John England III has been named the First Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Northern District of Alabama, The Birmingham News reports.

Joyce Vance, who has been the U.S. Attorney in Birmingham since last August, selected England, spokeswoman Peggy Sanford told The Birmingham News. “It is the usual practice that new U.S. attorneys name their own first assistants,” Sanford told the newspaper. “A first assistant is the U.S. Attorney’s alter ego, so it’s important to have someone who is a good fit to the U.S. attorney’s personal style.”

England, who joined the U.S. Attorney’s office in 1999, most recently served as a criminal division deputy chief, according to The News. He also has headed the Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement Task Force the newspaper reports.

England replaces Jim Phillips, who had been the First Assistant U.S Attorney for two years. Phillips will remain in the office as a deputy chief, overseeing terrorism, child exploitation and cybercrime cases. He will also oversee the office’s asset forfeiture unit, according to the newspaper.

Scientific tool manufacturer MDS Inc. will have to spin off some assets in order to complete its merger with another equipment manufacturer, Danaher Corporation, the Federal Trade Commission announced today.

MDS will divest assets related to  laser microdissection devices, which are used to separate cells from larger tissue samples for specialized testing, according to a statement from the agency.

“The Commission’s order will protect competition in the specialized and highly concentrated market for laser microdissection devices, leading to lower costs and increased innovation,â€� said the FTC’s Richard Feinstein, who heads the agency’s competition bureau.

Danaher and MDS are two of only four companies that make the devices in North America, the FTC said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephanie Brenowitz of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia is handling a strange case in which D.C. Superior Court Magistrate Judge Janet Albert was allegedly being stalked by her ex-girlfriend, reports the Washington Post.

In court yesterday, Brenowitz described the former girlfriend, Taylar Nuevelle, as manipulative and cunning. Brenowitz said that Nuevelle had threatened to “out” former lovers to employers during arguments and breakups, reports The Post.

Albert told the court on Tuesday that Nuevelle unceasingly telephoned her and broke into her home. Several times, Albert testified, she feared for her safety and that of her 9-year-old son.  Prosecutors say cellphone records show that Nuevelle called Albert 473 times between Sept. 11 and Oct. 22, 2008, including 139 times in one night, according to The Post.

Former U.S. Attorney Tom Marino (R) on Wednesday formally announced that he is running for Congress, The Daily Item of Sunbury, Pa., reported. He said he will challenge incumbent Rep. Chris Carney (D) for his seat in Pennsylvania’s 10th congressional district, which includes Scanton.

Marino was the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania from 2002 to October 2007.

He made the announcement in Williamsport, recalling the attitude that his parents had instilled in him long ago: “A citizen of this great country had to give back double what he had received.�

Before becoming a federal prosecutor, Marino was a Lycoming County, Pa., district attorney.

According to the Allentown Morning Call, during his time as U.S. Attorney, Marino came under fire for proving a reference for Louis DeNaples on DeNaples’ gaming application for Mount Airy Casino Resort while Marino’s office was investigating DeNaples. After Marino resigned, DeNaples hired Marino as an in-house counsel for non-casino businesses. Marino recently resigned in order to focus on his congressional bid.

Marino will face at least three other Republicans in the primary. The Republicans who have officially announced their candidacy are anti-tax activist Chris Bain, Snyder County Commissioner Malcolm Derk and chiropractor David Madeira.

Two other Republicans who have been mentioned as possible candidates are businessman Dan Meuser and Lackawanna Trail School Board Member Daniel Naylor.

A volunteer for an opponent of a former U.S. Attorney who is now running for governor in Wyoming tricked people seeking information on the ex-prosecutor — Matt Mead –  on the Internet, the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle reported today.

Matt Mead (Matt Mead for Governor)

The unnamed volunteer bought the Internet domain name mattmeadforgovernor.com, which redirected visitors to the campaign Web site of Wyoming state auditor Rita Meyer, who is running against Mead for the Republican nomination for governor. The bogus Web address now directs users to Mead’s official campaign Web site, meadforgovernor.com.

“This is the power of technology,” Meyer told the newspaper. “Sometimes these technology whippersnappers get a little overenthusiastic.”

The state auditor added that she took the campaign helper “to the woodshed” and was sorry about the incident.

Mead told the Tribune-Eagle that he didn’t think Meyer was involved with the Web site trickery. But he said using deception “isn’t the way you campaign in Wyoming.”

“I want voters to view everyone’s ideas,” Mead told the Cheyenne newspaper. “I don’t understand why somebody wants to do something like this. I don’t think it’s effective.”

A former associate in the antitrust group at the Washington, D.C.-headquartered Howrey law firm sued the firm today, accusing her former employer of discriminating against her because of her race and retaliating against her when she protested, according to a complaint filed today in Superior Court in Washington, D.C.

Kamisha Menns, a lawyer from Jamaica, joined the firm’s Brussels office last January. Soon after she arrived, she said in a press release, she was excluded from meetings, assigned unequal tasks, and referred to as “insubordinate” for suggestions that other, non-black associates were rewarded for.

When Menns complained about the harassment, according to the lawsuit,  Howrey fired her, filed a $100,000 arbitration claim against her, and actively tarnished her reputation with other employers. Through the lawsuit, Menns is seeking $30 million in damages.

In a statement, a Howrey spokeswoman said: “Personnel issues are always confidential and we will have no comment on this particular matter.” The spokeswoman noted that the firm has been a “leader among law firms in the area of diversity.”

According to the complaint, soon after Menns came to the firm, she received hostile messages from secretaries and partners, and was moved to a floor of the office building designated for support staff at the request of another attorney.

She first talked to the firm’s managing partner in Brussels, Trevor Soames, about the harassment, according to her lawyer Deborah Marcuse at the law firm Sanford Wittels & Heisler. Soames told her, according to the complaint, the Flemish office staff was hostile because of her race, because the Flemish “can be racist.”

“He told me the staff was reacting in that way because they had never been forced to be in a subordinate position to a Black person, particularly a Black woman with my level of education or who looked and spoke like I did,” Menns said in the statement.

Menns then approached the firm’s top management in Washington, D.C., with her complaints but was fired the next day, she said.

The firm threatened to prosecute her for illegally keeping documents, and approached Menns’ former employers at the law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer.

Freshfields withdrew a previous offer to serve as a reference for Menns, Marcuse said, making it impossible for Menns to find another job.

“The Brussels legal commnunity is fairly small,” Menns’ lawyer Marcuse told Main Justice, complaining that Howrey has taken steps to harm Menns’ reputation.

updated at 4 p.m. with comment from Howrey

Key Senate Republicans today called on Attorney General Eric Holder to testify before Congress about the decisions that the Justice Department made about a man who allegedly tried to ignite explosives in his underpants on a Dec. 25 Detroit-bound airplane flight.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and four top Republican committee members wrote in a letter to Holder that the decision to have FBI agents interrogate Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and read the Nigerian his Miranda rights was “hasty.” They added that it appears that there was “little, if any, coordination” between the DOJ and national security officials.

“It is critical that the American people have a full and timely understanding of the policy and legal rationale upon which this ill-advised decision was made,” Sens. McConnell, Jeff Sessions, (R-Ala.), Christopher “Kit” Bond (R-Mo.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) wrote. Sessions is the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee; Bond is the top Republican on the Intelligence panel; Collins is the ranking Republican on the Homeland Security panel; and McCain is the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee.

DOJ spokesman Matthew Miller defended the decision, saying in a statement last week that the DOJ consulted national security officials before Abdulmutallab was charged in federal court and not taken into military custody. It is  not clear exactly when in the decision-making process the DOJ consulted the national security officials on Abdulmutallab.

FBI Director Robert Mueller testified last week before the Senate Judiciary Committee that the events surrounding the alleged attempted bombing were “fast-moving� and authorities had “no time� to get other investigators in place. But Mueller said decisions were made “appropriately,� including the decision to read Abdulmutallab his Miranda rights.

The letter is the latest in a series of efforts by members of Congress to address the Abdulmutallab case.

Sessions previously wrote a letter to Holder last week demanding to know who made the decision to treat Abdulmutallab as a civilian. Earlier this week, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and ranking member Collins asked Holder to remove Abdulmutallab from federal custody and treat him as a military prisoner.

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, introduced legislation yesterday that would compel the DOJ to confer with the Director of National Intelligence and the secretary of Defense before deciding if a suspected terrorist should be tried treated as a civilian.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart took on the politics surrounding the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed trial last night, interviewing former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York David N. Kelley.

“Why do we really need trials? I mean people are just going to get mad, is it really worth it?” Daily Show correspondent Wyatt Cenac asked Kelley.

“I think the people who are getting mad are ill-informed,” said Kelley, siting on the witness stand in a courtroom the Daily Show rented out. “There have been 195 or more terrorist tried in federal courts in this country without any disaster.”

Cenac jokingly asked Kelley to if KSM could theoretically turn off the courtroom lights and climb out the window of the courtroom. Kelley said that’s a scenario security personnel would have to prepare for.

According to his profile Kelley “led the investigations of the Millenium bombing plot and the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, and participated in the investigation of the 1998 bombings of the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. He prosecuted Ramzi Yousef for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and served as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia acting as co-lead prosecutor of ‘American Taliban’ John Walker Lindh.”

The video is embedded below.

Attorney General Eric Holder continues to take lumps for his decision to try alleged Sept. 11th mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in federal court, Politico and The New York Times report.

Two moderate Senate Democrats — Jim Webb of Virginia and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, who faces a tough re-election fight this year — criticized the attorney general in a letter released Tuesday.

“Your decision to prosecute enemy combatants captured on foreign battlefields like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is without precedent in our nation’s history,” the letter reads. “Today, those who subscribe to the same violent ideology as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed continue to plan and execute attacks against innocent civilians all over the world,â€� the senators wrote. “It is not in our national interest to provide them further publicity or additional advantage.â€�

Four other senators, including former presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), also signed on to the letter.

O’Connor Criticizes SCOTUS Citizens United Decision

In a rare move, former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor offered a critique Tuesday of her former colleagues in their blockbuster campaign finance decision last week, The Washington Post and The New York Times report. Speaking at a conference at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C., O’Connor suggested the Citizens United decision, which struck down restrictions on corporate campaign donations, could spark an “arms race” in judicial elections and create a “problem for maintaining an independent judiciary.” The first female justice left the court in 2006 and has since become a staunch advocate for eliminating judicial elections.

“In invalidating some of the existing checks on campaign spending, the majority in Citizens United has signaled that the problem of campaign contributions in judicial elections might get considerably worse and quite soon,â€� O’Connor said.

O’Connor had one other reason to feel a bit piqued at her former colleagues: the precedent struck down Tuesday, the 2003 case McConnell v FEC, was an opinion she authored.

Former CIA Officer Pulls Back Waterboarding Claim

A former CIA officer who told ABC News that waterboarding techniques used on high profile detainee Abu Zubaydah led the al Qaeda operative to reveal actionable intelligence has retracted his claim, according to Foreign Policy magazine. In a 2007 interview, Jon Kiriakou told ABC’s Brian Ross that Zubaydah spilled his guts after a single round of waterboarding.

“From that day on, he answered every question,” Kiriakou said. “The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks.”

But in a memoir set to be released next month, Kiriakou admits he may have been mistaken.

“What I told Brian Ross in late 2007 was wrong on a couple counts,” Kiriakou wrote, according to FP. “I wasn’t there when the interrogation took place; instead, I relied on what I’d heard and read inside the agency at the time.”

Kiriakou’s initial appearance on ABC News sparked intense debate, with pro-waterboarding forces frequently marshalling his interview as evidence of the technique’s effectiveness.

ABC News has since modified its story online.

Former U.S. Attorney to Challenge Carney in Pa.

Another former Bush-era U.S. Attorney is setting his sights on Congress. Former U.S. Attorney Thomas A. Marino, who led the Middle District of Pennsylvania U.S. Attorney’s Office from 2002 to 2007, is expected to announce today that he will seek the Republican nomination to challenge Pennsylvania Rep. Chris Carney, a two-term Democrat.

Marino is the second Republican to enter the race. At least two other candidates have expressed interest in challenging Carney for his seat.

Another GITMO Detainee Released

The Justice Department announced Tuesday that it had transferred another detainee held at Guantanamo Bay to Switzerland for resettlement. The detainee, a man from Uzbekistan whose name was not released, is the 18th person to be released from the Cuban prison since December, according to Reuters.

The Obama administration has sought to close the camp, arguing that its perceived lawlessness has damaged U.S. standing around the world.

Antitrust Looking into Web Betting Site Merger

In the wake of the Justice Department’s approval of the Ticketmaster-Live Nation deal, the Antitrust Division has requested more information on a potential merger between two betting rivals, the Associated Press reports. Churchill Downs,  owner of several horse-race tracks, including the namesake track in Louisville, Ky., where the Kentucky Derby is held, announced in November that it would acquire Youbet.com, the leading online horse betting site. Churchill Downs owns a stake in two rival betting sites, Twinspires and XpressBet.

Former Ashcroft Adviser Joins Prison Consulting Firm

At least he found a way to put his experience to good use.

A former adviser to Attorney General John Ashcroft who later served 24 months in prison for tax evasion and fraud has joined ISA White Collar Prison Consultants, a D.C.-based prison consulting firm.

Charles Polk Jr., who helped Ashcroft prepare for his confirmation hearings, was accused of stealing $45,000 from the St. Louis Metropolitan Sewer District, a client of Polk’s employer, Doepken, Keevican and Weiss. He later pleaded guilty in federal court in 2006 to one count of tax evasion and one count of interstate transportation of money over $5,000 obtained by fraud.

Polk’s new firm specializes in providing non-legal advice to white collar clients. In a news release, ISA touted Polk’s knowledge of the criminal justice system “inside and out” as an asset.

Thomas Perrelli (file photo by Ryan J. Reilly)

A Republican member of Congress on Tuesday asked the Department of Justice Inspector General’s Office to look into allegations that DOJ officials consulted with the White House before deciding to  dismiss voter intimidation charges last May against members of the New Black Panther Party.

In a letter to Inspector General Glenn Fine, Virginia Rep. Frank R. Wolf cited reports in The Washington Times that suggested Associate Attorney General Thomas Perelli visited the White House last spring on several dates that match up with developments in the case.

“I am deeply concerned about allegations that Associate Attorney General Perrelli consulted with the White House counsel’s office in his decision to dismiss this case,” Wolf wrote. “The Washington Times has reported a series of meetings between Mr. Perrelli and the deputy White House counsel corresponding to key dates in the decision to dismiss this case.”

“The pace of these visits immediately slowed following the final dismissal of the case,” Wolf continued.  “If true, this represents a dangerous breakdown of the “firewallâ€� policy that former Attorney General Mukasey put in place in 2007 to prevent politicization on active cases.”

Last year, Wolf asked the inspector general’s office to look into the matter, in which the DOJ dismissed most of a case against members of the militant anti-white fringe group, two of whose members stood outside a polling place in Philadelphia in November 2008 in quasi-military garb, one of them holding a nightstick.

Fine instead referred the case to the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility. That investigation is still ongoing. The Justice Department has said there was no evidence of a coordinated voter intimidation campaign and that federal intervention wasn’t warranted. The government did win an injunction against the nightstick-wielding Black Panther.

The allegations in Wolf’s letter mirror those made by a former Bush Justice Department official, Hans von Spakovsky, that the meetings offer ”strong circumstantial evidence” that the White House was involved in the decision to dismiss the charges.

Spakovsky, writing for National Review Online last week, plucked out Perrelli’s appointments in the White House logs and matched them up with the dates of relevant actions in the New Black Panther litigation. The Washington Times wrote a similar piece the same day and later cited von Spakovsky’s piece as “confirmation” that its analysis was correct.

“All of this is circumstantial evidence, of course,” von Spakovsky wrote. “Perhaps all of Perrelli’s meetings had nothing to do with the NBPP case; perhaps Perrelli and the White House officials were discussing the latest Washington Redskins loss. Or perhaps not.”

But the No. 3 Justice could have have discussed any number of issues with the White House during the meetings last April and May such as tribal justice, the on-going negotiations related to the class-action Cobell v. Salazar settlement, making stimulus funds available to Indian County’s criminal justice needs, his trip with other cabinet officials to hard hit “auto communities,” or his testimony before a Senate committee on May 12.

The Justice Department declined to comment on Von Spakovsky’s piece or say what topics Perrelli covered in the White House meetings.

“We don’t respond to conspiracy theories from Hans von Spakovsky,” Justice Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told Main Justice.

Liberal news watch organization Media Matters blasted The Washington Times piece, saying the “editorial relied on falsehoods and distortions.”

The “editorial and accompanying timeline did not contain any reporting that Perrelli discussed the case with White House personnel in the meetings he had at the White House,” Media Matters wrote in an analysis. “Indeed, the Times acknowledged that one-third of the meetings Perrelli had at the White House occurred after the case was resolved.”

Von Spakovsky was a controversial figure in the Justice Department, where he served as a counselor to the assistant attorney general for civil rights from 2003 to 2005. While at the department, von Spakovsky advocated for a Georgia voter identification law that Democratic critics claimed made it harder for low-income and elderly citizens to vote. Then-Sen. Barack Obama was one such critic, writing is 2007 that von Spakovsky made “efforts to undermine voting rights” and had a “record of poor management, divisiveness, and inappropriate partisanship” at the Justice Department.

According to a 2008 Inspector General’s report, von Spakovsky and former DOJ officials John Tanner and Bradley Schlozman took political affiliations into account when reviewing résumés, making recommendations for applicants to be interviewed and conducting interviews for positions at the department. The report concluded that Schlozman violated federal law and that “division managers failed to exercise sufficient oversight to ensure that Schlozman did not engage in inappropriate hiring and personnel practices.”  Because of von Spakovsky’s controversial tenure at the Justice Department, Democratic senators later refused to confirm him to a position on the Federal Election Commission.

In addition to the IG letter, Wolf last week penned a missive to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to request time to speak at its Feb. 12 hearing about the New Black Panthers controversy.

Todd Gaziano, a commissioner at the the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights who is spearheading the hearing on the Black Panther case, is a frequent collaborator with von Spakovsky, both as a co-author of pieces for National Review Online and as a colleague at the conservative Heritage Foundation. Gaziano hired von Spakovsky as a short term consultant to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in the summer of 2008. Last August, von Spakovsky was appointed to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights’ State Advisory Committee for Virginia, where he resides.

At last Friday’s meeting of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, four of the Republican appointed members voted to go into executive session to discuss the case. Abigail Thernstrom abstained and two Democratically appointed members voted against going into the closed session.