A report released by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University concludes that the Justice Department increasingly has refused to prosecute FBI cases targeting suspected terrorists over the past five years. TRAC co-director Susan Long said researchers relied on the Justice Department's own numbers to come up with the findngs. The study was based on the most recent data available from the Justice Department's executive office for U.S. attorneys.

The government disputes the findings as inaccurate and "intellectually dishonest."

Prosecutors declined to bring charges in 87 percent, of international terrorist case referrals from the FBI between October 2005 and June 2006, according to the report.

During the 2001 budget year, prosecutors rejected 33 percent of such cases from the FBI. The data "raise troubling questions about the bureau's investigation of criminal matters involving individuals the government has identified as international terrorists," the report said. Also noted in the report, was the fact that while the number of agents and other employees has risen, prosecutions in traditional FBI investigations since 2001 - including drug cases, white collar crimes and organized crimes - have decreased.

The report states, "So with more special agents, many more intelligence analysts, and many fewer prosecutions the question must be asked: What is the FBI doing?"

A Justice Department spokesman, Brian Roehrkasse noted that terrorist hoax cases that were quickly dismissed may have been included in the government data, adding also that while some cases are referred to prosecutors to obtain subpoenas or other legal orders in investigations, they ultimately never result in criminal charges. Roehrkasse disputed the findings of TRAC and said that prosecutors rejected 67 percent of FBI international terrorist cases in the nine-month period - not 87 percent.

John Miller, the FBI's assistant director, said about half of the FBI's resources go to detection and information gathering of terrorist networks in cases that do not always result in arrests, reflecting changes in how investigations have been conducted since the Sept. 11, resulting in what appears to be a low number of cases prosecuted. Miller said, "It's not about the numbers and for TRAC to suggest as much is to be intellectually dishonest. The FBI has been very clear about how we have changed the way we do business since 9/11."

NEW YORK - (ACLU) The American Civil Liberties Union, the National Employment Law Project and the Transnational Legal Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law today filed a petition urging the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to find the United States in violation of its universal human rights obligations by failing to protect millions of undocumented workers from exploitation and discrimination in the workplace.

The petition was submitted to the commission on behalf of the United Mine Workers of America, AFL-CIO, Interfaith Justice Network and six immigrant workers who are representative of the six million undocumented workers in the United States labor force.

"The most poorly paid and least desirable jobs in the United States are filled by undocumented immigrants, yet the government increasingly limits the safeguards available to this population, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation and workplace discrimination," said Claudia Flores, an attorney with the ACLU Women’s Rights Project. "The United States government has an obligation under universal human rights norms to protect vulnerable populations, such as immigrant women, and has failed in this regard."

Undocumented immigrants make up nearly five percent of the U.S. labor force. However, employment and labor protections under state laws have been either eliminated or severely limited for undocumented workers in some states. These include such basic workplace protections as freedom from workplace discrimination and entitlement to hold an employer responsible for a workplace injury.

"International human rights law requires the United States to apply its workplace protections equally and without discrimination based on immigration status. We bring this petition to cast a global spotlight on the U.S. government’s poor human rights record in protecting undocumented workers from discrimination and to demand accountability from states and the federal government, all of whom are obligated to protect and defend human rights," said Chandra Bhatnagar, a staff attorney with the ACLU Human Rights Program.

The individuals named in today’s petition have each tried to assert their workplace rights but were unsuccessful. They are:

Melissa L., a woman who had to leave her job in New Jersey when workplace sexual harassment became intolerable. She filed a claim against her employer, but because

Michael J. Fox rallied Thursday with about 100 people for Maryland's Democratic Senate candidate, Congressman Ben Cardin. Fox says he campaigns for candidates who support embryonic stem cell research.

Fox has appeared in television ads for Cardin and other candidates around the country who support federal funding for such research, to find cures for diseases such as Parkinson's, from which he suffers, "I'm supporting candidates who support embryonic stem cell research in races where their opponents simply don't," he said.

Cardin's Republican opponent Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, opposes research that would destroy a human embryo.

"We are who we are, we have what we have, we want what we want, and we have the right to seek representation that will get it for us," Fox said, encouraging voters with such debilitating diseases to become active in politics. Fox had plans to campaign for Democrat Jim Webb in that state's Senate race in Virginia that evening.

According to Cardin , "We're losing our best scientists to other countries" that fund embryonic stem cell research. Cardin opined that Republican opposition to the research is hurting the nation.

After the Fox rally, Cardin was headed to Baltimore for a rally with former vice presidential candidate John Edwards, a Democrat from North Carolina.

Cardin attended a rally in rally Prince George's County - a counter to a Steele endorsement earlier in the week by Demorats in the predominantly black county. Steele is the first African-American elected statewide in Maryland; Cardin is white.

Backing Steele, the lieutenant governor introduced a group of ministers who are suuportive of Steele.

"I don't know anyone who wants to be poor. I don't know anyone who wants to be illiterate," Steele said to applause from the ministers, most of whom were black.

Steele's election platform focused on his promises to reduce poverty and push for more foreign aid to Africa and the Caribbean. He also promised to try to increase federal aid for small business development and college tuition.

Breaking Legal News.com
Sheryl Jones
Staf Writer

Authorities said Friday, that a scond man, identified as Charles Gamble, 24, was arrested and charged with assisting in the murder and cover-up of three people, discovered in a drainage pipe near a downtown apartment complex.

According to Columbia Police Chief Dean Crisp, all three victims had been attacked at a nearby apartment and then moved to the drainage pipe. A woman had been stabbed to death and two men fatally shot. Charles Gamble, was the woman's ex-boyfriend and father of her young child.

Jeremal Doreal Robinson, 21, of Columbia was also arrested and has been charged as an accessory and with obstructing justice.

Crisp said, "We're confident that we have the man that committed the murders. We're confident also that we have the individual who assisted him after the act in moving the bodies."

The victims, now identified as Charlene Octavia Yarbrough, 19, Marcus Antonio Wilson, 26, and Marquis Mitchell, 25. Investigators were reviewing several potential motives including a possible domestic dispute, police said.

A resident of the apartment complex, Rodrena Patrick, 20, said Gamble had been living there until he and Yarbrough got into a fight about a month ago. The couple's child had been taken into protective custody.

Gamble, who was on probation for a stalking conviction, has a criminal record dating back to a 2000 grand larceny charge, Crisp said.

The 2006 Health Confidence Survey, released by the Employee Benefit Research Institute under the headline, "Dissatisfaction with Health Care System Doubles Since 1998," helps explain why health care is consistently ranked as one of this country's key issues.

A record percentage in the survey, 52% of Americans, are unhappy with the cost of health care. That breaks down to 6 out of ten Americans rank the U.S. health system as poor or fair. That represents a sharp increase in the number of dissatisfied health care consumers, shich includes the insured as well as the uninsured.

Survey results indicate that of the average family surveyed, 36% are facing higher medical costs, 53% contribute less to their retirement plans and save less in general, and 28% have trouble paying for basic necessities. In addition, 20% of those surveyed increased their credit card debt or borrowed money to pay the ever increasing health care bills, while others have chosen to delay getting medical care altogether (44%) or filling necessary prescriptions (22%).

The EBRI survey points out both that the problems with U.S. health care are rapidly geting worse and that solutions are needed to address the issues of excessive cost and the consequential burden of tolerating ill health that is facing the insured as well as the uninsured.

Breaking Legal News.com
Sheryl M. Jones
Staff Writer

WASHINGTON – (USDOJ) A former Ft. Campbell soldier has been charged with various crimes for conduct including premeditated murder based on the alleged rape of an Iraqi girl and the deaths of the girl and members of her family, Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney David L. Huber of the Western District of Kentucky announced today.

Steven D. Green, 21, was charged in the indictment returned today by a federal grand jury in Louisville, Ky., with conduct that would constitute conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to commit aggravated sexual abuse, premeditated murder, murder in perpetration of aggravated sexual abuse, aggravated sexual abuse on a person less than 16 years of age, use of firearms during the commission of violent crimes and obstruction of justice. The potential statutory penalties for conviction of these offenses ranges from a term of years to life in prison to death.

The indictment charges Green with crimes arising from an incident that occurred on March 12, 2006, in and around Mahmoudiyah, Iraq. The indictment alleges that during the incident Green and others committed aggravated sexual abuse against a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, whose body was burned after the attack. The indictment also alleges that Green and others killed the girl, her father, mother, and six-year-old sister during the same incident.

Green was discharged from the U.S. Army in May 2006 and is being prosecuted in U.S. District Court under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, a statute that gives U.S. courts jurisdiction to prosecute crimes committed outside the United States by persons who served with the Armed Forces but are no longer subject to military prosecution. Other soldiers who have not been discharged by the Army are currently charged by the Army with taking part in the incident out of which the charges against Green arise.

Green, formerly stationed at Ft. Campbell, Ky., and deployed to Iraq while serving with the 101st Airborne Division of the United States Army, was arrested by the FBI on June 30, 2006, on federal charges of murder and rape pursuant to the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act. Green is scheduled to be arraigned on the indicted charges on Nov. 8, 2006, at 10 a.m. in Louisville.

An indictment is merely an accusation. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty at trial beyond a reasonable doubt.

The case was investigated by the FBI and the Criminal Investigation Division of the U.S. Army. The case is being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Western District of Kentucky and the Domestic Security Section of the Criminal Division.