[Freestar Media, LLC]
Can't...resist...must post...irony is delicious.

[Stone Court]
Republicans are threatening Major League Baseball if it sells the Washington Nationals to a group that includes George Soros, a wealthy Democratic supporter. A Soros critic, John Sweeney (R-N.Y.), asks, "from a fan's perspective, who needs the politics?" Who indeed? (Link provides lengthy list of sports teams owned by Republican donors.)

[SCOTUSblog]
Supreme Court unanimously approves Congressional regulation of thoughtcrime.

[Chicago Sun-Times]
A split Supreme Court struck down Ten Commandments displays in courthouses Monday, ruling that two exhibits in Kentucky cross the line between separation of church and state because they promote a religious message.

[Wi-Fi Planet]
Senators John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) introduce legislation promoting local governments' rights to launch wireless networks in direct competition to commercial carriers. The Community Broadband Act of 2005 (S. 1294) adds provisions to the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to allow a municipality to offer high-Internet access to its citizens. Meanwhile, other Republicans (Pete Sessions (R-Tex.), Florida Governor Jeb Bush) continue to introduce legislation to ban municipal networks.

[The Associated Press]
A divided Supreme Court has ruled that local governments may seize people's homes and businesses against their will for private development in a decision anxiously awaited in communities where economic growth conflicts with individual property rights, despite arguments that cities have no right to take land except for projects with a clear public use, such as roads or schools, or to revitalize blighted areas.

[AlterNet]
Better to burn the flag than the Constitution.

[Yahoo! News]
Another Democrat is cowed into apologizing for his conscience.

[News.com]
The U.S. Department of Justice is quietly shopping around the explosive idea of requiring Internet service providers to retain records of their customers' online activities. Data retention rules could permit police to obtain records of e-mail chatter, Web browsing or chat-room activity months after Internet providers ordinarily would have deleted the logs—that is, if logs were ever kept in the first place. No U.S. law currently mandates that such logs be kept.

[Survey USA]
Approval ratings for all 100 U.S. Senators.

[New York Times]
Philip A. Cooney, the former White House staff member who repeatedly revised government scientific reports on global warming, will go to work for Exxon Mobil this fall, the oil company said yesterday.

[My Way]
The Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee challenged Congress Wednesday to help define legal rights of terrorism detainees at Guantanamo Bay, bemoaning a "crazy quilt" system. Pentagon and law-enforcement officials defended current practices at the U.S. military prison camp. It may be that it's too hot to handle for Congress, may be that it's too complex to handle for Congress, or it may be that Congress wants to sit back as we customarily do, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said as his panel took testimony on practices and policies at the U.S. military camp at an American Navy base in Cuba. But at any rate, Congress hasn't acted, Specter said.

[Washington Post]
In a slap at President Bush, lawmakers voted Wednesday to block the Justice Department and the FBI from using the Patriot Act to peek at library records and bookstore sales slips. The House voted 238-187 despite a veto threat from Bush to block the part of the anti-terrorism law that allows the government to investigate the reading habits of terror suspects. This is a tremendous victory that restores important constitutional rights to the American people, said Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., the sponsor of the measure. He said the vote would help rein in an administration intent on chipping away at the very civil liberties that define us as a nation.

[New York Times]
White House official Philip A. Cooney, who once led the oil industry's fight against limits on greenhouse gases, has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents.

[Yahoo! News]
U.S. Supreme Court rules against medical marijuana.