RAWSTORY.COM -- Sen. Arlen Specter, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee... criticized some of the president's policies in the war on terror.

"This business of wiretapping is not in order in accordance with Constitutional rights and where you have the immunity granted to the telephone companies," Specter told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Wednesday. "That is still a festering wound and some speculation as to whether that will be asserted by a new administration."

RAWSTORY.COM (11/26/2008)-- The US Office of Special Counsel, which is tasked with protecting government employees who blow the whistle on corruption and mismanagement within their ranks, is not doing its job, a watchdog group says in a report released this week.

The Project on Government Oversight examined the cases of several Federal Air Marshals who alleged they were retaliated against by superiors after attempting to point out problems, and the special counsel was unable to protect them.

Valuable intelligence on thousands of suspected terrorists risks being lost because of backlogs at a little-known US federal government database that processes DNA samples gathered in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The unfinished work at the database – part of a classified intelligence partnership of military, intelligence and law enforcement agencies – has been referred to in public documents but has not been openly discussed by US government officials.

WASHINGTON – A judge has ordered the Justice Department to produce White House memos that provide the legal basis for the Bush administration's post-Sept. 11 warrantless wiretapping program.

U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy Jr. signed an order Friday requiring the department to produce the memos by the White House legal counsel's office by Nov. 17. He said he will review the memos in private to determine if any information can be released publicly without violating attorney-client privilege or jeopardizing national security.