The News

hosted.ap.org — Boeing Co. agreed to pay the U.S. government $25 million to settle claims the company did defective work on critical military refueling planes in Iraq and Afghanistan. The settlement arose out of a whistle-blower lawsuit filed in Texas by two former Boeing workers who will now receive $2.6 million for drawing attention to the issue. The Justice Department had investigated the Chicago-based aerospace giant for allegedly defective work on the Air Force fleet of KC-10 Extenders, which are used for in-flight refueling in the Iraq and Afghanistan war theaters. The work was done while performing maintenance on the planes at the Boeing Aerospace Support Center in San Antonio, Texas. The government investigation found Boeing overcharged the government for installing insulation blankets by padding the estimated hours of work and charging an excessive hourly rate for labor.

Read Full Article »

latimes.com — Karl Rove and other officials in George W. Bush's White House played an active role in the firing of the top federal prosecutor in New Mexico, according to documents released that also show Bush political aides tried to influence Justice Department officials on other matters. The e-mails and interview transcripts made public by the House Judiciary Committee show Rove and other White House aides paying particular attention to complaints from Republican officials in New Mexico that U.S. Atty. David C. Iglesias had failed to help their election prospects by prosecuting alleged instances of voter fraud. Iglesias was fired in 2006, one of nine dismissals of U.S. attorneys that Democrats said were motivated by politics. The firings became the subject of a long-running political fight in Washington. House Democrats called Rove the driving force in several of the firings and said the new evidence confirmed that partisan politics played an unusual role in the dismissals.

Read Full Article »

latimes.com — Pledging more oversight and accountability, the Obama administration announced plans Thursday to transform the nation's immigration detention system from one reliant on a scattered network of local jails and private prisons to a centralized one designed specifically for civil detainees. The reforms are aimed at establishing greater control over a system that houses about 33,000 detainees a day and that has been sharply criticized as having unsafe and inhumane conditions and as lacking the medical care that may have prevented many of the 90 deaths that have occurred since 2003.

Read Full Article »

hosted.ap.org — A former U.S. attorney for Nevada who was forced to resign during the Bush administration could soon be getting his old job back. President Barack Obama nominated Daniel G. Bogden on Friday to serve as the United States attorney for Nevada. Bogden was one of nine federal prosecutors told to resign by senior Justice Department officials during the Bush administration. The move led to resignations at the department and investigations into whether politics prompted the dismissals. Bogden is a partner in the Nevada law firm of McDonald Carano Wilson. He served as the U.S. attorney for the District of Nevada from 2001 to 2007. U.S. attorneys are political appointees who serve at the pleasure of the president, but they cannot be fired for improper reasons.

Read Full Article »

washingtonpost.com — Political adviser Karl Rove and other high-ranking figures in the Bush White House played a greater role than previously understood in the firing of federal prosecutors almost three years ago, according to e-mails obtained by The Washington Post, in a scandal that led to mass Justice Department resignations and an ongoing criminal probe. The e-mails and new interviews with key participants reflect contacts among Rove, aides in the Bush political affairs office and White House lawyers about the dismissal of three of the nine U.S. attorneys fired in 2006: New Mexico's David C. Iglesias, the focus of ire from GOP lawmakers; Missouri's Todd Graves, who had clashed with one of Rove's former clients; and Arkansas's Bud Cummins, who was pushed out to make way for a Rove protégé. The documents and interviews provide new information about efforts by political aides in the Bush White House, for example, to push a former colleague as a favored candidate for one of the U.S. attorney posts. They also reflect the intensity of efforts by lawmakers and party officials in New Mexico to unseat the top prosecutor there. Rove described himself as merely passing along complaints by senators and state party officials to White House lawyers.

Read Full Article »

nytimes.com — In a major step toward an overhaul of the nation’s food safety system, the House of Representatives passed legislation to require more frequent inspections of processing plants and give the government the authority to order the recall of tainted foods. House passage sets the stage for the Senate to take up the issue, though probably not until the fall. The Obama administration has voiced strong support for a comprehensive food safety revamping. The bill passed the House on a vote of 283 to 142. Democratic support was overwhelming, but Republicans were split, with 54 voting in favor and 122 against. Much of the opposition centered on lesser provisions that critics said would add burdensome bureaucracy for farmers.

Read Full Article »