandum Regarding Swift Justice Authorization Act (04-08-2002)
  
• Memorandum Regarding Determination of Enemy Belligerency and Military Detention (06-08-2002)
  
• Memorandum Regarding Applicability of 18 U.S.C. § 4001(a) to Military Detention of United States Citizens (06-27-2002)
  
• Memorandum Regarding October 23, 2001 OLC Opinion Addressing the Domestic Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities (10-06-2008)

News release: "According to a letter filed by the government in court today, the CIA acknowledged it destroyed 92 tapes of interrogations. The admission comes in an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit seeking records of the treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody abroad. In December 2007, the ACLU filed a motion to hold the CIA in contempt for its destruction of videotapes recording the harsh interrogation of prisoners in violation of a court order requiring the agency to produce or identify all the requested records. That motion is still pending."

USA Today: "For three years, the investigative arm of Congress has seen its staff dwindle in size. Now, the agency is getting a $25 million infusion of cash from the stimulus bill signed by President Obama last month to hire investigators, auditors and others to track hundreds of billions of dollars in federal spending to jump-start the economy. The stimulus bill contains $330.5 million for oversight and offers the president his first opportunity to put into practice his campaign pledge to demand greater accountability of federal spending. It provides $25 million for the Government Accountability Office, the non-partisan congressional agency; $84 million to create an accountability board within the administration and $221.5 million to the inspectors general who serve as department watchdogs."

Criminal Law Resources: Social Networking Online and Criminal Justice - The activities of users and the information being posted on social networking sites are having wide ranging effects on the administration of justice, law enforcement investigation, prosecution and defense. Ken Strutin's guide provides a snapshot of many of the novel and varied uses of social networking evidence in the field of criminal justice.

Workforce Management: "Employers would be prohibited from making hiring, firing and other personnel decisions on the basis of workers’ genetic predisposition to a disease under rules to be proposed this week by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The proposals, which are open for public comment over the next two months, also would bar employers from deliberately acquiring genetic information from employees and job applicants...In addition, employers would be restricted from disclosing genetic information about workers and applicants. Violators would be subject to compensatory and punitive damages under some circumstances."

• Meeting of February 25, 2009 - on Notice of Proposed Rulemaking Implementation of Title II of the Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act of 2008, Statement of Christopher J. Kuczynski, J.D., LL.M., Assistant Legal Counsel, ADA Policy Division
  
• Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (GINA) - H.R.493, Became Public Law No: 110-233 on May 21, 2008

News release: "Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) has announced three witnesses for a hearing scheduled Wednesday, March 4, on Getting to the Truth Through a Nonpartisan Commission of Inquiry. Leahy has proposed establishing a nonpartisan commission to examine past national security policies. Leahy has invited three witnesses to testify at the hearing: Thomas Pickering, former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Retired Vice Admiral Lee Gunn, and attorney John Farmer."

"The latest available data from the Justice Department show that during November 2008 the government reported 16 new national internal security/terrorism prosecutions. According to the case-by-case information analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), this number is up from 13 in the previous month. These two months' figures are the lowest recorded in this category since September 2001. The comparisons of the number of defendants charged with national internal security/terrorism-related offenses are based on case-by-case information obtained by TRAC under the Freedom of Information Act from the Executive Office for United States Attorneys."

"The 2009 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) is an annual report by the Department of State to Congress prepared in accordance with the Foreign Assistance Act. It describes the efforts of key countries to attack all aspects of the international drug trade in Calendar Year 2008. Volume I covers drug and chemical control activities. Volume II covers money laundering and financial crimes."

How Convicts and Con Artists Receive New Federal Contracts: "The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee examines the Excluded Parties List System, a federal database intended to prevent persons and businesses ineligible to receive federal contracts due to past misconduct from receiving new awards. A GAO report...released at the hearing finds numerous examples of ineligible parties continuing to receive new federal contracts, due to flaws in the database and inadequate contracting procedures. Many of the parties who continue to receive new contracts have been debarred from contracting for egregious violations that directly threatened the national security of the United States and the safety of U.S. troops and citizens. The hearing will review whether immediate changes should be implemented to prevent the award of economic stimulus contracts to ineligible fraudulent contractors."

Commission assesses another four Stability and Convergence Programmes: "Following last week's assessment of 17 Stability and Convergence Programmes, the European Commission today examined the updated programmes of Italy, Luxembourg, Lithuania and Portugal...According to Council Regulation (EC) No 1466/97 on the strengthening of budgetary surveillance and the surveillance and coordination of economic policies, Member States must submit updated macroeconomic and budgetary projections every year. Such updates are called stability programmes in the case of countries that have adopted the euro, and convergence programmes otherwise. This regulation is also referred to as the 'preventive arm' of the Stability and Growth Pact."

• Stability and Growth Pact document search
  
• Stability and convergence programmes submitted by Member States
  
• Related postings on financial system

  Permanent Link

Follow up to Backgrounder, Database and Executive Order: Closing Guantanamo, the Department of Defense released a Review of Department Compliance With President's Executive Order on Detainee Condition of Confinement: "After considerable deliberation and a comprehensive review, it is our judgment that the conditions of confinement in Guantánamo are in conformity with Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions..."

Timothy B. Lee: "Speaking at Princeton on Thursday, Richard Sarnoff, chairman of the Association of American Publishers, discussed the landmark settlement in the Google Book Search case. Sarnoff speculated that the agreement could effectively give Google and Amazon a "duopoly" in the online book market."

Update to February 4, 2009 posting, New and Restyled Civil and Criminal Forms Now Online, the reference has been revised to facilitate user access, see Federal Court Forms Now Categorized - A list of 56 new and restyled civil and criminal forms has been posted in a categorized listing.

Principles of Federal Appropriations Law: Third Edition, Volume III (898 pages, PDF): "Our objective in Principles is to present a basic reference work covering those areas of law in which the Comptroller General issues decisions, using text discussion with specific legal authorities to illustrate the principles discussed, their application, and exceptions. As we noted in our first volume, Principles should be used as a general guide and starting point, not as a substitute for original legal research..Publication of this volume completes our process of revising and updating the second edition of the “Red Book” and reissuing it in a 3-volume looseleaf set with cumulative annual updates. This volume and all other updated volumes of Principles, including the annual updates, are available on GAO’s Web site under Key References. The annual updates are only available online."

LLRX Book Review by Heather A. Phillips - Americans in Waiting: The Lost Story of Immigration and Citizenship in the United States - Heather A. Phillips discusses author Hiroshi Motomura's insights into changing views on this experience, including the status of immigration as contract, and that of immigration as affiliation.

News release: "UBS AG, Switzerland’s largest bank, has entered into a deferred prosecution agreement on charges of conspiring to defraud the United States by impeding the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Justice Department announced today.

As part of the deferred prosecution agreement and in an unprecedented move, UBS, based on an order by the Swiss Financial Markets Supervisory Authority (FINMA), has agreed to immediately provide the United States government with the identities of, and account information for, certain United States customers of UBS’s cross-border business. Under the deferred prosecution agreement, UBS has also agreed to expeditiously exit the business of providing banking services to United States clients with undeclared accounts. As part of the deferred prosecution agreement, UBS has further agreed to pay $780 million in fines, penalties, interest and restitution. Earlier today, the agreement was accepted in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. by U.S. District Judge James I. Cohn.

A criminal information was unsealed today that charges UBS with conspiring to defraud the United States by impeding the IRS. According to court documents, in 2000, after it purchased the brokerage firm Paine Webber, UBS voluntarily entered into an agreement with the IRS that required UBS to report to the IRS income and other identifying information for its United States clients who held United States securities in a UBS account. Court documents allege that the agreement also required UBS to withhold income taxes from United States clients who directed investment activities in foreign securities from the United States. The information further asserts that, in order to evade those new reporting requirements, employees and managers within the cross-border business, with the knowledge of certain UBS executives, helped United States taxpayers open new UBS accounts in the names of nominees and/or sham entities. According to court documents, the assets of the individual’s accounts were then transferred to the newly created accounts, as to which the U.S. taxpayer would not be identified as a beneficiary."

R40224, Troubled Asset Relief Program and Foreclosures, February 17, 2009

A Rising Share: Hispanics and Federal Crime: "Sharp growth in illegal immigration and increased enforcement of immigration laws have dramatically altered the ethnic composition of offenders sentenced in federal courts. In 2007, Latinos accounted for 40% of all sentenced federal offenders - more than triple their share (13%) of the total U.S. adult population. The share of all sentenced offenders who were Latino in 2007 was up from 24% in 1991, according to an analysis of data from the United States Sentencing Commission (USSC) by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center."

• Embassy Construction: Additional Actions Are Needed to Address Contractor Participation, GAO-09-48, January 16, 2009: "To provide safe and secure workplaces for overseas posts, the Department of State (State) has built 64 new embassy compounds (NEC) and other facilities since 1999, has 31 ongoing projects, and plans to build at least 90 more. In 2007, State reported the U.S. contractor pool for building NECs had reached its limit and proposed legislation to amend the criteria to qualify for NEC awards."
• Clean Air Act: Historical Information on EPA's Process for Reviewing California Waiver Requests and Making Waiver Determinations, GAO-09-249R, January 16, 2009: "Emissions from mobile sources, such as automobiles and trucks, contribute to air quality degradation and can threaten public health and the environment. Under the Clean Air Act, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates these emissions. The act generally allows one set of federal standards for new motor vehicle emissions and pre-empts states from adopting or enforcing their own standards. However, it also authorizes the EPA Administrator to waive this provision to allow the state of California1 to enact and enforce emission standards for new motor vehicles that are as protective, in the aggregate, as federal government standards. Other states may also adopt California's standards if they choose."

News release: "he Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Robert Allen Stanford and three of his companies for orchestrating a fraudulent, multi-billion dollar investment scheme centering on an $8 billion CD program. Stanford's companies include Antiguan-based Stanford International Bank (SIB), Houston-based broker-dealer and investment adviser Stanford Group Company (SGC), and investment adviser Stanford Capital Management. The SEC also charged SIB chief financial officer James Davis as well as Laura Pendergest-Holt, chief investment officer of Stanford Financial Group (SFG), in the enforcement action."

• Litigation Release No. 20901
  
• SEC Complaint
  
• Memorandum of Law

Researching Intellectual Property Law In The Russian Federation: Julian Zegelman's updated and revised research guide is intended to assist its users with research of Russian intellectual property law by a) describing the primary sources of intellectual property law in the Russian Federation; and b) listing a number of secondary sources that interpret and comment on intellectual property law in the Russian Federation.

E-Discovery Update: Revisiting ESI Agreements and Court Orders - Conrad J. Jacoby focuses on the new requirement that litigants must meet early in a dispute to discuss the scope of discovery work to reach agreement on how best to proceed with the discovery of potentially relevant electronically stored information (“ESI”). What happens, though, when fundamental assumptions used to reach agreement at that early stage in the case turn out to be incorrect?

Closing Guantanamo, Greg Bruno, Staff Writer, February 12, 2009. Council on Foreign Relations

• Introduction
  
• The Guantanamo Inmates: Who Are They?
  
• The Guantanamo Inmates: How to Try Them
  
• The Guantanamo Inmates: Where to Send Them
  
• Constitutional and Other Considerations
  
  • See also The Guantánamo Docket - The Detainees: "Of the 779 people who have been detained at the United States military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, 532 have been transferred and 242 remain, according to analysis by The New York Times of documents from the Department of Defense. In addition, five detainees died while in custody. This interactive database includes information about the detainees, thousands of pages of government documents and links to court records and news media reports."
    
  • Executive Order regarding Guantanamo Bay detainees, January 22, 2009 - "Executive Order requires closure of the Guantanamo detention center no later than one year from the date of the Order. Closure of the facility is the ultimate goal but not the first step. The Order establishes a review process with the goal of disposing of the detainees before closing the facility."

"The mission of the Securities and Exchange Commission is to protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation. During the current turmoil in the credit markets, the SEC has worked closely with the Department of the Treasury, the Federal Reserve, and other regulators in the U.S. and around the world to protect investors and the markets. The SEC administers the federal securities laws, requires disclosure by public companies, and brings enforcement actions against securities law violators. While other federal and state agencies are legally responsible for regulating mortgage lending and the credit markets, the SEC has taken the following decisive actions to address the extraordinary challenges caused by the current credit crisis..."

"The Law Library of Congress is pleased to present a newly digitized collection to celebrate the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth. The collection covers three eras including nine items in the Lincoln the Lawyer collection, five on Habeas Corpus and the War Powers of the President, and eight covering The Assassination: Trials. Lincoln's effort to restore the Union and his contributions to American political thought and its ideals of freedom often obscure the fact that he had been a successful attorney. Lincoln himself admitted his ambition lay in politics and not in the law, "My forte is as a Statesman, rather than a Prosecutor." Even if the law was Lincoln's "secondary" avocation, it was indelibly linked to him in life... and death." [Donna Scheeder]

February 11, 2009 - The Need for Increased Fraud Enforcement in the Wake of the Economic Downturn, John S. Pistole, Deputy Director, FBI, Before the Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing

News release: "The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced settlements with KBR, Inc. and Halliburton Co. to resolve SEC charges that KBR subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root LLC bribed Nigerian government officials over a 10-year period, in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), in order to obtain construction contracts. The SEC also charged that KBR and Halliburton, KBR's former parent company, engaged in books and records violations and internal controls violations related to the bribery. KBR and Halliburton have agreed to pay $177 million in disgorgement to settle the SEC's charges. Kellogg Brown & Root LLC has agreed to pay a $402 million fine to settle parallel criminal charges brought today by the U.S. Department of Justice. The sanctions represent the largest combined settlement ever paid by U.S. companies since the FCPA's inception."

• Litigation Release No. 20897
  
• SEC Complaint
  
• DOJ news release: Kellogg Brown & Root LLC Pleads Guilty to Foreign Bribery Charges and Agrees to Pay $402 Million Criminal Fine
  
• via FCPA Blog - Download a copy of KBR's criminal information here.
  
• Download a copy of the DOJ/KBR Joint Motion to Waive Presentence Investigation here.

James Mintz Group, Issue Two, December 2008: "In the last 120 days, one of the mightiest investigative armadas in our times has been assembled to look into alleged wrongdoing and conflicts of interest in the mortgage and financial industries. So many FBI agents have been assigned to these cases that it’s straining the war on terror; the understaffed SEC enforcement division is struggling to keep up; subpoenas are flying from state attorneys general; so many accountants are on it that it’s keeping the lights on late in Big Four offices; plaintiffs’ law firms are contacting financial firms’ former employees to find witnesses; law firms, forensic accountants and private investigators are conducting internal investigations to examine many corners of the mess. While this meltdown has been compared to the Great Depression, there is something different about the trouble these days — there’s an investigative overhang extending into the future with unknowable consequences. (scroll down the page to see sketch of the investigative battleground)." [via Center for Public Integrity]

News release: "The United States Securities and Exchange Commission announced that on February 9, 2009, it submitted to the Honorable Judge Louis L. Stanton, a federal judge in the Southern District of New York, the consent of Bernard L. Madoff to a proposed partial judgment imposing a permanent injunction and continuing relief previously imposed in the preliminary injunction order, entered on December 18, 2008. Madoff consented to the partial judgment without admitting or denying the allegations [$50 billion fraud] of the SEC's complaint, filed on December 11, 2008. If the partial judgment is entered by the Court, the permanent injunction will continue to restrain Madoff from violating certain antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws. Also, the proposed partial judgment would continue against Madoff the relief imposed in the December 18, 2008 Order, including the order freezing assets. The proposed partial judgment would leave the issues of the amount of disgorgement, prejudgment interest and civil penalty to be imposed against Madoff to be decided at a later time."

FOIA Facts: President Obama’s FOIA Memorandum and When Change Will Actually Occur - Scott A. Hodes notes the Obama administration's immediate focus on FOIA, but reminds us that changing the ship of government requires numerous steps and constant vigilance to ensure change remains consistent and constant.

War About Terror - Civil Liberties and National Security After 9/11: A Council on Foreign Relations Working Paper, by Daniel B. Prieto, Adjunct Senior Fellow for Counterterrorism and National Security, February 2009

"Wikileaks has released nearly a billion dollars worth of quasi-secret reports commissioned by the United States Congress. The 6,780 reports, current as of this month, comprise over 127,000 pages of material on some of the most contentious issues in the nation...Nearly 2,300 of the reports were updated in the last 12 months, while the oldest report goes back to 1990. The release represents the total output of the Congressional Research Service (CRS) electronically available to Congressional offices." [As noted by Michael Ravnitzky, "there are additional reports and briefings prepared for specific offices that are not included in that electronic output."]

• Alphabetical list of reports
  
• Chronological list of reports
  
• These reports have also been merged into OpenCRS.
  
• Torrent: WikiLeaks Document Release: CRS Reports, Feb 2009 (full pack, incl. metadata for indexing). Where applicable we have also categorized the reports according to country and attached them to our general country index.
  
• Note: See also the FAS directory of links to topical CRS Reports

"...the Journal of Legal Analysis (JLA) is a new open-access law journal co-published by Harvard University Press (HUP) and the John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Business at Harvard Law School. For the record, this is the first new journal we've published in thirty years...articles will be posted, for free, as soon as they are ready for publication. In addition, we're hoping the journal fills a gap in the legal publishing landscape by providing a peer-reviewed, faculty-edited journal that covers the entire academy."

Central Intelligence Agency Freedom of Information Act Annual Report
Fiscal Year 2008

Center for Research Libraries/Global Resources Network: The Future of Newspapers: A Conversation. Alex Jones, Laurence M. Lombard Lecturer in the Press and Public Policy and Director of the Shorenstein Center, Harvard University, John Carroll, Former Editor, Los Angeles Times.

EEOC: "On January 29, 2009, President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 (“Act”), which supersedes the Supreme Court’s decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., Inc., 550 U.S. 618 (2007). Ledbetter had required a compensation discrimination charge to be filed within 180 days of a discriminatory pay-setting decision (or 300 days in jurisdictions that have a local or state law prohibiting the same form of compensation discrimination). The Act restores the pre-Ledbetter position of the EEOC that each paycheck that delivers discriminatory compensation is a wrong actionable under the federal EEO statutes, regardless of when the discrimination began. As noted in the Act, it recognizes the “reality of wage discrimination” and restores “bedrock principles of American law.”

"GPO’s Federal Digital System (FDsys) is an advanced digital system that will enable GPO to manage Government information in a digital form. FDsys will enable GPO to manage information from all three branches of the U.S. Government. As a state-of-the-art digital content management system, FDsys will contain information gathered through three methods:

• Files submitted by Congress and Federal agencies;
  
• Information gathered from Federal agencies’ web sites (often referred to as “harvesting” information);
  
• Digital files created by scanning previously printed publications."
  
• See the Advanced Search page to specify specific dates and collections.

"A list of 56 new and restyled civil and criminal forms has been posted. A working group of judges, clerks, and staff members in the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts has rewritten the forms in simple, modern English."

Ahead of the Curve: In 2009, Your Lawyers Are Your Best Knowledge Management Resource - Gretta Rusanow outlines her recommendations on why this year presents an excellent opportunity to work on those long-desired collections of models, best practice documents, sample clauses and know how files.

After Midnight - The Bush legacy of deregulation and what Obama can do, Reece Rushing, Rick Melberth, and Matt Madia, January 2009.

Collaboration Through Wikis at Hicks Morley - Heather Colman explains how wikis were an ideal KM solution for her law firm. Quick and easy to set up, requiring little IT support, wikis support central data repositories and provide features including search capabilities, email, RSS, and also allow users to create a taxonomy of subject tags to classify information.

• January 22, 2009 - Proposed Funding for Education in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
• January 16, 2009 - Health Insurance Continuation Coverage Under COBRA
• January 16, 2009 - Economic Stimulus: Issues and Policies
• January 15, 2009 - Closing the Guantanamo Detention Center - Legal Issues: "This report provides an overview of major legal issues likely to arise in the event of executive and/or legislative action to close the Guantanamo detention facility. It discusses legal issues related to the transfer or release of Guantanamo detainees (either to a foreign country or into the United States), the continued detention of such persons in the United States, and the possible removal of persons brought to the United States."
• January 15, 2009 - Congress as a Consumer of Intelligence Information: "Among the issues the 111th Congress may choose to examine are ongoing efforts by the Director of National Intelligence to strike a balance between protecting intelligence sources while providing intelligence analysts and consumers—including those in Congress—more information about the reliability of those sources."

"Starting on January 5, 2009, DOL archived all DOL agency Web sites as they existed at that time. Please remember that this is archived material and that any guidance contained within the pages may have been superceded. The content available is no longer being updated and as a result you may encounter hyperlinks which no longer function. You should also bear in mind that this content may contain text and references which are no longer applicable as a result of changes in law, regulation and/or administration. To view the archive of a specific site, please use the links below."

• U.S. Department of Labor (contains several DOL agencies)
  
• Bureau of Labor Statistics
  
• Employment & Training Administration
  
• Mine Safety and Health Administration
  
• Occupational Health & Safety Administration
  
• Office of Administrative Law Judges
  
• Office of Inspector General
  
• GovBenefits.gov (DOL-managed Partner Web Site)
  
• HireVetsFirst.gov (DOL-managed Partner Web Site)
  
• See also - The CyberCemetery: "an archive of government websites that have ceased operation (usually websites of defunct government agencies and commissions that have issued a final report). This collection features a variety of topics indicative of the broad nature of government information. In particular, this collection features websites that cover topics supporting the university’s curriculum and particular program strengths.

News release: "Acting U.S. Trade Representative Peter Allgeier announced today that a World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement panel has found important aspects of China’s intellectual property rights (IPR) regime to be inconsistent with China’s obligations under the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement). The United States brought claims against China because of serious concerns about several shortcomings in China’s legal regime for protecting and enforcing copyrights and trademarks on a wide range of products."

• Review and Disposition of Individuals Detained at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base and Closure of Detention Facilities: "By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, in order to effect the appropriate disposition of individuals currently detained by the Department of Defense at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base (Guantánamo) and promptly to close detention facilities at Guantánamo, consistent with the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and the interests of justice.."
• Review of Detention Policy Options: "By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, in order to develop policies for the detention, trial, transfer, release, or other disposition of individuals captured or apprehended in connection with armed conflicts and counterterrorism operations that are consistent with the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and the interests of justice..."
• Ensuring Lawful Interrogations: "By the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, in order to improve the effectiveness of human intelligence gathering, to promote the safe, lawful, and humane treatment of individuals in United States custody and of United States personnel who are detained in armed conflicts, to ensure compliance with the treaty obligations of the United States, including the Geneva Conventions, and to take care that the laws of the United States are faithfully executed..."

George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum: "The George W. Bush Library holds millions of pages of official records documenting the two-term administration (2001-2009) of the nation's forty-third president, as well as donated historical materials that document Bush's 2000 presidential campaign and his personal papers as Governor of Texas. In addition to these textual records, the Bush Library has an extensive audiovisual collection containing photographs and videotapes, as well as an extensive artifact collection containing presidential and gubernatorial domestic and foreign gifts."

• Executive Orders Signed by George W. President Bush
  
• Public Papers of President George W. Bush
  
• Browse the George W. Bush White House Web Site

CDT news release: "The Supreme Court Wednesday dealt the final blow to the government's 10-year campaign to place onerous restrictions on Internet content. The Court declined to hear the government's appeal of lower court rulings [3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Decision in COPA February 22, 2008] that declared the Child Online Protection Act as unconstitutional. COPA passed in 1998 but was never enforced due to immediate court challenges on First Amendment grounds. Since COPA was passed there have been at least three major commissions or studies that have concluded that education and voluntary technology tools are the most effective way to protect kids online. These approaches are the ones Congress and the President should pursue to enhance Internet safety."

News release: "On his first full day in office, President Barack Obama signed an executive order and two presidential memoranda heralding what he called a "new era of openness." Announcing a Presidential Memorandum on the Freedom of Information Act to reestablish a presumption of disclosure for information requested under FOIA, President Obama said that "every agency and department should know that this administration stands on the side not of those who seek to withhold information, but those who seek to make it known."

President Obama also issued an executive order reversing changes made by President George W. Bush to the Presidential Records Act (PRA), stating he would hold himself and his own records "to a new standard of openness." The PRA order permits only the incumbent president (and not former presidents' heirs or designees or former vice presidents) to assert constitutional privileges to withhold information, and would provide for review by the Attorney General and the White House Counsel before a president could claim privilege over his or her records.

Finally, President Obama also today issued a Presidential Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government which recognizes that "[o]penness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government." It directs the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, the Chief Technology Officer, and the Administrator of the General Services Administration to develop an Open Government Directive within 120 days to implement the memo."

Art of Written Persuasion: Part IV - What Makes a Good Problem-Solving Model?: Following up on his commentary about how problem-solving models can help lawyers (and law students) to solve legal problems systematically and to communicate legal solutions persuasively in writing, Troy Simpson discusses what makes a good problem-solving model.

News release: "United States Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey and Acting United States Attorney Laurie Magid announced the filing of a criminal information' against, and a civil settlement with, pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and Company, headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, for the off-label marketing of the anti-psychotic drug Zyprexa. The monetary settlement, totaling $1.415 billion, is the largest amount paid by a single defendant in the history of the United States Department of Justice.
All government filings, both criminal and civil, are available for your convenience on the following links:

• Information
  
• Guilty Plea Agreement
  
• Government's Memorandum For Entry Of Plea and Sentencing
  
• Corporate Integrity Agreement
  
• Settlement Agreement

Following previous postings on Bush Administration Midnight regs, this report by ABC News: "This afternoon, White House Chief of Staff and Assistant to the president, Rahm Emanuel issued a memorandum ordering all U.S. government agencies to stop implementing any pending rules and regulations issued by the Bush administration until the Obama administration has an opportunity to review and sign off on them."

"GPO's Federal Digital System (FDsys) provides public access to government information submitted by Congress and Federal agencies and preserved as technology changes. The migration of information from GPO Access into FDsys will be complete in mid-2009. The migration is occurring on a collection-by-collection basis. Collections currently available on FDsys are: Compilation of Presidential Documents (1993 to Present); Congressional Bills (103rd Congress to Present); Congressional Documents (104th Congress to Present); Congressional Hearings (105th Congress to Present); Congressional Record (1994 to Present); Congressional Reports (104th Congress to Present); Federal Register (1994 to Present); Public and Private Laws (104th Congress to Present)."

U.S. Department of Justice Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Annual Report for Fiscal Year 2008: Backlogs of FOIA Requests and Administrative Appeals as of end of fiscal years - 4364.

News release: "The U.S. Department of Labor announced publication of a final rule to make investment advice more accessible for millions of Americans in 401(k) type plans and individual retirement accounts (IRAs). The final rule will be published in the Jan. 21, 2009, edition of the Federal Register. The rule includes a regulation that implements the new statutory exemption for investment advice added to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) by the Pension Protection Act (PPA) and a related class exemption."

• Employee Benefits Security Administration Federal Register Notice: Prohibited Transaction Exemption for Provision of Investment Advice to Individual Retirement and Similar Plans [12/04/2006] and Comments to Proposed Regs
  
• Chairmen Miller, Andrews Statement on Last-Minute Special Interest Regulation - Rule Could Undermine Retirement Savings Plans for Millions of Americans

Redesigning the SEC: Does the Treasury Have a Better Idea? by John C. Coffee, Jr., Hillary A. Sale. This article will appear in the 75th Anniversary SEC Symposium in the Virginia Law Review.

Follow up to January 7, 2009 posting, Bush Administration Releases Highlights of Accomplishments and Results, the next report in what appears to be a series, The Accomplishments of the U.S. Department of Justice, 2001-2009

Burney's Legal Tech Reviews: A Review of the 8GB SanDisk Cruzer Micro - Brett Burney returns with a review of the well designed, low cost, high capacity SanDisk Cruzer Micro, which includes U3 technology that turns the flash drive into a portable computing environment.

News release: The National Archives...open[ed] more than 150 cubic feet of records of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, known as the 9/11 Commission, an independent, bipartisan commission created by Congress. The Commission’s mandate was to provide a “full and complete accounting” of the attacks of September 11, 2001, and recommend how to prevent such attacks in the future. On January 14th...Memoranda for the Record (summaries of 709 interviews conducted by the Commission), series descriptions, and folder title lists will be available online. These records include information on the terrorists, past terrorist events, al Qaeda in general, and related subjects. The records also include information concerning the emergency responses to the attacks in New York City and Washington, DC...The records [opened] on January 14th represent 35% of the Commission’s archived textual records."

News release: "The U.S. Treasury Department today released the term sheet and answers to frequently asked questions for qualified financial institutions applying to the Capital Purchase Program that are S corporations. The term sheet provides for issuances of debt instead of stock, unlike other term sheets for the Capital Purchase Program."

• Term Sheet – S-Corporations
  
• FAQ – S-Corporations
  
• Related postings on financial system

Follow up to previous postings on missing White House emails, today's news release: "At a hearing today concerning the risks posed by the presidential transition to the recovery of millions of missing e-mails from the Executive Office of the President (EOP) in the National Security Archive's lawsuit seeking restoration of those e-mails, the White House acknowledged that it has done little to recover e-mail files from computer workstations and nothing to collect external media storage devices that could hold e-mails. These admissions came despite the issuance of a report and recommendation in April 2008 by a federal magistrate judge calling for the White House to locate and preserve data from the workstations and external media storage devices. Earlier today the court issued an order requiring steps to be taken to secure files from individual computer workstations, memory sticks, zip drives, DVDs and CDs."

News release: "The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) is publicly releasing for the first time the final version of a white paper created by the National Procurement Fraud Task Force Legislation Committee recommending ways to reduce procurement fraud. The June 9, 2008, white paper titled "Procurement Fraud: Legislative and Regulatory Reform Proposals," consists of recommendations that would "significantly aid the Federal Government in preventing, detecting and prosecuting procurement fraud," according to its authors. The Legislation Committee co-chairs are Brian Miller, Inspector General for the General Services Administration, and Richard Skinner, Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security. The draft white paper was originally dated July 9, 2007, but it went through an intense year-long vetting process."

FOIA Facts: New FOIA Provisions Take Effect - Scott A. Hodes discusses two sections (Section 6 and 7) of the OPEN Government Act of 2007 that just went into effect, and the problems that will be encountered by requesters trying to use them to their advantage.

"The Federal Judicial Center has posted a monograph that offers a brief introduction to the complexity and nuance in the subject-matter jurisdiction of the U.S. Courts of Appeals, including civil and criminal appeals, extraordinary writs, and federal agency reviews."

News release: "The Federal Trade Commission today announced the second in a series of public hearings exploring the evolving market for intellectual property (IP). These hearings, to be held February 11 and 12, 2009 in Washington, DC, will examine remedies for patent infringement...The February 11 hearing will address patent damages, including the standards that govern such assessments, the application of these standards in court proceedings, and the impact of the resulting awards on business activity, including licensing and innovation. The hearing on February 12 will focus on permanent injunctions in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s eBay decision and willful infringement. Panelists will consider, among other issues, the criteria courts have considered in deciding whether to grant or deny an injunction and the effect of these legal doctrines on innovation and business strategies. An agenda for the hearings is available here."

Follow up to previous posting, Oversight Committee Holds Hearing on EPA's New Ozone Standards, this recently released memo from DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel: Assertion of Executive Privilege Over Communications Regarding EPA's Ozone Air Quality Standards and California's Greenhouse Gas Waiver Request (June 19, 2008) (added 1/08/09).

The Upside of the Downturn – Time to Work on Your Know How: Knowhow expert Gretta Rusanow highlights content as the focus for law firm knowledge management plans this year.

• "Protected Person" Status in Occupied Iraq Under the Fourth Geneva Convention (March 18, 2004) (added 1/08/09)
• Status of Taliban Forces Under Article 4 of the Third Geneva Convention OF 1949 (February 7, 2002) (added 1/08/09)
• Authority of the President Under Domestic and International Law to Use Military Force Against Iraq (October 23, 2002) (added 1/08/09)
• Effect of a Recent United Nations Security Council Resolution Authority of the President Under International Law to Use Military Force Against Iraq (November 8, 2002) (added 1/08/09)
• Whether False Statements or Ommisions in Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Declaration Would Constitute a "Further Materials Breach" Under U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 (December 7, 2002) (added 1/08/09)
• Legality of the Use of Military Commission to Try Terrorists (November 6, 2001) (added 1/08/09)
• Related postings on Iraq

Metadata - What Is It and What Are My Ethical Duties?: Jim Calloway explains why every lawyer needs to understand a few basic things about metadata. He contends that the legal ethics implications of metadata “mining” are no longer just of interest to the lawyers processing electronic discovery, or the ethics mavens.

Editorial - Exit Stonewalling: "...E-mail messages that have gone suspiciously missing are estimated to number in the millions. These could illuminate some of the administration’s darker moments, including the lead-up to the Iraq war, when intelligence was distorted, the destruction of videotapes of C.I.A. torture interrogations, and the vindictive outing of the C.I.A. operative Valerie Plame Wilson. The deep-sixed history also includes improper business conducted by more than 50 White House appointees via e-mail at the Republican Party headquarters. Historians and archivists are suing the administration. We should be grateful for their efforts. Entire days of e-mail records have turned up conveniently blank at the offices of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney."

• Reuters: Chrysler gets $4 billion U.S. government loan
• "GMAC Financial Services today [December 29, 2009] announced that it has sold $5.0 billion of GMAC's preferred membership interests and warrants to the U.S. Department of the Treasury as a participant in the Troubled Assets Relief Program established under the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. The sale was completed today." See also GMAC Announces Consummation of Its Notes Exchange Offers
• Chrysler Statement Re Federal Assistance Received, January 2, 2009: "Chrysler Chairman and CEO Bob Nardelli said on behalf of the leadership team, that he was pleased to report that the Company's discussions with the Treasury Department have been completed, and that today, Chrysler received an initial $4 billion loan to help bridge the current financial crisis."
• Related postings on the financial system

Universal Declaration of Human Rights Website - "This site provides access to United Nations documentation related to the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. From 1946-1948 delegates to the United Nations discussed and drafted an international declaration on the subject of human rights that has become a standard of principles for human rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by General Assembly resolution 217A at its 3rd session in Paris on 10 December 1948. This website presents documents in chronological order, arranged according to the various bodies that met to discuss, draft and re-draft the Declaration. There are also brief biographic notes for the members of the Drafting Committee formed by the UN Commission on Human Rights." [via UN Pulse]

Presidential Libraries: The Federal System and Related Legislation, Updated November 26, 2008.

News release: "California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. has filed suit in federal court to block an “audacious attempt” by the Bush Administration to gut provisions in the Endangered Species Act mandating scientific review of federal agency decisions that may threaten endangered species and their habitat...The new regulations, initially proposed by the Departments of the Interior and Commerce in August 2008 and made final on December 16, largely eliminate a requirement in the Endangered Species Act that mandates scientific review of federal agency decisions that might affect endangered and threatened species and their habitats...The changes allow federal agencies to undertake or permit mining, logging, and other commercial activities on federal land and other areas without obtaining review or comment from federal wildlife biologists on the environmental effects of such activities."

Assertion of Executive Privilege Concerning the Special Counsel's Interview of The Vice President and Senior White House Staff (July 15, 2008) (added December 29, 2008): "It is legally permissible for the President to assert executive privilege in response to a congressional subpoena for reports of Department of Justice interviews with the Vice President and senior White House staff taken during the Department’s investigation by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald into the disclosure of Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity as an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency."

Reduced Hospitalizations for Acute Myocardial Infarction After Implementation of a Smoke-Free Ordinance — City of Pueblo, Colorado, 2002–2006. CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, January 2, 2009 / Vol. 57 / No. 51 & 52.

News release: "The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence today filed suit in federal court asking that the court strike down a last-minute Bush Administration rule change allowing concealed, loaded firearms in national parks and wildlife refuges. The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and seeks an injunction to block the rule, which is scheduled to go into effect on January 9, 2009...The rule will allow guns in rural and urban national park areas around the country, from Wyoming’s Yellowstone and California’s Yosemite to Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park, home of the Liberty Bell. The suit was filed on behalf of the Brady Campaign and its members, including school teachers in the New York and Washington, D.C. areas who are canceling or curtailing school trips to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty and the National Mall in Washington, D.C. now that the Bush Administration will be allowing guns in these national park areas."

"The United States Code is the codification by subject matter of the general and permanent laws of the United States. It is divided by broad subjects into 50 titles and published by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the U.S. House of Representatives. Since 1926, the United States Code has been published every six years. In between editions, annual cumulative supplements are published in order to present the most current information. In addition, the United States Code browse feature has been restored. The browse feature allows you to browse individual U.S. Code titles, down to the section level, for the latest available update. In the
current table, Titles 1 through 41, with the exception of 38A, are based on the 2006 edition (January 3, 2007) of the Code. Titles 38A, and 42 through 50 Appendix, are based on Supplement V of the 2000 Edition (January 2, 2006) of the Code."

8 Events that Shook the Industry in 2008 - From Hurricanes to Ponzi Schemes, it Was a Year of Disasters, Linda McGlasson, Managing Editor, Bank Info Security: "The year 2008 was marked with significant milestones. Major banks and investment firms around the globe foundered, failed and were acquired or propped up by their governments and regulatory overseers. Stock markets plunged as the subprime problems of investors around the world began unraveling. Opportunistic fraud was uncovered."

Neurolaw and Criminal Justice: Ken Strutin's article highlights selected recent publications, news sources and other online materials concerning the applications of cognitive research to criminal law as well as basic information on the science and technology involved.

The Recent Surge in Homicides involving Young Black Males and Guns: Time to Reinvest in Prevention and Crime Control, December 2008, James Alan Fox, Ph.D., The Lipman Family Professor of Criminal Justice, and Professor of Law, Policy & Society and Marc L. Swatt, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice, Northeastern University

Deep Web Research 2009: Marcus P. Zillman's guide includes links to: articles, papers, forums, audios and videos, cross database articles, search services and search tools, peer to peer, file sharing, grid/matrix search engines, presentations, resources on deep web research, semantic web research, and bot research resources and sites.

New York Times: "The National Archives has put into effect an emergency plan to handle electronic records from the Bush White House amid growing doubts about whether its new $144 million computer system can cope with the vast quantities of digital data it will receive when President Bush leaves office on Jan. 20. The technical challenge was an inevitable result of the explosion in cybercommunications, which will make the electronic record of the Bush years about 50 times as large as that left by the Clinton White House in 2001, archives officials estimate. The collection will include top-secret e-mail tracing plans for the Iraq war..."

News release: "The National Archives announced that the second and third volumes of the “Public Papers of President George W. Bush, 2004” are available for sale. These hardcover volumes were compiled by the Office of the Federal Register, an agency of the National Archives and Records Administration. “Public Papers of President George W. Bush, 2004, Book II” is 1088 pages and covers July 1 to September 30, 2004. “Public Papers of President George W. Bush, 2004, Book III” is 912 pages and covers October 1 to December 31, 2004. Both volumes contain the text of public speeches, news conferences, messages and statements, and communications to Congress. All materials are indexed by subject and name and listed according to document category. Four appendices are included with each volume, which provide supplementary materials such as the President's public schedule, nominations submitted to the Senate, and lists of other White House releases and documents published in the Federal Register."

Comprehensive Collection of Kissinger "Telcons" Provides Inside View of Government Decision-Making; Reveals Candid talks with Presidents, Foreign Leaders, Journalists, and Power-brokers during Nixon-Ford Years, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 263 - Part 1, Edited by William Burr

News release: "The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has published the ARL Statistics 2006–2007, the latest in a series of annual publications that describe the collections, staffing, expenditures, and service activities of ARL’s 123 member libraries. Of these member libraries, 113 are university libraries (14 in Canada, 99 in the US); the remaining 10 are public, governmental, and private research libraries (2 in Canada, 8 in the US)."

A Guide for the Perplexed: Libraries and the Google Library Project Settlement: Jonathan Band's article outlines the settlement’s provisions, with special emphasis on the provisions that apply directly to libraries. The settlement is extremely complex (over 200 pages long, including attachments), so this paper of necessity simplifies many of its details.

The Government Domain: Wrapping Up 2008 - E-gov expert Peggy Garvin provides an overview of the significant developments in the world of online government information this past year. According to Peggy, overall the year saw a push by individuals and non-government organizations for increased access to digital government information. Specifically, new official government and non-government websites came online, and existing sites developed more sophisticated features.

CNET: "One day after Virginia Tech released thousands of documents solely to families of victims in last year's massacre, the university's student newspaper made them public. On Thursday, the Collegiate Times posted the documents, which include e-mails sent from the account of gunman Seung-Hui Cho, who killed 32 fellow students and faculty members and then killed himself on April 16, 2007. The nearly 14,000 pages also include the police report on the massacre, e-mails from faculty sent to fellow professors and to Cho, a 2005 harassment complaint against Cho, post-massacre clean-up plans, administration plans on how to present the tragedy to the public, and post-massacre fundraising advice."

U.S. Courts: "Bankruptcy cases filed in federal courts totaled 1,042,993 for the 12-month period ending September 30, 2008, up more than 30 percent when compared to the 801,269 filings in Fiscal Year 2007, according to statistics released today by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. The September 2008 filings are the highest of any 12-month period since the 2006 implementation of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005, when there were 1,112,542 filings in the 12-month period ending September 30, 2006."

"A comparison of legislative resources available on GPO Access and other Government and non-Government Web sites was recently completed. Eight Web sites were selected for in-depth analysis including GPO Access, THOMAS, House.gov, Senate.gov, CQ.com, HeinOnline, Lexis-Nexis Congressional, and Westlaw. The report specifically evaluates the availability of legislative resources on all of the databases examined, the scope of the resources on each database, the source of those resources (i.e., whether they house their own content or link to other Web sites for it), and additional legislative resources or features exclusive to comparable Web sites. The 2008 comparison report and previous reports are available as follows:

• Executive Summary
• Chart - Comparison of Legislative Resources: Scope of GPO Access and Government Web Sites
• Chart - Comparison of Legislative Resources: Scope of GPO Access and Non-Government Web Sites."

Office of Counsel Legal Review, EPA’s California Waiver Decision on Greenhouse Gas Automobile Emissions Met Statutory Procedural Requirements, Report No. 09-P-0056, December 9, 2008

E-Discovery Update: My E-Discovery Holiday Wish List - Conrad J. Jacoby's holiday wish is for the legal community to finally develop one or more judicially accepted standards that can be used to craft consistent ways of requesting and producing information. With baseline procedures in place, both producing and requesting parties, as well as judges, will be able to make more informed decisions about the need for discovery and the way in which such discovery should be conducted.

Economic Indicators: Available from April 1995 forward, this monthly compilation is prepared for the Joint Economic Committee by the Council of Economic Advisors and provides economic information on prices, wages, production, business activity, purchasing power, credit, money and Federal finance."

News release: "The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Bernard L. Madoff and his investment firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, with securities fraud for a multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme that he perpetrated on advisory clients of his firm. The SEC is seeking emergency relief for investors, including an asset freeze and the appointment of a receiver for the firm. The SEC's complaint, filed in federal court in Manhattan, alleges that Madoff yesterday informed two senior employees that his investment advisory business was a fraud."

• SEC Complaint
  
• Order freezing assets and granting emergency relief (Dec. 12, 2008)
  
• Information for customers of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC

News release: "The Commission has appointed Mitchell S. Pettit as the interim monitor under the terms of the recently approved consent order concerning ChoicePoint, Inc.’s acquisition by Reed Elsevier, NV. The Commission also approved the interim monitor agreement in this matter. The Commission’s decision and consent order authorizes the FTC to appoint an interim monitor to oversee the divestiture of assets required in this matter. As the monitor appointed by the Commission, Pettit, the founder and CEO of MSP Strategic Communication, Inc., will perform his duties in accordance with the interim monitor agreement, which both ChoicePoint and Reed Elsevier have agreed to."

"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is announcing a final rule to provide an administrative reporting exemption for releases to the air from animal waste at farms of any hazardous substance at or above the reportable quantity for those hazardous substances. EPA is saying that these reports are unnecessary because there is no reasonable expectation that a Federal response would be made as a result of such reports. The final rule reduces the burden of complying with Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) and to a limited extent, the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) reporting requirements on the regulated community."

• SEC press release
• FBI press release
• ECF U.S. District Court, United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Foley Square), CIVIL DOCKET FOR CASE #: 1:08-cv-10791-LLS. Securities and Exchange Commission v. Madoff et al, Assigned to: Judge Louis L. Stanton. Cause: 15:77 Securities Fraud

European Space Policy Institute papers available online: "Papers presented at the workshop The Fair and Responsible Use of Space: an International Perspective, held November 20-21 in Vienna, Austria, co-sponsored by the Secure World Foundation are now available online."

In following posting today, Interior Publishes Final Changes to Endangered Species Act Regs, this news release: "The announcement by the Interior Department of a new rule eliminating Congress’s authority to prevent new mining on public lands escalated concerns about the Bush administration's last ditch efforts to push through major regulatory rule changes to energy and environmental policies. From global warming to water quality to endangered species to clean air, the Bush administration is pushing harder than ever to advance its anti-environmental agenda by rescinding, changing, or issuing rules, with negative consequences for our natural resources, environment, and America’s energy policy. A panel of environmental and regulatory experts will discuss the ramifications of these last-minute rulemakings at a hearing before Chairman Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming."

Follow up to related postings on "midnight regulations," this news release and report: "In 2001, the Bush administration began its radical, anti-environmental agenda by rescinding, changing, or issuing rules that degraded America’s environment. From refusing to reduce the arsenic levels in drinking water, to opening wilderness areas to new roads, to rejecting the Kyoto Protocol after promising to cut emissions, early actions merely presaged later damaging activities on global warming, clean air laws, and myriad other environmental and energy issues."

"The Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming has prepared the following report on what administrative actions the Bush administration could take in the final days of its second term": Past is Prologue: For Energy and the Environment, the Bush Administration’s Last 100 Days Could Rival the First 100, A Majority Staff Report.

"An estimated 27 million people are victims of human trafficking in the world today, and between 14,500 and 17,000 are trafficked into the United States each year. In order to help lawyers understand the complex issues human trafficking victims face, the American Bar Association has released three new resources for lawyers who have previously represented victims of domestic violence, children and other victims of crime.

• Meeting the Legal Needs of Human Trafficking Victims: An Introduction for Domestic Violence Attorneys & Advocates provides information about identifying trafficking victims and discusses potential cultural issues that may arise; it also addresses protection orders available in the U.S.; outlines visa options for global trafficking victims; and provides additional resources for lawyers.
• Specific considerations relating to youth and children, including running away, peer pressure and reliance on adults are explored in Meeting the Legal Needs of Child Trafficking Victims: An Introduction for Children's Attorneys & Advocates. In addition to outlining legal remedies, the guide also provides information about community-based responses to child trafficking.
• Finally, Human Trafficking Cases: How and Why to Use an Expert Witness, offers considerations in screening expert witnesses, tips on working with witnesses and case examples in which expert witnesses played a role.
Permanent Link

DOJ OIG: Review of the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA), Evaluation and Inspections Report I-2009-001, December 2008: "...we found that information in the national sex offender registries is incomplete and inaccurate and therefore the registries are not reliable tools for law enforcement and the public. For example, we found that registries were missing records, did not always identify known fugitives, and did not always contain sufficient information to enable law enforcement and the public to accurately identify sex offenders."

News release: "Chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and Bart Stupak (D-MI), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, today released a Committee on Energy and Commerce Majority Staff report detailing the findings of the Committee’s bipartisan investigation relating to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)...The report, titled Deception and Distrust: The Federal Communications Commission Under Chairman Kevin J. Martin, is the culmination of a bipartisan investigation into the FCC’s regulatory processes and management practices that was formally launched on January 8, 2008."

United States Attorney Northern District of Illinois: "Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich and his Chief of Staff, John Harris, were arrested today by FBI agents on federal corruption charges alleging that they and others are engaging in ongoing criminal activity: conspiring to obtain personal financial benefits for Blagojevich by leveraging his sole authority to appoint a United States Senator; threatening to withhold substantial state assistance to the Tribune Company in connection with the sale of Wrigley Field to induce the firing of Chicago Tribune editorial board members sharply critical of Blagojevich; and to obtain campaign contributions in exchange for official actions – both historically and now in a push before a new state ethics law takes effect January 1, 2009."

News release: "The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that it has unanimously approved measures that will shine more light than ever before on the municipal securities market by tapping the power of the Internet. For the first time, investors will have a free, one-stop way to find municipal bond information online to help them make investment decisions...The rule amendments approved by the SEC designate the MSRB as the central repository for ongoing disclosures by municipal issuers. Under a separate MSRB rule change, its Electronic Municipal Market Access (EMMA) system would make these disclosures available to investors in the same manner that the SEC’s EDGAR system does for corporate disclosures...EMMA will operate as a consolidated, online portal where investors can instantly access, for free, all of the key information produced by municipal bond issuers about their bonds. Offering documents, real-time trade prices, and education resources already are available on EMMA."

"The Commission will consider whether to adopt final rule amendments and whether to propose new rule amendments that will impose additional requirements on nationally recognized statistical rating organizations in order to address concerns raised about the policies and procedures for, transparency of, and potential conflicts of interest relating to ratings of residential mortgage-backed securities backed by subprime mortgage loans and collateralized debt obligations linked to subprime loans."

The regulatory program established by the Credit Rating Agency Reform Act allows the Commission to promulgate rules regarding public disclosure; recordkeeping and financial reporting; and substantive requirements designed to ensure that NRSROs conduct their activities with integrity and impartiality. The rules being considered today are meant to supplement previous rules implemented by the Commission under the Credit Rating Agency Reform Act in June 2007.

"The House Oversight Committee will next Tuesday consider a report supported by Chairman Henry A. Waxman and former Ranking Member Tom Davis finding that President Bush made a “legally unprecedented and an inappropriate use of executive privilege” when he directed Attorney General Mukasey to withhold Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s interview of Vice President Cheney from the Committee."

• Draft Report: President Bush's Assertion of Executive Privilege Regarding Attorney General Mukasey
  
• Appendix A to Report on President Bush's Assertion of Executive Privilege Regarding Attorney General Mukasey
  
• Appendix B to Report on President Bush's Assertion of Executive Privilege Regarding Attorney General Mukasey
  
• Draft Report: Additional Views of Chairman Waxman on President Bush's Use of Executive Privilege

"State Responses to Immigration: A Database of All State Legislation is a free, searchable data tool designed to generate information about all immigration-related bills and resolutions introduced in state legislatures. Classified by state, region, subject area, legislative type, and bill status, this is the only database that allows users to find out, for example, the status of enforcement initiatives introduced in their state, compare the number of bills regulating employment, or evaluate the passage rate of health-related bills across the nation.

State Responses to Immigration is a joint project of the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) and a research team at the New York University School of Law (NYU). We encourage you to read about the methodology we employed to gather and classify immigration-related legislation before using the tool.

We have posted the 2007 legislation and will add data for 2008, in addition to 2001-2006 data, in the coming months. Note: The database assigns a bill's status based on its status as of December 31 of the given year."

News release: "The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s 2008 enforcement actions in California included enforcement actions to reduce water pollution, clean oil spills, improve local air quality; prosecute environmental violators, and much more...“EPA enforcement actions against California companies will reduce more than 83.5 million pounds of pollution and clean up more than 100 million cubic yards of contaminated soil and water...”

“Seat at the Table” Transparency Policy: "As an extension of the unprecedented ethics guidelines already in place for the Obama-Biden Transition Project, we take another significant step towards transparency of our efforts for the American people. Every day, we meet with organizations who present ideas for the Transition and the Administration, both orally and in writing. We want to ensure that we give the American people a “seat at the table” and that we receive the benefit of their feedback. Accordingly, any documents from official meetings with outside organizations will be posted on our website for people to review and comment on. In addition to presenting ideas as individuals at www.change.gov, the American people deserve a “seat at the table” as we receive input from organizations and make decisions. In the interest of protecting the personal privacy of individuals, this policy does not apply to personnel matters and hiring recommendations."

• See also this Pew Internet post, Joining the Discussion at Change.gov: "While [change.gov]...is still a work in progress, the Obama team has clearly opted to err on the side of encouraging debate and interaction and sort out the details as they go along. That much is apparent from the recent online discussion of health care, which has so far garnered more than 4,000 user comments and a video reply from new HHS Secretary Daschle (the administration has since opened a similar discussion for the economy)."
  
• Related postings on the Obama transition

Senate Manual, 110th Congress - "Contains the rules, orders, laws, and resolutions affecting the business of the U.S. Senate; Jefferson's Manual, Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, Constitution of the U.S., etc. 104th, 106th, 107th, and 110th Congress. (Note: There are no records of the 105th, 108th, and 109th Senate Manuals, and Congress has made no known plans for their production.)"

AmLawDaily: "Google Inc. and Yahoo! Inc. called off their joint advertising agreement just three hours before the Department of Justice planned to file antitrust charges to block the pact, according to the lawyer who would have been lead counsel for the government."

News release: "To promote transparency in merger enforcement, the Federal Trade Commission today released its most recent staff update of horizontal merger investigations, describing transactions that took place between fiscal years 1996 and 2007. The update expands the coverage of mergers by adding two more years to the agency’s database. The new data contain tabulated concentration levels associated with the FTC’s investigations in 1,154 markets over the 12-year period and reflect results from 210 merger investigations. The data tabulations use the two market share concentration statistics described in the agency’s Horizontal Merger Guidelines – the post-merger Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) and the change in the HHI – along with the number of significant competitors. The number of “significant competitors” is defined relative to the competitive effects theory that was the most plausible basis for the investigation. Data on HHIs are available for 1,150 markets and data on “significant competitors” are presented for 925 markets."

"GPO's Authentication initiative focuses on the primary objective of assuring users that the information made available by GPO is official and authentic and that trust relationships exist between all participants in electronic transactions. In furthering GPO's mission to provide permanent public access to authentic U.S. Government publications, GPO is working to afford users further assurance that files are unchanged since GPO authenticated them.

The Beta release of an Authenticated Congressional Bills application provides digitally signed and certified Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files for a sample set of Congressional Bills from the 110th Congress. GPO has signed and certified the House and Senate bills PDF files within this application as part of GPO's initiative to reassure users that the online documents are official and authentic."

Nanotechnology: What Is It and Why Do Law Librarians Need to Know About It? According to R. Scott Russell, future studies linking nanotechnology to a range of adverse issues could lead to litigation for law firm clients. How to learn about nanotechnology, and reliable law and technology sources for research on this and related topics, are highlighted.

Follow up to previous postings on "midnight regulations," see Robert Pear's New York Times article, Bush Aides Rush to Enact a Safety Rule Obama Opposes: "The Labor Department is racing to complete a new rule, strenuously opposed by President-elect Barack Obama, that would make it much harder for the government to regulate toxic substances and hazardous chemicals to which workers are exposed on the job."

News release: "In 2008, the Electronic Public Access (EPA) Program celebrates its own coming of age after two decades of expansion and service. Back in September 1988, the Judicial Conference authorized “an experimental program of electronic access for the public to court information in one or more district, bankruptcy, or appellate courts in which the experiment can be conducted at nominal cost.”A dozen courts signed up for the pilot Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system.

It began as an electronic bulletin board system with dial-in modems. The U.S. Party/Case Index was added in 1997, allowing national searches through an index for district, bankruptcy, and appellate court cases. In 1998, PACER began moving to a web environment, so anyone with Internet access could view court cases.

From a dozen participating courts, PACER has grown to include all bankruptcy, district, and appellate courts. From 9,000 registered user accounts in 1994, PACER grew to 900,000 registered accounts by 2008. This fiscal year alone, PACER added 134,000 new users."

Stuck in a Revolving Door, Iraqis and Other Asylum Seekers and Migrants at the Greece/Turkey - Entrance to the European Union, November 2008.

United States District Court for the District of Columbia, Anthrax Case Documents.

TRAC news release: "The latest available data from the Justice Department show that in August 2008 the government reported 13,566 new prosecutions. While down slightly (2.3%) from the previous month, this number is still 43% higher than a year ago. The overall growth in federal prosecutions is largely driven by continuing increases in immigration matters, which accounted for 54% of all new cases filed in August in U.S. Federal Court."

Library of Congress, Federal Research Division: Rule of Law Handbook 2008, The Judge Advocate General's Legal Center and School, U.S. Army Center for Law and Military Operations

Forged in the Fire - Lessons Learned During Military Operations (1994-2008), September 2008

• The U.S. Financial Crisis: The Global Dimension with Implications for U.S. Policy, November 18, 2008
• Reporting Requirements in the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, updated November 13, 2008
• The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act and Current Financial Turmoil: Issues and Analysis, October 31, 2008
• Emergency Economic Stabilization Act: Preliminary Analysis of Oversight Provisions, October 31, 2008
• The Global Financial Crisis: The Role of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), October 30, 2008
• Related postings on financial system

CRS Report: Midnight Rulemaking: Considerations for Congress and a New Administration, November 18, 2008

News release: In the wake of a February 2008 appeals court decision striking down weak regulations proposed by the Bush Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a new report from the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project finds that the top 50 most polluting power plants In the U.S. emitted 20 tons of the dangerous neurotoxin mercury into the nation’s air in 2007. While some of the dirtiest coal-fired power plants are reporting reductions in such pollution since 2006, the majority of the worst 50 plants actually increased their mercury emissions through 2007, the most recent period for which data is available."

News release: "The Office of the Federal Register has created an Electronic Public Inspection Desk to provide free worldwide electronic access to public documents. For the first time in the 72-year existence of the daily Federal Register, the documents on file are available for viewing anytime, anywhere. Every Federal business day, anyone with access to a computer now can read critical documents governing Federal regulations relating to business, health, and safety as soon as the documents are placed on file. To view these documents, go to www.federalregister.gov. See "View Documents on Public Inspection" on the left hand side. This new desk grants the public access to documents that will be published in the next day's Federal Register as early at 8:45 a.m. EST. Previously, such documents could only be seen by viewing the documents physically located at the Office of the Federal Register in Washington, D.C."

News release: "A new Web site launched by four national legal organizations will help victims of disasters find valuable information and assistance to speed recovery from hurricanes, fires, floods or other disasters. The site is sponsored by the American Bar Association, Legal Services Corporation, National Legal Aid & Defender Association and Pro Bono Net.

“The site – www.disasterlegalservices.org – lists information for people who need help and the lawyers who want to volunteer to help them,” said ABA President H. Thomas Wells Jr. “By pooling the resources of our organizations, we can provide services in a timely, efficient manner.”

"Following an EPIC complaint, a federal court has ordered CyberSpy Software to stop selling malicious computer software. In March, EPIC filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission alleging that the spyware purveyor engages in unfair and deceptive practices by: (1) promoting illegal surveillance; (2) encouraging "Trojan Horse" email attacks; and (3) failing to warn customers of the legal dangers arising from misuse of the software. The federal regulators agreed, and asked the court for a permanent injunction barring sales of CyberSpy's "stalker spyware," over the counter surveillance technology sold for individuals to spy on other individuals. The court entered a temporary restraining order on November 6, 2008. Further litigation is expected before the court rules on the government's request for a permanent ban. For more information, see EPIC's Personal Surveillance Technologies page and Domestic Violence and Privacy page."

News release: "Detainees released from U.S. detention in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba and Afghanistan live shattered lives as a result of U.S. policies in the “war on terror,” according to a new report by human rights experts at the University of California, Berkeley done in partnership with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). The report, Guantánamo and Its Aftermath: U.S. Detention and Interrogation Practices and Their Impact on Detainees, based on a two-year study, reveals in graphic detail the cumulative effect of Bush Administration policies on the lives of 62 released detainees. Many of the prisoners were sold into captivity and subjected to brutal treatment in U.S. prison camps. Once in Guantánamo, prisoners were denied access to civilian courts to challenge the legality of their detention. Almost two-thirds of the former detainees interviewed reported having psychological problems since leaving Guantánamo."

Attorney General Must Work Without Partisanship, Op-Ed, October 28, 2008, By Sen. Patrick Leahy & Sen. Arlen Specter: "In much the same way that our financial system is suffering a crisis of confidence, our Justice Department — the flagship of our system of justice — also faces a difficult road to rebuild trust after a crisis of leadership and conscience. The infusion of politics into the Justice Department and an abdication of responsibility by its leaders have dealt a severe blow, squandering the public’s trust in a system that is supposed to apply our laws without fear or favor. Investigations by Congress and the DOJ’s inspector general into the U.S. attorney firing scandal and the politicized hiring of attorneys and immigration judges have substantiated some of our worst fears. We now have the corrosive situation in which defendants routinely question whether federal prosecutions are politically motivated. Great damage has been done to the credibility and effectiveness of the Justice Department...The next president should nominate someone who understands our moral obligation to protect the fundamental rights of all Americans and to respect the human rights of all people. The attorney general must hold everyone, no matter how powerful, accountable to the law. Any nominee must have a visceral commitment to pursuing and achieving justice, and a record of doing just that."

OMB Watch: "...more than 240 individuals and organizations [Participants included good government groups, professional associations, traditional reporters, bloggers, unions, representatives of the philanthropic community, technology experts, and members of academia. In an unprecedented manner, the project brought together conservatives, libertarians, and progressives. These recommendations are a demonstration that government transparency is neither a left nor a right issue. It's an American issue] called on President-elect Barack Obama and the 111th Congress to act on a series of government openness recommendations. The recommendations are included in a report from the 21st Century Right to Know Project, titled Moving Toward a 21st Century Right-to-Know Agenda: Recommendations to President-elect Obama and Congress.

Seventy recommendations urge the new president and the incoming Congress to act quickly on a number of key government openness issues while encouraging a more systemic, longer-term approach to a variety of other transparency problems that plague the federal government. Recommendations needing urgent attention are grouped into a "First 100 Days" chapter. Others are sorted into three additional chapters: National Security and Secrecy; Usability of Information; and Creating a Government Environment for Transparency."

News release: "The Department of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve Board today announced the release of a joint final rule to implement the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006. The Act prohibits gambling businesses from knowingly accepting payments in connection with unlawful Internet gambling, including payments made through credit cards, electronic funds transfers, and checks."

News release: "The Obama administration can act quickly after taking office in January to reverse the secrecy trend of the last eight years and restore openness in the executive branch, according to a set of new proposals posted online today by the National Security Archive. More than 60 organizations joined the recommendations, which call on President-elect Obama to restore efficiency and openness to the Freedom of Information Act process, reform the classification system to reduce overclassification and facilitate greater declassification, and ensure that presidential records are handled in accordance with the law and Congress’ intent."

Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys - Resource Management of United States Attorneys' Offices (USAOs), Audit Report 09-03, November 2008

News release: "A court ruled today that the National Security Archive may proceed with its effort to force the White House to recover millions of Bush Administration Executive Office of the President (EOP) e-mail records before the presidential transition. Rejecting the government's motion to dismiss the Archive's lawsuit, the Court ruled that the Federal Records Act permits a private plaintiff to bring suit to require the head of the EOP or the Archivist of the United States to notify Congress or ask the Attorney General to initiate action to recover destroyed or missing e-mail records...The National Security Archive originally filed its case against the Executive Office of the President and the National Archives and Records Administration to preserve and restore missing e-mail federal records in September 5, 2007. A subsequent lawsuit filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has been consolidated with the Archive's lawsuit. A chronology of the litigation is available here."

Washington Post: "Transition advisers to President-elect Barack Obama have compiled a list of about 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders that could be swiftly undone to reverse White House policies on climate change, stem cell research, reproductive rights and other issues, according to congressional Democrats, campaign aides and experts working with the transition team."

Hull D, Pettifer SR, Kell DB 2008 Defrosting the Digital Library: Bibliographic Tools for the Next Generation Web. PLoS Computational Biology 4(10): e1000204 doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000204 [Gerry McKiernan]

News release: "At midyear 2007, an estimated 4 in 10 inmates in Indian country jails were confined for a violent offense, the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) announced today. Domestic violence (20 percent) accounted for the largest group of violent offenders, followed by simple or aggravated assault (13 percent) and rape or sexual assault (2 percent). Six percent of Indian country jail inmates were being held for unspecified violent offenses."

Report on Federal Escape Offenses in Fiscal Years 2006 and 2007: "In response to a suggestion in a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, United States v. Chambers, 473 F.3d 724 (7th Cir. 2007), cert. granted, __ U.S. __ , 128 S. Ct. 2046 (2008), the United States Sentencing Commission undertook a data analysis of federal escape cases to inform the legal question of whether the crime of escape qualifies as a "violent felony" for purposes of 18 U.S.C. § 924(e), the Armed Career Criminal Act (the “ACCA”). This report summarizes the legal question at issue and describes the methodology and results of the analysis undertaken by the Commission."

News release: "In a striking rebuke to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Judge Gladys Kessler of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia yesterday rejected the CIA's view that it - and not journalists - has the right to determine which Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests are newsworthy. Reconsidering its earlier decision deferring to the CIA's written assurances that the agency would cease illegally denying the National Security Archive's news media status, the court ordered the CIA to treat the Archive as a representative of the news media for all of its pending and future non-commercial requests. Finding that the CIA "has twice made highly misleading representations to the Archive, as well as to [the] Court," the court explained that the CIA's position "is truly hard to take seriously" and enjoined the CIA from illegally denying the Archive's news media status."

ISOO Notices: "On September 30, 2008, the Director of the Information Security Oversight Office advised Federal agencies that ISOO would begin to issue ISOO Notices covering aspects of the classification, safeguarding, and declassification programs administered under Executive Order 12958, as amended and its implementing directive, 32 C.F.R. 2001. These ISOO Notices will seek to improve the classified national security information programs of Federal agencies by disseminating and providing consistent guidance to Federal agencies."

CRS Report - Presidential Transitions: Issues Involving Outgoing and Incoming Administrations, October 23, 2008.

"In EPIC v. DOJ, EPIC, the ACLU, and the National Security Archive are seeking government documents regarding the President's warrantless wiretapping program. Today, a federal court ordered the Department of Justice to provide for inspection copies of legal memos authored by government lawyers. The opinions, prepared by the Office of Legal Counsel, provided the legal basis for the President to wiretap US citizens in the United States without court approval. EPIC began the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in December 2005, after the New York Times first reported the details of the wiretap program. For more information, see EPIC's EPIC v. DOJ page. (Oct. 31)"

Follow up to previous postings on perchlorate and drinking water contamination, this recent CRS report: Perchlorate Contamination of Drinking Water: Regulatory Issues and Legislative Actions, October 16, 2008

"The Law Library of Congress contains approximately 75,000 volumes of printed Congressional Hearings. Committees hold hearings for a variety of purposes. Testimony is received from members of congress, officials of the executive branch, policy experts, interest groups and sometimes the general public on legislative proposals, the functioning of government programs, subjects of controversy, and matters under investigation. As part of the Law Library’s transition to the digital future, a collaborative pilot project was undertaken with Google, Inc. to digitize the entire collection and make it freely available to Congress and the world. Three collections have been selectively compiled to provide users with a test experience: Census: U.S. / Freedom of Information/Privacy / Immigration." [Scout Report]

Follow up to October 28, 2008 posting, Authors, Publishers, and Google Reach Landmark Settlement, from the Harvard Crimson: "Harvard University Library will not take part in Google’s book scanning project for in-copyright works after finding the terms of its landmark $125 million settlement regarding copyrighted materials unsatisfactory, University officials said yesterday."

Accomodating Integration, Martha Minow, In response to Elizabeth F. Emens, Integrating Accommodation, 156 U. PA. L. REV. 839 (2008).

• 2010 Census: Census Bureau Needs Procedures for Estimating the Response Rate and Selecting for Testing Methods to Increase Response Rate, GAO-08-1012, September 30, 2008
• Combating Nuclear Smuggling: DHS's Phase 3 Test Report on Advanced Portal Monitors Does Not Fully Disclose the Limitations of the Test Results, GAO-08-979, September 30, 2008
• Defense Critical Infrastructure: Developing Training Standards and an Awareness of Existing Expertise Would Help DOD Assure the Availability of Critical Infrastructure, GAO-09-42, October 30, 2008
• Medicare Part D Prescription Drug Coverage: Federal Oversight of Reported Price Concessions Data, GAO-08-1074R, September 30, 2008
• USA Patriot Act: Better Interagency Coordination and Implementing Guidance for Section 311 Could Improve U.S. Anti-Money Laundering Efforts. GAO-08-1058, September 30, 2008

Full text of the final rule, Mandatory Electronic Submission of Applications for Orders under the Investment Company Act and Filings Made Pursuant to Regulation E: "We are adopting several amendments to rules regarding our Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval (EDGAR) system. Specifically, we are amending our rules to make mandatory the electronic submission on EDGAR of applications for orders under any section of the Investment Company Act of 1940 (“Investment Company Act”) as well as Regulation E filings of small business investment companies and business development companies. We also are amending the electronic filing rules to make the temporary hardship exemption unavailable for submission of applications under the Investment Company Act. Finally, we are amending Rule 0-2 under the Investment Company Act, eliminating the requirement that certain documents accompanying an application be notarized and the requirement that applicants submit a draft notice as an exhibit to an application."

"U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez today released a report on the U.S. litigation environment and trends in foreign direct investment (FDI) flows into America during the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s 9th Annual Legal Reform Summit. “In the wake of economic challenges, it is important that America remains open and does not retreat into economic isolationism,” Gutierrez said. “Open markets and free trade make our country the number one destination for global capital, which drives innovation, exports and jobs here at home.”

News release: "According to a report released today by Chairman Waxman, key FDA career officials strongly objected to Bush Administration drug labeling regulations that would preempt state liability lawsuits, asserting that the central justifications for the regulations were “false and misleading” and warning that the changes would deprive consumers of timely information about drug hazards."

E-Discovery Update: Pushing Back Against Hardcopy ESI Productions - Conrad J. Jacoby addresses how critical technology issues related to document authenticity and document-associated metadata have left fewer lawyers willing to accept e-mail messages and other electronic documents in print format. He argues that litigants choosing to produce electronically stored information in hardcopy format should be prepared to provide more complete electronic copies of their production, even when it isn’t initially requested by opposing counsel.

CongressLine: Congress and Money - Paul Jenks examines how the appropriations process this year has provided a multitude of interesting examples of the wide variety of tools available to Congress and the federal government for appropriating money, beyond just the ordinary appropriations bills in Congress.

As print media decline, so does the amount of available information, by David Carr, IHT: "It has been an especially rotten few days for people who type on deadline. Just Tuesday, The Christian Science Monitor announced that, after a century, it would cease publishing a weekday paper. Time Inc., the Olympian home of Time magazine, Fortune, People and Sports Illustrated, announced that it was cutting 600 jobs and reorganizing its staff. And Gannett, the largest newspaper publisher in the country, compounded the grimness by announcing it was laying off 10 percent of its work force - as many as 3,000 people...The paradox of all these announcements is that newspapers and magazines do not have an audience problem - newspaper Web sites are a vital source of news and growing - but they do have a consumer problem."

CRS Report - Status of a Senator Who Has Been Indicted for or Convicted of a Felony, October 22, 2008

Fact Sheet: Major U.S. Export Enforcement Prosecutions During the Past Two Years - "...a snapshot of some of the major export and embargo-related criminal prosecutions handled by the Justice Department over the past two years, beginning in October 2006. These cases resulted from investigations by the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), the Pentagon’s Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS), and other law enforcement agencies. This list of cases is not exhaustive and only represents select cases."

Individual Retirement Accounts and 401(k) Plans: Early Withdrawals and Required Distributions, Updated October 27, 2008

The United Nations Office of Legal Affairs launched the Audiovisual Library of International Law. [Lorraine Pellicano Waitman]

"Today a diverse coalition of leading Internet companies, major human rights and free press organizations, investors and academics launched the Global Network Initiative to protect and advance freedom of expression and privacy in information and communications technologies. CDT and Business for Social Responsibility co-facilitated an 18-month effort by these groups to craft the key documents underlying this effort. The documents provide guidance for companies, NGOs, investors, academics and others working together to resist efforts by governments that seek to enlist companies in acts of censorship and surveillance that violate international standards. The documents also provide specific implementation commitments and outline a framework for accountability and learning."

News release: "The Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers (AAP), and Google today announced a groundbreaking settlement agreement on behalf of a broad class of authors and publishers worldwide that would expand online access to millions of in-copyright books and other written materials in the U.S. from the collections of a number of major U.S. libraries participating in Google Book Search...Under the agreement, Google will make payments totaling $125 million. The money will be used to establish the Book Rights Registry, to resolve existing claims by authors and publishers and to cover legal fees. The settlement agreement resolves Authors Guild v. Google, a class-action suit filed on September 20, 2005 by the Authors Guild and certain authors, and a suit filed on October 19, 2005 by five major publisher-members of the Association of American Publishers: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.; Pearson Education, Inc. and Penguin Group (USA) Inc., both part of Pearson; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; and Simon & Schuster, Inc. part of CBS Corporation. These lawsuits challenged Google’s plan to digitize, search and show snippets of in-copyright books and to share digital copies with libraries without the explicit permission of the copyright owner."

Electronic Frontier Foundation: "This document, Unintended Consequences: Ten Years under the DMCA, collects reported cases where the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA have been invoked not against pirates, but against consumers, scientists, and legitimate competitors. It will be updated from time to time as additional cases come to light. The latest version can always be obtained at EFF.org. This document is Version Five. The previous version, from April of 2006, is available here."

• M-09-03, Guidance on implementing P.L. No. 110-329 in accordance with Executive Order 13457 on “Protecting American Taxpayers From Government Spending on Wasteful Earmarks” (October 23, 2008)
• M-09-02, Information Technology Management Structure and Governance Framework: "Organizational Structure and Reporting Relationships of IT Executives and Senior Managers - A. The Department or Agency has a designated executive-level Chief Information Officer (CIO) reporting to the head of the organization, with formal and full responsibility for all requirements set forth in promulgating statutes, regulations and guidance of Public Law 104-106, “Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996,” Public Law 107-347, “E-Government Act of 2002,” Title 44 U.S. Code Section 3506 “Federal Agency Responsibilities,” Federal Acquisition Regulation Part 39, “Acquisition of Information Technology,” and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-130, “Transmittal Memorandum #4, Management of Federal Information Resources.” (October 21, 2008)
• M-09-01, Spectrum Relocation Fund Guidance (SRF) (October 14, 2008): "The SRF was created in 2004 to streamline the process through which Federal agencies can recover the costs associated with relocating their radio communications systems from certain spectrum bands, which were authorized to be auctioned for commercial purposes. This process allows for the consolidation of Federal spectrum use, with budgetary benefit resulting from spectrum auction proceeds, economic benefit resulting from new consumer wireless services, and agency benefit through the procurement of new communications systems."

ABA Journal, November 2008: The Pre-emption Prescription - The FDA is claiming total responsibility for drug and medical device safety.

House Document 108-224, Black Americans in Congress, 1870-2007: "The most comprehensive history available on the 121 African Americans who have served in Congress. The Full House Document (803 pages) is available in five ZIP files." Users may also download individual sections of the book, available in PDF.

Official Google Blog: "Today we are pleased to announce the launch of a 5-year quotes index. This expanded coverage lets you explore what Governor Palin said before she was a VP nominee, or Senator Obama before he was a presidential candidate. The InQuotes lab page is also much improved and now provides comparisons over time on issues like the economy or the war in Iraq."

News release: "Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, joined by Vice President Al Gore, today announced an agreement that requires a national energy company, Dynegy Inc. (“Dynegy”), to disclose timely and relevant information to investors about climate change risks...Under the agreement, Dynegy has agreed to provide disclosure of material risks associated with climate change in its “Form 10-K” filings, the annual summary report on a company’s performance required by the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) to inform investors. These required disclosures include an analysis of material financial risks from climate change related to: present and probable future climate change regulation and legislation; climate-change related litigation; and physical impacts of climate change."

DOJ Office of Information and Privacy (OIP) Guidance: Segregating and Marking Documents for Release in Accordanc with The Open Government Act

Processed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Requests - "The George Bush Library is in the process of updating and adding to the list of finding aids on this page" [which currently includes documents from 1998 to 2005].

News release: "Introducing new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) is central to fostering choice and competition in domain registration services, and as such is significant to the promotion of ICANN’s core values. The evolution of the namespace towards an enhanced diversity of services and service providers must be planned and managed effectively to preserve the security, stability, and global interoperability of the Internet.

The proposed policy to guide the introduction of new gTLDs was created by the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) through its bottom-up, multi-stakeholder policy development process. The elements addressed in the development of the new gTLD policy involve technical, economic, operational, legal, public policy, and other considerations. The intended result is a straightforward, fair, and efficient process for allocating new gTLDs."

The Art of Written Persuasion: From IRAC to FAILSAFE - A Compilation of Legal Problem-Solving Models - Troy Simpson's third column focuses on "a process model of problem-solving that provides a useful framework, because it offers a systematic, non-random way of tackling problems."

• October 16, 2008 - Cost-of-Living Adjustments for Federal Civil Service Annuities
• October 14, 2008 - Potential Offset Supply in a Cap-and-Trade Program
• October 14, 2008 - Federal Personnel: Conversion of Employees from Appointed (Noncareer) Positions to Career Positions in the Executive Branch
• October 14, 2008 - Auction Basics: Background for Assessing Proposed Treasury Purchases of MortgageBacked Securities
• October 06, 2008 - Supreme Court Appellate Jurisdiction Over Military Court Cases

Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC): "The latest available data from the Justice Department show that for the first ten months of FY 2008, the federal government reported filing 151 criminal mortgage fraud cases. The DOJ has only recently created a category for tracking such cases. Because of natural court delays, however, the government said that only 37 cases of this type were completed in the same ten-month period. In the months to come, TRAC will be providing regular updates on every referral acted upon by each U.S. Attorney's Office and what the ultimate outcomes are."

Review of CiteGenie - Automatic Bluebook citations when using Westlaw: Attorney Marc Hershovitz reviews CiteGenie, a new extension for the Firefox web browser that, as its website promises, "automagically" creates Bluebook formatted pinpoint citations when copying from Westlaw.

"A bipartisan report circulated today by House Committee on Oversight Chairman Henry A. Waxman and Ranking Member Tom Davis finds that President Bush made a “legally unprecedented and an inappropriate use of executive privilege” when he directed Attorney General Mukasey to withhold Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s interview of Vice President Cheney from the Committee. A separate report circulated by Chairman Waxman criticizes the President’s assertion of executive privilege in the Committee’s investigation into recent climate change and Clean Air Act decisions. Both reports will be considered by the full Committee next week." [Appendices to both reports are linked here]

News release: "The President's Working Group on Financial Markets made a statement Tuesday on a series of comprehensive actions to strengthen public confidence in our financial institutions and restore functioning of our credit markets."

• Statement by Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr. on Actions to Protect the U.S. Economy
  
• Joint Statement by Treasury, Federal Reserve and FDIC
  
• Treasury Announces TARP Capital Purchase Program Description
  
• Treasury Announces Executive Compensation Rules Under the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act
  
• Related postings on financial system

Securities and Exchange Commission Division of Enforcement, Enforcement Manual, Office of Chief Counsel, October 6, 2008: "The Enforcement Manual (“Manual”) is an electronic document designed to be a reference for the staff in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (“SEC”) Division of Enforcement (“Division” or “Enforcement”) in the investigation of potential violations of the federal securities laws. It contains various general policies and procedures and is intended to provide guidance only to the staff of the Division. It is not intended to, does not, and may not be relied upon to create any rights, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law by any party in any matter civil or criminal."

Interim Assistant Secretary for Financial Stability Neel Kashkari Remarks before the Institute of International Bankers, October 13, 2008

TRAC news release: "...the Internal Revenue Service on Tuesday turned over to TRAC thousands of pages of agency statistics on audits of all types, including individual, corporate, partnership and S corporation audits. A strongly worded June 13, 2008 ruling issued by Judge Marsha Pechman of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington mandated that the data requested under the Freedom of Information Act be turned over to TRAC, as specified in two court orders issued against the agency in 2006. However, rather than release the information as directed by the Court, the IRS instead filed a motion for a stay pending an appeal to the Ninth Circuit, U.S. Court of Appeals.

In denying this motion for a stay, Judge Pechman wrote that "Defendant has not shown a likelihood of success on the merits of its appeal, and [...] enforcement of the Court's June 13, 2008 order will not cause irreparable harm to any party or increase the burden on the IRS and does not impact the public interest."

Despite this ruling, and despite explicit instructions from the Court directing the IRS to immediately comply with the instructions set forth in the June 13, 2008 order, the IRS submitted a second motion for a stay. The denial of this second motion for a stay included the observation that the "Defendant has repeatedly defied this Court's orders" and instructed the IRS yet again to comply with the June 13, 2008 order.

Scott L. Nelson, TRAC's lead attorney in this case, detailed in an October 6 letter to the Ninth Circuit why the Court should not expedite consideration of the IRS' appeal. The next day, the IRS abandoned its request for an expedited ruling, and turned over the requested data to TRAC. The IRS has not however withdrawn its motion for a stay."

CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room: "The automatic declassification provisions of Executive Order 12958, as amended, require the declassification of nonexempt historically-valuable records 25 years old or older. By 31 December 2006 all agencies were to have completed the review of all hardcopy documents determined to be historically valuable (designated as "permanent" by the agency and the National Archives) and exclusively containing their equities. As the deadline pertains to CIA, it covers the span of relevant documents originally dating from the establishment of the CIA after WWII through 1981.

CIA has deployed an electronic full-text searchable system it has named CREST (the CIA Records Search Tool), which has been operational since 2000 and is located at NARA II in College Park Maryland. On this Agency site, researchers can now use an on-line CREST Finding Aid to research the availability of CIA documents declassified and loaded onto CREST through 2002. Data for the remaining years up to the present (CREST deliveries have been ongoing) will be placed on this site at later dates.

Search the CREST web database here. Note: it does not contain actual images of the documents as the regular Electronic Reading Room search does. Rather, it contains details on the files to speed FOIA requests."

New York Times: "A legislative committee investigating Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, the Republican vice presidential candidate, issued a report Friday night that found she unlawfully abused her authority by firing the state’s public safety commissioner. While the report concluded that a family grudge was not the only reason for dismissing the commissioner, Walter Monegan, it said it was probably a contributing factor. “Governor Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda, to wit: To get Trooper Michael Wooten fired,” said the report, which was issued in Anchorage. Mr. Monegan has insisted that he was dismissed as retribution for resisting pressure to fire Trooper Wooten, who was involved in a bitter divorce with the governor’s sister. Ms. Palin said Mr. Monegan was fired as part of a legitimate budget dispute. The report, which was commissioned and released by a bipartisan state legislative panel made up of 10 Republicans and 4 Democrats, said: “The evidence supports the conclusion that Governor Palin, at the least, engaged in ‘official action’ by her inaction if not her active participation or assistance to her husband in attempting to get Trooper Wooten fired [and there is evidence of her active participation].”

Statutory Structure and Legislative Drafting Conventions: A Primer for Judges, M. Douglass Bellis, Deputy Legislative Counsel, United States House of Representatives, Federal Judicial Center 2008

The Open House Project: "Fulfilling one of the recommendations of the Open House Project report, The Library of Congress has published on their THOMAS web page directions for creating permanent links."

• October 08, 2008 - Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies: FY2009 Appropriations
• October 06, 2008 - Supreme Court Appellate Jurisdiction Over Military Court Cases
• October 03, 2008 - Presidential Succession: Perspectives, Contemporary Analysis, and 110th Congress Proposed Legislation
• October 03, 2008 - Income and Poverty Among Older Americans in 2006
• September 30, 2008 - The Federal Workforce: Characteristics and Trends
• September 30, 2008 - Oil Industry Financial Performance and the Windfall Profits Tax

The Economic Bailout: An Analysis of the Economic Emergency Stabilization Act, Katalina M. Bianco, J.D., John M. Pachkowski, J.D., CCH - Wolters Kluwer Law & Business

President Bush Discusses Judicial Accomplishments and Philosophy, October 6, 2008

• Fact Sheet: Judges Who Honor the Constitution
  
• In Focus: Judicial Nominations

Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel: Enforceability of Certain Agreements Between the Department of the Treasury and the Government Sponsored Enterprises, (September 26, 2008) (added 10/02/08)

Follow up to September 29, 2008 posting, DOJ: An Investigation into the Removal of Nine U.S. Attorneys in 2006, today's House Judiciary Committee Hearing on: the Continuing Investigation into the U.S. Attorneys Controversy and Related Matters

Statement of Glenn A. Fine, Inspector General, U.S. Department of Justice concerning “The Investigation into the Removal of Nine U.S. Attorneys in 2006” October 3, 2008.

• Opening Statement of Chairman John Conyers, Jr.: "...with this detailed Report before us, there can no longer be any dispute that the firings were improper, that false statements were made to Congress, and that the Justice Department has been severely harmed as a result. As the Report states – and I quote: “Political partisan considerations were an important factor in the removal of several of the U.S. Attorneys.”
  
• Conyers Calls for Special Counsel on U.S. Attorney Report Judiciary Committee Hearing Scheduled for Friday

Follow up to September 14, 2008 posting, Felony Disenfranchisement Laws in the United States, this news today from the ACLU: "A report released today by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law reveals widespread misunderstanding among state elections officials of laws governing the right to vote of citizens with felony convictions. A second ACLU report, also released today, finds that voter registration forms in states across the country fail to clearly explain the eligibility of voters with criminal records. Both reports highlight widespread problems that endanger the voting rights of hundreds of thousands of eligible voters nationally in a presidential election year."

• De Facto Disenfranchisement
  
• Voting With a Criminal Record: How Registration Forms Frustrate Democracy

"The Law Library of Congress is pleased to announce the launch of the redesigned Global Legal Monitor. The Global Legal Monitor has transformed from a monthly published PDF to a dynamic continuously updated website. The new Global Legal Monitor has the ability to view legal developments by topic (more than one hundred so far) and by jurisdiction (over one hundred and fifty). The content of the Global Legal Monitor can also be searched through its advanced search interface."

Follow up to previous postings on EPA library closures, from the September 24, 2008 Federal Register: "EPA is enhancing access to library services for the public and Agency staff. EPA will open previously closed libraries in its National Library Network, with walk-in access for the public and EPA staff. Other library locations will expand staffing, operating hours, or services. This notice provides information regarding how members of the public can access the libraries and services beginning September 30, 2008."

Federal Justice Statistics, 2005, 9/30/08: "Immigration and drug arrests comprised more than half of the 140,200 federal suspects arrested and booked by the U.S. Marshals in 2005, the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) announced today. Material witness (20 percent), immigration (15 percent) and weapons (11 percent) arrests increased at the fastest annual rate from 1995 to 2005. In 2005, immigration (27 percent) was the most prevalent arrest offense followed by drug (24 percent) and supervision violations (17 percent). Forty percent of all suspects arrested by the U.S. Marshals Service were arrested in 1 of 5 federal judicial districts along the U.S.-Mexico border, including Arizona, New Mexico, the Southern and Western Districts of Texas, and the Southern District of California. Nearly 1 in 4 (23 percent) of all suspects arrested in 2005 were arrested in the Southern and Western Districts of Texas."

An Investigation into the Removal of Nine U.S. Attorneys in 2006, September 2008 (392 pages, PDF)

• "In sum, we believe that the process used to remove the nine U.S. Attorneys in 2006 was fundamentally flawed. While Presidential appointees can be removed for any reason or for no reason, as long as it is not an illegal or improper reason, Department officials publicly justified the removals as the result of an evaluation that sought to replace underperforming U.S. Attorneys. In fact, we determined that the process implemented largely by Kyle Sampson, Chief of Staff to the Attorney General, was unsystematic and arbitrary, with little oversight by the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General, or any other senior Department official. In choosing which U.S. Attorneys to remove, Sampson did not adequately consult with the Department officials most knowledgeable about their performance, or even examine formal evaluations of each U.S. Attorney’s Office, despite his representations to the contrary.
  We also determined that the U.S. Attorneys were not given an opportunity to address concerns about their performance or provided the reasons for their removal, which led to widespread speculation about the true reasons for their removal, including that they were removed for improper partisan political reasons. And to make matters worse, after the removals became public the statements and congressional testimony provided by the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General, Sampson, and other Department officials about the reasons for the removals were inconsistent, misleading, and inaccurate in many respects."
  
• Statement by Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey on the Report of an Investigation into the Removal of Nine U.S. Attorneys in 2006: "The Justice Department has an obligation to the American people to pursue this case wherever the facts and the law require. This investigation would ordinarily be conducted under the supervision of either the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia or a Department component. However, the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia has been recused from the matter, and I have determined that, given the nature of the matter, it would be best overseen by an attorney outside Main Justice. Therefore, I have asked Nora Dannehy to exercise the authority of the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia for purposes of this matter."


• Related postings on U.S. Attorney firings

LLRX Book Review by Heather A. Phillips - We're All Journalists Now: The Transformation of the Press and Reshaping of the Law in the Internet Age - Heather A. Phillips highlights attorney John Gant's contention that one's title, income, and employer are at best side issues in determining who is a journalist in the day-to-day realities of issuing press passes as well as in larger policies such as the extension of shield laws.

Courthouse News: "Thomson Reuters demands $10 million and an injunction to stop George Mason University from distributing its new Web browser application, Zotero software, an open-source format that allows users to convert Reuters' EndNote Software. Reuters claims George Mason is violating its license agreement and destroying the EndNote customer base."

News release: "Nevada Senator Harry Reid testified this week at a hearing before the Commerce Committee regarding the safety and security dangers associated with the proposal to ship 77,000 tons of nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain. Reid spoke about the Department of Energy’s unpreparedness to begin a massive nuclear waste shipping campaign."

"The U.S. Sentencing Commission reports that from March 3 to August 26 of this year federal courts received 13,170 motions for sentence reductions by offenders convicted of crack cocaine crimes, and granted 9,703 of them." Report. District by District Statistics.

Researching Medical Literature on the Internet - 2008: Medical journals, dictionaries, textbooks, indexes, rankings, images – all can be found on the Net, and much of it is available free. Sources include publishers, government agencies, professional organizations, health libraries and commercial entities. Gloria Miccioli's completely updated and revised topical guide expertly focuses on what she identifies as the best, content-rich databases and services for researchers.

"The Federal Reserve Board on Monday announced the approval of a policy statement on equity investments in banks and bank holding companies. The policy statement provides additional guidance on the Board's position on minority equity investments in banks and bank holding companies that generally do not constitute "control" for purposes of the Bank Holding Company Act."

Follow up on postings related to the White House visitor logs, this news release: "U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly issued a preliminary injunction in CREW, et al. v. Cheney et al., requiring Vice President Cheney, the Office of the Vice President, the Executive Office of the President, that archivist and the National Archives and Records Administration to preserve all vice presidential records, broadly defined to encompass all records relating to the vice president carrying out his constitutional, statutory or other official or ceremonial duties."

Follow up to previous postings on the government's domestic surveillance program, today news that "The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a lawsuit [full complaint in Jewel v. NSA] against the National Security Agency (NSA) and other government agencies today on behalf of AT&T customers to stop the illegal, unconstitutional, and ongoing dragnet surveillance of their communications and communications records. The five individual plaintiffs are also suing President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney's chief of staff David Addington, former Attorney General and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and other individuals who ordered or participated in the warrantless domestic surveillance."

State statutes of limitation for credit card debt - Collectors have a limited time to file lawsuits over unpaid card debts, by Emily Starbuck Gerson and Connie Prater: "CreditCards.com compiled a state-by-state listing of credit card debt statutes of limitations. Click on a state; more information will appear below the map...The chart is current as of June 30, 2008."

News release: "The Federal Reserve Board on Tuesday, with the full support of the Treasury Department, authorized the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to lend up to $85 billion to the American International Group (AIG) under section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act. The secured loan has terms and conditions designed to protect the interests of the U.S. government and taxpayers.

The Board determined that, in current circumstances, a disorderly failure of AIG could add to already significant levels of financial market fragility and lead to substantially higher borrowing costs, reduced household wealth, and materially weaker economic performance.

The purpose of this liquidity facility is to assist AIG in meeting its obligations as they come due. This loan will facilitate a process under which AIG will sell certain of its businesses in an orderly manner, with the least possible disruption to the overall economy."

News release: "The Federal Trade Commission today issued a complaint charging that Reed Elsevier Inc.’s (Reed Elsevier) proposed $4.1 billion acquisition of ChoicePoint Inc. (ChoicePoint) would be anticompetitive and in violation of the antitrust laws, as it would combine the two largest providers of electronic public record services to U.S. law enforcement customers.

To eliminate the anticompetitive effects of the proposed acquisition, the FTC will require Reed Elsevier to divest assets related to ChoicePoint’s AutoTrackXP and Consolidated Lead Evaluation and Reporting (CLEAR) electronic public records services to Thomson Reuters Legal Inc., within 15 days after the proposed acquisition is consummated.

Through its LexisNexis division, Reed Elsevier provides electronic public records services to law enforcement customers in direct competition with ChoicePoint’s AutoTrackXP and recently, ChoicePoint’s CLEAR, a new and advanced electronic public records service. Together, the two firms account for over 80 percent of the approximately $60 million U.S. market for the sale of electronic public records services to law enforcement customers."

Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse: "The latest available data from the Justice Department show that for the first nine months of FY 2008, the federal government reported 111,874 prosecutions, a marked increase over the previous year. If activity continues at the same pace for the remaining months of the year, the total will be 149,165, up nearly 27% from FY 2007 when the number of prosecutions totaled 117,651. For details, see this TRAC Report."

Commentary: New FBI Anti-Terror Guidelines - Beth Wellington's commentary focuses on congressional and public response to the guidelines, related public surveillance actions, and on ramifications to civil liberties now and in future.

Criminal Law Resources: DNA Post-Conviction Resources - Ken Strutin's article includes a collection of recent and representative web-based materials concerning DNA technology developments and legal research on the impact of wrongful convictions and DNA exonerations on the justice system.

The Sentencing Project, Felony Disenfranchisement Laws in the United States: "Since the founding of the country, most states in the U.S. have enacted laws disenfranchising convicted felons and ex-felons. In the last 30 years, due to the dramatic expansion of the criminal justice system, these laws have significantly affected the political voice of many American communities. The momentum toward reform of these policies has been based on a reconsideration of their wisdom in meeting legitimate correctional objectives and the interests of full democratic participation."

September 12, 2008 - Disenfranchisement News - New York: Voting Rights Education Hits the Road - Nevada: Automatically Eligible, but You Have to Know the Rules - North Carolina: Campaigning off the Beaten Path- Tennessee: NAACP Offers Restoration

New York Times: States Restore Voting Rights for Ex-Convicts: "Felony disenfranchisement — often a holdover from exclusionary Jim Crow-era laws like poll taxes and ballot box literacy tests — affects about 5.3 million former and current felons in the United States, according to voting rights groups. But voter registration and advocacy groups say that recent overhauls of these Reconstruction-era laws have loosened enough in some states to make it worth the time to lobby statehouses for more liberal voting restoration processes, and to try to track down former felons in indigent neighborhoods."

"The American Civil Liberties Union and ACLU of Mississippi filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the state's denial of voting rights to citizens with felony convictions. Although the Mississippi Constitution permits people who have been convicted of a crime to vote for president and vice president, election administrators are denying that right in practice. In today's filings, the ACLU asked the court to allow these citizens to register to vote in time to cast ballots for president and vice president this November."

"Welcome to TobaccoWiki, the online research project to which anyone can contribute. We need your help to mine the millions of pages of previously-secret, internal tobacco industry documents now posted on the Internet. The purpose of Tobaccowiki is to make it easier to find information about tobacco industry behavior, and to reveal what has been learned about the industry through its documents. Like Wikipedia, the collaborative, online, free encyclopedia, Tobaccowiki is also a collaborative project. We need you to help us search through the tobacco industry documents now available online and enter information here about what you find. We welcome participation from everyone: students, journalists, smokers and non-smokers, food service workers, public health workers, tobacco control advocates, musicians, scientists, researchers and just plain curious folks. Everyone is invited to join in this project to facilitate access to information in the tobacco industry documents."

• New York Times: "The Justice Department made public on Friday a plan to expand the tools the Federal Bureau of Investigation can use to investigate suspicions of terrorism inside the United States, even without any direct evidence of wrongdoing. Justice Department officials said the plan, which is likely to be completed by the end of the month despite criticism from civil rights advocates, is intended to allow F.B.I. agents to be more aggressive and pre-emptive in assessing possible threats to national security."
• Transcript of Background Briefing with Department of Justice Officials on Consolidated Attorney General Guidelines
• ACLU: "Following a briefing today at the Department of Justice (DOJ), the American Civil Liberties Union reiterated its deep concern over new guidelines that would govern FBI investigations. The new guidelines would lower standards for beginning "assessments" (precursors to investigations), conducting surveillance and gathering evidence, and would replace existing guidelines for five types of existing guidelines: general criminal, national security, foreign intelligence, civil disorders and demonstrations.
  
  The rewritten guidelines have been drafted in a way to give the FBI the ability to begin surveillance without factual evidence, stating that a generalized "threat" is enough to use certain techniques. Also under the new guidelines, a person's race or ethnic background could be used as a factor in opening an investigation, a move the ACLU believes will institute racial profiling as a matter of policy. The guidelines would also give the FBI the ability to use intrusive investigative techniques in advance of public demonstrations. These techniques would allow agents to conduct pre-textual (undercover) interviews, use informants and conduct physical surveillance in connection with First Amendment protected activities.
  
  

News release: "More than 50 years after the historic but controversial execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were convicted of atomic espionage, the U.S. government this Thursday, September 11, is expected to make public long shrouded grand jury testimony from its prosecution of the Rosenbergs, which will be the subject of a press briefing on September 11, 2008.

Several noted Cold War scholars will provide expert analysis of the newly public documents at the briefing, organized by the National Security Archive, the independent nongovernmental research institute at George Washington University, which successfully led a coalition of historians in demands that the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) unseal Rosenberg trial grand-jury records. The Archive, along with the American Historical Association, the American Society for Legal History, the Organization of American Historians, the Society of American Archivists, and New York Times reporter Sam Roberts, filed a petition in January 2008 seeking the release of grand jury records from the 1951 indictment of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, arguing that public interest outweighed privacy and national security concerns."

News release: "The Bear Stearns Companies, LLC and its subsidiary, EMC Mortgage Corporation, have agreed to pay $28 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that they engaged in unlawful practices in servicing consumers’ home mortgage loans. The companies allegedly misrepresented the amounts borrowers owed, charged unauthorized fees, such as late fees, property inspection fees, and loan modification fees, and engaged in unlawful and abusive collection practices. Under the proposed settlement they will stop the alleged illegal practices and institute a data integrity program to ensure the accuracy and completeness of consumers’ loan information."

DOJ FOIA Post: "In light of Section 9 [Section 9 amends 5 U.S.C. § 552(f), the definitions provision of the FOIA, by including in the definition of “record” any information “maintained for an agency by an entity under Government contract, for the purposes of records management.” This provision makes clear that records, in the possession of Government contractors for purposes of records management, are considered agency records for purposes of the FOIA] of the OPEN Government Act, it is important for agencies to ensure that their searches for records in response to FOIA requests include any potentially responsive agency records that may be in the possession of an entity under contract with the agency for purposes of records management. Any agency employing such a government contractor to manage or store its records must institute appropriate procedures to allow it to search for and identify agency records that may be responsive to a FOIA request that are in the possession of that records management-contractor. Given that the clear intent of this provision is to clarify that the location of the agency records in the hands of the contractor for records management purposes does not remove the records from the scope of the FOIA, such records must be capable of being searched in response to FOIA requests. If responsive agency records are located in the possession of the records management-contractor, they should be forwarded to the appropriate FOIA office within the agency for processing. Such records must be identified and handled by the agency just as if they had been in the possession of the agency in the first instance."

"OpenTheGovernment.org’s fifth annual report, Secrecy Report Card 2008, shows both a continued expansion of government secrecy across a broad array of agencies and actions and some movement toward more openness and accountability, particularly in the Congress. The public has a right to know what its government is doing to preserve health, safety, and the public weal. Information created by or for the federal government belongs to the American public and should be open (except in strictly limited and specified contexts)...The government spent $195 maintaining the secrets already on the books for every one dollar the government spent declassifying documents in 2007, a 5% increase in one year. At the same time, fewer pages were declassified than in 2006, even though the government spent the same amount of money on declassification. The intelligence agencies, which account for a large segment of the declassification numbers, are excluded from the total reported figures."

"The new online edition of the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law went live in August 2008. The initial upload included over 450 articles including over 120 that relate to judicial decisions and dispute settlement, and a set of articles covering the history of international law since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. Of particularly topical interest are the articles on the fragmentation of international law, the position of heads of state and heads of government, Genocide, and the Taliban. The next upload will take place in October 2008."

News release: "The Department today issued a report informing consumers, businesses and policy makers about issues relating to monopolization offenses under the antitrust laws. The report, Competition and Monopoly: Single-Firm Conduct Under Section 2 of the Sherman Act, September 2008, U.S. Department of Justice (215 pages, PDF) examines whether and when specific types of single-firm conduct may or may not violate Section 2 of the Sherman Act by harming competition and consumer welfare.

The Department's report draws extensively on a series of joint hearings, involving more than 100 participants, that the Department and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) held from June 2006 to May 2007 to explore in depth the antitrust treatment of single-firm conduct. The 213-page report also incorporates commentary found in scholarly literature and the jurisprudence of the U.S. Supreme Court and lower courts.

Section 2 of the Sherman Act prohibits a firm from illegally acquiring or maintaining a monopoly, meaning the ability to exclude competitors and profitably raise price significantly above competitive levels for a sustained period of time. Unlike antitrust laws that prohibit anticompetitive mergers or other agreements among firms, Section 2 particularly targets single-firm conduct, such as decisions regarding whether and on what terms to sell to or buy from others. Although possessing monopoly power is not unlawful, using an improper means to seek or maintain monopoly power is unlawful where it can harm competition and consumers."

News release: "The Justice Department today announced that on Sept. 9, 2008, it will monitor the primary elections in New York (Manhattan), Kings (Brooklyn), and Queens Counties, N.Y., to ensure compliance with federal voting rights statutes, and specifically the minority language provisions of the Voting Rights Act."

Official Google Blog: "Today, we're launching an initiative to make more old newspapers accessible and searchable online by partnering with newspaper publishers to digitize millions of pages of news archives...Not only will you be able to search these newspapers, you'll also be able to browse through them exactly as they were printed -- photographs, headlines, articles, advertisements and all...You’ll be able to explore this historical treasure trove by searching the Google News Archive or by using the timeline feature after searching Google News. Not every search will trigger this new content.."

"The Justice Department and its Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) have failed to complete significant parts of their 22-point plan to improve the performance of the nation's Immigration Courts, according to a detailed analysis by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). While major shortcomings were identified, the study also found areas where the proposed changes were adopted.

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales issued the improvement plan in 2006 in the wake of a series of federal appellate court rulings that sharply criticized the Immigration Courts. The proposed plan also followed the publication of detailed statistical studies by TRAC and others documenting extraordinary disparities in how individual immigration judges were deciding asylum matters. The studies showed that case outcomes were frequently determined more by the outlook of a particular judge than the underlying facts."

National Law Journal (subscription req'd): "The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a $1 billion damages award by the U.S. Court of Federal Claims for the government's breach of oil and gas leases held by 11 companies -- what court watchers say may be the largest single award by the claims court in its 150-year history.

Also, in a trio of cases, a three-judge panel of the Federal Circuit resolved a crucial issue largely in favor of nuclear utilities in the spent-fuel battle with the government, which is likely to boost damages awards in the 40 to 50 cases still pending."

"Two newly updated features let you trace the growth of the federal court system over more than 200 years, state by state for the district courts and by each judicial circuit for the courts of appeals."

• Index: Chronological History of Authorized Judgeships in U.S. District Courts
  
• Index: Chronological History of Authorized Judgeships in the U.S. Courts of Appeals

E-Discovery Update: Producing Spreadsheets in Discovery – 2008

News release: "The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged two Wall Street brokers with defrauding their customers when making more than $1 billion in unauthorized purchases of subprime-related auction rate securities...The SEC alleges that Julian Tzolov and Eric Butler misled customers into believing that auction rate securities being purchased in their accounts were backed by federally guaranteed student loans and were a safe and liquid alternative to bank deposits or money market funds. Instead, the securities that Tzolov and Butler purchased for their customers were backed by subprime mortgages, collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), and other non-student loan collateral."

DOJ OIG: Report of Investigation Regarding Allegations of Mishandling of Classified Documents by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, September 2, 2008.

"In sum, our investigation concluded that Gonzales mishandled classified materials regarding two highly sensitive compartmented programs. We found that Gonzales took his classified handwritten notes home and stored them there for an indeterminate period of time. The notes contained operational aspects and other information about the NSA surveillance program that is classified at the TS/SCI level. By regulation, such material must be stored in a Sensitive Compartmented Storage Facility (SCIF). At the time he took these materials home, Gonzales did not have a SCIF at his house. Although Gonzales did have a safe at his residence at this time, we found that he did not use it to store the notes.

We also found that Gonzales improperly stored other highly classified documents about the two compartmented programs in a safe at the Department that was not located in a SCIF. Several employees in the OAG had access to the safe where Gonzales stored the documents even though they lacked the necessary security clearances for this information. We concluded that Gonzales’s mishandling of both the notes and the other classified documents violated Department security requirements and procedures."

ACLU news release: "A federal judge [U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York] has ordered the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) to turn over three memos that authorized the extremely harsh treatment of prisoners in CIA custody or explain by October 3 why these memos can lawfully be withheld. The American Civil Liberties Union called for the immediate release of the May 2005 OLC memos as part of its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit requesting information on the treatment and interrogation of detainees in U.S. custody overseas...In another development in the same case, the ACLU obtained Department of Defense (DOD) documents about the treatment of detainees in Iraq. The documents, from the military's Criminal Investigation Division, are from two investigations."

Bureau of Justice Statistics: "Presents 110 tables with detailed data on major variables measured by the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)."

Bureau of Justice Statistics: Civil Rights Complaints in U.S. District Courts, 1990 - 2006

Why and What Lawyers Should Consider Outsourcing: This article by Ron Friedmann reviews the history of and logic behind legal outsourcing. It then outlines some of the current legal outsourcing options. A detailed discussion of each option is not possible in one article. Instead, the final section takes a close look at one, outsourcing secretarial and word processing tasks.

The Art of Written Persuasion: The Problem with the Case Method and the Case for the Problem Method: In this second article in the series, Troy Simpson suggests that the ‘case method’ of teaching law may help to explain why lawyers write badly. He then outlines some of the advantages of the ‘problem method’ of teaching law.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) today issued a new question-and-answer guide aimed at promoting the hiring and advancement of individuals with disabilities in federal government employment. The new publication is available here."

News release: "The National Archives announces publication of World War II: Guide to Records Relating to U.S. Military Participation compiled by retired staff archivist and subject specialist Timothy P. Mulligan. Dr. Mulligan has prepared eight previous guides and other finding aids to captured German and related records and is the author of three books, as well as more than 15 articles on World War II subjects. Published in two volumes, this important new guide represents the most comprehensive and detailed finding aid to World War II source materials in the custody of the National Archives of the United States."

News release: "Department of Justice is revising its corporate charging guidelines for federal prosecutors throughout the country. The new guidance revises the Department’s Principles of Federal Prosecution of Business Organizations, which govern how all federal prosecutors investigate, charge, and prosecute corporate crimes. The new guidelines address issues that have been of great interest to prosecutors and corporations alike, particularly in the area of cooperation credit.

First, the revised guidelines state that credit for cooperation will not depend on the corporation’s waiver of attorney-client privilege or work product protection, but rather on the disclosure of relevant facts. Corporations that disclose relevant facts may receive due credit for cooperation, regardless of whether they waive attorney-client privilege or work product protection in the process. Corporations that do not disclose relevant facts typically may not receive such credit, like any other defendant."

Corporate Charging Guidelines

Great .gov Web sites, by Joab Jackson: "These 10 sites show agencies putting the power of the Web to work. Government agencies are finally catching on to the World Wide Web. Ten years ago, most government executives saw the Web as a sort of electronic brochure. Now they have come to realize that the Web can be the primary form of interaction with constituents."

The Government Domain: Back to School for Constitution Day 2008 - E-gov expert Peggy Garvin guides researchers, educators and librarians to key online resources available for teaching, training and educational activities associated with the September 17, 2008 celebration of Constitution Day in the United States.

News release: "The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has published Social Software in Libraries, SPEC Kit 304, which provides an overview of ARL libraries’ implementation of software that people use to connect with one another online...In the last few years, the use of social software has grown enormously. While a growing number of libraries have adopted social software as a way to further interact with library patrons and library staff, many things are unclear about the use of social software in ARL member libraries. This SPEC survey was designed to discover how many libraries and library staff are using social software and for what purposes, how those activities are organized and managed, and the benefits and challenges of using social software, among other questions.

For this study, social software was broadly defined as software that enables people to connect with one another online. The survey asked about 10 types of applications: (1) social-networking sites; (2) media-sharing sites; (3) social-bookmarking or tagging sites; (4) wikis; (5) blogs; (6) sites that use RSS to syndicate and broadcast content; (7) chat or instant messaging services; (8) VoIP (Voice-over-Internet Protocol) services; (9) virtual worlds; and (10) widgets."

The table of contents and executive summary from this SPEC Kit are available online at http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/spec304web.pdf.

Via BoleyBlogs: How to Read a Legal Opinion: A Guide for New Law Students, Orin S. Kerr, George Washington University - Law School, The GREEN BAG, An Entertaining Journal of Law, Vol 11, No. 1, p. 51, Autumn 2007: "This essay is designed to help new law students prepare for the first few weeks of class. It explains what judicial opinions are, how they are structured, and what law students should look for when reading them."

Technology Tools for Information Management - Roger V. Skalbeck and Barbara Fullerton's share a fast paced presentation of 19 practical, low cost and innovative tech tools they respectively use on a regular basis. So if you are looking for ideas to improve your use of Outlook, RSS, Adobe, and enhance your presentations and collaborative goals, this article is a must read.

"Judicial Facts and Figures is a set of tables containing historical caseload data primarily for the fiscal years from 1990, 1995, 2000 and 2002 through 2007. The tables include data on the U.S. Courts of Appeals, the U.S. District Courts, and the U.S. Bankruptcy Courts."

Library of Congress Federal Research Division, Country Profiles: Turkey and Yemen.

News release: "Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox today unveiled the successor to the agency’s 1980s-era EDGAR database, which will give investors far faster and easier access to key financial information about public companies and mutual funds.

The new system is called IDEA, short for Interactive Data Electronic Applications. Based on a completely new architecture being built from the ground up, it will at first supplement and then eventually replace the EDGAR system. The decision to replace EDGAR marks the SEC’s transition from collecting forms and documents to making the information itself freely available to investors to give them better and more up-to-date financial disclosure in a form they can readily use."

Justia: Find Attorneys, Legal Aid and Legal Services - Arranged by practice areas, states and metro areas.

Project will preserve Bush administration Web sites, By Jill R. Aitoro: "More than 100 million Web pages from President Bush's second term will be preserved for historians, researchers and the public, thanks to a joint effort announced on Thursday of government agencies and non-profit libraries. The Library of Congress and Government Printing Office, in partnership with the California Digital Library, University of North Texas Libraries and Internet Archive, will harvest and archive all Web sites that could change under a new presidential administration. The total amount of data in the collection, which will focus on executive and legislative branch sites, is expected to reach 10 to 12 terabytes."

FOIA Facts: Expanding the FOIA - Scott A. Hodes highlights the recent introduction of legislation that would eliminate the FOIA shield for the Smithsonian Institute, and the continued lack of transparency when dealing with other federal agencies.

News release: "The Campaign Legal Center today launched the Voters' Rights Protection Project, to provide generic drafts of potential court filings to individuals, organizations, and political parties who must resort to the courts to protect the fundamental rights of citizens to vote. In a letter today to both major parties and copies to the respective presidential campaigns (full text below), the Legal Center announced the project and said it would make the legal templates publicly available. Information announcing the project is also being sent to national, state, and local party committees, as well as third party organizations and numerous community and grassroots organizations from coast to coast."

2008 Voter Registration Guides: "The Lawyers’ Committee and its pro bono law firm partners have compiled comprehensive third-party voter registration guides for all 50 states and the District of Columbia. These guides will help volunteers, organizers, and leaders navigate the complex rules that govern voter registration in each state. Please keep in mind, these guides are designed for informational purposes only."

National Criminal Justice Reference Service, August 2008: "This Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) bulletin provides an overview of research on the deterrent effects of such transfers, focusing on OJJDP-funded studies on the effect of transfer laws on recidivism. In an effort to strengthen sanctions for serious juvenile crimes, most states enacted laws expanding the types of offenders and offenses eligible for transfer from juvenile courts to adult criminal courts. The information this bulletin provides should help inform public discussion and policy decisions. (NCJ 220595)."

"The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has announced the final guidelines for Title I of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006, the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA). The Guidelines provide necessary tools for states, the District of Columbia, territories, and certain federally recognized Indian tribes to incorporate SORNA minimum requirements into their sex offender registration and notification programs...The final guidelines provide direction and assistance to all jurisdictions in their efforts to meet the minimum standards of the Adam Walsh Act."

News release: "The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that it has published for public comment an agreement [Release No. 34-58350] among the securities self-regulatory organizations (SROs) that is designed to improve detection of insider trading across the equities markets by centralizing surveillance, investigation, and enforcement under NYSE Regulation, Inc. (NYSE Regulation) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. (FINRA). Currently, each equity exchange is responsible for surveillance of trading on its market and any investigations and enforcement actions involving its members."

News release: "The Navy’s use of low frequency active sonar will remain restricted to certain military training areas of the Pacific Ocean, according to an agreement approved by a U.S. district court in San Francisco today. The comprehensive agreement between the Navy and conservation organizations follows a court injunction issued early this year against the Navy’s Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System Low Frequency Active (LFA) sonar system, which blasts vast areas of ocean with harmful levels of underwater noise. In that decision, the court agreed with a coalition of organizations, led by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), that the Navy’s proposed LFA deployment in more than 70 percent of the world’s oceans was illegal. A separate lawsuit challenging the U.S. Navy’s use of mid-frequency active sonar is currently under consideration in the U.S. Supreme Court."

• Final Settlement Agreement Outlining U.S. Navy's Use of LFA Sonar in Pacific Ocean, 2008
  
• Related postings on Navy sonar program

• Senate Lobbying Contributions Database
• House Lobbying Contributions Database
• "The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 requires lobbying registrants and individual lobbyists to file a semi-annual report of certain contributions, along with a certification that the filer understands the gift and travel rules of both the House and the Senate. These reports are due by July 30th (for the January through June reporting period) and by January 30th (for the July through December reporting period) or the next business day should either of those days fall on a weekend or holiday. Registrants, and each of their lobbyists, who were active for all or part of the semi-annual reporting period must file separate reports detailing certain FECA contributions, honorary contributions, presidential library contributions, and payments for event costs."

News release: "The Federal Trade Commission today issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) seeking public comments on a proposed rule prohibiting market manipulation in the petroleum industry. The NPRM will assist the Commission in determining whether, and in what ways, it should develop a final rule. The Commission expects to conclude the rulemaking process by the end of the year."

News release: "The Bush Administration plans to rollback protections for America’s imperiled wildlife by re-writing the regulations of the Endangered Species Act. According to leaked documents obtained by the National Wildlife Federation, the proposed changes would weaken the safety net of habitat protections that have helped protect and recover endangered fish, wildlife and plants for the past 35 years."

• Leaked Copy of Proposed ESA Changes
  
• NWF Analysis of Proposed Bush Administration Changes to ESA
  
• Related postings on Endangered Species Act

Follow up to previous postings on the EPA library closures, today this news release from the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER): "The Memorandum of Agreement between the EPA and the American Federation of Government Employees becomes final today....EPA will not, however, re-open its specialized library for research on the properties and effects of new chemicals which held one of the world’s most comprehensive technical collections on pesticides and other compounds. EPA did pledge to reopen a Chemical Library as part of its re-opened Headquarters Library in Washington, D.C. with a “professional librarian with knowledge of chemical information” and access to an unspecified “specialized chemical collection."

Human Rights Watch - Courting History - The Landmark International Criminal Court’s First Years, July 2008: "This 244-page report examines the ICC’s accomplishments and shortcomings since it began operations in 2003. The court was created to bring justice to the victims of gross human rights violations; so far the court has issued arrest warrants against suspects in four countries, though none have yet been tried."

News release: "...the Bush administration is pushing changes which could dramatically weaken protections against overfishing already depleted ocean stocks, according to public comments filed today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER - a national alliance of local state and federal resource professionals). The thrust of the Bush plan would cede more control to the fishing industry over environmental harvest limits."

• Read the PEER comment letter
  
• View the NOAA draft proposal

Follow up on previous postings related to Politicized Hiring