The battle between Google, Inc. and Microsoft Corp. has now kicked into high gear on both sides of the Atlantic.

On Tuesday, Google acknowledged that European antitrust regulators had opened an inquiry into its business practices, at the behest of some Microsoft-connected firms. The announcement of the European probe comes after recent disclosures that German antitrust authorities were investigating similar claims.

In the U.S., Google has not had it any easier. Earlier this month, Google was hit with its second U.S. antitrust lawsuit brought by the same lawyers who have long advised Microsoft.

In January, Google filed suit against a comparison shopping site myTriggers.com in Ohio state court, hoping to collect on $335,000 in unpaid bills.

Instead of paying the bill, myTriggers enlisted the help of both Microsoft’s antitrust lawyer, Rick Rule at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, and famed trial lawyer Stanley Chesley, who worked on several of the largest settlements of the past few decades including those for the Lockerbie bombing and Dow Corning’s injury-prone silicone breast implants.

(Creative Commons)

The company then filed a counterclaim earlier this month accusing the search giant of violating antitrust laws by manipulating search results to punish potential rivals.

“Google employs a variety of exclusionary acts that ensure that rivals cannot divert traffic to their own competing search websites, particularly if the effect of such diversion is substantially to compete against Google’s dominant platform,” myTriggers said in its complaint.

Rule also advises another search engine, TradeComet.com, which filed a similar suit against Google in a New York federal court last year.

Observers have questioned both lawsuits’ ties to Microsoft, but in an interview with Main Justice, Rule denied Microsoft’s interest in either matter.

“Microsoft is not involved,” he said, “our clients are only the named plaintiffs.” Rule declined to explain how his firm was hired in either case, but did say: “It is my practice to answer phone calls, and I’ve been blessed that I haven’t had to go out and elicit clients.”

Microsoft-related entities also appear to be going after Google on the other side of the Atlantic.

In a blog post last night, Google acknowledged that it had received word from the European Commission that it was investigating complaints filed by three companies accusing Google of manipulating its search rankings to punish other search engines and engaging in other anti-competitive conduct.

“This kind of scrutiny goes with the territory when you are a large company,” wrote Google senior competition counsel Julia Holtz,  on the company’s blog.

In her discussion of the investigation, Holtz fingered Microsoft as the unseen hand directing the complainants. One, a U.K.-based shopping search site called Foundem, is part of a Microsoft-backed organization called ICOMP, she said.  Another, a search engine called Ciao!, was bought by Microsoft in 2008. The third company is a French legal search engine, ejustice.fr.

The attacks against Google are reminiscent of similar campaigns against Microsoft over the past two decades.

“It’s not surprising that Google would start to see lawsuits, and it’s ironic that Microsoft is trying to foist upon Google the experience it had,” Andrew Gavil, a professor at Howard University’s law school, said in an interview.

But just how much Google’s experience will mirror Microsoft’s is unclear.

(Microsoft)

“In contrast to Microsoft, you don’t have a clear package of conduct that is identified as being anticompetitive,” Gavil said.  ”For all the discussion on Google, no one can point to the core group of anti-competitive conduct. Individual firms are complaining about practices particular to them, but there is no broad based attack on the market.”

Industry groups that have long been a part of tech antitrust battles also said Google’s conduct did not raise as many concerns as previous investigations.

“We have for over 30 years been involved in fighting the biggest and most abusive monopolies and industry heavyweights who have abused their power,” said Edward Black, president of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, which counts both Google and Microsoft as its members. “We do not see Google’s behavior fit that pattern.”

In its lawsuit last year, TradeComet alleged that Google massaged its Web site ratings, known as quality scores, to make TradeComet’s ads prohibitively expensive once it realized the company posed a potential threat to its business.

Google says a Web site’s quality score is based on the number of users that have clicked on its link in the past, and search advertising analysts have said there usually is a strong correlation between the two.

MyTriggers’ case also accused Google of punishing its site in search rankings, but it goes further. The complaint argued that Google entered into “favorable agreements” with Shopping.com, Shopzilla.com, PriceGrabber.com, Ask.com, Aol.com and others but discriminates against other search websites.

The complaint alleged Google entered into “horizontal agreements” with some rivals to use the same quality score for certain advertisers. It further accused Google of maintaining a secret “whitelist” of firms that are blacklisted by it and the other search sites it has agreements with.

Since March 2008, according to the complaint, myTriggers rates to advertise on Google and other search sites rose between 1,000 percent and 10,000 percent.

The TradeComet complaint included accusations of one similar partnership, between Google and Business.com, but a executive from that Web site told the New York Times last year it had no special relationship with Google.

Whether such agreements violate any laws might have to play out in court. “There is nothing wrong with partnership agreements, there’s no abstract reason that these need to be illegal, but if it was tantamount to an agreement on price,” there could be a problem, said Geoffrey Manne, a former Microsoft lawyer who is now a professor at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Ore.

Rule said he looked forward to his day in court. “The complaint speaks for itself. The whole point of litigation is a plaintiff’s ability to prove its case, and to be awarded damages for the violation,” Rule said. “That’s what this is about.”

Last year, Wired magazine detailed Microsoft’s efforts to tar Google’s reputation.

A federal judge on Tuesday criticized defense lawyers for former KB Home Chief Executive Bruce Karatz for pressing misconduct allegations against federal prosecutors without sufficient evidence, The Los Angeles Times reports.

Karatz, who is charged with 20 counts of fraud and making false statements during an investigation of his company’s option grants, had accused federal prosecutors of manipulating witnesses in his upcoming trial. Judge Otis Wright II, of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, declined to pursue the matter, citing an “astonishing” lack of evidence to support the allegations, according to the Times.

Wright said he was troubled by the defense’s assertion that a judge’s recent finding of misconduct in the backdating case against Broadcom Corp. co-founders Henry Samueli and Henry Nicholas III pointed to possible foul play in the Karatz investigation, the Times reports.

The Karatz trial, scheduled to begin March 9, is a chance at redemption for the Justice Department, after a series of disappointments in previous stock options backdating cases — most prominently, the Broadcom matter.

Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, the head of the Criminal Division, said in a recent interview with Main Justice that the department was taking a “hard look” at the backdating cases. But he cautioned that the outcome of the Karatz trial would not necessarily determine the department’s course.

“We take a hard look — whether we’re talking about stock options cases or whether we’re talking about honest services cases, where it’s our obligation to assess the state of the law,” Breuer said. “That’s what we’re doing in the Criminal Division and that’s what the U.S. Attorneys’ offices are doing. Once they do that I don’t think there’s any one outcome that necessarily flows from that.”

The U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri today told members of the Senate Judiciary panel’s Human Rights and the Law Subcommittee that there are not enough law enforcement and social services resources to combat child sex trafficking in the United States.

Beth Phillips (DOJ)

U.S. Attorney Beth Phillips, who worked on child exploitation cases as an Assistant U.S. Attorney, said U.S. child traffickers have “little fear” of arrest or prosecution because victims often won’t cooperate with law enforcement officials. Phillips said there needs to be more specialized services for victims, including secure housing.

“Without secure housing it is difficult for law enforcement officers to maintain the steady contact with victims necessary to build rapport and build trust,” Phillips said. “While general resources might be available at the state level, there are very little resources capable of addressing the full range of trauma experienced by these children.”

The U.S. Attorney, who was sworn into office on Dec. 31, said the Justice Department has employed a number of task forces and initiatives over the last decade to fight child prostitution, including the Innocence Lost National Initiative, begun in 2003, which tries to rescue U.S. victims of child trafficking. The DOJ also has a few, limited grant programs to help state, local and tribal officials save child prostitutes in the United States.

“The Department of Justice is committed to continuing its multi-pronged attack against the victimization of American children,” Phillips said. “Through a training and grant-making perspective, we continue to assist local communities in understanding and responding to this issue. From a law enforcement perspective, our efforts are focused on building capacity through the establishment and training of task forces to successfully apprehend and prosecute offenders who make money off of the backs of children.”

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) introduced bipartisan legislation last December to create a dedicated grant program that would provide grants to state, local and tribal programs that fight sex trafficking in the United States. The bill, which would authorize $50 million over four years, has not seen any legislative action, however.

“[Child prostitutes] don’t have any power. They don’t have any clout. They don’t have any political action committee,” Wyden said today. He added: “We are not going to tolerate this kind of moral wrong. We are not going to tolerate sacrificing so many of our young people.”

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder emphasized the importance of enforcing intellectual property rights during a trip to Brazil on Wednesday, saying that preventing IP theft is a “priority concern” for the Attorney General and President Barack Obama.

Attorney General Eric Holder, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary for Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and FBI Director Robert Mueller at a meeting with entertainment industry representatives in December (photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice).

Holder’s speech comes a day after U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel requested input from the public on the enforcement of intellectual property rights in a White House blog post and less than two weeks after the Justice Department announced the creation of the Department of Justice Task Force on Intellectual Property.

That task force was announced after a December meeting in which Vice President Joe Biden pledged that the Obama administration would work to combat piracy in the rapidly changing technological age. The December meeting featured several high ranking government officials including Secretary for Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and FBI Director Robert Mueller, as well as entertainment industry executives.

At the Rio de Janeiro Prosecutor General’s Office, Holder said that Brazil and the United States “need strong enforcement of criminal laws to protect intellectual property rights if we are to continue to foster innovation and creativity, safeguard consumers, and create economic growth.”

The task force “will help develop and implement a multi-faceted criminal enforcement strategy with our federal, state and international partners to effectively combat IP crime,” Holder said. “Through this new task force, we will seek creative and aggressive enforcement strategies — under both the civil and criminal laws— to combat the ever-growing threat to intellectual property worldwide.”

Holder’s prepared remarks:

“Thank you very much for your warm welcome, and good morning to my distinguished fellow panelists and to all members of the audience. Thank you, Ambassador Shannon, for that kind introduction, and thank you, Prosecutor General Lopes, for graciously hosting today’s event.

“I sincerely appreciate the opportunity to meet with my Brazilian enforcement colleagues to discuss the challenges both our countries face in protecting the intellectual property that is so vital to our economic infrastructure and security. Our countries each need strong enforcement of criminal laws to protect intellectual property rights if we are to continue to foster innovation and creativity, safeguard consumers, and create economic growth.

“Intellectual property is a critical component of the economies of both Brazil and the United States. If we cannot provide strong protection of intellectual property rights, our creative industries will suffer. There will be less research and development to foster innovation, and fewer technological advances in computer software and consumer products. And we risk falling behind in achieving much needed advances in new medicines and medical care that our scientists, universities and corporations develop.

“Thanks to advances in technologies — in particular the increasing accessibility of the Internet and improvements in manufacturing, transportation and shipping — digital content such as business software and movies can be distributed to a worldwide market almost instantaneously. Even small businesses have unprecedented opportunities to market and distribute their goods and services around the world.

“Unfortunately, the success of this worldwide, digital marketplace has also attracted criminals who seek to exploit and misappropriate the intellectual property of others. The same technologies that have created unprecedented opportunities for growth in legitimate economies have also created global criminal organizations that are eager to steal the creativity and profits from our domestic industries and workers. As Attorney General, I dedicate much of my time and attention countering the threats posed by these transnational criminal syndicates. These groups, who do not respect international boundaries or borders, have developed sophisticated, efficient and diverse methods for committing almost every type of intellectual property offense imaginable, including:

• widespread online piracy of music, movies, video games, business software and other copyrighted works;
• well-funded corporate espionage;
• sales of counterfeit luxury goods, clothing and electronics, both on street corners and through Internet auction sites; and
• increased international trade in counterfeit pharmaceuticals and other goods that pose a substantial risk to the health and safety of our consumers.

“In the United States, we consider the theft of intellectual property to be a threat to our nation’s economic security, as I know you in Brazil do as well. This is a priority concern for President Obama and for me. The Obama Administration has taken a number of significant steps to ensure that protecting intellectual property rights remains a cornerstone of our country’s strategy for economic growth and prosperity. In 2009, President Obama appointed the first-ever Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator to serve in the White House and to work closely with an Advisory Committee composed of high level officials from all federal agencies across the United States. The IP Enforcement Coordinator, Victoria Espinel, will work with the Advisory Committee to develop a government-wide strategic plan to combat intellectual property violations. The plan will focus on all areas of intellectual property, including copyrights, patents, trademarks and trade secrets, both in the United States and abroad, and will include input from the public and from a broad cross-section of industries affected by IP theft.

“Last December, Vice President Biden further demonstrated the Administration’s commitment to IP protection by convening an IP summit of high-level cabinet officials, including myself, as well as leaders of many of the IP industries, where he emphasized the importance of stronger enforcement of IP rights and improving government coordination.

“And just two weeks ago, I announced the creation of a Department of Justice Task Force on Intellectual Property. This task force will help develop and implement a multi-faceted criminal enforcement strategy with our federal, state and international partners to effectively combat IP crime. Through this new task force, we will seek creative and aggressive enforcement strategies—under both the civil and criminal laws— to combat the ever-growing threat to intellectual property worldwide. Let me be clear again- this is a priority matter for my government.

“We are also expanding our efforts to attack IP crime by incorporating the legal tools that we use to attack other types of economic crime, such as with criminal laws against smuggling, money laundering, and fraud. Moreover, because of its high profits and international scope, IP crime has increasingly become the province of international organized crime. That is why I incorporated intellectual property crime into the Department’s International Organized Crime Strategy, a strategy that seeks to identify and target the most serious criminal groups operating throughout the world. The International Organized Crime strategy and initiative bring the best our law enforcement agencies have to offer, working toward a common purpose: to dismantle the most serious organized crime groups wherever they are located throughout the globe, whatever their source of income. Increasingly, our investigations show that many of these crime groups are financing their illicit activities through the theft of intellectual property and sale of counterfeit goods. This poses a significant threat to all our economies, and it challenges us to work together even more to combat global organized crime.

“At home, our experience has shown that the increasingly sophisticated and diverse methods of committing intellectual property crime demand a more creative enforcement approach that better targets the skills and resources of our law enforcement community. The Department therefore has created two highly-specialized groups of criminal prosecutors who are devoted to the unique challenges of intellectual property enforcement. The first group is the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, in the Department’s Criminal Division. This group of 40 prosecutors and four highly-skilled Cybercrime Lab specialists focuses exclusively on computer and intellectual property crime. These attorneys prosecute many of the largest criminal IP cases that have international sources or that require multi-district coordination. They also help develop and implement the Department of Justice’s overall IP enforcement strategy nationwide, working closely with federal prosecutors in U.S. Attorney’s Offices throughout the country.

“The second group of specialized prosecutors exists in the dedicated network of more than 230 Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property (CHIP) coordinators and Assistant U.S. Attorneys nationwide who are located in each of our 93 United States Attorney’s Office’s across the country. These CHIP prosecutors receive highly-specialized training and unique resources with which to effectively combat the wide variety of IP crimes committed in their districts.

“Of course, prosecutors are only part of the equation. Without skilled and dedicated investigative agents, there would be no cases to prosecute, and certainly fewer cases prosecuted successfully. Therefore, the Department works hand-in-hand with our law enforcement investigative partners in a variety of ways, including through the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center (IPR Center). The IPR Center is led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and includes investigators and analysts from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Food and Drug Administration, and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, all working together to combat counterfeiting and online piracy.

“We work hard to ensure that our prosecutors, agents and analysts have the training, technical and legal expertise to keep pace with the IP criminals. We measure our success by the quality of our prosecutions and the deterrent impact they achieve by convicting and jailing these offenders.

“And our enforcement efforts require constant vigilance. The theft of a single trade secret can completely destroy a small up-and-coming company that seeks to profit on its creativity and ideas. When the trade secret is stolen to benefit another foreign power, our competitiveness in the world economy – and even our national security – can be threatened. Counterfeit drugs that are intended to treat serious illnesses and health conditions attack the very foundations of public health and safety in our countries. This is simply unacceptable.

“Of course, we all know that the international scope of IP crime is very wide, and its penetration into our societies is deep. We thus have a responsibility to work with our law enforcement colleagues in other countries to disrupt the production and smuggling of counterfeit and pirated goods from their source organizations and illegal businesses. To that end, the Department partners with our foreign law enforcement counterparts whenever possible.

“I am pleased that we have also worked so well with our colleagues here in Brazil over the course of many years. For example, in December 2008, the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division worked closely with Brazilian law enforcement to present a series of well-attended training programs in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Brasilia, which focused on the technical aspects of investigating IP crime – especially computer forensic analysis. The program appeared to have been well received, and we appreciated the opportunity to share ideas on computer forensic examinations and online investigative techniques.

“We have also worked well together in the area of cybercrime and electronic evidence collection. While it will be difficult to leave Rio, I am looking forward to traveling to Brasilia tomorrow to attend the REMJA meeting of Ministers of Justice and Attorneys General of the Americas under the Organization of American States (OAS). We have worked hard through this organization’s Working Group on Cybercrime to develop stronger, harmonized laws to facilitate the collection and exchange of electronic evidence in all areas of the law, including computer and intellectual property crime. We appreciate Brazil’s contributions to the Working Group and to the numerous seminars the Working Group has organized throughout the Americas.

“Like the United States, I know well that Brazil has also suffered the effects of IP crime. Counterfeit products and pirated versions of copyrighted works directly undermine your economy and creative industries. But Brazil is rising to face those challenges through the groundbreaking work of the National Council to Combat Piracy & Counterfeiting (CNCP). Our colleagues on the CNCP bring creativity and hard work to bear on the task of protecting IP rights. Since 2004 you have increased enforcement actions; you have helped to amend the law to reflect the new and changing relationship between IP and technology, and you have conducted public awareness and education campaigns to make Brazilian citizens aware of the economic harm and personal risks associated with counterfeit goods and pirated works.

“I also want to acknowledge the enforcement efforts of our hosts today from the Office of the Prosecutor General for Rio de Janeiro. The state of Rio is a shining example of how law enforcement officials can reduce the flow of fake goods in our economies through targeted actions that have a large deterrent effect, and make criminals aware that IP crimes are treated no less seriously than narcotics or firearm offenses, or frauds and other economic crimes.

“We applaud those efforts and the significant results they have achieved. But we can and must do more. We are not close to all that we can, and should, do. Brazil and the United States have taken leadership roles in the world in tackling the problems of counterfeiting and piracy, and as leaders we should work together at every opportunity to reach our goals. It is against this backdrop, that I am very excited to work with Brazil on developing a regional approach that brings together law enforcement experts from across the Americas with a mutual goal of increasing international cooperation in combating IP crime in the region. I look forward to finding additional opportunities to collaborate on the protection of intellectual property rights and other areas of shared interest.

“Thank you, again, for your gracious hospitality today. I look forward to working with all of you in the months and years ahead and build a stronger partnership between our great two nations.

Thank you.”

Lanny Breuer (doj)

A mistrial has been declared in the fraud and bribery trial of two American Samoa officials, according to The Blog of Legal Times.

Lt. Gov. Aitofele Sunia and American Samoa lawmaker Tini Lam Yuen, a senator in the territorial legislature, were charged with fraud and bribery.

The trial, before Judge Reggie Walton in federal court in the District of Columbia, began Jan. 12 and the jury had been deliberating for more than two weeks when it announced on Tuesday that it was deadlocked. Eleven of the jurors said they favored acquittal.

Federal prosecutors in the 2007 indictment of Sunia and Yuen allege that they used their political positions and relationships to secure contracts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars  for companies under their control, BLT reported. Under the contracts, the companies supplied classroom and library furniture to the American Samoa Department of Education.

Stephen Anthony (Covington & Burling LLP)

Stephen Anthony, a partner at Covington & Burling and a lead attorney for Sunia, told BLT the jury deliberated “carefully and thoroughly� in the case. He added, “It was clear the jury paid close attention to the evidence.� Sunia also was represented by Covington & Burling partner Emily Henn. Yuen was represented by Michele Peterson, an assistant federal public defender in Washington, D.C.

Emily Henn (Covington & Burling LLP)

When the indictment was issued, Lanny Breuer, then a partner at Covington & Burling,  was lead counsel for Sunia and appeared in court several times. He withdrew from the case in February 2009, a month after being nominated to head the criminal division at the Justice Department. He recused himself from participating in the prosecution of the case.

The case was prosecuted by DOJ trial attorneys Matthew Stennes and Kathryn Albrecht of the Public Integrity Section. They did not comment on whether DOJ plans to prosecute Sunia and Yuen again, BLT reports.

The DAG candidates, from top left: Gary Grindler; David Kris; B. Todd Jones; Daniel Marcus; Thomas Perrelli; and Christine Varney. (Main Justice compilation)

In his “In the Loop Column” today, The Washington Post’s Al Kamen notes a new candidate for Deputy Attorney General: American University law school professor Dan Marcus, who was general counsel to the 9/11 Commission.

During the Clinton administration, he held several senior positions in the Justice Department, including Associate Attorney General. He appears to be something of a consensus candidate — a former senior counsel in the White House who is well-received in the law enforcement community.

Other hopefuls, according to Kamen and our own reporting, include acting Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler, current Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli and Assistant Attorney General for National Security David Kris.

Grindler’s front-office experience gives him a leg up, and he’s more than proven his law enforcement chops. Kris, too, is a well-regarded manager and, inarguably, one the department’s top minds on national security — an obvious strength in the current climate (or any climate, for that matter). But the White House is said to favor someone with more political savvy.

Perrelli is a popular manager with strong ties to the White House. His candidacy apparently suffers for the reason above, only flipped: He may be too close to Obama, and coupled with Holder’s proximity to the President, the Justice Department could have an appearance problem.

Our dark horse: Christine Varney, Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust. She’s also said to be an internal candidate, and she’s very ambitious. On the merits, she also has strong management experience and a lot of political clout, but her lack of law enforcement bona fides is an obvious strike.

Honorable mention: B. Todd Jones, the U.S. Attorney for Minnesota. (And also a name uttered on the Fifth Floor.) He was U.S. Attorney during the Clinton administration, which makes him a more traditional pick: It’s a long-standing practice to pluck DAGs from the 94 prosecutor offices. And he’s chairman of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee of U.S. Attorney, a key policy role.

Tips are welcomed. Vote below for your pick on our current batch of candidates.

Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., introduced legislation Tuesday that would make it a federal crime to intimidate or threaten witnesses in state court proceedings, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

The legislation would give state witnesses the same legal protections that federal witnesses have.

“It is a violation of state law to intimidate a witness, but making it a federal offense imports a great deal more pressure, more power to the situation,â€� Specter said in a floor statement Tuesday. Here is Specter’s news release about the bill.

Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa.

According to Specter, the State Witness Protection Act of 2010 is in response to a Philadelphia Inquirer series that found witness fear to be a factor in virtually every violent-crime prosecution in Philadelphia. The legislation would help protect the integrity of the judicial process, Specter said.

“Unless witnesses can be assured they will be protected, the problem of witness intimidation cannot be expected to go away,� he said.

The bill would allow the FBI and federal prosecutors to investigate and bring charges against people who intimidate witnesses in local court cases and would set tough new penalties for those crimes.

It would impose maximum penalties of up to 20 years for intimidating or harming a witness, up to 30 years for the attempted murder of a witness, and the possibility of the death penalty for the murder of a witness, according to the Inquirer.

According to The Inquirer, Specter’s effort was supported by Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams and Barbara Clowden, whose 17-year-old son was killed two days before he was to testify as a witness in an arson trial in 2006. Clowden was profiled in the Inquirer series.

The Inquirer stories documented conviction rates that are among the lowest in the nation and described how thousands of cases collapse after terrified witnesses fail to appear in court.

The legislation is cosponsored by three other Senate Judiciary Committee members: Ted Kaufman, D-Del., Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.

Joshua Marquis (gov)

Josh Marquis, the Clatsop County district attorney and one of two people under consideration to be the next U.S. Attorney for Oregon, has warned his fellow district attorneys that if they voice opinions about key measures before the state legislature, lawmakers may further cut the salaries of the DAs, The Bend Bulletin reports.

The issue of pay for the 36 DAs in Oregon became an issue after state lawmakers last year passed a bill that cut about $5,000 from the DAs’ annual salaries, or almost a month’s pay for some, the newspaper reports. The DAs hope that keeping quiet about a criminal sentencing bill that was considered earlier this month might convince the state legislature to restore their pay cut. How well this tactic has worked will be evident when lawmakers vote on the issue as part of a budget bill expected to be voted on today, according to the Bulletin. The sentencing bill was passed by the legislature and signed into law last week.

Marquis — who along with Amanda Marshall, a child advocacy attorney at the Oregon Department of Justice — is under consideration to be the next Oregon U.S Attorney — encouraged his fellow DAs to consider their financial situations before coming out against the “fix-it” bill which would modify “earned timeâ€� sentencing provisions that allow some inmates to be released early, the newspaper reports.

Amanda Marshall (facebook)

Kent Robinson, the First Assistant U.S. Attorney in Oregon, also was recommended for the post by a 13-member ad hoc selection committee last summer. But in February withdrew his application for unknown reasons. He served as the district’s acting U.S. attorney from July 2009 until earlier this month.

The Bulletin reports that some DAs argue that lawmakers used the pay cut to pressure them to keep quiet about their objections to the “fix-it” bill. However, several key Democratic lawmakers said they do not believe that the pay cuts were linked to positions that the DAs may have taken on legislation, according to the newspaper.

In a Feb. 10 email to fellow DAs, Marquis warned his colleagues not to voice criticisms of the bill, the newspaper reports. “There are many problems with this ‘fix,’ but if any of us say a word they’ll cut off our salaries. … so I hope everyone has equity for a loan, savings or has been setting aside money. This WILL pass. There is nothing we can do about it.”  Marquis told the newspaper that based on his inquiries, he firmly believes that “legislators who had the power to do thisâ€� made the threat.

Kent Robinson (gov)

However, he was unwilling to name any specific lawmakers. Marquis, who has lobbied on criminal justice bills for nearly 30 years, said, “I think I’m able to distinguish between truth and rumor.” He added, “I’ve never seen anything like this, and it’s very concerning.â€�

It’s unknown what effect e-mails by Marquis and other DAs had on the decision by the attorneys to keep quiet, but the lawmakers got their bill and the DAs hope that means their get their pay cuts reversed today.

“Barack Obama may not realize it, but I may have just helped save his presidency. How? By winning a drawn-out fight to protect his powers as commander in chief to wage war and keep Americans safe,” begins John Yoo’s op-ed in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal.

John Yoo (Berkeley)

The law professor and former Office of Legal Counsel lawyer who blessed the CIA interrogation program spares nothing in attack on the Obama administration, generally, and the Justice Department’s ethics unit, the Office of Professional Responsibility, specifically.

OPR determined that Yoo and his former boss, Jay Bybee, now a federal judge, committed professional misconduct. That determination was downgraded by the department’s top career lawyer, David Margolis, to a finding that Yoo and Bybee exercised “poor judgment” in their work.

Yoo writes:

Part of Mr. Obama’s plan included hounding those who developed, approved or carried out Bush policies, despite the enormous pressures of time and circumstance in the months immediately after the September 11 attacks. Although career prosecutors had previously reviewed the evidence and determined that no charges are warranted, last year Attorney General Eric Holder appointed a new prosecutor to re-investigate the CIA’s detention and interrogation of al Qaeda leaders.

In my case, he let loose the ethics investigators of the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) to smear my reputation and that of Jay Bybee, who now sits as a federal judge on the court of appeals in San Francisco. Our crime? While serving in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in the weeks and months after 9/11, we answered in the form of memoranda extremely difficult questions from the leaders of the CIA, the National Security Council and the White House on when interrogation methods crossed the line into prohibited acts of torture.

Yoo criticizes OPR’s years-long investigation of him as infused with “rank bias and sheer incompetence” — taking Margolis’ conclusions to their extreme — and dollops blame on Attorney General Eric Holder for failing to stop “this sorry mess earlier,” as his predecessor, Michael Mukasey, tried to do.

And why did Yoo and his top-notch lawyer, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s Miguel Estrada, fight so strenuously to reverse OPR’s “mistakes, misdeeds and acts of malfeasance”?

For Obama, of course:

Mr. Obama is fighting three wars simultaneously in Iraq, Afghanistan, and against al Qaeda. He will call upon the men and women serving under his command to make choices as hard as the ones we faced. They cannot meet those challenges with clear minds if they believe that a bevy of prosecutors, congressional committees and media critics await them when they return from the battlefield.

Click here to continue reading Yoo’s piece.

Georgia will go to court over a voter verification law that cannot go into effect without Department of Justice or court approval, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Political Insider blog reported Tuesday.

Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp said the state plans to file a lawsuit seeking clearance for a state law that has twice failed to pass muster with the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division.

“The State of Georgia will no longer watch the Obama Justice Department play politics with our election processes and protections,” Kemp said in a statement. “The Justice Department is denying Georgia’s legal requirement to verify the information provided by new voter registration applicants.”

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 requires Georgia and several other states to secure permission, known as pre-clearance, from the DOJ or to obtain a favorable judgment in the D.C. U.S. District Court before changes affecting state voting procedures can go into affect.

The Georgia law at issue requires new voters to undergo a background check that uses information from two databases that contain driver’s license information and Social Security numbers to verify citizenship.

Kemp said he also would seek approval in the suit for a second law, passed last year, that would require voters to present one of several forms of identification verifying U.S. citizenship in order to register to vote.

In May 2009, the DOJ Civil Rights Division informed the state of Georgia that it could not approve the database law because it unfairly burdened a disproportionate number of minorities.

In a letter to Kemp dated Monday, DOJ Civil Rights Division chief Thomas Perez said the DOJ had not changed its position on the program and noted that the state has not yet to submit requested information on both programs.

“[Our] review indicates that the state has not provided any additional information or arguments related to the original voter registration verification program …to support [your] request that the objection to the original program be withdrawn,” Perez wrote. “In light of these considerations, I remain unable to conclude that the state of Georgia has carried out its burden of showing that the original [program] has neither a discriminatory purpose nor a discriminatory effect.”

This post has been corrected from an earlier version.