durbin

Testifying at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this morning, Attorney General Eric Holder promised to produce the evidence, withheld by the Department of Justice, that some Democratic Senators believe is necessary for an informed debate on the renewal of the USA PATRIOT Act.
As I reported yesterday, Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) and Richard [...]

As the debate over health care reform rages on, there’s been almost no attention to the fact that health and medical malpractice insurance companies since 1945 have been exempt from the federal antitrust laws aimed at keeping every other private market competitive. The McCarran-Ferguson Act has allowed insurance companies to dominate markets and reap enormous [...]

I just spoke to Kevin Bankston, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s senior attorney specializing in free speech and privacy law, about his reaction to today’s Senate Judiciary Committee markup session on the Patriot Act, which resulted in passage of the Leahy-Feinstein bill, with a few amendments. Bankston, who’s been following this debate closely, was not pleased.
“We’re [...]

An amendment to the Patriot Act provision authorizing National Security Letters that would have required the letters to target only people with some connection to a foreign power or the activities of a foreign power, so as to ensure that the NSL is actually issued to investigate terrorism rather than, say, fishing expeditions, was just [...]

Republicans and Democrats have been sniping about the USA Patriot Act ever since Congress passed the law in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks to try to forestall another such disaster.

A top Democrat on Monday warned the nation’s banks that, unless they get more aggressive in modifying mortgages to prevent foreclosure, Congress will renew previous efforts to empower families to keep their homes through bankruptcy.

Letters between Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and the Justice Department shed light on a reportedly impending investigation that would mark the Obama administration’s first clear break from the Bush-era policy of refusing to prosecute abuse cases.

Since the White House effectively killed the foreclosure crisis measure in the Senate, some in the upper-chamber are not ready to give up.

More than a year ago, Sens. Richard Durbin (D-Ill..) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) asked the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility to investigate the conduct of lawyers at the Office of Legal Counsel, whose work provided legal justifications for waterboarding and other abusive interrogation tactics.
Since then, the two senators (and many others) have been asking [...]

Following a 45-minute meeting with Roland Burris, Senate Democratic leaders said Wednesday that several steps remain before they’ll decide whether to seat the former Illinois attorney general to replace President-elect Barack Obama in the upper chamber.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters in the Capitol that Senate rules dictate that Burris must have the [...]