Smith also admitted she mailed a false campaign finance statement to state election officials while running for her Senate seat in 2002.

Federal prosecutors allege Smith had given her campaign $15,000 illegally siphoned from her businesses, then concealed it as contributions from various individuals.

Smith's husband also pleaded guilty Tuesday. Mark Smith admitted to a tax fraud charge involving $63,000 in withholding taxes due in 2004 from the health care companies.

The Smiths had faced a 17-count indictment in the case. The charges also included tax evasion and tax fraud counts against them both, alleging nearly $1 million in unpaid withholding taxes, as well as campaign-related mail fraud counts against the former legislator.

Each pleaded guilty as part of separate agreements with prosecutors. Though court officials have yet to calculate the punishment recommended under federal sentencing guidelines, their plea agreements suggest prison terms of up to five years each as well as fines.

The couple remains free on bail pending a Nov. 5 sentencing hearing.

Lisa Smith had served two terms in the House of Delegates when she challenged and defeated then-Senate Finance Chairman Oshel Craigo, D-Putnam, in a 2002 election upset. She resigned the Senate seat in December 2004, citing an undisclosed illness.

The Smiths were indicted in early 2006. The case was delayed after Lisa Smith was found mentally incompetent to stand trial. She received treatment at a Federal Bureau of Prisons facility, and U.S. District Judge Robert C. Chambers declared her competent in late March.

Lisa Smith remains in a doctor's care and relies of various medications for her mental health, Chambers was told Tuesday.

For the 6th consecutive year, Greenberg Traurig has been selected as the best corporate law firm in Miami by directors serving on boards of publicly traded companies. The results were published in Corporate Board Member magazine's annual Legal Industry Research Study, sponsored by FTI Consulting.

Corporate Board Member/FTI Consulting's annual study identifies the top 20 national corporate law firms and the top five corporate law firms in 25 major metropolitan areas, based on ballots submitted by directors serving on boards of publicly traded companies listed with the NASDAQ Stock Market, New York Stock Exchange, or American Stock Exchange.

"This recognition is especially meaningful to us because it comes from clients and people directly affected by the constantly changing legal and regulatory environment," said Gary Epstein, chair of Greenberg Traurig's national corporate practice. "We work hard to establish and maintain continued confidence and respect of corporate directors, and we are proud and grateful when our efforts are rewarded like this. I believe that we share this recognition with the other Greenberg Traurig corporate lawyers in South Florida, with whom we work on a regular basis, and, in a broader sense, with the entire national corporate practice group, whose resources are always available to us."

"Doing well in our survey has become a singular badge of honor, for the very reason that it doesn't come from the law firms' peers," said William S. Rukeyser, editorial director of Corporate Board Member. "It's an accolade from their customers -- the directors, executives and general counsel who hire them, pay their bills, and thrive or suffer from their advice."

The 40 attorneys in Greenberg Traurig's Corporate and Securities Practice in Miami represent both public and privately-held clients in a wide range of industries and in transactions ranging from multi-billion dollar acquisitions to private equity transactions as well as public and private offerings of securities.

About Greenberg Traurig, LLP

Greenberg Traurig, LLP is an international, full-service law firm with 1,700 attorneys and governmental affairs professionals in the U.S., Europe and Asia. The firm is ranked seventh on The American Lawyer's Am Law 100 listing of the largest law firms in the U.S., based on number of lawyers.

Earlier this year, Roe told lawyers at a Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association conference that "there will be negative campaigns against judges in 2008. That is reality."

Lathrop simply said that it no longer needed the space it leased to Roe and that it had given its landlord and Roe notice of its intent to terminate the lease.

Roe last week said his lease runs until March or April and he'd been dealing directly with the building's owner, an out-of-town outfit. He said he originally signed a two-year lease.

Roe said he hopes to remain in the space by negotiating directly with the landlord but plans to remain there in any event until the sublease expires.

The space houses nine employees, according to Roe, who has his own 20- by 25-foot glassed-in corner office. He said he had two other offices in the area but declined to disclose their locations.

Blunt's sister, Amy Blunt, works in Lathrop's government relations department. Like other large and influential law firms, Lathrop boasts both heavyweight Democrats and Republicans on its roster, including Jack Craft (Republican) and Harold Fridkin (Democrat) in its Kansas City office.

KSU case is 'moot'

A constitutional challenge to the removal in 2004 of the adviser to Kansas State University's newspaper was ruled moot last week by a federal court.

Katie Lane, the former editor in chief of the Collegian, and Sarah Rice, its former managing editor, sued over the removal of Ron Johnson as the paper's adviser, supposedly because of the subpar quality of the newspaper's news coverage.

The move occurred after a controversy erupted on campus over the extent of minority news coverage in the newspaper and its failure to cover the Big XII Conference on Black Student Government held in Manhattan in 2004. Lane and Rice claimed that Johnson's removal was triggered by the controversy and chilled the exercise of their First Amendment rights.

The trial court dismissed the case, finding that the First Amendment claim failed because the decision to remove Johnson was based on the quality of the Collegian, not its content. On appeal, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the trial court's decision, ruling that because Lane and Rice have since graduated, their claims were moot.

An exception to the mootness doctrine — where there's a reasonable expectation that the same complaining parties will be subjected to the same actions again — was found inapplicable.

"Because only KSU students serve as editors of the Collegian, there is no reasonable expectation that Lane and Rice will be subjected, post-graduation, to censorship by defendants in connection with this newspaper," the court stated.

The USA TODAY/Gallup poll, taken Friday through Sunday, found that Clinton has widened her lead over Obama. Her support was at 48 percent, up 8 percentage points from three weeks ago, while Obama's support was down two percentage points at 26 percent.

The 22-point gap between the two is nearly double the margin found in the July 12-15 poll.

Among Democrats and independents who "lean" Democratic, former North Carolina senator John Edwards is at 12 percent.

Among Republicans, the race is stable: former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani at 33 percent, former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson at 21 percent, Arizona Sen. John McCain at 16 percent and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney at 8 percent.

The Democratic race is much closer in the states where opening contests will be held and campaigning is already fierce, the USA Today newspaper reported.

In the survey, Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents by overwhelming margins say Clinton would do a better job as president than Obama in handling terrorism, the Iraq war and relations with unfriendly nations.

If the nomination narrows down to two, Clinton was preferred over Obama by 59 percent to 36 percent.

Also in the poll, President George W. Bush's approval rating ticked up to 34 percent, better than his low of 29 percent in July. The approval rating for congressional Republicans was 29 percent and 37 percent for congressional Democrats -- both new lows in the eight years since the question was first asked.

The survey of 1,012 adults has an error margin of +/- 3 points for the full sample, and 5 points for the Republican and Democratic subsamples.

The company noted that this class action lawsuit settlement will have no impact on earnings and capital in 2007, as it has accrued $74.25 million in 2005 for the potential settlement of the class action lawsuit.