The Daily MuckThose keeping a tally of Wall Street businesses facing federal investigation should add one more to the list. The bank Washington Mutual, whose failure in September represented one of the largest in financial history, is the subject of a government inquiry, federal officials confirmed Wednesday. (ABC)
An inter-departmental feud is further holding up the release of seventeen Uighur Muslims picked up in Afghanistan in 2001 and detained in Guantanamo. The U.S. refuses to return the men to China, their home, saying they may be tortured, but is equally resistant to releasing them in the U.S., as a U.S. court ordered them to do last week. The State Department, which has been looking for an alternative place to free the prisoners, says the Justice Department’s legal wrangling has compromised its negotiations and forced it to cancel a meeting that had been planned to discuss resettlement. (New York Times)
Black employees of the U.S. Marshalls Service filed a civil rights suit in federal court Wednesday, alleging that the agency practiced discrimination and denied them promotions because of their race. The plaintiffs seek $300 million in lost backpay for approximately 200 persons. (AP)
Arizona Rep. Rick Renzi (R), charged in February with money laundering, embezzlement, and using his legislative post to push through a land deal for a former business partner, asked the court to drop the charges, in a motion filed yesterday that alleged government misconduct. (Roll Call)
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo yesterday threatened legal action against insurance giant American International Group if it does not curb profligate spending and return executive pay packages worth millions of dollars. AIG, the recipient of more than $122 billion in federal funds, made headlines last week when reports surfaced about a $442,000 party at a lavish California resort and a $90,000 partridge hunting trip, both held after the bailout. The chastened firm promised Cuomo it would comply. (New York Times)
Arguments opened yesterday in a New Orleans fraud and conspiracy trial that links three Louisiana politicians, including Rep. William Jefferson (D). The defendant, Gwendolyn Moyo, who has been convicted on similar charges twice before, is accused of successfully scamming nearly $2 million. Moyo is representing herself and was a source of courtroom hijinks, referring to one of her former investigators, Mr. Kurakazu, as “Mr. Karma Sutra” and “Mr. Kamikazee.” Jefferson and his sister Betty are named as unindicted co-conspirators, while former state Sen. Derrick Shepherd (D) pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering last week. (New Orleans Times Picayune)
A Nebraska district court declined to pass judgement on God Wednesday, throwing out a suit filed by a local legislator because the Almighty’s lack of address prevented the court from serving him properly. The state senator, Ernie Chambers, had alleged that God was a terrorist who practiced destruction upon the Earth. At TPMMuckraker we cannot make these things up. (AP)
Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt agreed to release old e-mails for free to media outlets in a settlement reached Wednesday in a case related to how the Sunshine Law, designed to promote public transparency, applies to e-mails. The deal only partially ends a long running dispute about the e-mails, which first surfaced when Blunt’s chief of staff said the administration routinely deleted the communications and was not required to keep them as records. In October 2007, a former legal adviser Scott Eckersley filed a suit, still pending, alleging that Blunt had fired him for advising the opposite. (AP)
A longtime New York legislator stepped down Wednesday from his position on the state’s parole board after being arrested Monday for soliciting sex with minors. Chris Ortloff (R) is 61, and according to undercover agents had expressed interest in having sex with toddlers. (AP)
