On the Waterfront--Still. John Fund has this piece in OpinionJournal.com: "Congress is patting itself on the back for passing the Port Security Act last Saturday. But the day before, a House-Senate conference committee stripped out a provision that would have barred serious felons from working in sensitive dock security jobs."

Gagging Gloria Allred The Supreme Court has rejected attorney Gloria Allred's challenge to a gag order on police, prosecutors, defense counsel and attorneys representing witnesses during the trial of Scott Dylenski, convicted earlier this year of the murder of Pamela Vitale, wife of TV legal analyst Scott Horowitz. Allred represented the murderer's ex-girlfriend, who testified at the trial. She hired famed constitutional lawyer Erwin Chemerinsky to argue that the judge's order amounted to prior restraint of Allred's free speech rights according to a San Jose Mercury News story by AP writer Pete Yost.

Death Row inmate Robert Thompson, convicted and sentenced to death in 1983 for the rape and murder of a 12-year-old Anaheim boy, has died of an apparent heart attack according to a report this morning's Bay City News Wire. The story reports that after seventeen years, Thompson was still pursuing claims regarding his case in federal court and that the leading cause of death at San Quentin is natural causes.

A Journalism Ethics Lesson. The Cincinnati Inquirer has this editorial on an astonishing revictimization of a rape victim by a professor: "A year ago, a University of Cincinnati journalism professor passed out a police report with not only details of the 2002 rape, but [the victim's] name, address, telephone number, height, weight and hair color to his class. The lesson, ostensibly, was one on journalistic ethics."

Military Commissions Act. Sens. Warner, McCain, and Graham have this op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (subscription) on the compromise military commissions bill.