Hobby Lobby Stores and a sister company, Mardel Inc., sued the government, claiming the mandate violates the religious beliefs of its owners.

In an opinion issued Wednesday, Sotomayor said the stores fail to satisfy the demanding legal standard for blocking the requirement on an emergency basis. She said the companies may continue their challenge to the regulations in the lower courts.

Company officials say they must decide whether to violate their faith or face a daily $1.3 million fine beginning Jan. 1 if they ignore the law.

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Federal law prohibits gun sales to anyone who was declared mentally unfit by a court. In Bill Clinton’s first term, Congress passed a law requiring states to report these mental health records to the FBI. But in 1997, the Supreme Court threw out that requirement, saying states could share whatever information they wanted to—or more likely not share it.

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Bork had become accidentally like a martyr, and he cashed in, quite literally, on his supposed victim status, writing a couple of best-selling books decrying the moral degeneracy of contemporary America, and living large on what has been referred to indelicately as wingnut welfare.

This narrative was always a bunch of nonsense, and although de mortuis nil nisi bonum is a maxim of our profession, the memory of the deceased will not be spared here.

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Son Robert H. Bork Jr. confirmed the death Wednesday. His father had a long career in politics and the law that took him from respected academic to a totem of conservative grievance.

Bork was accused of being a partisan hatchet man for Nixon when he fired Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox in the Saturday Night Massacre of 1973.

Bork's drubbing during the 1987 Senate nomination hearings made him a hero to the right and a rallying cry for younger conservatives.

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The 58-year-old Sotomayor says in an unusually personal book for a Supreme Court justice that she feels an occasional tug of regret at not having borne or adopted children. The memoir, "My Beloved World," is being published by Alfred A. Knopf in January. An early copy was sent by the publisher to the Associated Press.

Sotomayor also defends affirmative action – under which she was admitted to Princeton University and Yale Law School – as needed to get disadvantaged students to the starting line of a race to success. She grew up so poor in the South Bronx that her family never even had a bank account.

She acknowledges she entered through a special door reserved for minority students but writes that her accomplishments at Princeton, including receiving the highest prize given to seniors, earning a place in the Phi Beta Kappa honor society and graduating with highest honors, speak for themselves.

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At a speaking event in Princeton on Monday, the justice was confronted by a gay freshman named Duncan Hosie, who questioned why he has equated laws banning sodomy with those banning bestiality and murder. "It's a form of argument that I thought you would have known, which is called the 'reduction to the absurd,'" Scalia sniffed. That's funny; I thought it was called hyperbole. Or maybe just a steaming pile of wrong.

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Politico reports:

In June, the House of Representatives told the Supreme Court that the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act “is an issue of great national importance” that urgently requires the justices’ attention. The 1996 law denies federal benefits to same-sex married couples.

But when the court agreed on Friday to hear one of the DOMA cases early next year, the Republican leadership had nothing to say about it.

Advocates on both sides of the issue said they’d seen no statements from Republican lawmakers about the court’s decision to take on DOMA and an even more provocative dispute regarding a ban California voters approved on same-sex marriage.

“I’m personally grateful to Speaker Boehner for being willing to defend the law, but it’s clear GOP elites don’t want to talk about it and want to keep it as quiet as possible,” Maggie Gallagher, a founder of the National Organization for Marriage, said. “That’s so obvious, I don’t see any point in pretending otherwise.”

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Speaking at Princeton University, Scalia was asked by a gay student why he equates laws banning sodomy with those barring bestiality and murder.

"I don't think it's necessary, but I think it's effective," Scalia said, adding that legislative bodies can ban what they believe to be immoral.

Scalia has been giving speeches around the country to promote his new book, "Reading Law," and his lecture at Princeton comes just days after the court agreed to take on two cases that challenge the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman.

Some in the audience who had come to hear Scalia speak about his book applauded but more of those who attended the lecture clapped at freshman Duncan Hosie's question.

"It's a form of argument that I thought you would have known, which is called the 'reduction to the absurd,'" Scalia told Hosie of San Francisco during the question-and-answer period. "If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?"

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"There is no question that it is a risk," said Gavin Newsom, California's lieutenant governor, the Daily Intel reports. "If they nationalize it and reject it, that’s going to take decades to come back to the court."

Katherine Franke, director of Columbia Law School's Center for Gender and Sexuality, told HuffPo's Lila Shapiro that because the lower court's ruling on Proposition 8 was very narrow, she would have preferred if the Court just decided to take up DOMA. "I'm not thrilled. I would have preferred they took the Windsor case alone."

The National Organization for Marriage, on the other hand, thinks things are looking up. “I’m ecstatic,” Brian Brown, NOM's president, told the New York Times. “Taking both cases at the same time exposes the hypocrisy on the other side.”

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Proposition 8 is California's ban on gay marriage, which a lower court ruled is unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment. The Court said it would rule on whether the 14th Amendment bars the state from defining marriage as between a man and a woman. The justices will also decide whether supporters of Prop 8 have standing in this case, and, if not, will not hear arguments on the case.

The Court said it would also take up a DOMA case brought by Edith Windsor, challenging section 3 of the law, which defines marriage as only between a man and a woman for the purpose of receiving federal benefits. The Supreme Court will decide whether or not to uphold the Second Circuit's ruling that the law was unconstitutional because it violated the equal protection guarantee of the 5th Amendment.

Similar to Prop 8, the DOMA order gives the justices a way out of ruling on the merits, because it will decide "whether the Executive Branch’s agreement with the court below that DOMA is unconstitutional deprives this Court of jurisdiction to decide this case; and whether the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group of the United States House of Representatives has Article III standing in this case."

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Gay marriage has been legal in the Federal District, Mexico City, since 2010, and the Supreme Court had previously ruled that those marriages must be recognized nationwide. Wednesday’s ruling struck down a law in the southern state of Oaxaca that denied same-sex couples the right to marry there.

The ruling could have repercussions beyond Mexico’s borders. The couples seeking to marry in the Oaxaca case based their claims partly on protections in the American Convention on Human Rights, which has legal force in many Latin American countries. In saying that bans on same-sex marriage are discriminatory, the court may establish a precedent that could be used by LGBT activists throughout the region.

This comes before the U.S. Supreme Court has even decided whether it will hear a gay marriage case.

This Oaxaca case, which has broad implications, had an unlikely beginning. It was initiated by a Oaxacan law student, Alex Alí Méndez Díaz, who brought suits on behalf of a handful of couples even though other LGBT activists in his state warned that they were doomed to fail.

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The court has been considering whether to hear one of several challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act, as well as whether or not to hear an appeal of a lower court' s decision that Proposition 8, California's law banning same-sex marriages, is unconstitutional.

The justices initially met to discuss the cases last Friday, but did not release any orders then or Monday morning. Both cases have been added to the official list of cases for consideration for this Friday's closed-door conference.

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The justices on Friday decided they would hear an appeal from medical professionals who want to stop Myriad Genetics Inc. from patenting genetic mutations that are linked to increased risk of breast cancer. The company's BRACAnalysis test looks for those mutations.

Doctors want to use genetic testing to look at these genes to discover whether patients have increased risks of diseases like breast or ovarian cancer, but they say letting businesses patent them would get in their way. Companies say without being able to patent and profit from their work, they would not be able to fund the type of medical breakthroughs doctors depend on.

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The court is reviewing eight petitions related to the Defense of Marriage Act, which  federal appeals courts in New York and Massachusetts struck down this year, as well as a challenge to the decision that found Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in California, unconstitutional. The justices are in a private meeting today to decide whether to hear the cases or uphold lower court decisions.

Reuters reports that the court could decide which cases to take up as early as this afternoon or Monday morning, and that the "The Supreme Court is expected to take at least one of the challenges, as the court typically reviews lower-court decisions that invalidate a federal law."

The Wall Street Journal speculates that there are three possible courses for the justices: To decline to hear any of the cases, to hear a DOMA case but take no action on Proposition 8 (which would mean gay marriage would be legal in California), or to take up both DOMA and Prop 8.

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The court ordered the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals to reevaluate the case on the merits, after it had initially rejected Liberty's lawsuit on technical grounds.

From the Washington Post:

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Her ordinarily routine request still is being debated more than four years later, and by the likes of former attorneys general, a slew of senators, the Obama administration and possibly this week, the U.S. Supreme Court.

Because Golinski is married to another woman and works for the U.S. government, her claim for benefits has morphed into a multi-layered legal challenge to a 1996 law that prohibits the federal government from recognizing unions like hers.

The high court has scheduled a closed-door conference for Friday to review Golinski's case and four others that also seek to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act overwhelmingly approved by Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton.

The purpose of the meeting is to decide which, if any, to put on the court's schedule for arguments next year.

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Voters had passed the ban on affirmative action in 2006 by a statewide referendum, and last year a three-judge panel on the court struck it down. Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, who is defending the ban, had asked for an en banc hearing before the full 6th Circuit, which ruled last week.

From CNN, Judge R. Guy Cole wrote the decision to overturn the ban:

"'A black student seeking the adoption of a constitutionally permissible race-conscious admissions policy ... could do only one thing to effect change: She could attempt to amend the Michigan Constitution -- a lengthy, expensive and arduous process -- to repeal the consequences' of the ban, Cole wrote.

On the other hand, a student could do several other things to persuade a college to alter its admissions policy to favor applicants' alumni connections, including lobbying the admissions committee or petitioning the university's leaders, Cole wrote.

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The election “continued America’s great history of expanding opportunity and equality,” Emanuel wrote in a letter to the Chicago Sun-Times. “Today, we must take the next step on that journey by affording the opportunity to marry to all Americans — and we can continue that march by quickly enacting marriage equality here in Illinois.”

The Advocate reports:

In Illinois, a marriage equality bill was introduced in February by the state’s three openly gay legislators (there will be a fourth in the next term). Gov. Pat Quinn, also a Democrat, has made it clear he supports such a measure. The Democrats have a majority of seats in both the state Senate and House, and in the next term, beginning in January, will have supermajorities.

All these factors would appear to bode well for the bill, and there has been speculation that a vote on it could come before the end of this year. Emanuel, however, declined to predict when the legislature might take it up or if it would pass. He said he simply wants to ensure marriage equality won’t get lost in the shuffle amid the state’s financial and other challenges, and he thinks it will unless someone makes it a priority.

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Bales, 39, is accused of slipping away from his base at Camp Belambay in southern Afghanistan to attack two villages in March. 16 civilians, including nine children were killed. Several soldiers, testifying at Bales' ongoing preliminary hearing, said he returned to their base covered in blood.

"Terrible, terrible things happened," said prosecutor Major Rob Stelle, who argued that Bales' statements when apprehended showed the soldier to have "a clear memory of what he had done, and consciousness of wrong-doing."

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