Congress has authorized 2,000 new hires for the FBI, and the FBI will be filling many of the positions with computer programmers and hackers in its fight against cybercrime. The problem, according to FBI Director James Comey, speaking yesterday at a white collar crime conference:

“I have to hire a great work force to compete with those cyber criminals and some of those kids want to smoke weed on the way to the interview,” Mr. Comey said.

Up until now, the FBI has asked applicants whether they have used marijuana within the past three years. Comey says the agency is changing "its mindset and the way we do business" and working more outside the box:

One conference goer asked Mr. Comey about a friend who had shied away from applying because of the policy. “He should go ahead and apply,” despite the marijuana use, Mr. Comey said.

The jury in the New York trial of Muslim cleric Mostafa Kamel Mostafa, better known as Abu Hamza al Masri, has convicted him of all 11 terror-related charges.

Abu Hamza testified for four days in his defense. The jury did not believe him. His defense says the jury placed too much emphasis on the "terror camp that wasn't" in Bly, Oregon.

James Ujaama, originally a follower of Abu Hamza, testified against him, as did another former ally turned informant, who testified via videotape from London.

Ujaama also testified a few years ago at the trial of Oussama Kassir, a Swede who was also involved in the Oregon pseudo-camp. Kassir was convicted and got a life sentence.

Hamza is also likely to get a life sentence, possibly at Supermax in Florence, unless they can't accommodate his medical condition (he has no hands and is blind in one eye.) [More...]

Al Jazeera America has just begun airing an 8 part series on the flaws in our criminal justice system. The first episode aired last night, and addressed coerced and false confessions. The remaining topics:

• Episode 2: Mandatory Sentencing
• Episode 3: Flawed Forensics (FBI Lab)
• Episode 4: Eyewitness Identification
• Episode 5: Parole
• Episode 6: Juvenile Justice
• Episode 7: Broken Windows: Policing Strategies
• Episode 8: Prosecutorial Integrity

Reuters has more on the show here.

The peace talks between FARC and Colombia reached a new milestone this week, with a partial agreement on drug trafficking.

Under the agreement, FARC pledges to end its involvement in the drug trade and Colombia promises to develop a strategy to combat corruption associated with drug trafficking and to stop eradicating farmer's coca plants and instead focus on alternative crop programs (except where communities refuse to participate in alternative programs or violate the agreement.[More...]

It's that time of year again, when the House Appropriations Committee considers the annual DOJ budget. In the next several days, an amendment will be offered defunding medical marijuana raids in states with laws permitting use of medical marijuana.

Representatives Rohrabacher and Farr will be introducing an amendment to this measure to prevent any of the department’s funding from being used to interfere with medical marijuana programs in states that have approved them.

The amendment would prevent the Department of Justice from using taxpayer funds to interfere in state-sanctioned medical marijuana programs.

I couldn't even begin to say what I did all weekend, instead of blogging. That's because I did absolutely nothing -- and it felt great.

Since there's nothing on TV besides The Good Wife, I may catch up -- but more likely, I'll start fresh again tomorrow.

Here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

Uruguay President José Mujica tells Fox News that Uruguay's new law legalizing marijuana is better than Colorado's new law. Why? Because in Uruguay, they regulate users, not just sellers. Under their new law, pot-smokers will be treated like cows.

“Right now, every cow, 13 million of them, are registered here,” Mujica said. “We know where they were raised, what they eat – we’re the only country that does that,” he said. “We are going to apply a process just like that to marijuana laws.”

[More...]

She's running, if you had any doubt:

Clinton told the audience that middle class incomes had stagnated over the last decade even as the average worker’s productivity had increased significantly in the same period. She pointed to studies that showed 4 out of 10 children born into the lowest rung on the economic ladder remained there as adults. [...] “And where is it all going?” Clinton asked. “Economists have documented how the share of income and wealth going to those at the very top, not just the top 1 percent but the top 0.1 percent, the 0.01 percent of the population, has risen sharply over the last generation,” she said. “Some are calling it a throwback to the Gilded Age of the robber barons.”

She also explicitly contrasted her husband’s record on inequality as president with President George W. Bush. “The 1990s taught us that even in the face of difficult long term economic trends it’s possible through smart policies and sound investments to enjoy broad based growth and shared prosperity,” she said. She denounced the Bush administration for squandering those economic gains as well as a budget surplus [--]“That’s what happens when your only policy prescription is to cut taxes for the wealthy and then to deal with the aftermath of a terrible terrorist attack and two wars without paying for them,” she said. “Regulators neglected their oversight of the financial sector and allowed the evolution of an entire shadow banking system that operated without accountability.”

For those who remember all my posts on former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner on his failed policies on helping homeowners, here are some fancy Chicago economics professors saying the same thing:

Atif Mian and Amir Sufi are convinced that the Great Recession could have been just another ordinary, lowercase recession if the federal government had acted more aggressively to help homeowners by reducing mortgage debts.

The two men — economics professors who are part of a new generation of scholars whose work relies on enormous data sets — argue in a new book, “House of Debt,” out this month, that the government misunderstood the deepest recession since the 1930s. They are particularly critical of Timothy Geithner, the former Treasury secretary, and Ben Bernanke, the former Federal Reserve chairman, for focusing on preserving the financial system without addressing what the authors regard as the underlying and more important problem of excessive household debt. They say the recovery remains painfully sluggish as a result.

Geithner really stunk.

I potted my very first plants today. This one is sweet basil. I also got mint, cilantro and italian flat parsley. [More...]

The judge in Oscar Pistorius' case yesterday rejected forcing him to undergo a 30 day inpatient evaluation. Instead, saying it was not supposed to be punishment, she ordered an out-patient evaluation. The evaluation will take place at a hospital on the outskirts of Pretoria, and Oscar will be able to spend nights at his uncle's house, where he has been living since the shooting.

That's good news for Oscar and quick thinking by his lawyer, who suggested it as an alternative to the typical in-patient eval.. His family gave a statement afterwards, saying they were pleased by the decision.

The only people who seem disappointed are the journalists covering the trial, since it throws their schedules into disarray. [More....]

I've been writing briefs all day and I'm not yet done.

Here's an open thread, all topics welcome.