David Axelrod/meet the press

By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com
CHICAGO -- David Axelrod, President Obama’s senior advisor, is now being protected by the U.S. Secret Service, ticklethewire.com has learned.

Sources familiar with the situation said Axelrod picked up the detail in recent weeks.

U.S. Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan declined to provide details, but said: “I can confirm that he is a protectee of the Secret Service.”

He declined to say why Axelrod, 54,  had picked up the detail or whether there had been any recent threats.

Last month, Axelrod was spotted with a Secret Service detail at Manny’s, his favorite Chicago deli  on South Jefferson.

The White House did not immediately respond and asked that questions be submitted via email. The White House had yet to respond to the written questions as of late afternoon Tuesday. Later on, the White House declined to comment.

The Secret Service provides protection for the President and Vice President and their families, his chief of staff and some other members of the cabinet.

But people like Axelrod don’t automatically get protection unless it’s authorized by the Department of Homeland Security and approved by the White House with an executive order.

This may not be the bust of the century, but when you’re the son of Michael Douglas, it’s a bust that won’t go unnoticed. Sometimes it just sucks to be famous — or related to someone who is.

The son of Academy Award winner Michael Douglas has been arrested once again — this time in the Big Apple for getting in the middle of a deal to sell an eye-popping pile of crystal meth, law-enforcement sources said yesterday.

The 30-year-old sometime-actor/sometime-DJ was busted on July 28 at the Gansevoort Hotel in the Meatpacking District by a DEA task force, the sources said.

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Patrick Fitzgerald says reporters must obey when ordered by a judge to reveal sources. I disagree. Some of the biggest corruption scandals would never have come to light without reporters’ willingness to protect sources and go to jail if necessary. Besides, the real point here is that Congress needs to pass a federal shield law to protect reporters and sources. That would end the argument about being above the law.

Patrick Fitzgerald/ticklethewire photo

Prosecutors and reporters share an interest in gathering information that can help expose corruption and uncover wrongdoing by government officials and those who wield power, Fitzgerald said, but those interests do not always match.

“No one is against the right to know,” said Fitzgerald at the program sponsored by the Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities, “but we both have strong views about the best way to get to the truth in a particular case.” He emphasized that his comments were not intended to reflect policy positions of the Obama administration.

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The drug war in Mexico is deadly enough, and hand grenades have made it even deadlier. Will we start seeing drug traffickers use handgrenades in the U.S.?

By JACQUES BILLEAUD
Associated Press Writer
PHOENIX – It was a scenario U.S. law enforcement had long feared: A fragmentation grenade from Mexico’s bloody drug war tossed into a public place.

Only the grenade thrower’s bumbling prevented bloodshed in a south Texas bar – he neglected to pull a second safety clasp. But the act was proof that one of the deadliest weapons in Mexico’s drug battle is a real threat to the U.S., and investigators are stepping up efforts to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

While Mexican drug violence has been spilling across the border in the form of kidnappings and killings, grenades are a particular worry because they can kill large numbers of people indiscriminately, and they are a weapon of choice among Mexican cartel members.

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Suspect Bruce Ivins

Bruce Ivins was named the sole suspect, but not everyone is convinced of that. The question is will the review of the science in the case shed some light on Ivins? It would be nice if it did.

By Dan Vergano
USA TODAY
WASHINGTON – A year and a day after the death of anthrax mailing suspect Bruce Ivins, a panel met here at the National Academy of Sciences to dissect the investigative science behind the FBI case against him.

“The committee will only review and assess the scientific information,” said Alice Gast of Lehigh University, head of the review panel. “We will offer no view on the guilt or innocence of any person or persons.”

Just such questions, however, surround the still-open case, said Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., who spoke before the panel, which met Thursday and Friday.

“This was the only documented bioterror attack on the U.S.,” Holt said. “Simply stated, the government suffers from a credibility gap that raises questions about the guilt of Dr. Ivins.”

An anthrax vaccine researcher at the United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases in Frederick, Md., Ivins died of a drug overdose July 29, 2008.

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A verdict is not likely to come until at least Wednesday, and it could take longer. It’s a complicated case and at least a few counts are likely to trigger some spirited conversation during deliberations, which resume Tuesday.

UPDATE: 7 p.m. Wednesday: The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported that the jury failed to reach a verdict Tuesday and will resume deliberations Wednesday.

Opening statements in Jefferson trial/courtesy of Art Lien/NBC News

By Jonathan Tilove, and Bruce Alpert
New Orleans Times-Picayune
ALEXANDRIA, VA. – Jurors in the federal corruption trial of former Rep. William Jefferson completed a third day of deliberations Monday without reaching a verdict, extending a nervous time for everyone involved.

“Nothing is worse than waiting for a jury,” said Harry Rosenberg, a former chief federal prosecutor in New Orleans, now in private practice. “There’s nothing you can do.”

“It’s a really bad time,” said Anna Edwards, daughter of former Gov. Edwin Edwards, who sat through three such ordeals with her father — one of which ended in a verdict of innocent, another with a mistrial and the third with the conviction that sent him to prison.

“You are totally and completely out of control,” she said. “Someone else has your life in their hands and they’re trying to figure out what they’re going to do with it, and they are not even people you know. They’re not people who are your friends or enemies. They are just people”

Jefferson, the former nine-term Democratic congressman from New Orleans, is facing 16 counts, including soliciting bribes, depriving his constituents of his “honest service,” money laundering, obstruction of justice and turning his congressional office into a racketeering enterprise.

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It’s nice to leave mark in your life. Jim Ingram did just that.

By Jerry Mitchell
Jackson Clarion-Ledger
JACKSON, Miss. – Retired FBI agent Jim Ingram, who investigated civil rights killings and once led the state’s Department of Public Safety, died Sunday after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 77.

On his death bed last month, Ingram remarked that he’d been praying for God to take him. “I’m ready to go soar with the eagles,” he said.

In his more than 30 years with the FBI, Ingram headed the Chicago and New York offices before serving as deputy assistant director in Washington.

He worked on some of the agency’s best known cases, including the 1963 assassination of President John Kennedy, the 1968 assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the 1978 mass suicide in Guyana of more than 900 followers of cult leader Jim Jones.

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OTHER STORIE OF INTEREST

• Boston Officer Suspended for Racial Slur Tied to Harvard Prof  is Suing (AP)
• N.J. Corrections Officer Kills 4-Month Old  Son and Self (AP)
• Ex-Record Exec  Sentenced For Hiring Anthony Pelicano to Spy on Girlfriend (AP)
• Baltimore Medics Mistakenly Declare Man Dead (AP)
• Authorities Arrest High Ranking Drug Cartel Member (Security DeBrief)
• Atty Gen. Holder Appoints Immigration Official Fired By Bush (BLT: Blog of LegalTimes)
• Ruth Madoff Has to Account for Her Expenditures (Wall Street Journal)

By Rachel Leven
ticklethewire.com
Federal prosecutors say George Jacobsen went far beyond the boundaries of freedom of speech with his MSN Internet group that focused on killing Stockton, Calif. Police officers.

A federal indictment charged the former Stockton resident with creating and managing the MSN group “Ways2KillAStocktonPolice Officer” and “StocktonCityWatch”, which included postings of threatening messages.

“Any time an officer is threatened is a serious matter. However, the defendant’s outrageous online threats to kill Stockton police officers and their children is beyond the pale and worthy of every day he is confined in federal prison,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Lawrence G. Brown in a prepared statement.

Specifically, Jacobsen, 46, of Reno, Nev., faces four counts of transmitting threatening communications in interstate commerce. He could get up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Jacobsen ” created a photo album on ‘Ways2KillAStocktonPoliceOfficer’ entitled ‘hit list’, with photographs of police officers that included messages.” The indictment was announced late last week.

” He created numerous links on that web group which included: ” ’22 Ways to kill a Stockton Police Officer with your hands’, ‘Police Officers Home Address And family info’; ‘How to blow up a police car’, ‘The Joy of Killing Young Republicans’, ‘Revenge on Police officers Children at college’, ’10 Ways To Kill A Police Officer’,  ‘Kill a Cop’, and ‘Stockton Police Officers Damned to Hell’,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a press release.

Authorities say he focused his death threats specifically on at least four police officers.

The FBI investigated the case with the help of the Stockton Police.

Read Indictment