Legal News

Wash. Man Charged with Threatening Sen. Murray

A Washington state man has been charged with threatening to kill Democratic Sen. Patty Murray over her support for health care reform, leaving voicemail messages at her office saying she had a target on her back and "it only takes one piece of lead."

Federal agents arrested Charles Alan Wilson, 63, without incident in Yakima, Wash., on Tuesday.

Murray's office in Seattle reported the threats amid a rash of ugliness aimed at lawmakers who supported the sweeping federal health care legislation. Some lawmakers have been spit on and several have reported receiving threatening calls.

FBI spokesman Bill Carter said Wilson is believed to be the first person in the country arrested for such threats.

The messages to Murray were left on voicemail from a blocked telephone number, FBI Special Agent Carolyn W. Woodbury wrote in a probable cause statement. Agents said they traced the calls to Wilson's home in Selah, near Yakima.

Wilson has a .38-caliber revolver registered to him and has a concealed weapons permit, Woodbury wrote.

Washington Watchdog Group Sues Dick Cheney Over VP Papers

Beltway insiders, which we are not, may know about CREW, or the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Yesterday, the organization introduced itself to Vice President Dick Cheney — with a lawsuit. CREW, along with two historians and three organizations of historians and archivists, filed a complaint against Cheney, the Office of the Vice President, the archivist and the National Archives and Records Administration, challenging their exclusion of a majority of Cheney’s papers from the Presidential Records Act. Click here for the report on CREW’s Web site, where you’ll find a link to the suit. Here’s an AP report.

The suit stems from Cheney’s position that his office is not part of the executive branch of government. A spokesman for Cheney, Jamie Hennigan, told the AP that the office of the vice president follows the PRA and will continue to follow the requirements of the law. He said that includes turning over vice presidential records to the National Archives at the end of the term.

Two months ago, reports the AP, Cheney chief of staff David Addington told Congress the vice president belongs to neither the executive nor legislative branch of government, but rather is attached by the Constitution to Congress.
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