JESSE J. HOLLAND

Associated Press
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GOP campaign rhetoric raising racial concerns

Hoping to win the hearts of Southern conservatives, Newt Gingrich leaned into his argument that President Barack Obama is a "food stamp president" and that poor people should want paychecks, not handouts — a pitch that earned him a standing ovation in South Carolina during a presidential debate on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

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Court schedules week of health care arguments

The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will use an unprecedented week's worth of argument time in late March to decide the constitutionality of President Barack Obama's historic health care overhaul before the 2012 presidential elections.

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Court seems ready to overturn La. conviction

Incredulous Supreme Court justices on Tuesday repeatedly questioned why the New Orleans district attorney's office never gave defense lawyers statements from the only witness in a murder trial that could have cast doubt on a death row inmate's conviction of killing five people.

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Racial politics return with Cain allegations

Herman Cain's rise as a presidential contender was supposed to prove that race didn't matter in the Republican Party. Cain is fast making it the only thing that does.

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Court: Can gov't get involved in church dispute?

The Supreme Court appeared sharply divided Wednesday on whether a church school can be sued over an employee's discrimination complaint, raising questions that pit the constitutional separation of church and state against the government's interest in protecting people from discrimination and retaliation.

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Obama increases number of female, minority judges

President Barack Obama is moving at a historic pace to try to diversify the nation's federal judiciary: Nearly three of every four people he has gotten confirmed to the federal bench are women or minorities. He is the first president who hasn't selected a majority of white males for lifetime judgeships.

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Can't ban violent video sales to kids, court says

States cannot ban the sale or rental of ultraviolent video games to children, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, rejecting such limits as a violation of young people's First Amendment rights and leaving it up to parents and the multibillion-dollar gaming industry to decide what kids can buy.

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Slaves, freedmen spied on South during Civil War

In the Confederate circles he navigated, John Scobell was considered just another Mississippi slave: singing, shuffling, illiterate and completely ignorant of the Civil War going on around him.

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Judge issues mixed rulings on Clemens subpoenas

A judge ruled Thursday that a congressional committee does not have to give baseball star Roger Clemens its evidence that he lied about using performance-enhancing drugs, but left open the possibility that he may be able to get material from the authors of Major League Baseball's Mitchell Report that first publicly accused him of being a user.

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FBI wants public to help break murdered man's code

A lifelong fan of codes, Ricky McCormick wrote out two pages of letters, numbers and symbols and stuck them in his pocket. His body was found in a Missouri cornfield in the summer of 1999, those two sheets of paper still in his pants.

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Court makes it easier to sue businesses

The Supreme Court made it easier to haul businesses into court on Tuesday, ruling that investors can sue them for purposefully withholding damaging information about a product and that employees can sue them for retaliation without having to make a written complaint.

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Court seems likely to let jilted wife appeal

WASHINGTON (AP) — Like a storyline from a tawdry soap opera, a jilted wife tried to poison her husband's pregnant lover by spreading toxic chemicals around the woman's house and car. But after Carol Anne Bond put some in a mailbox, federal prosecutors swept her up and sent her to prison using a federal anti-terrorism law for using "chemical weapons."

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Court says NASA background checks can continue

The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to stop federal investigations into the private lives of people who want to work at government installations — even those who don't have security clearances and don't work on secret projects.

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High court denies man's gun arrest appeal

Missing a plane connection cost Utah gun owner Greg Revell 10 days in jail after he was stranded in New Jersey with an unloaded firearm he had legally checked with his luggage in Salt Lake City.

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Court hears appeal from Anna Nicole Smith's estate

The Supreme Court on Tuesday considered whether Anna Nicole Smith's estate legally deserves some of the $1.6 billion estate left behind by her late Texas billionaire husband.

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Court will not overturn $5 million slander award

The Supreme Court will not overturn a Florida surgeon's $5 million slander award after a hospital executive said he would not send his dog to the doctor for surgery.

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Chief justice urges progress naming judges

Republicans and Democrats must find a long-term solution to selecting federal judges, Chief Justice John Roberts says, while blaming both sides for the political gridlock of judicial nominations in the Senate.

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Supreme Court to cut costs to fight deficit

The Supreme Court will join Congress and the president next year in cutting costs to reduce the federal deficit, Chief Justice John Roberts said Friday in his year-end report.

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US executions drop by 12 percent in 2010

The number of executions in the United States dropped 12 percent in 2010, and the number of people sentenced to die is nearing historic lows, a report from an anti-capital punishment group says.

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Court weighs allowing Mazda seat belt lawsuit

The Supreme Court debated Wednesday whether to let Mazda be sued in California courts because a woman died while wearing a seat belt across her lap in her family's minivan.

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Court hears arguments on violent video games

The Supreme Court on Tuesday expressed sympathy for a California law that aims to keep children from buying ultra-violent video games in which players maim, kill or sexually assault images of people.

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Court hears arguments on violent video games

Retailers who sell the latest "Halo" or "Call of Duty" video game to children would face substantial fines under a law being considered by the Supreme Court.

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High court will reconsider Anna Nicole Smith case

The long-running legal fight over whether former Playmate Anna Nicole Smith should have gotten part of the fortune left behind by her elderly Texas billionaire husband landed at the Supreme Court on Tuesday as justices announced new cases to be argued in the upcoming 2010 term.

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Senator pushes bill legalizing stem cell research

Sen. Arlen Specter on Monday initiated a drive to legalize federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, superseding conflicting court decisions that he said are slowing critical work to find cures for crippling diseases.

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Leader of Pakistan Taliban charged in CIA bombing

U.S. officials launched a broad legal offensive against Pakistan's Taliban on Wednesday, placing the group on its international terrorism blacklist and charging its leader with planning last year's suicide bombing in Afghanistan that killed seven CIA employees.

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