Today is my daughter’s sweet 16 birthday, so I will be rather occupied.  It happens to coincide with the warmest weekend in several months, so it should be a fun day. 

Feel free to open track this all weekend.  I will be back to blog later.

While you do so, here is a SCOTUS case round up, just for fun.

Enjoy your weekend! 

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List of Major High Court Cases

Some Supreme Court cases still to be decided and the issues involved:

GUANTANAMO TRIALS: Whether President Bush has overstepped his authority with military war-crimes trials for foreigners held at the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

TEXAS REDISTRICTING: Whether to throw out all or part of a 2003 congressional map promoted by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

INSANITY: Whether to strike down Arizona’s insanity defense law, in an appeal brought on behalf of a schizophrenic teenager who killed a police officer.

CAMPAIGN FINANCE: If Vermont and other states can limit how much money is contributed and spent in political campaigns.

FOREIGN SUSPECTS: If two foreigners convicted of violent crimes in the United States have to be given new trials because police did not tell them they could seek legal help from their countries’ governments, as required by a 1969 treaty.

INMATE NEWSPAPERS: Whether states can keep troublesome inmates from reading most ewspapers and magazines.

DEATH PENALTY: Whether Kansas’ death penalty law is constitutional.

LAWYERS: Whether criminal defendants who can afford a lawyer get to pick their own.

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In some of the cases resolved this term, the court:

ASSISTED SUICIDE: Upheld on a 6-3 vote Oregon’s one-of-a-kind assisted-suicide law.

CAMPUS RECRUITERS: Ruled unanimously that the government can withhold funding from colleges that won’t open their campuses to military recruiters because of the Pentagon’s policy on gays.

DEATH PENALTY: Ruled 9-0 that condemned inmates can file special federal court claims that the chemicals used in executions cause unconstitutionally cruel pain; Ruled 5-3 that a Tennessee death row inmate could use new evidence to try to get his conviction overturned.

FREE SPEECH: Scaled back protections for government workers who blow the whistle on official misconduct, on a 5-4 vote.

ABORTION: Reaffirmed 9-0 that states can require parental involvement in abortion decisions and that state restrictions must have an exception to protect the mother’s health.

PLAYMATE’S BATTLE: Revived 9-0 former Playboy Playmate Anna Nicole Smith’s pursuit of her late husband’s oil fortune.

POLICE SEARCHES: Ruled 5-4 vote that judges cannot throw out evidence collected by police who have search warrants but do not properly announce their arrival.

WETLANDS: Ruled 5-4 that the government can block development on wetlands, even those miles away from waterways, as long as regulators prove a significant connection to the waterways.

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