Rules

The Senate Judiciary Committee amended the sweeping immigration bill Tuesday to tighten student visa rules in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings. The committee, which is trying to get through the 844-page bill by the end of the week, also fended off changes that threatened to derail the delicate compromise reached by a bipartisan group of eight senators who drafted the legislation. The lengthy meeting of the committee unfolded as a core group of House Republicans turned up the volume against the immigration overhaul.

There's a perception that illegal recruiting is rampant in high school sports. So how come in the latest summary report issued by the California Interscholastic Federation through March, among nearly 800,000 athletes who compete statewide, only 84 were declared ineligible because of pre-enrollment contact or undue influence? That means either the perception is wrong or no one is catching the cheaters. I believe the latter is true. Even Roger Blake, the CIF's executive director, admits the numbers are misleading.

A National Labor Relations Board judge has ordered NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to rescind disciplinary actions against five scientists who shared emails at work about a Supreme Court decision on background security checks for JPL employees. Administrative Law Judge William G. Kocol ordered JPL to purge disciplinary letters related to the case from the employee files of Dennis Byrnes, Scott Maxwell, Larry D'Addario, Robert Nelson and William Bruce Banerdt. The five were accused of violating rules against unsolicited spam and bulk email.

POOLESVILLE, Md.  - On a curve of the Potomac River 37 miles northwest of Washington, the Dickerson power plant has stood sentry over small villages, crop fields and horse farms for more than half a century. Burning mostly coal and some natural gas, Dickerson emitted about 1.5 million tons of greenhouse gases in 2011, akin to the pollution of about 275,000 cars. How much longer Dickerson will run depends in no small measure on the steps President Obama takes to fulfill the pledge he made in his State of the Union address to tackle climate change.

In yet another scathing critique of government health officials, a federal judge refused Friday to stay his order making emergency contraceptives available to consumers of all ages without a prescription. Calling government efforts to restrict the sale of drugs such as Plan B "frivolous and taken for the purpose of delay," U.S. District Judge Edward R. Korman of New York wrote that the medications would be available to all unless the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled otherwise by noon Eastern time on Monday.

CHICAGO - Major League Baseball suspended the crew chief and fined all four umpires who botched a simple application of the rules in Thursday night's game between the Angels and Astros in Houston. Angels Manager Mike Scioscia protested the ruling, which was dropped after the Angels rallied for a 6-5 win, but MLB acknowledged Friday that the "rule covering pitching changes was not applied correctly by the umpiring crew. " MLB later announced that crew chief Fieldin Culbreth received a two-game suspension for the "misapplication" of baseball rules, and the other three members of the crew - Brian O'Nora, Bill Welke and Adrian Johnson - were fined.

Massing the heavy legal artillery of 1st Amendment principles, a federal appeals court has ruled that the federal government can't order businesses to post signs informing employees that they have a right to join a union and to bargain for better wages. It's a troubling ruling. The case stems from a 2011 decision by the National Labor Relations Board that employers must "post notices to employees, in conspicuous places," informing them of their rights under the National Labor Relations Act, and include the information in electronic mailings.

A judge ruled on Thursday that The Times could not be stopped from reporting on testimony from the top manager of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in a deposition for an open-government lawsuit. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Luis A. Lavin said that in asking the court to deny Times reporters access to the testimony and a prohibition against articles about it, the commission sought “essentially a gag order.” “This is a public matter,” Lavin said of the lawsuit brought against the commission by The Times and a 1st Amendment group, Californians Aware.

SAN FRANCISCO - The California Supreme Court gave local governments the power Monday to zone medical marijuana dispensaries out of existence, a decision that upholds bans in about 200 cities but does little to solve Los Angeles' years-long struggle to regulate hundreds of storefront pot outlets. The unanimous decision provided clarity for cities and counties that want to rid themselves of the dispensaries, which sprouted up statewide after a 1996 voter-approved measure that sought to authorize medical marijuana but lacked specifics in how it would be regulated.

WASHINGTON - Employers cannot be required to post a notice that tells their workers they have a right to join a union and bargain for better wages, a federal appeals court ruled in the latest setback for the National Labor Relations Board. The so-called poster rule would have required more than 6 million private employers to post a one-page notice in a prominent place. Labor leaders hoped it would help stem the long decline in union membership in the private sector. Only about 7% of private-sector employees belong to unions.