Justice Department

Exelon Corp. will pay $692,000 - including $151,000 to Maryland regulators - to settle alleged violations of a Justice Department agreement that had allowed the company to acquire Baltimore's Constellation Energy Group. The Justice Department said Thursday that Exelon - to not raise market prices for electricity - was required to make electricity-sale bids at or below cost from 22 of its generating plants while waiting to sell three plants in Maryland after the merger. Instead, some of its bids were above cost, the agency said.

Criminals paid to restore a stream that runs through a Bel Air park. They also are covering the cost of upgrades to septic systems in the Sassafras River watershed and an effort to find new ways to detect illegal pollution discharge in Montgomery County and Cumberland. In January, the Gunpowder Valley Conservancy will begin a two-year project to improve the Middle River and tidal Gunpowder watersheds, courtesy of lawbreakers. All of the work is possible because local Coast Guard inspectors caught shipping companies dumping pollutants in the ocean and a federal judge ordered them to pay $1.3 million in restitution.

— In a challenge to the Obama administration's efforts to jump-start the lagging restoration of the Chesapeake Bay, lawyers for farmers and homebuilders argued in federal court here Thursday that the Environmental Protection Agency overstepped its legal authority and relied on a flawed computer model in setting a pollution "diet" for the ailing estuary. Lawyers for the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Association of Home Builders, poultry and pork producers, and other farming groups argued that states in the Chesapeake watershed, not the federal government, should be in charge of deciding how and where to reduce pollution fouling the bay. They also complained that the far-reaching "diet" was rushed into place despite gaps and errors and without giving the public enough time to review and comment on it. "It will affect urban growth; it affects how agriculture land will be used," said Richard E. Schwartz, one of the industry groups' lawyers.

A former Maryland assistant U.S. attorney resigned today in the wake of an internal watchdog report on the ATF's botched gun operation known as "Fast and Furious. " The U.S. Justice Department's Inspector General on Wednesday referred 14 employees, including Jason Weinstein, a senior aide to Lanny Breuer and former federal prosecutor in Baltimore, for possible internal discipline. Read the report from Reuters here . After the news broke, Weinstein's attorneys sent out several documents that they say refute the Inspector General's findings.  Read Weinstein's resignation letter here.  A " fact sheet " that Weinstein says "identifies the most egregious inaccuracies" in the report.  A letter on Weinstein's legacy from retired Baltimore Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III.  “It is a horribly sad day for this country when a professional who has dedicated his life to law enforcement and the rule of law falls victim to criticism that is so profoundly wrong and so deeply flawed," his attorney, former Inspector General Michael R. Bromwich, said in a statement.

Department of Justice officials toured the Baltimore City Detention Center on Wednesday amid complaints about conditions for juveniles held at the facility, officials confirmed. Agency officials would not comment on what they observed during the tour. Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, a Baltimore Democrat, said in a statement that the visit was "urgently needed and if any unsafe or unsecure conditions are found, they must be immediately remedied. " Cummings wrote to the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division this month, after The Baltimore Sun highlighted the increasing concerns of attorneys and youth advocates about conditions for juveniles who are being held at the jail on adult charges.

The U.S. Justice Department's civil rights division has not visited the Baltimore City Detention Center in nearly two years, despite an agreement with the state to oversee reforms at the facility. The jail's handling of juveniles has been a continuing concern for the Justice Department, and attorneys and youth advocates say changes made last year have exacerbated conditions. The Baltimore Sun has reported that youths describe regular attacks among detainees and lax supervision by correctional officers.

According to the state public safety department, there's been 11 assaults in the Baltimore City Detention Center's youth annex this year. Yet in court, a 17-year-old who stands just 5-foot-1 and weighs less than 110 pounds, testified under oath that he alone had been beaten up some six times in a matter of a few weeks - attacked in his sleep by other youths in the 16-to-32-to-a-cage living areas for youth being held on adult charges. Others, in a series of hearings viewed by The Sun, told similar stories, and said they were threatened with more attacks if they told.

What is "Fast and Furious" exactly ("House panel supports Holder contempt vote," June 21)? This scandal involves theU.S. Department of Justiceintentionally allowing guns to cross the border into Mexico, in an attempt to track them to drug cartels. This "gun-running" was exposed when U.S. border agents confronted several men who were suspected of illegally crossing the border and smuggling drugs. This confrontation ended with U.S border agent Brian Terry being shot and killed. The gun that shot Agent Terry was traced back to the guns that were involved in Fast and Furious.

The prospect of spending years behind bars in a tiny cell is sufficiently chilling to deter most people from ever committing a crime. Those who willfully break the law anyway and get caught have no one to blame but themselves when a judge sentences them to prison. But even convicted felons shouldn't have to suffer the extralegal indignity and physical trauma of being raped by fellow inmates and prison staff while they're serving their time. Sexual assaults in the nation's prisons are alarmingly common.

When Baltimore County Police Capt. Andre Davis took command, late in 2010, of recruiting and hiring, he could see that efforts to bring in African-Americans had slipped. Background checks were not being completed on many applicants, and no effort was being made to see that black candidates showed up for physical and written exams. He said he reformed those practices but acknowledges that it will take much more over many years to reverse a decades-long deficiency in minority hiring.