The Cato Institute’s Walter Olson highlights several recent high-profile losses suffered by the Obama Justice Department in its overzealous enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, “the law that criminalizes many of the sorts of official payments that alas typify the business climate across much of the globe.” As Olson notes, “DoJ’s most stinging embarrassment of all came last month” in a decision that included this rebuke from federal Judge Howard Martz: it is with deep regret that this Court is compelled to find that the Government team allowed a key FBI agent to testify untruthfully before the grand jury, inserted material falsehoods into affidavits submitted to magistrate judges in support of applications for search warrants and seizure warrants, improperly reviewed e-mail communications between one Defendant and her lawyer, recklessly failed to comply with its discovery obligations, posed questions to certain witnesses in violation of the Court’s rulings, engaged in questionable behavior during closing argument and even made misrepresentations to the Court. See more here: The Obama Administration’s Prosecutorial Overreach
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The Obama Administration’s Prosecutorial Overreach
Seems kind of obvious, doesn’t it? Yet it hasn’t been this way before : The FBI is changing its long-standing definition of rape for the first time to include sexual assaults on males following persistent calls from victims advocates who claim that the offense, as currently defined in the agency’s annual crime report, has been undercounted for decades. Under the current definition, established 85 years ago, many of the sex crimes alleged in the ongoing prosecution of former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky would not be counted in the bureau’s Uniform Crime Report, one of the most reliable measures of crime in the United States. Sandusky is accused in alleged assaults and sexual misconduct involving 10 male victims. Rape is currently defined as the “carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.” The new provision will define rape as any kind of penetration of another person, regardless of gender, without the victim’s consent. I have seen statistics that show more men are raped in this country every year than women, and while I am unsure of their accuracy, the fact is that rape of men is common — in prison. Long-time readers of the site know that I do not consider prison rape funny . Not only is it not part of the prescribed punishment, but the victims are likely to be weaker and less violent people — meaning that even if you did subscribe to a vigilante justice ethic, you’d still be letting the most violent get their jollies at the expense of the least violent. The FBI’s collection of these statistics will not settle the question of the extent of rape of males, since prison rape is often unreported. But it is a step in the right direction. Thanks to Gabriel Malor on Twitter.
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FBI Will Now Count Rape Against Men in Crime Statistics
Efforts to create new American jobs and make the nation more secure seem to involve one step forward, one step (sometimes, two) back. Consider one week’s news on this front: The Good. Because the high yen makes exporting unprofitable and because of interrupted supplies from Japan’s tsunami and Thailand’s floods, Honda has announced a major expansion of its manufacturing in North America. It will increase manufacturing in five U.S. and one Canadian and Mexican plant each (plus building a second in Mexico) by as much as 40 percent, from 1.29 million vehicles a year to more than two million. Not only that, Honda will then export up to 300,000 vehicles from North America to other parts of the world, up from 35,000 currently.
When we say “thanks,” we offer an expression of our gratitude. The following can best be described as my humble expression on behalf of a friend who served our country — who has dedicated himself to an important cause, and one that conveys his own sense of duty and grateful appreciation. My friend, Joe Coon, an Iraq war veteran who lives and works in Washington D.C., recently wrote an opinion piece regarding a very important matter: the visa status of Iraqi interpreters employed by the U.S. military during the war effort. This is a matter largely overlooked by the public, confounded by politicians and staggered by byzantine procedure. Joe served in Iraq for all of 2005, stationed some 40 miles north of Baghdad near a town called Balad. If you recall, this period represented a major turning point in the post-invasion storyline. All hopes for a peaceful transition to democracy and a speedy U.S. withdrawal were shattered in May, the bloodiest month since the initial invasion, as Sunni Arab insurgents tore through the country. Iraq appeared to be hurtling towards disintegration. However, turmoil was tempered by promising news: the new constitution was ratified and elections for the new Iraqi National Assembly were held. Purple fingers were emblematic of hopeful hearts. These gains were due in no small part to the efforts U.S. servicemen and women — and brave Iraqis who supported our troops and their nascent democracy. Thankfully, Joe returned safely from his deployment. However, he left behind a close friend and critical partner — an Iraqi national who served the U.S. army as an interpreter, by the name of Bandar. Ultimately, Bandar’s problematic immigration through the special immigrant visa program (SIV) inspired Joe to speak out on behalf of those interpreters who were promised sanctuary in America. Many have been robbed of safe haven by ham-fisted political processes. They remain prime targets of the insurgency. Hundreds, if not thousands have already been killed. It’s anybody’s guess what will happen to those that remain after the U.S. leaves for good.
The Man Nobody Knew: In Search of My Father, CIA Spymaster William Colby is an extraordinary documentary about the long-time CIA operative who led the agency amid the post-Watergate scandals that almost destroyed it. It remarkably resembles The Good Shepherd , the 2006 fictional film about a dedicated Cold War spy across the years, right down to their eerily similar white brick colonial houses in leafy D.C. area neighborhoods. But the real life Colby and his wife are far more interesting than the characters played by Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie. Working for the CIA’s predecessor, the OSS, during WWII, Colby parachuted into Nazi-occupied France and Norway to help the Resistance. After briefly working at the law firm of former OSS chief “Wild Bill” Donovan, Colby joined the CIA and helped Italy’s Christian Democrats against the Soviet-backed Communists during the 1950s. He presided over U.S. covert assistance to South Vietnam in the 1960s, personally befriending doomed President Ngo Dinh Diem, and later organizing the “Phoenix Program” that neutralized Viet Cong killers. Colby took the helm at CIA as President Richard Nixon was collapsing and revelations about CIA’s own scandals were fast emerging. He struggled for candor with endless Congressional hearings without betraying CIA assets and operations. Senator Frank Church’s melodramatically waving a pistol before cameras to illustrate CIA assassination schemes iconically illustrated the nation’s masochistic desire to castrate the CIA even as Soviet power was surging. Appropriately for an old spook, Colby died somewhat mysteriously in 1996, his body recovered after he’d gone missing for several days, having apparently fallen from a canoe at his Maryland vacation home. His son produced this film to explore who his enigmatic father really was, without fully finding a satisfactory answer. Colby, a devout Catholic sometimes known as the “warrior-priest,” was zealously devoted to his vocation of defending America, first from Nazism, and then from Communism. Like many of his “greatest generation,” he was driven by duty and was not emotionally expressive, often exasperating his more introspective Baby Boomer children. Most delightfully in the film, Colby’s wife of 40 years, a very perceptive and spry octogenarian, is interviewed at length. She shared his Catholicism and devotion to the CIA. The whole Colby family met with President Diem shortly before his assassination during a coup countenanced by the Kennedy Administration. Mrs. Colby struggled with the moral compromises and largely shared her husband’s confidence that the greater good required America’s victory in the Cold War. Other interviewees include old CIA colleagues, former allied intelligence chiefs, and such familiars as Bob Woodward, Brent Scowcroft, Donald Rumsfeld, and Bud MacFarlane. Colby bore up mightily during the congressional investigations of 1975 but never had the Ford Administration’s full confidence. After the 1976 Langley ceremony installing his successor George Bush, Colby drove off alone in his somewhat battered looking car. He practiced law and consulted, abruptly divorcing his wife in 1984, then marrying a younger woman. Colby portrays his father as friendless and tragic. Perhaps. Twenty years ago, easily finding his number in the phone book, I invited Colby to speak about his newly published Vietnam memoir to my Methodist church outside Washington. “I’m not even sure I’ll be alive then,” he laughingly said of the date several months away. He enthusiastically appeared at the church breakfast, sharing his strategic analysis of the post-Cold War world. The most charming man I’ve ever met, he left us all feeling like his new best friends, though of course none of us would see him again. Colby concluded by describing his recent visit to Moscow, recently freed from communism, and where he was now ignored as merely a tourist. After walking around the sites of Red Square, he smilingly realized he had conducted his own “personal victory tour.” Colby lived long enough to witness the fall of the two great tyrannies against which he had dedicated his life. He seemed more vindicated than tragic. His son describes him at life’s end as no longer interested in living longer. If so, it’s because his full life was completed. J. Edgar is another film about a zealous public servant whose life was about as long as Colby’s but, who unlike his CIA colleague, never retired and never allowed marriage or family to distract him from his exclusive love for the FBI. The sexual orientation of the lifelong bachelor who was often seen with his FBI deputy director Clyde Tolson is the topic of endless prurient fascination. How director Clint Eastwood would handle Hoover’s personal life provoked much speculation.
