Criminal violations by US military recruiters more than doubled in 2005: GAO News
Criminal violations by US military recruiters more than doubled in 2005: GAO

[JURIST] Allegations of recruiting violations by the US military increased from 4,400 cases in 2004 to 6,600 cases in 2005 according to a report [text, PDF; abstract; highlights, PDF] released by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) [official website] on Monday, with actual criminal violations rising by more than 200 percent, from 30 in 2004 to 70 in 2005. The report noted that due to the current environment, with fewer potential recruits coming forward while numbers were needed for service in Iraq and elsewhere, "some recruiters, reportedly, have resorted to overly aggressive tactics, such as coercion and harassment."

The US Department of Defense [official website] concurred or partially concurred with four of the GAO's five recommendations for tracking and reporting recruiting violations, allegations and irregularities when it viewed a draft of the report. Reuters has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Bank of England granted political independence

On May 6, 1997, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown announced that the Bank of England would be granted political independence for the first time in the three-hundred year history of the Bank. This policy was statutized in the subsequent Bank of England Act of 1998 gave the Bank independent control of British monetary policy effective June 1, 1998. Read the Bank of England Act of 1998.

Chinese Exclusion Act barred Chinese laborers from US

On May 6, 1882, President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, barring Chinese laborers from entering the United States and prohibiting courts from bestowing US citizenship on Chinese. Connecticut Senator Joseph Hawley spoke out against the Act in these words: Let the proposed statue be read 100 years hence, dug out of the dust of ages and forgotten as it will be except for a line of sneer by some historian, and ask the young man not well read in the history of this country what was the reason for excluding these men and he would not be able to find it in the law. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and its successors were abolished in 1943 at the insistence of President Franklin Roosevelt.