Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour Monday signed legislation to let the 13 hotel-casinos destroyed by Hurricane Katrina to be rebuilt 800 feet inland, despite opposition from religious conservatives. The law was approved in a special legislative session where the Mississippi Legislature convened to specifically work on the aftermath of the hurricane's devastation. The legislation was passed [...]

Officials from the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq resumed counting ballots Tuesday as part of an effort to recheck an unusually high number of votes in this weekend's referendum on the Iraqi constitution . The recount had been disrupted by a sandstorm, but ballot boxes from 12 Shiite and Kurdish provinces are now back on [...]

US Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers Tuesday will turn in her responses to a Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire devised to reveal how she might rule on cases brought before the Supreme Court. In meetings with Senators following her nomination to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Miers has revealed that she believes the Constitution contains [...]

Crime in the United States 2004, Federal Bureau of Investigation, October 18, 2005 . Read the full text of the report . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

A lawyer who has worked with Saddam Hussein's defense team said Monday that the defense will likely begin pre-trial proceedings on Tuesday by once again requesting a six month delay. The defense is expected to argue that it has not been given 45 days to review all prosecution documents as provided by Rule 45 of [...]

Dora B. Schriro, Director, Arizona Department of Corrections v. Robert Douglas Smith, Supreme Court of the United States, October 17, 2005 . Read the per curiam opinion . Reported in JURIST's Paper Chase here.

Susan Wood, former director of the US Food and Drug Administration's Department of Women’s Health said Monday that the FDA’s refusal earlier this year to consider over-the-counter sales of Plan B , also known as the morning-after pill, was based on political considerations rather than scientific facts. Wood, who resigned in August in protest over [...]

A tax reform interest group chairman says that the President’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform created last January to consider alternatives to the current US income tax system will probably not recommend any major changes to the code when it submit its report to the Treasury Department by November 1st. The panel is considering [...]

According to an attorney for former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) , prosecutors in his case offered DeLay a deal that would have allowed him to plead guilty to misdemeanor charges, thus avoiding felony charges of money laundering and criminal conspiracy. In a letter from defense attorney Dick DeGuerin to Travis County District Attorney [...]

In a White House meeting Monday with visiting Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov , President Bush urged the Libyan government to release five Bulgarian nurses sentenced to death for intentionally causing an AIDS outbreak at a Benghazi children's hospital in 1999. The story made international headlines last year when the court deciding the case seemingly ignored [...]