When Lois Lerner of the Internal Revenue Service invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination before a House committee on Wednesday, she did so after making a brief statement.

Those remarks have triggered a debate over whether Lerner waived her Fifth Amendment rights. While case law on the subject is limited and fuzzy, most practitioners agree that Lerner risks being held in contempt.

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George Washington University Law School professor Orin Kerr, in a post on The Volokh Conspiracy blog, pointed to the 1999 Supreme Court ruling in Mitchell v. U.S. that a witness "may not testify voluntarily about a subject and then invoke the privilege against self-incrimination when questioned about the details."

The charges resulted from the so-called "Kids for Cash" scandal that erupted in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania in late 2008. Ciavarella and his fellow judge, Michael Conahan, were accused of receiving over $2.8 million in three years from a commercial builder, Robert Mericle, and an attorney and businessman, Robert Powell, in exchange for helping to construct and operate juvenile detention centers and placing juvenile offenders there.

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Over the course of several years, Ciavarella committed hundreds of juveniles to detention centers co-owned by Powell, including many who were not represented by counsel, without informing the juveniles or their families of his conflict of interest.

The U.S. Senate unanimously confirmed Sri Srinivasan to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Thursday, making him President Obama's first successful nomination to the court and the first new judge there since 2006.

Srinivasan, the principal deputy solicitor general in the U.S. Justice Department, saw his nomination sail through a normally contentious Senate confirmation process. The 97-0 vote reflected his broad support from the legal community and legal pedigree that included work for both Democrat and Republican administrations.

The evidence that George Zimmerman's attorneys have uncovered on Trayvon Martin's cell phone paints a troubling picture of the Miami Gardens teenager: He sent text messages about being a fighter, smoking marijuana and being ordered to move out of his home by his mother.

And photos from that phone offer more of the same: healthy green plants - what appear to be marijuana - growing in pots and a .40-caliber Smith & Wesson handgun.

Defense attorneys on Thursday gave formal notice to prosecutors that they intend to use those and other reputation-damaging pieces of evidence about Trayvon once Zimmerman's second-degree murder trial begins June 10.

Prosecutors say they're not relevant and should be barred.

Jurors in Jodi Arias' murder trial resume deliberations Thursday after they were unable to reach a unanimous verdict on whether she should be sentenced to life in prison or death for killing her one-time boyfriend, prompting the judge to instruct them to keep trying.

The researchers assessed 270 Colorado prison inmates charged with violating prison rules and who, after a disciplinary hearing, were placed in one of three prison environments. Subjects in the first group, which included individuals with or without a mental illness, were placed in a super-maximum security environment in which they were locked in their cell 23 hours a day. Inmates in the second group, which also included individuals with or without a mental illness, were assigned to a general-population maximum-security housing unit, where they had more out-of-cell time per day than the first group had.
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Whereas some of the inmates' psychological health deteriorated over the course of the study, this was generally not the case, even among inmates in solitary confinement. "We were surprised that only a small number of inmates in segregation got clinically worse," Metzner told Psychiatric News.

Iran's election overseers removed potential wild-card candidates from the presidential race Tuesday, blocking a top aide of outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and a former president who revived hopes of reformers.

Their exclusion from the June 14 presidential ballot gives establishment-friendly candidates a clear path to succeed Ahmadinejad....  It also pushes moderate and opposition voices further to the margins....

The candidate-vetting group is called the Guardian Council.

Many US States have a similarly undemocratic system for choosing judges.  A commission, unaccountable to the people and typically dominated by the state bar either outright or as a practical matter, approves a short list of candidates.  The person who actually is accountable to the people, the governor, gets the same kind of lesser of evils (but not by much) choice that the people of Iran will get for their president.

The selection commission serves the same function as the Guardian Council.  It makes sure that the Great Unwashed, through the person they elected, do not choose any candidates of insufficient ideological purity.  The Orwellian name for this system is "merit selection."

Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking disclosure by the Central Intelligence Agency of 52 post-mortem images of Osama bin Laden. The agency refused on the ground that the images were classified Top Secret. Judicial Watch sued, and the district court granted summary judgment for the agency. We affirm because the images were properly classified and hence are exempt from disclosure under the Act.

It isn't easy looking at a photo lineup. But one mug shot was unmistakable. I paused for a long moment, and I must have had a strange look because the officer asked if I recognized someone. "Yes," I said. "That's the driver." Of all the forlorn faces staring up at me, his was the only one smiling.

"He was probably smiling because he knew he got one over on you with your computer," the officer said.

"I guess so. But why would he be smiling now, when he's under arrest?"

"F*** America, Boston Marathon Suspect Wrote in Boat."

As police searched for him, and as he lay bleeding in his boat hideout, Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev wrote "F*** America" on the side panel of the boat, police in Massachusetts told ABC News.

Officers said they also discovered the phrase "Praise Allah" on the boat's side panels and several anti-American screeds, including references to Iraq, Afghanistan and "the infidels."

Hundreds of illegal immigrants with criminal records were released earlier this year as the Obama administration prepared for budget cuts, according to newly released data that challenged claims the program involved "low-risk" individuals ****Of the 2,226 detainees that were released in February, the department revealed, "622 have been identified as having some type of criminal conviction."

Nelson Peacock, assistant secretary for legislative affairs, said ICE focused on [releasing]  those that "posed no significant threat to public safety."

"The initial portrayal by the media has been one of a 'monster' and that's not the impression that I got when I talked to him for three hours," [defense counsel Craig Weintraub] said to Cleveland's WKYC-TV. "I know that family members who have been interviewed by the media have expressed that as well."

Craig argues that Ariel is a loving father who is committed to his daughter.

He is "extremely committed to the well being and positive future for his daughter, who he loves dearly. And if people find that to be a disconnect from what he's alleged to have done, then the people will just have to deal with it. We just know how he feels about his little girl."