The House Judiciary Committee endorsed legislation today that would establish the same sentencing guidelines for powder cocaine and crack offenses.

The Democrat-backed “Fairness in Cocaine Sentencing Act of 2009” was reported out of committee by a 16-9 vote along party lines. The legislation would eliminate the 100-to-1 ratio between crack and powder cocaine penalties put in place by Congress in the 1980s. The decades old law gives the same five-year mandatory minimum sentence for the sale of five grams of crack cocaine as it does for the sale of 500 grams of powder cocaine. The legislation supported by the panel today also would abolish mandatory minimum sentences for crack and remove distinctions between powder cocaine and crack offenses.

“This distinction is no longer considered rational,” Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), chair of the House Judiciary crime, terrorism and homeland security subcommittee, said at the meeting today.

Panel Republicans tried to kept mandatory penalties for powder cocaine and crack offenses in place, but were unsuccessful. The committee tabled an amendment offered by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) that would have maintained a mandatory minimum prison sentence for powder cocaine and crack offenses.

“The bill sends the wrong message to drug dealers and those who traffic in ravaging human lives,” said House Judiciary Ranking Member Lamar Smith (R-Texas) at the meeting. “It sends the message that Congress does not take drug crimes seriously.”

Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer has stood in support  of Congress’s efforts to eliminate the differences between crack and powder cocaine sentencing. He said at a hearing in May that the current sentencing policies – which disfavor blacks because crack is generally sold in poor urban communities – are “hard to justify.�

This post has been corrected from an earlier version.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) turned up the heat on Republicans today, blaming them for delaying votes on several Justice Department nominees, The Blog of Legal Times reported.

Patrick Leahy (Gov)

Office of Legal Counsel nominee Dawn Johnsen, Tax Division nominee Mary L. Smith, Civil Rights Division nominee Thomas Perez and five U.S. Attorney appointees have spent weeks waiting for a vote before the full Senate. Read our previous post on the U.S. Attorney nominees here. We reported yesterday that the Senate may squeeze in a vote on Perez before its month-long August recess.

“The Senate has to do better,” Leahy said at the hearing, according to The BLT. “There’s actually no excuse for not having moved yet.”

The Vermont senator noted the delay on Northern District of Alabama U.S. Attorney nominee Joyce Vance, who was endorsed by Senate Judiciary Ranking Member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), The BLT said.

“This nominee of a Republican has been blocked by the Republican side,” Leahy said, according to The BLT. “We’ve got to do better than that.” (Actually, Vance was selected by Alabama’s senior House Democrat, Rep. Artur Davis, though she had the support of Sessions. Read one of our previous reports here.)

The BLT noted that no Republicans were present at the hearing today to respond to Leahy’s remarks.

This post has been updated.

From The Washington Post:

A Department of Justice lawyer from Prince William County was fatally struck by lightning Monday while jogging on the beach on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, authorities said.

Matthew Glomb, 49, of Woodbridge was remembered by friends and colleagues as a family man and a deeply religious person who had a great sense of humor.

“The second you met him he cared about you,” said Sara Scichilone, 21, who met Glomb through Chrysalis, a group that runs Christian youth retreats.

Glomb, who joined the Justice Department in 2002 after a career in the U.S. Coast Guard, worked in the aviation-admiralty office and specialized in maritime law.

Police said Glomb was jogging on the beach about 5:20 p.m. Monday when a severe thunderstorm rolled in and he was struck by lightning. He was killed instantly.

If anyone out there has anything to add about Matthew Glomb, e-mail me at jpalazzolo@mainjustice.com. I’ll update the post with your comments as they come.

From J.C. Powell:

Matt Glomb loved serving his country and protecting the dignity of the bar.  He proudly represently the United States and knew that his actions were going to make a positive change for society.
 
I met Matt in a maritime case and I instantly knew that he was not only knowledgeable in his field but more importantly that he wanted justice and fairness to prevail.  This is heading that many attorneys have lost. 
 
An example was that at a meal, when it was time to pay the bill, he always insisted that he pay his share and that no one would accuse him of taking something.  He knew that although he was among friends, that he could not take a gift as he could not put himself in that position, although none of his friends would have ever complained.
 
His personal beliefs were strong and he would not waiver from them.  His faith and love controlled his life and he was very caring for his family.
 
He was a man who not only knew the law but knew how to apply it to get a just result.  That is an indication of genius.
 
I miss him and hope that his family knows that they were always on his mind.
 

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) said in an interview today with Main Justice that a vote on Justice Department Civil Rights Division nominee Thomas Perez could happen “as early as next week.�

Tom Perez (maryland.gov)

The Maryland senator said confirming Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is a top priority for the Senate before it starts its month long recess next week. But a vote on Perez before the August recess is still possible, he said.

“I hope that we can move it before the recess,� Cardin said. “We’re going to try.�

Perez is currently Maryland’s labor secretary. Cardin, a Senate Judiciary Committee member from Perez’s home state, said he had several meetings with Republicans who opposed the Perez nomination, which was reported out of committee on June 4 by a vote of 17-2. Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) were the only senators to oppose Perez in committee.

Sessions, the ranking member of the committee, called into question last month Perez’s prior work on the board of CASA de Maryland, an influential immigrant advocacy group that has come under fire by anti-immigration groups.

Coburn said last month that Perez, former director of the Office of Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has supported providing translators to illegal immigrants who are receiving medical care. The Oklahoma senator, a medical doctor who operated on people without U.S. citizenship, said providing illegal immigrants with interpreters would “wreck health care.�

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said Coburn and Sessions got a “much clearer viewâ€� of Perez from one of the meetings they had with Cardin. Sessions said that that the meeting he had with Cardin, Kyl and Coburn was “a good meeting.”

Cardin said he wasn’t aware of any current efforts by the Republicans to delay a vote on Perez.

We’ve seen the first signs of life in Henry Schuelke III’s criminal investigation of the prosecutors who bungled the government’s case against former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens.

Henry F. Schuelke III (photo by Susana Raab)

In a filing this afternoon, Schuelke asked U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan for the authority to take deposition testimony under oath and, if necessary, issue subpoenas to compel such testimony, as well as books, papers, documents, data or other materials that may be relevant to the investigation.

The filing asks permission to issue subpoenas to Public Integrity Section Chief William Welch II; his deputy, Brenda Morris; former PIN prosecutors Edward Sullivan and Nicholas Marsh (now lawyers in the Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs); Alaska-based Assistant U.S. Attorneys Joseph Bottini and James Goeke; FBI Special Agent Mary Beth Kepner; Bill Allen, the government’s star witness in the case; and his lawyer, Robert Bundy, of counsel at Dorsey& Whitney.

An FBI whistleblower accused Kepner, the lead agent on the case, of having an inappropriate relationship with Allen.

Sullivan promptly granted the order. Read it here.

The motion may suggest the next phase in Schuelke’s investigation, assuming the Justice Department has been cooperating fully with his requests for case materials. Sullivan dismissed the indictment in April and appointed Schuelke to handle the investigation after the government failed on numerous occasions to turn over materials that were potentially favorable to Stevens’ defense team.

The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility is also probing the Stevens case, and the Criminal Division is conducting a larger review of other Alaska-related public corruption prosecutions.

Click here for our recent profile of Schuelke.

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will be on the Texas Tech University payroll for only a year. But that’s not stopping several professors from protesting their soon-to-be colleague’s new job, the college’s student newspaper reported today.

Alberto Gonzales (DOJ)

A nine-page petition signed by 70 professors and obtained by The Daily Toreador said it was unethical to hire Gonzales to teach a political science class this fall and help recruit minority students. The document said Gonzales shouldn’t have been hired because Texas Tech chancellor Kent Hance, who served in the U.S. House for six years as a Democrat before becoming a Republican in 1985, was a “good friend” of Gonzales. Professor Walter Schaller, who created the petition, told The Toreador that the chancellor’s job is only “to raise money and deal with the legislature.”

“The idea [to hire Gonzales] came from Hance and it’s very difficult to say no to the chancellor,” Schaller told the newspaper.

The petition also said the former Bush official had several “ethical failings” during his tenure as White House counsel and Attorney General that tarnish his credibility. These “failings” included the U.S. Attorney purge, denying habeas corpus and supporting President Bush over the Constitution, according to the petition.

“Gonzales’s appointment is a troubling example of a ‘celebrity hire,’” the petition said. “It is unclear what Gonzales has done that makes him deserving of employment at Texas Tech. Does he have a noteworthy academic record? Does he have a record of publishing in law reviews? Was his service to his country particularly distinguished?”

The former Attorney General told The Toreador he disagrees with the petition.

“We live in a country where, in the academic world, people can express publicly their approval and disapproval of various issues,” he said. “What I’m focused on, is demonstrating that I’m serious about this teaching responsibility. I’m also serious about promoting diversity within Texas Tech. I hope that people will treat me fair and give me an opportunity to demonstrate that.”

Arizona U.S. Attorney Diane Humetewa will step down from her post on August 2, The Associated Press reported today.

Diane Humetewa (DOJ)

The Bush appointee has served as the Arizona U.S. Attorney since 2006. Humetewa was the first American Indian woman to be a U.S. Attorney. Last month, she received the “Women in Federal Law Enforcement Foundation President’s Award” — the highest award given by the Women in Federal Law Enforcement Foundation.

President Obama nominated Phoenix lawyer Dennis Burke earlier this month to be the state’s next U.S. Attorney We reported on Burke’s plans for the Arizona office here. Burke must be confirmed by the Senate before he can take office.

The Justice Department urged the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to stop its review of four patent protection rules until the next U.S. Patent and Trademark Office director is sworn in, The National Law Journal reported today.

The district court knocked down four rules that govern patent prosecutions, but a three-judge Federal Circuit panel upheld three and knocked down one. An en banc review of the rules by the U.S. Court of Appeals is scheduled to begin October 7. The case is Tafas v. Doll.

David Kappos (Marquette University Law School)

President Obama nominated David Kappos last month to lead PTO. The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on his appointment tomorrow. The DOJ asked the court to resume proceedings 60 days after the confirmation of the new PTO director in order to give the official time to review the rules, The Journal reported.

According to The NLJ, The DOJ added:

“The challenged rules at issue are not currently being enforced by the USPTO, which is enjoined from implementing them, and the Office will not implement them during the requested stay.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee did more than approve Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court today. It also reported Office of Legal Policy nominee Christopher Schroeder and other nominees to the Senate by voice vote.

Christopher Schroeder (Duke)

The appointees reported by voice vote include: Thomas McLellan to be deputy director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy; Alejandro Mayorkas to be director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services at the Department of Homeland Security; and Cranston J. Mitchell to be a commissioner of the U.S. Parole Commission.

The senators present did not make any specific comments regarding Schroeder during the meeting today. But ranking member Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said Republicans had “some concern about the nominees.”

Schroeder’s nomination for the DOJ office that oversees judicial nominations and legal policy has flown a bit under the radar. First, President Obama’s original choice for the job, Mayer Brown partner Mark Gitenstein, withdrew under fire from liberal groups outraged about his advocacy of tort reform on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Then, Schroeder’s June 24 confirmation hearing was disrupted and cut short by a Senate quorum call to consider impeachment charges against Texas U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent. Read our previous post about the OLP nominee here.

The 19 senators present did, however, have a lot to say about Sotomayor.

She passed the panel by a 13-6 vote that was mostly along party lines. Sessions and Republican Sens. Orrin Hatch (Utah), Charles Grassley (Iowa), Jon Kyl (Ariz.), John Cornyn (Texas) and Tom Coburn (Okla.) voted against reporting Sotomayor to the Senate. Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) was the only Republican to vote in favor of sending Sotomayor to the Senate.

Graham said today during the meeting that Sotomayor’s “wise Latina” remarks “did bug the hell out” of him. But he said those comments were not enough for him to vote against what he called a “competent” and “well qualified” nominee.

Hatch echoed many of the sentiments of the dissenting Republicans in his statement before the panel today.

“In the end, Judge Sotomayor’s record regarding her approach left too many unresolved controversies and too many conflicts with fundamental principles about the judiciary in which I deeply believe,” Hatch said. “As a result, I regret that I cannot support her appointment to the Supreme Court.”

Read our previous post about the Republican opposition to Sotomayor here.