FLE

States efforts to enforce immigration may be unconstitutional Lawmakers across the United States are passing local laws to get tough on illegal immigration, but legal experts say many of those laws will turn out to be unconstitutional. More than 550 bills relating to illegal immigration were introduced in statehouses this year, and at least 77 were enacted, according to a survey presented last week at the annual meetings of the National Conference of State Legislatures. But NCSL analyst Ann Morse told lawmakers that a 1986 federal law forbids states from enacting stricter criminal or civil penalties that those adopted by U.S. Congress. "The federal government decided it was too complicated for the states to enact their own competing laws on this," she said. So what about the laws passed this year? "I believe they'll be tested in court," she said....
The FBI’s continued technological incompetence is putting America at risk As The Washington Post reported on August 18, five years after 9/11 the FBI’s computer system is still not fixed. How can this be? It’s an ugly story of poor management, contractor abuse and an agency that cannot electronically connect the dots--even though nearly everyone agreed in 2001 that developing that ability should be among the top priorities for the United States. It’s as if after Pearl Harbor President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered that ships and aircraft be built to fight the Japanese, only to discover that five years later the government had built none. The blame begins with Louis Freeh, who smugly headed the FBI for eight years under President Bill Clinton. Although he claims to have tried to upgrade the bureau’s computers in 1995, he failed miserably. In 2001, when any large business in the world that wanted to make money was long since fully automated-and when most American six-year olds could download Little League snapshots-the FBI remained in the horse-and-buggy era. Its rusty mainframes used text-only “green screens” and could not scan reports or transmit photographs. Agents had no PCs and were forced to share e-mail accounts. Because it took 12 steps to upload a single document, most agents gave up and did everything the old-fashioned way-on paper. Remember the period right after 9/11? I was hardly the only one writing about computers at the FBI. The new FBI director, Robert Mueller, insisted he was focused on the task at hand. He spent $170 million on a plan called “Trilogy” that was meant to solve the Bureau’s technology problems. From the start, it was a rip-off....
Police hit out at FBI over leaks Anti-terror police in Britain have made an angry request to their US counterparts asking them to stop leaking details of this month's suspected bomb plot over fears that it could jeopardise the chances of a successful prosecution and hamper the gathering of evidence. The British security services, MI5 and MI6, are understood to be dismayed that a number of sensitive details surrounding the alleged plot - including an FBI estimate that as many as 50 people were involved - were leaked to the media. FBI sources confirmed to The Observer that the bureau had been ordered to stop briefing at the request of the British authorities. 'The shutters have come down,' a bureau source said. 'We have been told not to discuss the case any more.' The request for silence by the British authorities is an early sign that those involved in the investigation have concerns at the way their evidence-gathering is proceeding....
Government Lawyers' Role in the War on Terror Inside the Bush White House, government lawyers have been instrumental in creating and justifying policies related to the detention and torture of alleged enemy combatants that are at odds with the Geneva Conventions - policies of exceptionalism that have gone hand-in-hand with a broader American unilateralism that has infuriated friends and foes alike. The blogosphere had offered some choice responses to Executive Branch lawyers' defense of the President's purported power, as commander-in-chief, to ignore congressional and international law limitations on the prosecution of the war on terror. These responses, taken together, amount to a fierce assault on the profession. As one prominent academic blogger, Professor Jack Balkin, responded to lawyerly justifications of torture and the like, "lawyers are whores" who will give intellectual cover to any position, no matter how wrong or unreasonable. It is important to evaluate such charges. But it is also exceedingly difficult. Executive branch justifications for overarching claims of presidential power invoke any number of relatively arcane theories of constitutional interpretation and statutory construction. It isn't easy to find the line between arguments that are merely unpersuasive, and ones that are so misguided that they (and the lawyers who advance them) merit our scorn. A recent series of articles in the Indiana Law Journal brings this issue into sharp focus. These articles take up the Administration's invocation of what scholars call the "constitutional avoidance" doctrine to justify a reservation of presidential power to torture or engage in warrantless wiretapping -- notwithstanding congressional statutes prohibit such activity. (That claimed reservation of power has been expressed not only in internal legal memos that have leaked, but also in Presidential signing statements regarding legislation such as the anti-torture legislation spearheaded by Senator McCain....)