Perhaps to protect future protégés from sexxxy scorn, Senator Chuck Schumer is asking the Justice Department to investigate the legality of the recent practice of employers obtaining employees' Facebook passwords. The AP reports that Schumer, along with Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, specifically want to know if it violates the Stored Communications Act or the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Sadly, expressions like SMH, ROTFL, and "Amazeballs" remain legal. more ›

Remember that $26 billion settlement that the DOJ and 49 attorneys general announced on Thursday with some of the country's biggest banks to let toxic mortgage bygones be toxic mortgage bygones? It may not exist yet. In one of the biggest PR coups since that free trip to South Africa, the details of the settlement were peddled via press releases (and awful stock photos) but the document itself has yet to be seen. "Once the documents are finalized, they'll be posted to nationalmortgagesettlement.com," a representative from the North Carolina's AG office told American Banker. Aw, c'mon Copperfield, give us back the settlement. more ›

It's a proud day to be an American terror-porn fetishist: an analysis of a DOJ filing by The Atlantic Wire reveals that the Obama administration may be forced to release photos of Osama bin Laden's dead body if "sensitive information" is redacted. The portion of the brief "concedes that there are reasonably segregable, nonexempt portions of the records that are legally required to be disclosed," a former director of the DOJ's Office of Information and Privacy says. Will they still be released "like a wedding album?" more ›

So you know how East Haven, CT mayor Joe Maturo's plan for reaching out the Latino community, which has been intimidated by the local police for years (well, at least according to the Department of Justice's investigation), was to go and have some tacos? Well, activists just sent his office 500 tacos. more ›

As the Department of Justice investigates whether thousands of NYC apartments follow the Fair Housing Act by providing accessible housing to the disabled, the NY Times spent time with one woman who has a tough time maneuvering around her Battery Park City apartment while using her wheelchair. Roberta Galler, who had polio has a child, "cannot open or close windows by herself because the locks are too high" and "has not returned to her bathroom in the wheelchair since being trapped there for two hours"--now she "takes several laborious steps with braces to enter the room." Galler said developer Related has been great and simply hopes "future construction will keep people like me in mind — because this is not functional.” If the DOJ believes developers have violated discrimination laws, millions will need to be spent on fixing the apartments. more ›

In the wake of the suicide of government biodefense scientist Dr. Bruce Ivins, the only apparent suspect in the 2001 anthrax letter attacks, the FBI and Justice Department says it will share case details once it has spoken to victims' families. The agencies consider the case closed, but Senator Tom Daschle – to whom one of the letters was addressed – said, "What troubles me is that Mr. Ivins wasn't indicted, and if he wasn't indicted, how confidant are they that they had the evidence and the information that they needed?" The Washington Post spoke to a friend of Ivins who said the scientist started to drink a liter of vodka and take "large doses of sleeping pills and anti-anxiety drugs" at night last fall, around the same time the FBI showed his daughter photos of anthrax victims, saying, "Your father did this," and offered his son a $2.5 million reward and a "sports car of his choice" to solve the case. more ›

While the FBI is being pressured to release evidence about why it believed government biodefense scientist Dr. Bruce Ivins was behind the 2001 anthrax letter attacks, salacious tidbits are being divulged. Like how he "maintained a post office box under an assumed name that he used to receive pornographic pictures of blindfolded women" (NY Times) and had a "decades-long obsession with a college sorority" Kappa Kappa Gamma (AP). Pretty much everyone wants answers from the FBI and Department of Justice--the former head of the biological-weapons section of Unscom writes in the Wall Street Journal today that anthrax spores sent to U.S. Senators had a lethality "far exceed[ing] that of any powdered product found in the now extinct U.S. Biological Warfare Program." more ›