Former US attorney general John Ashcroft has accepted a part-time position as Distinguished Professor of Law and Government at Regent University , the Virginia Beach Christian graduate school headed by evangelist Pat Robertson . Ashcroft's first course in April will be a week long and will cover "leadership in times of crisis." He is scheduled [...]

UK Home Secretary Charles Clarke has ordered a review of the British government's decision last year to downgrade cannabis from a regulatory B class to a C class, the same as anabolic steriods and anti-depressants. The review, disclosed Saturday , comes after a new study suggested a strong link between mental ilness and cannabis use. [...]

Schiavo v. The Honorable George W. Greer, et al., United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida Tampa Division, Judge James S. Moody, March 18, 2005 . Excerpt: The fact that Petitioners have exhausted their state court appellate options without success does not provide this Court with jurisdiction over this matter. Therefore, the [...]

US v. Platte; US v. Hudson; US v. Gilbert, United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, March 17, 2005 . Excerpt: Of course, whenever a criminal statute has such a broad scope, some prohibited activities may be much less reprehensible than others. The maximum permissible sentence is designed for the most reprehensible offenses. [...]

Former Connecticut governor John G. Rowland was sentenced Friday to one year in prison, four months of house arrest, three years probation, and an $82,000 fine after pleading guilty in December to a federal corruption charge. The sentencing period, set by the judge who heard Rowland's leniency plea , fell short of 15 to 21 [...]

Wire services are quoting sources close to the case as saying that Terri Schiavo's feeding tube has been removed at the request of her husband acting on authority of a court order. 4:15 PM – At a press conference still ongoing, Michael Schiavo lawyer George Felos said that the feeding tube had been removed at [...]

US District Judge Nancy Atlas decided Friday against renewal of the automatic stay protecting the remaining assets of Yukos , the Russian energy company whose bankruptcy case was dismissed in a Houston bankruptcy court last February. The decision comes as a major loss to Yukos, which faces a $27.5 billion back tax bill enforced by [...]

In Friday's international brief, a new poll published Friday by Le Parisien newspaper has the scheduled May 29 national referendum on the European Constitution failing with a 51% "no" vote. Polls taken as recently as February had indicated a strong 2/3 of the French populace in favor of the regional pact. A flurry of anti-government [...]

Former Serbian prime minister Zoran Zivkovic said Friday that in 2003 CIA agents aided Serbian police in dozens of unsuccessful attempts to capture former commander General Ratko Mladic . Mladic is accused of atrocities and genocide during the 1992-95 Bosnian war, and Serbia has been accused by the international community of harboring the former wartime [...]

The US District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana began pre-trial hearings Friday, launching the federal liability case against Merck & Co. , producers of the painkilling product Vioxx . Dozens of lawyers, handling over one thousand lawsuits, entered the courtroom before Judge Eldon E. Fallon , who was assigned last month to coordinate [...]