Texas AG Paxton back on job after acquittal

AUSTIN, Texas — Newly acquitted of impeachment charges, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is back on the job and getting back to the usual.

Promises to keep dragging the Biden administration into court. Support from former President Donald Trump. And coming soon, a sit-down with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

As Paxton on Sunday begins his first full day back in office after winning acquittal in the Texas Senate over accusations of corruption and bribery, the Republican is quickly resuming what has long helped make him one of the most resilient political figures in the U.S. despite years of criminal charges and alleged scandal.

Federal health department lax in dealing with remote First Nations' needs, says Auditor General

Earlier this year, an institute associated with St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto came out with a wide-ranging report on Indigenous health in Canada. 

It was entitled "First Peoples, Second Class Treatment," and the title tells it all.

The report provides a detailed, documented account of the ways in which Canada's nasty dealings with its first peoples, going back to the earliest colonial times, have yielded the results we know today. 

What You Should Know About Obama’s Leading Candidate For Attorney General

CNN reports that President Obama is “expected to nominate Loretta Lynch,” the top federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island, to serve as the next Attorney General of the United States. If confirmed, Lynch will be the first African American woman to lead the Justice Department.

Much of Lynch’s appeal to Obama may stem from the fact that she is removed from many of the political battles that would render a nominee who has often been at odds with Republicans unconfirmable in a GOP-controlled Senate. Lynch has a distinguished, but relatively apolitical, career as a prosecutor. After earning both her undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard, Lynch was an associate at a large law firm before joining the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Eastern District of New York in 1990. There, she rose to hold several senior career roles, including Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney from 1998 to 1999, when she was confirmed to lead the office at U.S. Attorney during the Clinton Administration. Shortly after President Clinton left office, Lynch became a partner at another large law firm until President Obama reappointed her as U.S. Attorney in 2009.

Conservative Senators expected to oppose Liberal motion calling on AG to audit MPs’ expenses

PARLIAMENT HILL—The Conservative majority in the Senate has signalled it will oppose a Liberal motion urging the House of Commons to invite Auditor General Michael Ferguson to conduct a sweeping audit of Commons spending, including MPs’ expenses, in the same way the Senate called in Mr. Ferguson for an audit of its own expenses.

Newfoundland and Labrador Conservative Senator Elizabeth Marshall, chair of a special committee that has kept lines open to Mr. Ferguson since his office began its investigation of Senator expenses last year, told the Senate she will oppose the motion from Prince Edward Island Liberal Senator Percy Downe and argued it is up to the Commons to decide whether it wants its books under an audit inquiry.

Federal response to AG report on First Nations emergency preparedness ‘a start,’ but not enough, says AFN regional chief

The federal government’s plans to improve emergency management on First Nations reserves is “a start,” but it doesn’t go far enough to address the serious gaps identified in the latest auditor general’s report, says a regional chief with the Assembly of First Nations.

Auditor General Michael Ferguson found that the federal government spent nearly $450-million on on-reserve emergency management activities between 2009 and 2013, but Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development’s annual budget for emergency management is only $19-million.

MPs don’t want AG to conduct random audits on House, NDP slams move

MPs refuse to give the auditor general the power to conduct random audits on the House and MPs’ expenses, but the NDP is slamming the move.

“This process now where the AG has to be invited in, it’s sort of a type of self-policing—if MPs feel comfortable they can invite in the auditor general. The auditor general has an important role to play and has to play it independently,” said Peter Julian (Burnaby-New Westminster, B.C.). “He or she should have the right to go in and audit the books.”

Attorney General can't clarify which law keeps Bill Blair mum on Rob Ford

Attorney General John Gerretsen said he does not know what law is preventing Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair from commenting on whether Mayor Rob Ford is under criminal investigation.

“You’d have to ask him about what law he’s citing then,” Gerretsen told the Star on Wednesday.

Blair has repeatedly refused to answer questions about any potential Ford link to the Project Traveller drugs-and-guns investigation, whether there is a criminal probe of the mayor’s office, or if police have recovered a video appearing to show him smoking crack cocaine.

AG’s audit will be ugly for Conservatives and Liberals, no end in sight

Calling in the auditor general is a great political move for the Prime Minister—in the short term. Instead of focusing attention on Nigel Wright’s payment to Mike Duffy, the move drills down to specific Senate spenders.

The report should provide a welcome diversion from ongoing expense and attendance leaks.

Almost daily we are treated to another tidbit expounding on the corporate excesses of Pamela Wallin and the dubitable, double expense habits of Mike Duffy.

HSBC To Be Sued By New York Over Foreclosure Abuses

* NY says HSBC ignored law designed to protect homeowners

* Bank declines to comment

NEW YORK, June 4 (Reuters) - The state of New York plans to sue HSBC Holdings Plc for ignoring a law designed to protect struggling homeowners from being thrown into foreclosure without getting a chance to renegotiate their mortgages.

NDP wants House to order Tories to hand over docs on 'missing' public safety billions

Yesterday, Liberal treasury board critic John McCallum challenged the government to back up its claim that nearly $3.1 billion in public safety-related financing was not, as determined by the auditor general, 'missing', but had been duly listed in the public accounts and estimates.

Today, the New Democrats are upping the ante with a motion that, if passed, would force the government to show its work by delivering to the House all related annual reports, internal evaluations, Treasury Board submissions and related material by June 17th, at which point the speaker would make arrangements to post the entire collection online.

How to blame the NDP for losing track of $3.1 billion

We’ve all been very mistaken, apparently.

Over the last week, ever since the Auditor General’s Office released its spring report and revealed that $3.1 billion in potential anti-terror and public safety spending had not been accounted for, a lot of people in Ottawa have been asking what might have happened to it — and why the government can’t seem to track it down.

New York AG: Wells Fargo, BofA Violated National Foreclosure Settlement

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said Monday he may sue Wells Fargo and Bank of America for allegedly violating the terms of last year’s multi-state mortgage settlement, despite questions over his authority to do so.

The agreement, reached by the Department of Justice, Department of Housing and Urban Development and 49 state attorneys general, called for the five largest mortgage companies to significantly revamp their procedures for dealing with distressed borrowers. It called on them to provide billions of dollars in aid to those borrowers and change the way they pursue home repossessions, in exchange for prosecutors dropping legal claims that the companies systematically violated borrowers’ rights when using faulty, so-called “robosigned” documents in foreclosure proceedings.

AG says trying to track $3.1-billion in unaccounted anti-terror funding would be like ‘tracing serial numbers on dollars’

Auditor General Michael Ferguson, who last week revealed that the federal government can’t account for $3.1-billion in anti-terrorism spending between 2001 and 2009, told The Hill Times that tracking down that money would be like “tracing the serial numbers on the dollars,” but opposition MPs on the House Public Accounts Committee want to see the federal government try.

“We would have had to go back through every single dollar that those departments spent, and try to determine whether it was [Public Security and Anti-Terrorism—that would be a huge task,” Mr. Ferguson told The Hill Times following the April 29 release of his office’s 10-chapter spring 2013 audit.

Auditor general’s report 2013: Lack of co-operation threatens Indian residential schools historical record

OTTAWA—Efforts to preserve the memory and legacy of the abusive Indian residential school system are in peril due to disagreements over the type, quality and cost of documents needed, says the auditor general.

“We are concerned that the lack of co-operation, delays and looming deadline stand in the way of creating the historical record of Indian residential schools as it was originally intended,” auditor general Michael Ferguson said at a news conference Tuesday after tabling his spring report in the House of Commons.

Canada can't account for $3.1B in anti-terror funding, AG finds

The Canadian government isn't monitoring whether billions spent on anti-terrorism measures since 2001 are meeting the desired objectives and can't account for $3.1 billion, Auditor General Michael Ferguson found in his spring report released today.

The lack of information on spending and results identified in the auditor general's chapter on the Public Security and Anti-Terrorism Initiative is a common theme throughout his report, which includes 11 chapters in total.

Louisiana Attorney General Says Angola 3 "Have Never Been Held in Solitary Confinement"

James "Buddy" Caldwell, attorney general of the state of Louisiana, has released a statement saying unequivocally that Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, the two still-imprisoned members of the Angola 3, "have never been held in solitary confinement while in the Louisiana penal system."

In fact, Wallace, now 71, and Woodfox, 66, have been in solitary for nearly 41 years, quite possibly longer than any other human beings on the planet. They were placed in solitary following the 1972 killing of a young corrections officer at Angola, and except for a few brief periods, they have remained in isolation ever since.

Attorney General won’t say how many convicted in wake of 2010 Toronto gang sweep

Toronto police typically aren’t shy when it comes to announcing how many arrests were made and charges laid after one of their anti-gang sweeps.

But it’s a different story when the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General is asked for a status update on the most recent major initiative targeting gangs, May 2010’s Project Corral.

JPMorgan Chase Lawsuit: New York Attorney General's Suit Is First For Task Force

The New York Attorney General sued JPMorgan Chase on Monday, alleging that Bear Stearns, the troubled investment bank it bought in 2008, "kept investors in the dark" about the quality of the mortgage-backed bonds it was selling as the market started to sour.

The lawsuit is the first legal action against a Wall Street bank to come from a joint federal and state task force announced by President Barack Obama during his State of the Union address in January. It alleges civil fraud violations, which means that potential penalties will be measured in dollars, not jail terms. Nevertheless, the JPMorgan Chase lawsuit qualifies as one of the more significant actions taken by a law enforcement agency to date against a Wall Street bank.

AG’s spring report on feds’ F-35 fighter jets attracted ‘massive’ media attention: documents

PARLIAMENT HILL—Auditor General Michael Ferguson’s explosive report released in April on the government’s $25-billion plan to acquire 65 F-35 stealth fighter jets received “massive” media coverage for two weeks after its release and was one of the top three most controversial auditor general reports in the past decade, according to newly-released documents and a ranking of audit report news coverage from the AG’s office.

There were more than 1,000 news stories on the internet about the F-35 audit from its April 3 date of release until April 18 and thousands more “hits” on television and radio news programs, as well as emailed letters from citizens, most of whom expressed support for Mr.  Ferguson as the controversy began raging, according to copies of emails and documents released by the Auditor General’s Office under the Access to Information Act.

Public Works hiring private firm to review F-35 procurement process, possibly challenge AG's report

PARLIAMENT HILL—The Public Works Department secretariat now in charge of the F-35 stealth fighter jet procurement is contracting a private sector firm to review “all of the steps taken to date” in the controversial project to determine whether federal laws and procurement rules were followed prior to the Conservative government’s 2010 decision to acquire 65 of the stealth attack planes, the department says.

But the NDP opposition and a former government procurement chief who is calling for a competition to replace Canada’s aging fleet of jet fighters say the terms of the review are a slap in the face for Auditor General Michael Ferguson, whose office has already reviewed the same procurement actions and who last April issued a highly critical report to Parliament on the F-35 acquisition, including an allegation that National Defence withheld $10-billion in operating costs from the public.