DEA wiretaps have tripled over the last nine years. Of particular concern: It is increasingly bypassing the Title III requirements by applying for wiretaps in state courts.

USA Today reports (no link due to autoplay video)

The DEA conducted 11,681 electronic intercepts in the fiscal year that ended in September. Ten years earlier, the drug agency conducted 3,394.

The statistics are here.

The House of Representatives yesterday approved the fiscal year 2016 Commerce, Justice, Science (CJS) Appropriations bill (H.R. 2578) on a vote of 242-183. The bill contains $51.4 billion in total discretionary funding,

Here is DOJ's submitted request. The bill as introduced is here.

There were 87 amendments to the bill. These are the ones that passed. [More...]

Despite a ruling by a federal judge in Virginia several months ago holding that Kim Dotcom cannot defend against the forfeiture of his assets because of the fugitive disentitlement doctrine, a New Zealand Court this week has granted DotCom's request for an Order prohibiting the Crown in New Zealand from proceeding to register the subsequent U.S. default forfeiture judgments against the assets in NZ. The opinion is here.

It's all pretty complicated, but in a nutshell: [More...]

Rick Perry wants a second chance to run for President. He will announce his campaign tomorrow.

I was listening to an interview with his wife on the car radio today. She said a few times he's a different person now than four years ago. She said he was a person living in pain from his back surgery then. She said the Rick Perry she knew then is not the same Rick Perry she knows today. The impression she gave, which was probably not what she intended, is that Rick Perry had a major personality disorder for an extended period of time. [More...]

CNN reports that Usaamah Abdullah Rahim's first target was activist Pamela Geller, who staged the Garland, TX rally. (No link due to CNN's autoplay video on the article.) He later changed his mind and decided to target local police, apparently intending to behead one or more of them.

Rahim and his friend Wright's conversations were recorded. Here's the FBI Affidavit for the arrest of Wright. The third person with them is not named. According to the affidavit, Rahim planned to behead someone out of state and then decided police were an easier target.

After Garland, Pamela Geller asked for police protection. I don't think taxpayers should have to fund her protection. She brought this on herself. Let her organization pay.

Please keep your comments free of name-calling and personal attacks on Geller.

In other news, here's an interesting article about the FBI's domestic flying program using front companies.

Time for a new open thread. All topics welcome.

Mehdi Masroor Biswas, aka @ShamiWitness, has been charged with numerous terror crimes for his favorable tweeting about ISIS. He was arrested in December. Most of the charges carry a maximum of seven years in prison.

Joint Commissioner of Police, M. Chandrashekhar said Mehdi was charged with eight sections of the Indian penal Code (IPC) including unlawful activities, conspiracy, supporting a terrorist organisation, waging war against the State, sedition and promoting enmity. The charge-sheet, containing 36,986 pages, was submitted to the Court on Monday.

The charges were filed by the Bengaluru police in the Metropolitan Magistrate Court. I haven't been able to find the actual chargesheet, but more descriptions are here and here. [More...]

The Senate has approved the USA Freedom Act. Already passed by the House, it will now go to President Obama for signing.

The USA Freedom Act, a bill that would end the National Security Agency’s practice of collecting troves of call data from telephone companies, passed on a 67 to 32 vote. It would instead mandate a six-month transition to a system in which the data would remain in private hands but could be searched on a case-by-case basis under a court order.

Dias Kadyrbayev, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's friend who removed his computer and backpack from his dorm room was sentenced to six years in prison today for his guilty pleas to obstructing the investigation into the Boston Marathon bombing.

The plea agreement called for a sentence of up to 7 years. All sides agreed the sentencing guidelines' terrorism enhancement, applicable to the obstruction charges, was too harsh. The judge said "This guideline doesn't serve the purposes of sentencing." [More...]

FTR, a 2007 Martin O'Malley and Harold Ford (!) column in defense of "the vital center" (and the DLC):

O'Malley is a dynamic, accomplished guy. But he was all in for HRC in '08, so isn't it a bit awkward to rail against "royal families" now?

— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) May 31, 2015

Ya think?

No seriously, that's what they said:

The editor running the coverage, Carolyn Ryan, is more than satisfied with the results so far. “We’ve had extraordinary and world-beating coverage,” Ms. Ryan, the Washington bureau chief, told me by phone this week, mentioning her “dream team of reporters.”

In the news media world, she said, “it’s been broadly recognized that we are dominating.” She mentioned that commenters from Matt Drudge to Dylan Byers of Politico to Andrew Kaczynski of BuzzFeed have praised the coverage or aspects of it. [My emphasis.]

Somewhere, Howell Raines and Jeff Gerth are smiling.