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A federal judge today blocked a last-minute rule enacted by President Bush allowing visitors to national parks to carry concealed weapons. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly issued a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit brought by gun-control advocates and environmental groups. The Justice Department had sought to block the injunction against the controversial rule.

WASHINGTON, Mar 19, 2009 (UPI via COMTEX) -- A federal judge in Washington Thursday blocked enforcement of a Bush administration rule allowing people to carry loaded concealed weapons in national parks. The rule, filed toward the end of former President George W. Bush's second term, reversed a 25-year-old U.S. Department of the Interior policy requiring that guns be kept unloaded, dismantled or locked up in national parks, except in areas designated for hunting and target practice.

Twice in the past four years, a top Justice Department lawyer warned the presiding judge of a secret surveillance court that information overheard in President Bush's eavesdropping program may have been improperly used to obtain wiretap warrants in the court, according to two sources with knowledge of those events. The revelations infuriated U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly -- who, like her predecessor, Royce C. Lamberth, had expressed serious doubts about whether the warrantless monitoring of phone calls and e-mails ordered by Bush was legal. Both judges had insisted that no information obtained this way be used to gain warrants from...

The Federal Election Commission today issued an advisory opinion that finds the Fired Up network of blogs qualifies for the "press exemption" to federal campaign finance laws. The press exemption, as defined by Congress, is meant to assure "the unfettered right of the newspapers, TV networks, and other media to cover and comment on political campaigns." The full ruling is available at the FEC site. A noteworthy passage: "...an entity otherwise eligible for the press exception would not lose its eligibility merely because of a lack of objectivity..."

The United States suspended its controversial military trials for 'war on terror' detainees after a ruling by a federal judge. Following the judge's action on Monday, the Defense Department said it had postponed the first trial hearing of accused "Australian Taliban" David Hicks, which was scheduled to start Friday at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba. "The courts have intervened, as I understand it, and things are off for a period until the courts sort through things," US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said. Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said the government has not decided whether to appeal the ruling...

Bloggers narrowly dodge federal crackdown Published: March 24, 2005, 8:50 PM PST By Declan McCullagh Staff Writer, CNET News.com Political bloggers and other online commentators narrowly avoided being slammed with a sweeping set of Internet regulations this week. When the Federal Election Commission kicked off the process of extending campaign finance rules to the Internet on Thursday, the public document was substantially altered from one prepared just two weeks earlier and reviewed by CNET News.com. The 44-page document, prepared by the FEC general counsel's office and dated March 10, took a radically different approach and would have imposed decades-old rules...

Bradley Smith says that the freewheeling days of political blogging and online punditry are over. In just a few months, he warns, bloggers and news organizations could risk the wrath of the federal government if they improperly link to a campaign's Web site. Even forwarding a political candidate's press release to a mailing list, depending on the details, could be punished by fines. Smith should know. He's one of the six commissioners at the Federal Election Commission, which is beginning the perilous process of extending a controversial 2002 campaign finance law to the Internet. In 2002, the FEC exempted the...

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that terror suspects held in Cuba must be allowed to meet with lawyers, and that the government cannot monitor their conversations. In a sharp rebuke of the Bush administration, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said the administration "attempts to erode this bedrock principle" of attorney-client privacy with "a flimsy assemblage" of arguments. The Supreme Court ruled in June that the 600 foreign-born men then held in the Navy-run prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could challenge their captivity in American courts.