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Passenger rights

Suppose you're a passenger in a car when the police pull it over to question the driver. Are you, as a passenger, free to go? Or are you seized by the police, just like the driver? The answer to that question determines whether you, the passenger, can challenge the constitutionality of the stop, because the Fourth Amendment bans "unreasonable searches and seizures."

Today, a unanimous Supreme Court said the answer is, yes, passengers are seized when the police pull over a car and driver. 

"A traffic stop necessarily curtails the travel a passenger has chosen just as much as it halts the driver," wrote Justice David Souter for the court. "A sensible person would not expect a police officer to allow people to come and go freely from the physical focal point of the investigation into faulty behavior or wrongdoing."

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How a bill is vetoed

Since the expected veto of the Iraq spending bill is so high profile, how does a president actually do it?

The answer comes from the U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 7. It says if the president wants to veto a bill, "he shall return it, together with his Objections, to the House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it."

As a practical matter, say administration officials, it works this way. The president doesn't actually do anything to the bill. No rubber stamps that say "VETOED" across the face of it, as visually appealing as that would be. Instead, he writes a message to, in this case, the House, which states his objections. This is the veto message. That, along with the bill, will be returned to the House by the executive clerk. 

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Tale of the tape

The U.S. Supreme Court today ruled in favor of a Georgia sheriff's deputy who rammed a car after a high speed chase, causing a spectacular crash that left the 19-year-old driver paralyzed.

Today's decision relied, in an unusual way, on videotape of the chase recorded in the deputy's car. It was so central to the ruling that the court took the unusual step of posting it on its Web site. To the majority of the court, the tape shows the driver putting at risk the safety of others on the road. "We see him racing down narrow two-lane roads, in the dark of night, at speeds shockingly fast," said Justice Antonin Scalia for the majority, which found that no jury could have concluded anything but that he put innocent members of the public at risk.

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Insights into the Supreme Court

In unusually blunt language, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy told a Senate committee today that salaries for federal judges are too low, that Congress should not cut the budget of the U.S. Marshal's service, and that the Supreme Court should not be required to allow in TV cameras.

Kennedy's appearance was unusual in several respects. First, justices normally appear only to testify about the budget for the judicial branch, not to comment on other issues. His appearance followed an invitation to the court, sent to the chief justice. Kennedy was the designated testifier.

Second, he gave what is apparently the first public expression about how the court, as a body, views the TV issue. A bill to allow cameras in the Supreme Court has the backing of Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., of the Judiciary Committee.  But in appearing before the committee today, Kennedy said the justices often use oral argument to converse with each other, through the arguing lawyers. "Please don't introduce into the dynamics of our court the insidious temptation of trying to get a sound bite on TV. Please don't introduce that into our inter-collegial dynamics. We don't want that," Kennedy told the committee.

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Gitmo chief resigns

A strange three-week controversy over the remarks of the Pentagon's top official responsible for overseeing the detainees at Guantanamo Bay has ended with his resignation, the Pentagon revealed today.  The saga began when he provoked an outcry in the legal community by publicly questioning the decisions of U.S. law firms to defend some of the detainees.

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What next in the Boston 'hoax' case?

As authorities in Boston look into whether they can file criminal charges against the company behind the cartoon ad campaign -- or sue it for damages -- the initial criminal case against the two men charged with planting the Boston signs will not be easy for the state to pursue in court.

Peter Berdovsky and Sean Stevens were charged today with disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor, and a more serious charge -- planting a hoax device. Prosecutors will have a hard time making that one stick.

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$9 million for Syrian-born Canadian

The leader of one of America's closest allies in the war on terror today personally criticized the U.S. for the way it handled a Canadian citizen suspected by the U.S. of having terrorist connections.

Canada's prime minister, Stephen Harper, today sent a formal letter of apology to a Syrian-born Canadian, Maher Arar, who was detained in 2002 at Kennedy airport in New York on his way home from an overseas trip. U.S. officials determined he was a potential risk and deported him -- not to Canada but to Syria. Because he held dual citizenship, he was deportable to either country.

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Airport security ads?

While you're waiting to take off your shoes and put your laptop in a plastic tray in the airport security line, how about passing the time by reading about why you should change your car insurance?

The Transportation Security Administration is ready to give you that opportunity. And it wants to know if airports would like to use security checkpoint ads to generate some income. TSA notified industry that it will accept proposals for the next month from airports and advertisers who want to take part in a one-year program that will evaluate interest and effectiveness of checkpoint advertising.

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'Blind Sheik' recovering

FBI officials say they sent an advisory to local law enforcement agencies last week, informing them that the Blind Sheik, Omar Abdel Rahman, could be near death. His death, the notice says, might lead to attempts at reprisal.

But today, officials say his condition improved and that he is now stable. They believe his death is no longer imminent. They also say they have no specific intelligence of any actual plan to attack the U.S. in retaliation.

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Knocking down the Diana bug report

Current and former U.S. officials say no U.S. intelligence agency ever targeted Princess Diana for intelligence collection.

Their comments follow stories over the weekend in British papers, reporting that U.S. intelligence agencies were spying on her. Some say her phone calls were being monitored, and some say specifically that it was done by the U.S. Secret Service.  These stories are said to be based on the British report due out later this week on her death.

However, Homeland Security and U.S. Secret Service officials today say it is untrue that the Secret Service ever gathered intel information on Diana. "The Secret Service had nothing to do with it," the official says.

Separately, a former senior U.S. intelligence official says Princess Diana was never targeted for intelligence gathering in any way. But, the former official says, her voice MAY have been picked up while others were targeted. Even so, he says that as far as he knows, there were no intercepts of her in Paris the night she died, contrary to what the British papers are reporting.

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