The Rev. Edward Pinkney was convicted in 2007 of paying people $5 to vote in a recall election in the southwestern Michigan city of Benton Harbor and was sentenced to probation.

Months later, Pinkney wrote a commentary in a Chicago-based populist newspaper that said Judge Alfred Butzbaugh could be punished by God with curses, fever and "extreme burning" unless he repented, a reference to an Old Testament passage. The black minister also described Butzbaugh, a white judge who presided over his case, as dumb, racist and corrupt.

In June 2008, another Berrien County judge sent Pinkney to prison for three to 10 years for violating probation with his words. Pinkney appealed saying his free-speech rights were trampled.

Once out of the parking lot, Peterson was arrested for drunken driving. He was subsequently found guilty and ordered to spend 60 days in jail.

A Wisconsin appeals court on Wednesday commended Peterson for doing the right thing by trying to sleep it off, and said the trial court was wrong not to let him argue that police had entrapped him.

The state had argued successfully at trial that people who choose to drink too much can't argue they've been entrapped when stopped for drunken driving. The 2nd District Court of Appeals disagreed.

"Drinking alcohol to excess, while inadvisable and unhealthy, is not unlawful by itself," the appeals court said.

It did not address the fact that Peterson was underage. Peterson's attorney, Andrew Mishlove, said that was irrelevant given the other issues at stake.

"I was asked no question by anyone including the president about my views on any specific legal issue," she said at the outset of a second day of questioning by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

She made her remark after Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, asked about a published report that administration officials have been seeking to reassure abortion rights groups concerned about her position on the issue.

Sotomayor, 55, is in line to become the first Hispanic to sit on the Supreme Court. Even Republicans concede she is on the way toward confirmation, barring a major gaffe.

Sotomayor sidestepped when Cornyn asked whether she stood by or disavowed a controversial 2001 remark that a "wise Latina" judge would often make better decisions than a white male.

She said she stood by her statement on Tuesday that the comment was a rhetorical flourish gone awry.

The National Court said investigative magistrate Santiago Pedraz had produced no new evidence to indicate that the soldiers had acted incorrectly, given that they were in a war situation.

The soldiers, members of a tank crew, said they were responding to hostile fire when they shot at a Baghdad hotel housing Western journalists during the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Spanish cameraman Jose Couso was one of two journalists killed in the shooting. The other was Reuters cameraman Taras Portsyk.

Pedraz first charged the soldiers in 2007. The National Court threw out that indictment this year, saying the evidence was insufficient and concluded the Couso's death was an accident of war.

But Pedraz reinstated it in May citing new evidence from three Spanish journalists who were at the hotel at the time of the shelling and looking out of a hotel window along with Couso.

These reporters testified that the tank had not come under fire before shooting at the Palestine Hotel.

But in the latest ruling, the National Court said their testimonies provided no new evidence which could lead the court to question the soldiers' claims that they believed, rightly or wrongly, they had come under fire, possibly from a sniper.

The 6-0 decision limits the potential liability of companies that made components of lead paint for decades and are now facing dozens of lawsuits by Milwaukee children who ingested paint chips.

The lawsuits, including about 30 that are pending, will still move forward claiming the companies failed to warn consumers of the risks and created a market for a dangerous product, said Milwaukee attorney Peter Earle, who represents the children. But the plaintiffs now cannot add claims of defective product design, which could have been easier to prove.

The case at issue involved a boy who sustained lead poisoning after ingesting paint chips while living in a Milwaukee apartment in 1998, when he was 1. The boy, now 12, suffered learning disabilities as a result, Earle said.

Writing for the majority, Justice Ann Walsh Bradley said the boy and other plaintiffs cannot claim manufacturers of white lead carbonate products used as a pigment in residential paints were responsible for a design defect.

U.S. District Judge David Hittner issued an order saying he will allow the "thousands of potential victims throughout the world" to speak to the court or submit written statements before he accepts a plea agreement in the case between prosecutors and James M. Davis, the ex-chief financial officer of Houston-based Stanford Financial Group.

Davis pleaded not guilty during his arraignment Monday to conspiracy to commit mail, wire and securities fraud; mail fraud; and conspiracy to obstruct a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation.

But his attorney has said the former Stanford finance chief will plead guilty to these charges during a court hearing Aug. 6.

Davis was charged last month as part of the federal government's criminal case against Stanford and executives Laura Pendergest-Holt, Gilberto Lopez and Mark Kuhrt.