TV News LIES

If you represent U.S. businesses and want to scale back an anti-corruption law, what do you do? Hire the nation’s former top law enforcement official.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has recruited former Attorney General Michael Mukasey to press its case for reining in an American law that bans bribery overseas — and for softening the Obama administration’s aggressive enforcement of it. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act makes it a crime for U.S. companies to pay bribes or offer any “thing of value” to a foreign official to advance the corporation’s interest.

The bill requires all Internet service providers to save their customers' IP addresses — or online identity numbers — for a year. The bill's stated purpose is to help police find child pornographers, but critics say that's just an excuse for another step toward Big Brother.

The number of successful child pornography prosecutions has skyrocketed in recent years. Prosecutors are hardly at a disadvantage, says forensic technologist Jeff Fischbach.

A Maryland rabbi described as the "Jewish Indiana Jones" is accused of fraud for allegedly making-up stories of finding Torahs in former concentration camps.

Menachem Youlus, 50, was arrested Wednesday in New York City on federal fraud charges for allegedly misrepresenting the origin of Torahs sold through his "Save a Torah" organization and then pocketing some of the money, The New York Times reported.

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the NYPD has become one of the country's most aggressive domestic intelligence agencies. A months-long investigation by The Associated Press has revealed that the NYPD operates far outside its borders and targets ethnic communities in ways that would run afoul of civil liberties rules if practiced by the federal government. And it does so with unprecedented help from the CIA in a partnership that has blurred the bright line between foreign and domestic spying.

Neither the city council, which finances the department, nor the federal government, which contributes hundreds of millions of dollars each year, is told exactly what's going on.

Eric T. Schneiderman, the attorney general of New York, has come under increasing pressure from the Obama administration to drop his opposition to a wide-ranging state settlement with banks over dubious foreclosure practices, according to people briefed on discussions about the deal.

In recent weeks, Shaun Donovan, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and high-level Justice Department officials have been waging an intensifying campaign to try to persuade the attorney general to support the settlement, said the people briefed on the talks.

Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein has hired high-profile Washington defense attorney Reid Weingarten, according to a government source, as the Justice Department continues to investigate the bank.

Blankfein, 56, is in his sixth year at the helm of the largest U.S. investment bank, which has spent two years fending off accusations of conflicts of interest and fraud.