Update Oct. 21: The FBI denies seizing currency during the search. Follow-up post here.

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Original Post 10/19

The David Copperfield rape allegation story isn't adding up for me on so many levels.

A Seattle woman has made a rape claim against magician David Copperfield, law enforcement sources tell FOX News. The woman told Seattle police the magician raped her while she was in the Bahamas, sources said. Because the alleged incident happened abroad and the woman did not report it until she returned to the United States, Seattle authorities turned over the case to the FBI.

The F.B.I. raided Copperfield's Las Vegas warehouse, which is more like a museum of his stuff, and seized a camera and $2 million in cash.

What federal crime is being investigated? A rape in the Bahamas is outside the jurisdiction of the U.S. For a rape to go federally, it usually has to occur on an Indian reservation, in a prison or have to do with transporting an underage woman across state lines to commit a sex offense or use of a date rape drug.

Did Copperfield take the woman to the Bahamas? Did he fly her from Seattle to Vegas first and then to the Bahamas? Is that enough to constitute interstate coercion or transporting a woman across state lines for the purpose of committing a sexual offense?

More....

A lawyer reader at TPM writes in to criticize Mark Geragos as counsel for Brent Wilkes.

When is the last time he has been successful in one of these high profile cases? Think Michael Jackson. Wynonna Ryder. Yet people seem to be drawn to his "celebrity" status.

Uh...Geragos didn't try the Michael Jackson case, Tom Mesereau did, and Jackson was acquitted on all counts.

As for Winona, she was acquitted of burglary and convicted on lesser charges for which Geragos got her probation.

He also did a great job for Susan MacDougal. He was no slouch for Gary Condit either.

Murray Waas continues to break new ground in reporting on Justice Department investigations.

Today he reports that DOJ wanted guilty pleas from two New York Times sources over the December, 2005 article disclosing the NSA warrantless wiretapping program.

The sources refused and Murray says government investigators in the case concede the evidence against them was weak. Now comes the next step: DOJ will subpoena the Times reporters to get to the sources.

Unable to obtain guilty pleas, the federal prosecutor in charge of the leak case has now informally recommended that the Justice Department move forward to compel testimony from the Times. He has argued that it will be difficult to bring criminal charges without such testimony.

As a result, one of the first major decisions likely to be made by Attorney General-designate Michael Mukasey, if confirmed by the Senate, will be whether to subpoena reporters for the Times to testify.

My bet: He'll authorize the subpoenas. That's what top cops do.

Join Senator Dodd in this fight.

Newsweek debuted a new design this week. I don't know about you, but when I log on to a site and the audio of a commercial loads instantly, forcing me to either search for the button to turn the sound off or exit the site, I exit immediately.

Goodbye, Newsweek unless you dump that feature quick. I also dislike the in-your-face lightbox with huge rotating pictures and headlines.

The site is also crowded as hell. Back to the drawing board, Newsweek, this one's a bust.

Besides voting no (along with Sen. Russ Feingold), Sen. Ron Wyden may have inserted a poison pill in Senator Rockefeller's attempted FISA capitulation bill:

[P]assage in the committee came with one unexpected hitch. In an interview after the closed session, Mr. Wyden said he had succeeded, by a vote of 9 to 6, in adding an amendment that would offer additional protections by requiring that the government get a warrant whenever it wanted to wiretap an American outside the country, like an American soldier based overseas or a business person.

“The individual freedom of an American shouldn’t depend on their physical geography,” he said.

But Mr. Wyden said the administration vigorously opposed that measure and was threatening to veto any final bill if it is included.

Good work Senator Wyden.

Congrats to long-time bachelor and Scooter Libby prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. He's getting married.

Patrick J. Fitzgerald, 46, the U.S. attorney in Chicago since September 2001, plans to marry Jennifer Letzkus, 34, a teacher, spokesman Randall Samborn confirmed.

Samborn said the couple plan a "small private wedding" but declined to say exactly when or where. He also would not provide Letzkus's hometown.

Let the DoddMania begin:

The Military Commissions Act. Warrantless wiretapping. Shredding of Habeas Corpus. Torture. Extraordinary Rendition. Secret Prisons.

No more.
I have decided to place a "hold" on the latest FISA bill that would have included amnesty for telecommunications companies that enabled the President's assault on the Constitution by illegally providing personal information on their customers without judicial authorization.

I said that I would do everything I could to stop this bill from passing, and I have.
It's about delivering results -- and as I've said before, the FIRST thing I will do after being sworn into office is restore the Constitution. But we shouldn't have to wait until then to prevent the further erosion of our country's most treasured document. That's why I am stopping this bill today.

Thank you Senator Dodd. You make me proud to be a supporter of your candidacy for President.

What a frightening thought. Cops using steroids to bulk up and get the upper hand when dealing with suspects.

In New York City this week six police officers are being investigated for illegally using prescriptions to obtain anabolic steroids for body building. According to law enforcement experts, the prototypical steroid user is in his 30s, white and worried about competing.

The article then describes a cop named Matthew (not his real name) and relays his comments about how he and his fellow cops bulked up so they'd have a better advantage in taking down suspects.

Matthew's case is just one example in an increasing trend among urban police officers working tough beats.

....From Boston to Arizona, police departments are investigating a growing number of incidents involving uniformed police officers using steroids. So-called "juicing" has been anecdotally associated with several brutality cases, including the 1997 sodomizing of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima in New York City.

Matthew eventually got fired, charged and served 23 days in jail.

The S-CHIP veto overide has failed. The roll call vote is here. Via Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.), received by e-mail:

The House voted 273 to 156 to override the veto, however this was 16 votes short of the 2/3 necessary to override the President’s veto and pass this bill into law.

"I am disappointed the President is playing politics with our children’s health”, said Perlmutter. “As we saw with the vote on stem cell research, the President and many Republicans reject the will of the majority of Americans and the hopes and promise that basic health care services can provide to our children. Be assured, I will continue to fight to keep kids from hardworking American families ."

Yesterday Senator Chris Dodd said:

While the President may think that it's right to offer immunity to those who break the law and violate the right to privacy of thousands of law-abiding Americans, I want to assure him it is not a value we have in common and I hope the same can be said of my fellow Democrats in the Senate.

"For too long we have failed to respect the rule of law and failed to protect our fundamental civil liberties. I will do what I can to see to it that no telecommunications giant that was complicit in this Administration's assault on the Constitution is given a get-out-of-jail-free card."

Senator Dodd, what you must do is lead the fight against the capitulation by your fellow Dem Senators on this issue:

Senate Democrats and Republicans reached agreement with the Bush administration yesterday on the terms of new legislation to control the federal government's domestic surveillance program, which includes a highly controversial grant of legal immunity to telecommunications companies that have assisted the program, according to congressional sources.

. . . It was a victory for President Bush, whose aides lobbied heavily against the Democrats' [House] bill, and an embarrassment for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who had pushed for the measure's passage. The draft Senate bill has the support of the intelligence committee's chairman, John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), and Bush's director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell. It will include full immunity for those companies that can demonstrate to a court that they acted pursuant to a legal directive in helping the government with surveillance in the United States.

More...

Total capitulation.

Senate Democrats and Republicans reached agreement with the Bush administration yesterday on the terms of new legislation to control the federal government's domestic surveillance program, which includes a highly controversial grant of legal immunity to telecommunications companies that have assisted the program, according to congressional sources.

Here's more:

The draft Senate bill has the support of the intelligence committee's chairman, John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), and Bush's director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell. It will include full immunity for those companies that can demonstrate to a court that they acted pursuant to a legal directive in helping the government with surveillance in the United States.

Such a demonstration, which the bill says could be made in secret, would wipe out a series of pending lawsuits alleging violations of privacy rights by telecommunications companies that provided telephone records, summaries of e-mail traffic and other information to the government after Sept. 11, 2001, without receiving court warrants. Bush had repeatedly threatened to veto any legislation that lacked this provision.

Why am I not surprised? Because I never expected anything else since August when the Dems signed onto Bush's bill so they could go home and vacation during the August recess.

More...