In some circles, the three-letter moniker puts the agency on a par with its better-known cousins -- the F.B.I., C.I.A. and N.S.A. -- in the government's intelligence and law-enforcement realm, and is in keeping with new tri-letter agencies like the Transportation Security Administration.
"That happens in all sorts of law enforcement realms, but immigrants are especially vulnerable to that exploitation, because there's misinformation that immigrants don't have rights," the attorney told me.
Still, baseball continues to enjoy immunity from the antitrust laws in realms beyond the reserve clause.
The mob craving to bring coercive law into every realm of human behaviour has long troubled ethicists.
It was proclaimed by the king to be the Law of the realm, and the people pledged obedience to it.
Leading scholars at Oxford were, however, loyal to the Anglican Book of Common Prayer and used the vestments demanded by the ecclesiastical law of the realm.
In 1614, on the occasion of the last meeting of the Estates-General before the Revolution, the Third Estate sought to have it made a fundamental law of the realm that under no pretext whatever was it permissible to disobey the king.
40: To no one will we sell, to no one will we refuse or delay, right or justice… 45: We will appoint as justices, constables, sheriffs, or bailiffs only such as know the law of the realm and mean to observe it well.
The already fractious dispute over Arizona's tough new immigration law entered the realm of Punch and Judy yesterday as politicians exchanged soundbites over news that Los Angeles is to pursue an economic boycott of the state, in protest at its crackdown on undocumented workers.
