Public Corruption

Couple of interesting press releases from the DOJ today involving public corruption.

The first involves a South Korean businessman who was arrested “on a criminal complaint charging him with one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States, to commit wire fraud and to commit bribery, and one count of bribery.”  (The allegations stem out of a telecom contract involving employees of the Army Air Force Exchange Service.)  What is interesting about the charges is that they are brought in a criminal complaint.  The vast majority of federal charges are brought initially via indictment, and criminal complaints are typically used when it is felt that there is an emergency requiring the individual to be arrested immediately.  A criminal complaint is a written statement of the essential facts constituting the offense charged, and it must be presented under oath to a magistrate judge or other competent judicial authority.  If the magistrate judge feels there is probable cause, then he will issue an arrest warrant.  After the individual is arrested and brought before the magistrate judge, a couple of things can happen.  First, the case can proceed on the complaint, or, if the individual so chooses, he can ask that his case go to the grand jury for a formal indictment to be issued.  Sometimes, the complaint process is used to buy time to get more charges incorporated into an indictment.

The other public corruption case involves the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which is one of those laws that shows just how far the United States’ extraterritorial jurisdiction extends.  Aibel Group, Ltd, a UK-based company, pleaded guilty in the Southern DIstrict of Texas on a two-count criminal information, “charging a conspiracy to violate the FCPA and a violation of the FCPA.”  Aibel Group has agreed to pay a $4.2 million fine, and “to serve a two year term of organizational probation that requires, among other things, that it submit periodic reports regarding its progress in implementing antibribery compliance measures.”

Mukasey Looks to Be Fine

According to the DOJ, Attorney General Mukasey did not suffer a stroke or a heart attack, and simply had a fainting spell.  More details here.

Mukasey Update

The DOJ has released a statement regarding Attorney General Mukasey’s condition:

“At the conclusion of his remarks before the Federalist Society Annual Dinner in Washington, D.C., Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey collapsed.

“Upon his collapse, emergency first aid was rendered by the Attorney General’s security detail and a doctor who was on the scene.

“The Attorney General arrived at George Washington University Hospital shortly thereafter.

“The Attorney General is conscious, conversant and alert. His vital statistics are strong and he is in good spirits. He is receiving excellent care and appreciates all of the good wishes and prayers he has received. The doctors will keep him overnight for further observations.

“We will update the public when we have additional information.”

Fishers of Men Update

Earlier today I mentioned that three individuals had been indicted on student loan fraud and FEMA fraud, but that the US Attorney’s Office hadn’t put a press release up.  It has now.  According to the press release, the charges involve nine counts of bank fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, each of which carries a maximum of 30 years imprisonment, a fine of up to one million dollars, or both, per count, and one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States.

(And just so there’s no confusion, I know the press release says that bank fraud carries a fine of up to $250,000 for bank fraud, but the statute says $1,000,000, and, as I mentioned earlier, the ultimate sentence, if the allegations are proven beyond a reasonable doubt or if there’s a plea, will be determined by the district judge based on guidance from the sentencing guidelines.)

Mukasey Collapses

Well, it’s still early, and we’ll probably know more in the morning, but Attorney General Mukasey collapsed during a speech before the Federalist Society.  Looks bad.  Newsweek (and scads more) have deets.

Makes me wonder if Bush will try to appoint a successor, let the clock run out, or if he’ll do something weirder, like appoint Holder…

The Sun Herald, by the way, has the text of the speech that Mukasey was delivering.

Spiders Can Be Kinda Cool

This is a really cool story.  NASA sent some spiders to space to see how they’d react to zero gravity.  Initially, they didn’t respond very well, making some very chaotic webs.  And then one went missing, though it probably didn’t cost $100,000 like a tool belt that accidentally floated away.

Well, the missing spider showed up again, and the other spider seems to have adapted to space, spinning normal looking webs.  That’s just really, really fascinating to me.

Anyway, NASA.gov has a little video of a spider, though not much detail.  And it also has an amazing picture gallery, and information on buried glaciers on Mars.

DOJ Responds to Judge Leon

The Department of Justice has responded to Judge Leon, whose ruling I mentioned earlier.  Unsurprisingly, the response is “We are of course disappointed by, and disagree with, the Court’s decision that we did not carry our burden of proof with respect to the [five] detainees.”  (Link.)

Blackberry Storm

I don’t suppose I can resist talking a little about what everyone else seems to be talking about.  In the world of super-duper phones, there’s the iPhone, BlackBerry devices, and then Windows Mobile devices.  (Oh, okay, fine, there’s Symbian, and now, apparently, Android, too.  Have I missed anyone?)  I personally use a Treo 800w, and I like it a lot.  Is WM 6.1 frustrating?  Yes, it is.  Have I found a fix to what was causing me problems?  Yes, I have.  I happen to like having a Qwerty keyboard, and I don’t mind the stylus at all.  I’m naturally predisposed against the iPhone because I loathe iTunes, and again, there’s the whole Qwerty thing.  I used to have a Blackberry, but I hated it immensely, though I hear that things have gotten much better in the two years since I used one.  (In the interim, I used a Motorola Q, which I will never, ever, go near again.)

So, BlackBerry has been on a rampage lately, and now the latest device is the Storm, which has a “clickable” touch screen.  So what are people saying about it?  Let’s find out:

AppleInsider, which is collecting a compendium of reviews, brings up the Chicago Tribune’s Eric Benderoff review.  Benderoff calls it “a flurry, failing to add much more than a trace of innovation.” He thinks the Bold might be a better idea for BlackBerry users.  In fact, he says the touch screen is worse than the iPhone and G1 touch screens, and when the whole point is supposedly to improve on the touch screen, well, that pretty much kills the deal, there, dunnit?

Rosemary Hattersley and Mark Hattersley over at Macworld say, however, that the touch screen succeeds in taking on the iPhone.  “To a certain extent.”  They tend to like the Pearl-esque Suretype mode, which appears when the phone is vertical.  But they also call it clunky.  So, maybe that’s not such great praise.  But they do love the ability to cut and paste.

Mossberg at the WSJ says it’s pretty slick, though the tactile feedback is not the same as using a physical keyboard.  Also, when the phone is vertical you get a Pearl-esque keyboard; you only get a full Qwerty layout when the phone’s horizontal.  And there’s no Wi-Fi.  That’s plain loony.  Even my Treo 800w has Wi-Fi.   There are some advantages over the iPhone, though: higher resolution, better battery life, a removable battery, nine Gigs of memory (rather than the iPhone’s eight) and expandable with flash memory, and the ability to shoot videos.  Oh, also, MMS, the ability to cut and paste, edit Office docs, and tethering are available, too.  It’s not as sleek as the iPhone, though.  And Mossberg’s test phone is pretty sluggish.  He allows that it might improve with finalized software, but it debuts tomorrow, you know?  Generally, he seems to like it and says “the Storm is a very capable handheld computer that will appeal to BlackBerry users who have been pining for a touch-controlled device with a larger screen.”

Wired’s Daniel Dumas says “keep looking” for the iPhone killer, and gives it 6 out of 10 points.  He says that the touch feedback is quite awesome, and is “just as easy as typing one out on a MacBook’s keyboard.”  He likes the 3.2 MP camera and the video and MMS features, too.  He also hates Verizon’s iron thumb regarding control of the OS.  Generally, he’s not a big fan of the Storm.

PC World’s Yardena Arar says it’s “awkward and disappointing.”  The clickable touchscreen really disappoints Arar:  “I’d tap a menu item, for example, but then when I depressed the screen, the selection would somehow shift and a different item would execute.”  Also, typing is a chore: “Typing on the Storm isn’t much fun, either. You have to click the screen keyboard for each keystroke (the keys flash blue under your fingertips as you click), which ends up feeling like a lot of work in a way that typing on a hardware keyboard (or on the iPhone’s software keyboard, for that matter) never did.”  On the other hand, Arar, unlike Mossberg, likes the Pearl-esque keyboard presented when the phone is vertical.

Lance Ulanoff at PC Magazine doesn’t love the Storm, even though he wanted to.  He thought the interface slowed him down immeasurably.  He also brings up an interesting point about the benefit of having a physical Qwerty keyboard:  “if I look at my Treo’s ‘real’ keyboard, I see characters like ‘Q,’ ‘H,’ ‘L,’ and ‘M’ with symbols—a question mark, dollar sign, apostrophe, and comma—above each of them, respectively. So, I know where the crucial comma can be found. On the BlackBerry Storm, I have to go through a multistep process to find a comma.”

Generally, then, it looks like the Storm has problems that are fairly substantial.  Substantial problems, however, didn’t stop people from buying the iPhone, so it will be interesting tomorrow when the Storm goes on sale.  As it is, there is apparently a software flaw that may cause shortages.

Oh Yeah, That’ll Really Fix Things… (Actually, It Might)

So, the world’s reaction to the Somalian pirates–days after Britain said that it was powerless to do anything while India cemented its reputation for having really smart people by actually just sinking a mothership–is to impose sanctions on Somalia.  Because what needs to happen there is more sanctions.

At least, that would be my reaction if I just read headlines like: “UN Approves Somalia Sanctions Plan” and “UN Security Council Strengthens Sanctions Against Somalia” and “UN to Impose Sanctions Against Somalia to Stop Pirate Trade.”  What you get if you dig a little deeper, though, is this:  the sanctions are still amorphous and not directed at particularized individuals, entities, or nations (yet).  However, they will be imposed on anyone contributing to violence and instability in Somalia.

This makes much more sense than simply saying “sanctions on Somalia,” especially considering that instability in the region is considered widely to be the precipitating cause of the piracy, and blanket sanctions on Somalia would probably exacerbate the problem.

Gitmo Releases

The New York Times (and hundreds of others) is reporting that five individuals being held at Guantanamo Bay have been ordered to be released.  District Judge Richard J. Leon is overseeing the first challenges brought by individuals who have been held at Guantanamo Bay, and he has ruled that five of the first six who have brought such challenges have been held for seven years without any justification other than intelligence purposes.  It should be noted that Judge Leon is a Bush appointee who previously ruled against the detainees the first time their case came around.  (The sixth man was deemed to have provided support to al Qaeda.)

Judge Leon ordered the men to be released “forthwith,” and urged the United States not to appeal, but I suspect that an appeal will come.  Of course, things could get shaken up quite a bit if Eric Holder is named as Attorney General and he gets confirmed for the post, because he is on record as being very outspoken against the maintenance of Guantanamo Bay.  (See this ABC blog for a little more info.)