The Supreme Court agreed today to hear a potentially significant appeal from Conrad Black, the jailed former newspaper executive who contends he was wrongly convicted under a broadly worded anti-fraud law that makes it a crime to deprive someone of “honest services.” Read more

The opponents of the Employee Free Choice Act, a major priority of labor that is also known as “card check,” formed a well-coordinated army during 2008. Read more

The Supreme Court rejected appeals today from two hold-out counties in Southern California that object to the state’s 13-year-old medical marijuana law and claimed it should be struck down as violating the federal drug-control act. Read more

The basics The Obama administration is set to announce an agreement today that would force cars and trucks in the U.S. to achieve dramatically better gas mileage. Read more

In the Ozark Mountain town of Rogers, Ark., more than 250 business owners gathered for lunch at a construction company last month to focus on what they saw as a major threat – a proposal in Congress to make it easier to form labor unions. Read more

The Pentagon said Monday it no longer includes a Bible quote on the cover page of daily intelligence briefings it sends to the White House, as was the practice during the Bush administration. Read more

A Haitian man was charged with human smuggling Monday after federal authorities accused him of piloting a boat overloaded with migrants that capsized off Florida’s coast, killing at least nine people, including a pregnant woman. Read more

The Supreme Court on Monday dealt a setback to women who took pregnancy leaves from work before 1979. Read more

The Obama administration plans to announce on Tuesday that it will set national restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles, in what environmentalists are hailing as a major step to curb global warming and spur development of more fuel-efficient cars. Read more