WASHINGTON

HIGH COURT ASKED TO TAKE GUANTANAMO CASE

Lawyers for a Guantanamo detainee asked the Supreme Court yesterday to consider blocking military tribunals for terror suspects, and overturn what they called an extreme ruling by high-court nominee John Roberts.

Judge Roberts was on a three-judge federal appeals court panel that last month ruled against Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who once was Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s driver. Mr. Hamdan’s attorneys told justices that the appeals court gave the White House authority “to circumvent the federal courts and time-tested limits on the executive.” “No decision, by any court, in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has gone this far,” wrote Hamdan attorney Neal Katyal, a law professor at Georgetown University.

The Pentagon maintains it has the authority to hold military commissions, or tribunals, for terror suspects like Mr. Hamdan who were captured overseas and are now being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A lower-court judge ruled against the government, but Judge Roberts and two other judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit disagreed.

The ruling was handed down shortly before Judge Roberts was nominated to the Supreme Court, to replace retiring Justice O’Connor. Justice O’Connor has been skeptical of government wartime powers. In 2004, she wrote that “a state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation’s citizens.” The appeals court said last month that the 1949 Geneva Conventions governing prisoners of war does not apply to the Al Qaeda network and its members.

– Associated Press

MILITARY TEAM IDENTIFIED FUTURE 9/11 HIJACKERS IN 2000

More than a year prior to the September 11, 2001, attacks, a small military intelligence unit uncovered Mohammed Atta and three other future hijackers as probable members of an Al Qaeda cell operating in America, the New York Times Web site reported last night.

A former defense intelligence official and a Republican member of Congress told the Times yesterday that the military team compiled information, including visa photographs of the four men, and suggested to the military’s Special Operations Command that the information be shared with the FBI. The recommendation was rejected and the information was not shared, in part because Atta and the others were in America on valid entry visas, they said.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

WHITE HOUSE SIDES WITH N.H. ON ABORTION

The Bush administration jumped into the legal dispute over a New Hampshire abortion law yesterday, arguing that the outcome could affect a final ruling on a federal abortion law that has been struck down by three courts.

In a legal brief filed with the Supreme Court, the Justice Department said New Hampshire’s parental notification law for minors seeking abortion does not violate the Constitution, and urged justices to uphold it.

The court decided in May to review the 2003 New Hampshire law. An appeals court ruled it was unconstitutional because it didn’t provide an exception to protect the minor’s health in the event of a medical emergency.

The court’s decision “may have direct relevance to the government’s defense of the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act,” Solicitor General Paul Clement wrote in a friend-of-the-court brief.

The law Congress passed and President Bush signed in 2003 also lacks an exception when the health of the mother is at risk. Judges in Lincoln, Neb., New York, and San Francisco have overturned the law on that basis.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis has upheld the Nebraska ruling. The other decisions also have been appealed and are expected by many legal experts to eventually reach the Supreme Court.

– Associated Press

MIDWEST

JUDGE: OHIO HIGHWAY SHOOTER TO PLEAD GUILTY

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The man who carried out a series of highway shootings that terrorized central Ohio and killed one woman is dropping his insanity defense and agreeing to plead guilty, the judge said yesterday.

Barring a last-minute change of heart by the defendant or prosecutors, Charles McCoy Jr. will enter the plea this afternoon, Judge Charles Schneider said after meeting with one of the man’s attorneys. He did not have details of the agreement.

Mr. McCoy’s first trial ended in a mistrial in May. Jurors could not decide if Mr. McCoy was legally insane, meaning he did not understand right from wrong, during the shootings over five months in 2003 and 2004.

Mr. McCoy, 29, faces decades in prison. The judge said he will recommend that Mr. McCoy serve his sentence in a prison mental health wing so he can be treated for his paranoid schizophrenia. “Whatever happens is not a very happy ending,” said Michael Miller, one of Mr. McCoy’s attorneys. “I hope for a resolution on Tuesday. We’ve accepted what’s going to happen.”

Prosecutor Ron O’Brien would not confirm a deal had been reached but said an agreement would be discussed today.

– Associated Press

WEST

DELAY’S FOSTER HOME PROJECT OPENS IN TEXAS

RICHMOND, Texas – House Majority Leader Tom DeLay yesterday opened a privately financed project touted as an innovative way of giving abused and neglected children a stable foster home environment. “There is no other place in the entire country that does what we’re trying to do,” the Republican congressman said of the project. “And we hope to take this as a model around the country because the foster care system in every state has problems that need to be dealt with.”

The project also has drawn attention because the first phase includes homes constructed by Houston-based builder Perry Homes. The company is owned by Robert Perry, a Republican Party financial donor who gained notoriety last year as the chief financial backer of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, whose ads criticized the war record of John Kerry.

Mr. DeLay said the homes are being built by Perry Homes at cost, and he dismissed suggestions that his charitable activities provide a way for donors to gain political access.

– Associated Press