Courts

Re "Marriage and legal nonsense," Opinion, May 27 Tim Rutten hit it on the nose: The California Supreme Court's decision regarding marriage equality is nervous and contradictory. As one of the 18,000 couples legally married before Proposition 8 took effect, we are grateful that our marriage is still recognized in California. But we are deeply disappointed in the Supreme Court's ruling, which, in effect, says that half the voters can make the state Constitution as discriminatory as they want.

The Obama administration argued that allowing terrorism detainees in Afghanistan to challenge their detention in U.S. courts would endanger the military mission in that country. In a filing with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, the Justice Department said detainees at the Bagram military base should not have equal rights to sue in the U.S. that the Supreme Court granted last year to detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The administration argued that Bagram is in an active war zone and in the sovereign nation of Afghanistan.

A suspect who said he was simply a martial arts and physical education instructor burst into tears in court as he denied belonging to a terrorist cell that allegedly helped plot the Sept. 11 attacks. Abdulla Khayata Katan, 29, also said that Spain's top counter-terrorism judge browbeat him into making false statements about fellow defendants. In hours of taped testimony played in court, Katan did not complain or sound like he was speaking under duress. But he interrupted the playback repeatedly.

A procession of legal experts declared Thursday that the state's manner of meting out the death penalty had become so bogged down and dogged by inequities that wholesale repair was needed. But during the first of three hearings by a state criminal justice commission there was little agreement on what would constitute the best fix.

Millions of gallons of polluted runoff from state highways in Los Angeles and Ventura counties will be prevented from contaminating local waters and beaches every year under a court agreement reached Friday between Caltrans and environmentalists. Caltrans vowed to reduce storm water pollution by 20% below 1994 levels along more than 1,000 miles of state highway in the region, according to the agreement in federal court with the Natural Resources Defense Council and Santa Monica BayKeeper.

A federal judge Wednesday abruptly fired the man he had appointed to fix the multimillion-dollar problems of medical care in the state's prisons, after determining the effort was moving too slowly and in too confrontational a manner. U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson revoked the power he had given Robert Sillen and handed it to J. Clark Kelso, a lawyer with experience turning around government institutions in crisis.

Millions of fingers scurrying over mobile electronic devices probably paused this week as news emerged of a trove of text messages containing flirty and sexually explicit chat between Detroit Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick and one of his top aides. Even those engaging in more wholesome dialogue would be wise to wonder: Do text messages disappear -- like oral conversations -- or are they permanently logged somewhere for potential retrieval -- as e-mail usually is?

Court oversight of Microsoft Corp.'s market dominance, which began with a 2002 landmark antitrust settlement, was extended Tuesday for two years. A federal judge ruled that a consent decree enforcing the settlement would remain in effect until November 2009. A group of 10 states, led by California and New York, had requested that the oversight be extended until November 2012. The court's ruling "should not be viewed as a sanction against Microsoft," U.S.

A judge in Alexandria refused to toss out an indictment against a Louisiana congressman accused of taking bribes, rejecting the argument that the indictment unconstitutionally infringed on his privileges as a congressman. Attorneys for Rep. William J. Jefferson argued that testimony given by his staffers to the grand jury that handed up the indictment violated the Constitution's speech or debate clause.

Television ads promoting movies are not the normal business of politics or the courts, but they are this month because conservative activists are seeking a wide audience for "Hillary: The Movie." David N. Bossie, who made a name for himself as a relentless investigator of the Clintons during the 1990s, has released a 90-minute documentary on the New York senator.