In a break with President Bush, the Senate Republican leader, Bill Frist, has decided to support a bill to expand federal financing for embryonic stem cell research, a move that could push it closer to passage and force a confrontation with the White House, which is threatening to veto the measure.

Wow... science can trump orthodoxy sometimes. Or so it would seem. I wonder if there's more to this story...

Veering From Bush, Frist Backs Funding for Stem Cell Research

With Congress poised for a final vote on the energy bill, the Environmental Protection Agency made an 11th-hour decision Tuesday to delay the planned release of an annual report on fuel economy.

But a copy of the report, embargoed for publication Wednesday, was sent to The New York Times by a member of the E.P.A. communications staff just minutes before the decision was made to delay it until next week. The contents of the report show that loopholes in American fuel economy regulations have allowed automakers to produce cars and trucks that are significantly less fuel-efficient, on average, than they were in the late 1980's.

Not really news but still pretty poor.

E.P.A. Holds Back Report on Car Fuel Efficiency

The House voted Thursday to extend permanently virtually all the major antiterrorism provisions of the USA Patriot Act after beating back efforts by Democrats and some Republicans to impose new restrictions on the government's power to eavesdrop, conduct secret searches and demand library records.

Ugh ...

House Beats Back Challenges to Patriot Act

Here's the Unsealed Declaration of Brian W. Kernighan [PDF], as text, thanks once again to Scott David Daniels. We've discussed this in the previous article and earlier, and really it speaks for itself. You can get the exhibits mentioned on that last page linked.

I hadn't been paying much attention to SCO for awhile... their
case has totally fallen apart. But the shouting will probably persist for some years...

Unsealed Declaration of Brian W. Kernighan, SCO v. IBM

Decius wrote:

Rattle wrote:
Wikipedia has some of the best resources on the the history of the court.

How could you miss the article on the new nominee?

Without knowing anything else about the guy, one thing that I don't like is how young he is -- at only 50, we'll probably be stuck with him for a long time for better or worse.

RE: John Roberts Jr.

Both Republicans and Democrats said that a nomination announcement in the next few days could push the news of Karl Rove and a federal investigation into who leaked the name of a C.I.A. officer off the front pages, a development that would be highly welcome at the White House. Mr. Rove, Mr. Bush's senior adviser, has been named by two reporters as a source of the leak, a potential crime.

Bush to Announce His Nominee for Supreme Court Tonight

President Bush said today that his nominee for the Supreme Court may be someone who has never sat on the bench before.

"Would I be willing to consider people who had never been a judge?" Mr. Bush said. "And the answer is, 'You bet.' "

Bush Says He Might Consider Judicial Newcomers for High Court

Within hours after Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's announced retirement from the Supreme Court, members of conservative groups around the country convened in five national conference calls in which, participants said, they shared one big concern: heading off any effort by President Bush to nominate his attorney general, Alberto R. Gonzales to replace her.

Conservative Groups Rally Against Gonzales as Justice

In nearly 25 years on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, has sat through nine Supreme Court confirmation hearings, some short and polite, some ugly and drawn out. Now that he is the chairman, he is prepared for the next one to go either way.

Confirmation Battle in Senate Could Define Specter's Career

Drug companies have freedom under the Food and Drug Administration rules to ignore their rival's patents when starting research on competing medications, the Supreme Court ruled Monday.

Justices Say Drug Patents Don't Bar Rival Research