John Collauti, the public relations spokesman for the Federal Medical Center at Devens, says Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is in segregation in a small cell with a steel door that allows food to be passed through and prison officials to watch him.

Collauti said in a telephone interview that Tsarnaev is in secure housing where authorities can monitor him. His cell has a solid steel door with an observation window and a slot for passing food and medication.....[M]edical workers making rounds each shift monitor the inmates. He said guards also keep an eye on some cells with video cameras.

Also, inmates in the more restrictive section do not have access to TVs or radios, but can read books and other materials, he said.

In other words, he's in the hole. [More...]

President Obama is about to take the stage at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Michelle looks great as usual.

Big Media blew a lot of stories this year, especially in the early reporting days of major events -- like Adam Lanza and the Boston bomb suspect. They are like a big echo chamber, with too many of them citing each other instead of doing original reporting.

Nevertheless, tonight's their night, and I'll probably watch some of it. Is anyone else here watching?

Ezra Klein writes:

The Democrats have lost on sequestration

The Democrats have lost on sequestration. That’s the simple reality of Friday’s vote to ease the pain for the Federal Aviation Administration. By assenting to it, Democrats have agreed to sequestration for the foreseeable future.

This is a curious conclusion. After all, the deal is to restore $253 million to the FAA, relative chump change in terms of the federal budget. Is this really the moment Democrat "lost" on sequestration? Not really. Ezra writes:

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been moved from the hospital to BOP's medical prison at Fort Devens. Here's an interesting overview of the facility from a brochure seeking psychology interns.

The New York Times has transcribed the interview his parents gave yesterday in Makhachkala, Russia.

Authorities now say the carjacking did not happen in Cambridge, but across the river in Allston. Also, they have been searching the Crapo Hill Landfill in New Bedford, perhaps for a computer.

The Senate Judiciary Committee today passed a bill, originally proposed by Sen. Patrick Leahy, that would amend the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and require law enforcement to get a search warrant for emails that have been in electronic storage for more than 180 days. (A search warrant is currently required for emails in storage less than 180 days.)

Here is a copy of the bill.

Contrary to Republican disinformation, it would not affect terror cases, since there a provision that explicitly excludes FISA. [More...]

Busy work day. Here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

As I wrote here, there are statistics for the yearly number of Muslim-American terror arrests in the U.S. and they have been declining, not rising.

The statistics are compiled every year by the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy.

I was just re-reading the report for 2012 published in February, 2013, in which there were 9 plots (14 arrests), and was struck by the role of the FBI in the arrests. We all knew the FBI is fond of stings, but the details are telling: [More...]

I have been complaining forever about news sites that auto-play their annoying videos when you click on an article. The problem has become more pronounced in recent months, apparently because videos are a huge money-maker for news sites (apparently young people prefer watching them to reading.)

Finally, I found a way around them and it's easy in all browsers.

Firefox:

• Type "about:config" into your URL bar.
• A warning will come up - dismiss it
• An alphabetical list will come up of various processes. Scroll down to "plugins.click_to_play". Right click on it and choose "toggle." Restart Firefox.

That's it. the next time an article with a video comes up, it will look like like the one below. If you want to watch it, just click on it. [More...]

So much for the Boston Police' public speculation that Dzhokar Tsarneav may have shot himself in the neck in a suicide attempt -- and their claim the gunfire battle occuring at the boat was two-way.

Officials now say Dzhokar was unarmed when he was captured. No gun was found on or around the boat.

Two U.S. officials say Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving suspect, was unarmed when police captured him hiding inside a boat in a neighborhood back yard. Authorities originally said they had exchanged gunfire with Dzhokhar for more than one hour Friday evening before they were able to subdue him.

Interesting that instead of this being the headline, CBS has a headline referring to a speculative claim by police in the article that Tamerlan may have financed the venture with marijuana sales. No support for is given other than Tamerlan was unemployed.

According to his wife, he was the stay at home dad while she worked 60 to 80 hours a week. That's hardly evidence of drug dealing. [More...]

Yesterday I mentioned a doozy of an indictment against 13 prison guards in Baltimore that sounded like a plot from the Wire. It's really more like a soap opera.

Here is the FBI press release. All of the charged guards are female. Four were impregnated at the jail by the same imprisoned alleged gang leader -- one of them twice.

Correctional Officers Smuggled in Cell Phones and Drugs and were “in Bed” with BGF Inmates; Surprise Searches Conducted by Federal Agents and Trusted Officers from Outside Baltimore

In addition to the 13 guards, 12 jailed inmates and/or their associates are charged in the huge RICO indictment. It took 170 agents to arrest them and execute related search warrants. [More...]

Via CNET:

Senior Obama administration officials have secretly authorized the interception of communications carried on portions of networks operated by AT&T and other Internet service providers, a practice that might otherwise be illegal under federal wiretapping laws.

The secret legal authorization from the Justice Department originally applied to a cybersecurity pilot project in which the military monitored defense contractors' Internet links. Since then, however, the program has been expanded by President Obama to cover all critical infrastructure sectors including energy, healthcare, and finance starting June 12.

EPIC obtained the documents though an FOIA lawsuit.

18 year old Abdella Tounisi is the latest terror sting victim of the FBI. He is a U.S. citizen and a college student. His parents are Jordanian. He's now in federal detention in Chicago charged with providing material support to a terrorist group. The material support he allegedly was willing to provide was personnel -- himself.

He isn't charged with planning anything in the U.S. -- he had decided to go to Syria and fight with jihadists there. The FBI caught him by setting up a pretend Islamic terror recruiting website. He fell for the bait. During their online communications, Tounisi told the FBI he was very physically very small and had no fighting experience. He also told them he had no contacts in Syria. The FBI assured him his size didn't matter, they would train him, and then instructed him on how to make flight arrangements to Turkey. It even sent him a bus ticket for the next leg of his journey. He was arrested at O'Hare after checking in for his flight to Turkey.

According to the Complaint, the FBI monitored his google searches, the You Tube videos he watched, his IP address log-ins, and e-mails. In a later filing, the Government filed a notice it will be relying on FISA evidence. [More...]