Justice Department to sue North Carolina over voting law
Washington (CNN) - The Justice Department is expected to file a lawsuit Monday seeking to block parts of a new North Carolina voting law that tightens election procedures, including requiring photo identification to cast ballots.
The lawsuit would challenge four parts of the law and ask a court to require North Carolina to obtain pre-approval for certain voting law changes under a part of the Voting Rights Act that remains in effect, according to a person briefed on the legal filing.
Obama admin funding cops in schools
Washington (CNN) - Nine months after the Sandy Hook school shooting tragedy, President Barack Obama is putting millions of dollars into funding armed police officers in schools across the country, an idea not too far removed from an National Rifle Association proposal to make sure schools are protected by “good guys with guns.”
Friday afternoon the Justice Department announced about $45 million in funding intended to create 356 new school resource officer positions under the federal COPS grants.
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Feds cringe at possibility of more forced budget cuts
Washington (CNN) – The leadership of federal law enforcement agencies is bracing for some real pain/tough choices if forced budget cuts are implemented again next year.
The Obama administration’s ongoing standoff with Republicans over Obamacare and the budget means forced budget cuts from the so-called “sequestration” will be likely. The administration is pushing Congress to find a long-term solution that would restore some of the sequestered cuts.
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Obama to nominate Carlin as DOJ’s chief national security lawyer
(CNN) - President Barack Obama nominated John Carlin as the Justice Department’s chief national security lawyer.
Carlin has held the post of acting assistant attorney general for national security since March when Lisa Monaco left to become the president’s homeland security and counterterrorism adviser.
FULL STORY Feds sue to stop Texas voter ID law
(CNN) - The U.S. Justice Department said Thursday that it will file a lawsuit seeking to stop a controversial Texas law that would require voters to show identification at voting booths.
The department wants a court to declare that the law, passed in 2011, violates part of the federal Voting Rights Act and voting guarantees provided in the 14th and 15th Amendments.
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Senator challenges home state voter ID law
Updated 8/13/2013 at 5:22pm
(CNN) - The day after North Carolina's Republican Gov. Pat McCrory signed a controversial voter ID bill into law, one of the U.S. senators from his state is seeking to challenge it.
In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan asked that the Justice Department look into the law she worried would "restrict the ability of minorities, seniors, students, the disabled, and low and middle income citizens to exercise their constitutional right to vote," she wrote.
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Eric Holder seeks to cut mandatory minimum drug sentences
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Washington (CNN) - The Justice Department will no longer pursue mandatory minimum sentences for certain low-level, nonviolent drug offenders, Attorney General Eric Holder said Monday, noting the nation is "coldly efficient in jailing criminals," but that it "cannot prosecute or incarcerate" its way to becoming safer.
"Too many Americans go to too many prisons for far too long, and for no truly good law enforcement reason," Holder told the American Bar Association's House of Delegates in San Francisco.
FULL STORY Justice plans sentencing changes for non-violent criminals
Washington (CNN) - The Justice Department is preparing an overhaul of how federal prosecutors deal with non-violent criminal offenders in a move that could mark the end of the tough-on-crime era, which began with strict anti-drug laws in the 1970s and accelerated with mandatory minimum prison sentences and so-called three-strikes laws.
The idea is to change the type of sentences that prosecutors seek in cases where instead of prison, offenders could benefit from alternatives such as drug court, a Justice Department official said.
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Senate narrowly confirms ATF chief
Washington (CNN) - The Senate voted Wednesday to confirm B. Todd Jones as head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, giving the politically controversial agency its first permanent director since 2006.
Senators voted 53-42 to approve Jones - the ATF's acting director since the fall of 2011 - shortly after he received the bare 60 votes needed to clear a key procedural hurdle.
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Holder gave 'deceptive and misleading' testimony, House Republicans say
Washington (CNN) – House Republicans issued a report Wednesday finding that Attorney General Eric Holder gave "deceptive and misleading" testimony, but abandoned accusations that he had perjured himself in May during a hearing on the government's seizure of journalists' phone and email records.
The House Judiciary Committee's Republicans launched an investigation after the hearing because Holder claimed not to know of any potential prosecution of members of the press in leak investigations. After the hearing, the Justice Department acknowledged that Holder had signed a search warrant to seize emails from Fox News Channel reporter James Rosen. The search warrant included a declaration that Rosen was a "co-conspirator" in the leak probe targeting a former State Department contractor.
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