The Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday postponed for the fourth time a vote on the nomination of Dawn Johnsen to head the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel because of the White House health care summit with members of Congress this morning.

Dawn Johnsen (Indiana University)

Committee chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said the health care summit, which several members of the panel attended, was an “extraordinary circumstance.” Traditionally, panel members can only ask to hold over a nominee once.

Johnsen, who has been on the panel’s agenda since Jan. 28, was held over the first time at the request of panel Republicans. The committee was then forced to hold her over twice more because the panel lost its quorum and its ability to conduct business.

Panel Republicans have voiced concerns about Johnsen’s vocal opposition to the President George W. Bush’s national security policies and her past work for an abortion rights group.

“Next week we will complete action on Dawn Johnsen,” Leahy said.

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved two U.S. Attorney nominees Thursday by voice vote.

The nominees are:

William J. Hochul Jr. (Getty Images)

-William J. Hochul Jr. (Western District of New York): The almost 20 year veteran of the Western District office would succeed Terrance P. Flynn, who resigned as U.S. Attorney in January 2009. Hochul was nominated on Dec. 24. Read more about him here.

Sally Yates (DOJ)

-Sally Yates (Northern District of Georgia): The current acting U.S. Attorney, who has worked in the Northern District since 1989, would succeed David E. Nahmias, who stepped down as U.S. Attorney in August. Yates was tapped on Dec. 24. Read more about her here.

The panel has now approved 36 U.S. Attorney nominees, 34 of whom have won Senate confirmation. The committee has yet to consider another 14 would-be U.S. Attorneys.

Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine told members of Congress Wednesday that the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms were not coordinating efforts with the agencies’ explosives investigators racing to the scene of an incident in the hopes of calling dibs on a case. As some agents acknowledged to Fine, they believed “possession is nine-tenths of the law.”

Inspector General Glenn Fine, Margaret Gulotta of the FBI and Jennifer Shasky Calvery of the DAG's Office at a hearing on Wednesday (photo by Ryan J. Reilly).

The Inspector General audit report issued in October found that the FBI and the ATF management of their coordinated efforts was ineffective.

Testifying before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, Fine reported that conflicts over which agency should lead investigations continue to occur even though the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms was transferred from the Treasury Department in 2003.

According to the report, 33 percent of ATF specialists and 40 percent of FBI bomb technicians who responded to the Inspector General’s survey reported having disputes with their counterparts at explosives incidents in fiscal years 2007 and 2008.

Jennifer Shasky Calvery, senior counsel to the Deputy Attorney General, told the committee that the Justice Department had already implemented several of Fine’s recommendations and had formed working groups to resolve the issues raised in the report.

Fine and other DOJ officials also testified on a separate Inspector General report, also issued in October, on the FBI’s foreign language translation program.

Jennifer Shasky Calvery, senior counsel to the Deputy Attorney General, testifies before the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security on Wednesday (photo by Ryan J. Reilly).

That report found that the FBI lacks a consolidated, accurate collection and statistical reporting evaluation system for the foreign language material it collects. It also found that the FBI continues to have significant amounts of unreviewed audio and electronic files it collected for its counterterrorism, counterintelligence and criminal investigations between fiscal year 2006 and 2008.

Margaret Gulotta , section chief of the Language Services Section of the FBI, said that the FBI continues to struggle to find qualified staff for the section.

The audit found that the number of linguists performing translations for the FBI has decreased from 1,388 in March 2005 to 1,298 in Sept. 2008, and that the FBI had not reached its hiring goals.

The audit found that it took the FBI approximately 19 months to hire a contract linguist, an increase from the 16 month period it took in 2005. Fine said that one of the reasons that it was so difficult for the FBI to add staff was because it is currently taking 14 months to complete a background investigation.

“You don’t think terrorists would be willing to wait fourteen months if they know we’ve got this problem?” said Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), ranking member of the subcommittee. “They don’t wait fourteen months, they take advantage of our weaknesses.”

Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.)  said the panel would discuss the Inspector General report regarding the FBI’s use of informal requests for phone records at an upcoming hearing.

The Senate passed by voice vote Wednesday night legislation that would temporarily extend three Patriot Act provisions set to expire at the end of this month.

The bill would keep in place the Patriot Act’s “lone wolf,� business records and “roving wiretap� powers until Feb. 28, 2011. The House has yet to consider the measure.

Both the House and Senate had begun work on long-term renewals, but the bills contained major differences.

The Senate Patriot Act bill would reauthorize all of the authorities. The House version would renew the records and “roving wiretap� powers but not the “lone wolf� authority, which the government has never used. The bills also would include new oversight for the authorities.

The Senate bill was approved by the Judiciary Committee last October and is awaiting floor action. The House bill, which won Judiciary Committee approval last November, is also awaiting floor action.

“I would have preferred to add oversight and judicial review improvements to any extension of expiring provisions in the USA PATRIOT Act,” Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said in a statement Wednesday night.

Here is a summary of the provisions that are due to expire:

• Lone wolf: Allows the government to track a target without any discernible affiliation to a foreign power, such as an international terrorist group. The provision applies only to non-U.S. persons. The government has never used it.
• Business records: Allows investigators to compel third parties, including financial services and travel and telephone companies, to provide them access to a suspect’s records without the suspect’s knowledge.
• Roving wiretaps: Allows the government to monitor phone lines or Internet accounts that a terrorism suspect may be using, regardless of whether others who are not suspects also regularly use them. The government must provide the FISA court with specific information showing the suspect is purposely switching means of communication to evade detection.

President Barack Obama made four U.S. Attorney nominations on Wednesday, the White House announced late last night.

They are:

Laura Duffy (voiceofsandiego.org)

Wifredo Ferrer (gov)

-Laura Duffy (Southern District of California): The Assistant U.S. Attorney, who has worked in the Southern District since 1997, would replace interim U.S. Attorney Karen P. Hewitt, who has led the office since Carol Lam was forced out during the 2006 U.S. Attorney purge. Read more about Duffy here.

-Wifredo Ferrer (Southern District of Florida): The assistant Dade County, Fla., attorney and deputy chief of staff to then-Attorney General Janet Reno would succeed R. Alexander Acosta as the next presidentially appointed U.S. Attorney. Acosta stepped down last summer, and his first deputy, Jeffrey H. Sloman, became acting U.S. Attorney. Sloman was appointed U.S. Attorney in January by U.S. Attorney Eric Holder and continues to lead the office pending confirmation of a new U.S. Attorney.

Read more about the nominee here.

Alicia Limtiaco (UCLA)

-Alicia Limtiaco (Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands): The Guam attorney general would replace U.S. Attorney Leonardo Rapadas, who has led the territories’ offices since 2003. Read more about her here.

John B. Stevens Jr. (Lamar University)

-John B. Stevens Jr. (Eastern District of Texas): The Jefferson County, Texas, judge would succeed Rebecca Gregory, who resigned last May. Stevens and a U.S. Attorney finalist for the Western District of Texas are the only candidates for the state’s four U.S. Attorney posts who received the backing of the Texas House Democrats and the state’s Republican senators in a tense battle over recommendations. Read more about Stevens here.

Obama has now made 50 U.S. Attorney nominations. The Senate has confirmed 34 U.S. Attorneys thus far.

The House Wednesday voted overwhelmingly to strip health insurers of an exemption from some federal antitrust scrutiny they have enjoyed since the 1945 enactment of the McCarran-Ferguson Act. The tally was 406-19. All of the nay votes were cast by Republicans.

The legislation, introduced by Tom Perriello (D-Va.), is a trimmed-down version of similar legislation that was included in the health overhaul package that passed the House last year. That measure also would have included medical malpractice insurers, who fall under the larger property and casualty umbrella.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) introduced a slightly different bill last fall, but it did not make it into the final version of the health bill passed by the Senate.

After Wednesday’s House vote, Leahy issued a statement urging his colleagues to consider legislation to repeal the health insurance industry antitrust exemption.

“We cannot introduce competition to the health insurance market while allowing the insurance industry to hide behind a special-interest, anachronistic, statutory antitrust immunity,” Leahy said in a statement. “I hope the Senate will quickly pass this repeal and send it to President Obama to be signed into law.”

Courts have cut back on the exemption over the years. Recent studies have shown that local markets are dominated by large health insurers. The American Medical Association found that more than 90 percent of metropolitan markets are “highly concentrated”, but experts disagree to what extent such concentration is a product of lax antitrust oversight.

In an op-ed article today in The New York Times, Robert Reich, who was secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, voiced support for the repeal. Here’s his take:

Anthem’s parent is WellPoint, one of the largest publicly traded health insurers in America, which runs Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans in 14 states and Unicare plans in several others. WellPoint, through Anthem, is the largest for-profit health insurer here in California, as it is in Maine, where it controls 78 percent of the market. In Missouri, WellPoint owns 68 percent of the market; in its home state, Indiana, 60 percent. With 35 million customers, WellPoint counts one out of every nine Americans as a member of one of its plans.

Antitrust laws are supposed to prevent this kind of market power.

On Tuesday, the White House also announced its support for the legislation.

The UBS saga continues.

On Wednesday, the Swiss government said it would seek approval from parliament to go ahead with a deal struck last year with U.S. authorities to reveal the names of Americans with offshore accounts, according to Reuters and the Wall Street Journal (subscription required).

The 2009 agreement between Zurich-based UBS and U.S. and Swiss officials called for the bank to turn over names and account details for 4,450 American UBS clients. In recent years, the Department of Justice Tax Division and the Internal Revenue Service have stepped up its efforts to find and prosecute offshore tax evasion. The U.S. had hoped to obtain the information from UBS to for use in prosecuting tax dodgers.

However, last month a Swiss court threw a wrench into the agreement, halting the turnover and ruling the deal would violate Swiss bank secrecy laws. The court also held that the accounts did not amount to tax fraud, a criminal offense under Swiss laws, but merely tax evasion, a civil offense.

According to Reuters, the Swiss government will ask parliament to eliminate the legal distinction between the two offenses, which would allow UBS to provide the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Department of Justice with the information sought.

“We will in this way uphold the international commitments made by Switzerland with a view of finding a definitive resolution to the legal and sovereignty conflict with the United States,” the Swiss government said in a statement. UBS in a statement said it intends to fulfill all commitments under both a criminal and civil settlement of the tax row, including providing relevant account information to Swiss tax authorities, Reuters reports.

According to Reuters, the future of UBS  is “crucial for the stability of the Swiss financial market.” Reuters reports that uncertainty surrounding the agreement has prompted UBS account holders to withdraw billions of Swiss francs. The Swiss government on Thursday will unveil a strategy on how to support its financial services industry, Reuters reports.

The Associated Press and Newsday are asking a federal judge in Brooklyn, N.Y., to make public the plea agreement between prosecutors and Najibullah Zazi, the alleged NYC subways bomber, the AP reported Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Raymond J. Dearie sealed both Zazi’s plea agreement and the application requesting the plea agreement be sealed, according to the AP. The news organizations argued in court papers that the public has a right to access the documents unless there’s an overriding reason to seal them.

Zazi pleaded guilty to three counts of conspiracy earlier this week and admitted he planned to bomb the New York City subways around the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison on two of the counts and up to 15 years on the third. His sentencing is scheduled for June 25.

Newsday, a newspaper serving New York City and the Long Island, initially asked to unseal the document, and the Associated Press joined it Wednesday.

Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee Friday on the Justice Department Office of Professional Responsibility report on the conduct of the so-called “torture” memo authors.

No other witnesses are expected.

Gary Grindler (DOJ)

Last week, the House Judiciary Committee released the long awaited report on former Office of Legal Counsel lawyers Jay Bybee and John Yoo, who authorized harsh interrogation methods for use on terrorism suspects. An earlier draft of the report said the Bush officials had engaged in professional misconduct. But Associate Deputy Attorney General David Margolis, a career lawyer who has been at the DOJ about 40 years, softened the OPR conclusion to say Bybee and Yoo showed only “poor judgment.”

Grindler is currently the second-in-command at the DOJ. He replaced former Deputy Attorney General David Ogden, who resigned earlier this month.

The House Judiciary Committee also plans to hold hearings on the OPR report, but the panel has not yet announced dates for the hearings.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is slated to vote on two U.S. Attorney nominees Thursday.

The nominees are:

William J. Hochul Jr. (Getty Images)

-William J. Hochul Jr. (Western District of New York): The almost 20 year veteran of the Western District office would succeed Terrance P. Flynn, who resigned as U.S. Attorney in January 2009. Hochul was nominated on Dec. 24. Read more about him here.

Sally Yates (DOJ)

-Sally Yates (Northern District of Georgia): The current acting U.S. Attorney, who has worked in the Northern District since 1989, would succeed David E. Nahmias, who stepped down as U.S. Attorney in August. Yates was tapped on Dec. 24. Read more about her here.

The panel has approved 34 U.S. Attorney nominees, all of whom have already won Senate confirmation. The committee has yet to schedule votes for another 10 would-be U.S. Attorneys.

The committee will also consider tomorrow Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel nominee Dawn Johnsen, who has been on the panel’s agenda since Jan. 28.

Her nomination was held over the first time at the request of panel Republicans. The panel was then forced to hold her over two more times because the committee lost its quorum and its ability to conduct business. Committee Republicans have voiced concerns about Johnsen’s vocal opposition to the Bush administration’s national security policies and her past work for an abortion rights group.