In a department that has had its fair share of negative publicity, this can’t help.

BY FRAN MAIN
Chicago Sun-Times
CHICAGO – A Chicago Police officer pleaded guilty today to a civil rights violation for beating a 60-year-old man who was handcuffed and shackled to a wheelchair.
“I lost it,” Officer William Cozzi admitted in federal court.
The government is seeking a sentence of six to eight years for the 51-year-old officer.
Cozzi previously was convicted on a state charge of misdemeanor battery and sentenced to 18 months’ probation.
After the Chicago Sun-Times obtained a videotape of the beating, police Supt. Jody Weis referred the case to the FBI for federal prosecution.
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Ex-Sen. Ted Stevens

Atty. Gen. Mukasey got a reprieve from the a federal judge. Still, the Sen. Stevens case is not looking good for the governor. It’s hard to believe the judge won’t at least call for a new trial.

By The Anchorage Daily News
WASHINGTON — The judge in Ted Stevens’ false-disclosure case reversed himself Wednesday and said neither the attorney general nor any other top level Justice Department official would be required to give a sworn statement about an Anchorage FBI agent’s whistle-blower complaint.
Instead, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ordered in Washington that the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section provide him and Stevens’ lawyers with all its communications related to the agent’s complaint. The material, due Jan. 29, will be filed under seal, Sullivan ruled, preventing public disclosure.
The FBI complaint, by agent Chad Joy, has clouded Stevens’ conviction on seven counts of failing to disclose gifts and services over six years. Joy alleged that the public corruption investigation in Alaska was tainted by another agent’s improper source handling, and that prosecutors in Stevens’ trial knowingly withheld evidence that Stevens was entitled to see.
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David Iglesias

David Iglesias, the former U.S. Attorney, who became the poster child for what was wrong with the U.S. Attorney system in the U.S. under Bush, is working for the government again.

By Zachary Roth
TPM Muckraker
David Iglesias — the former US Attorney who was fired in 2006 for failing to prosecute politically motivated cases as aggressively as the Bush administration and its allies wanted — has a new job.
Iglesias, a member of the US Naval Reserve JAG corps, has been reactivated as part of a special prosecution team for Guantanamo detainees, he told a New Mexico news station this morning.
“One hundred percent of what I’m doing is prosecuting terrorist cases out of Guantanamo,” he said.
Igleisas explained that he had already begun the work, having travelled to the facility once, and expecting to go back.
“It’s the most significant set of orders I’ve had in my 24 years of navy service,” he added. “The level of detail that I’m looking into some of these terrorist groups, it just takes my breath away.”
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It seems in the end it often came back to J. Edgar Hoover, a man with a lot of power and a healthy ego.

By John Rogers
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES - Talk about irony. Comedian George Carlin spent decades pushing the bounds of free speech by saying the seven words you can never say on television, but not one of them made it into an FBI file on him.
Among the 12 pages that do make up a file recently released by Carlin’s family are a couple of letters from outraged citizens who complained that the “alleged comedian” had made fun of the FBI and its director, J. Edgar Hoover, during TV appearances in 1969 and 1970.
There’s also a letter from Hoover himself thanking one of Carlin’s critics for defending his honor, and an internal FBI memo that quotes the director as asking: “What do we know of Carlin?”
Not much, as it turned out. The memo notes the FBI has “no data concerning Carlin” other than the two letters from his critics.
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It appears Gov. Rod Blagojevich isn’t the only family member facing more embarrassing moments. The FBI apparently recorded dozens of conversations between the Gov and his brother Robert.

Gov. Blagojevich

• Gov. Blago’s Wife  Loses $100,000 a  Year Charity Job (Chicago Sun-Times)
• White Power Mailed to Wall Street Journal and Prof. Alan Dershowitz (Washington Post)
• Obama Signs Executive Order To Shut Gitmo (CNN)

This man could be off to prison for a long long time for greed.

Jorge De Castro Font

By The Associated Press
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — A former Puerto Rican lawmaker has pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges that could send him to prison for more than a decade.
Former Sen. Jorge de Castro Font entered the plea Wednesday after prosecutors agreed to drop 10 of the 31 charges he faced for allegedly trading political favors for cash and services.
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