Jump for joy via @saparevo@.

Word is that the DOJ is seriously beefing up the fraud enforcement unit within the Criminal Division.

This is some very good news indeed:

The Obama administration is dramatically beefing up the fraud section of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Criminal Division as it tries to add muscle to back up its rhetoric about cracking down on health care and corporate fraud.

The department is looking for what Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer calls "a superstar" to lead the fraud section. It also plans to add 10 trial attorneys and fill the long vacant job of deputy chief for corporate, securities and investment fraud.

That promise of extra bodies is critical: The fraud section is already the Criminal Division’s largest litigation unit. With additional resources and the strong backing of Justice higher-ups for more fraud prosecution, the new chief should become the bane of defense lawyers’ existence nationwide.

Oh, frabtacular day, if they follow through on this.

Serious criminal enforcement of fraud has been needed for a long, long time.  Say, at least, about eight long years.

Gee, wonder how the utter lack of real tooth-filled enforcement the last few years happened?

Can you say Barbara Comstock, Alice Fisher and their ideological soulmate pals? I know I sure as hell can…

God hates sinners via danny.hammontree.

Randall Terry is at it again.  Because apparently the half-skull poster of Sonia Sotomayor and exhortations to his unstable flock about the Angel of Death weren’t nearly enough to get him the fundraising haul attention he needed.

In any polite society, his brand of dangerous stoking of the fires of hell would get him shunned by decent people.

In fact, it’s well past time that GOP lawmakers were asked — clearly and without any ambiguity — what they think of Terry’s fire and brimstone violence stoking on behalf of their policy agenda. 

Because they cannot have it both ways any more that Terry can. 

Using Terry’s dangerous rhetoric to push the Republican policy agenda makes them just as responsible for the ends of those means as Terry is. 

Either you embrace the violent ends that result from this and take responsibility.  Or you denounce it for what it is:  dangerous violence stoking rhetoric that poses a public threat, and is designed to scare public officials into inaction through threats of violence and retribution against their safety.

Just like it was designed to do with Dr. Tiller.

Here, though?  Terry gets time at the National Press Club to spew his vile, violent venom:

Randall Terry, Founder of Operation Rescue, and other local pro-life advocates will hold a press conference at the National Press Club (529 14th Street NW, Washington, DC) on Tuesday, July 21, at 2:00 P.M. Mr. Randall Terry to discuss what he and other pro-life leaders will and will not do if healthcare passes and includes paying for child-killing, and what convulsions follow.

"Let all those in government be warned: They cannot order people to pay for the murder of babies, and betray God Himself, without horrific consequences." — Randall Terry (more…)

You decide:  horror movie poster or dog whistle call to action from Randall Terry to every nutball with access to God only knows what.

Just take a look at the poster to the left of Terry’s "Anti-Sotomayor Tour" and tell me there isn’t an irresponsible undercurrent of violent thought running through it.

I want to amplify what Kyle at Right Wing Watch said about this:  the right has gotten no traction on Sotomayor thus far.  Which means what to them?  Paltry fundraising numbers.

As Kyle points out, that doesn’t stop Randall Terry. No siree. For he of the "promote myself at any cost" mentality goes all out with this:

Randall Terry, for one, isn’t going to let this slow him down and so he is taking his "Defeat Sotomayor" effort on the road for a twelve city tour which is scheduled to culminate in Washington DC just as the hearings are getting under way (the photo below comes from this accompanying flyer [PDF and graphic content] proclaiming "To refuse to filibuster is to bow in abject obedience to the Angel of Death"). . .

I bring this to the public’s attention not to give Terry more publicity but because, frankly, I think the US Marshall’s Service ought to have a long talk with him.

As a sitting federal judge on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Sotomayor is entitled to protection from the US Marshalls, who take threats to judge security very, very seriously.

Especially since threats against judges have been mushrooming exponentially since the right wing decided to make judges targets of ire in so much of their public political discourse. And worse.

That this has been a long-term strategy for PR points with the rabid GOP base has not gone unnoticed. But it makes for a helluva lot of work for US Marshalls who are charged with protecting federal judges across the country. In fact, they just opened a new facility in Virginia to track threats nationwide it’s gotten so pronounced.

And for local sheriffs departments and state troopers who have to protect state judges from rampant lunacy and threats? Those folks are already overworked and underbudgeted as it is.

And yet, here comes Randall Terry tromping around and stirring up the multitudes of his unstable flock with a call from the Angel of Death.  Tell me that doesn’t say "big threat" in neon letters to you after the murder of Dr. Tiller.

I’m sure folks here remember Judge Reggie Walton from the Libby case. He had this to say in a recent interview about threats and the source thereof:

But Walton has his own theory on why the volume of threats has increased. "I think the unfortunate reality is our society has become so partisan … that when you have hot-button issues, people take it to the extreme."

He places some of the blame on talk show hosts. "The type of vicious attacks sometimes that you see coming from certain players in the media, I think contributes to the problem." (more…)

Remember those charts that Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse revealed during the USAtty firing hearings? (You can look here at “Related Files: Justice Dept/White House Contacts” [PDF] on the right hand side, Sen. Whitehouse has put up the whole thing on his website.)

The first chart had a grand total of 7 contacts (4 WH and 3 DOJ) between the DOJ and the White House from 1994 to 2002.

In the back and forth on Dawn Johnsen’s OLC nomination, what gets lost in the media shuffle is why her experience in that office is so critical.

And why that office needs an experienced hand at the helm.  Now.

The fallout from the Stevens trial debacle just keeps coming forward: One F.B.I. agent, Chad Joy, has said in an affidavit that he sat in on meetings in which Stevens prosecutors were clearly aware that they were ignoring their professional obligations to turn over materials that the defense could use to counter the charges.

Yesterday, Sens. Whitehouse and Durbin sent a response letter back to acting Assistant Attorney General M. Faith Burton regarding some unusual maneuvering between former AG Mukasey, OPR and OLC. So unusual that Whitehouse and Durbin spell it out exactly why this is outside the norms of usual DOJ procedure in black and white in their letter.

NPR’s Nina Totenberg reports that DOJ sources say Ted Stevens’ indictment will be dismissed this morning by AG Eric Holder.  This would, effectively, end pending criminal sentencing from Stevens’ trial. Reportedly, it was allegations of prosecutory misconduct and the withholding of potentially exculpatory information by prosecutors on the case which thoroughly disgusted Holder