The casinos object to a law that forces them to transfer of millions of dollars to ailing horse tracks.

Last year, the state Supreme Court unanimously upheld the law. The high court let that ruling stand Monday without comment.

The renewal of the law in 2008 figures in the case against Blagojevich. FBI wiretaps on telephones in Blagojevich's home and the governor's office showed an alleged effort by the then-governor to shake down a racetrack owner for a sizable campaign contribution while the bill was pending. A lawyer for the owner, John Johnston, has said the contribution was not made.

Four secretly recorded conversations about the issue were played at Blagojevich's impeachment trial in the state Senate.

The separate requests, which moved the legal battle to the nation's highest court, were filed after a U.S. appeals court in New York approved Chrysler's sale to a group led by Fiat, a union-aligned trust and the U.S. and Canadian governments.

The Chrysler case could set a precedent for General Motors Corp, which is using a similar quick sale strategy in its bankruptcy in New York.

The appeals court late on Friday stayed the closing of the sale until Monday afternoon, giving the pension funds and other opponents time over the weekend to ask the Supreme Court to block the sale while they appeal.

The three state pension funds, which hold about $42 million of Chrysler's $6.9 billion in secured loans, argued the sale unlawfully rewarded unsecured creditors such as the union ahead of secured lenders.

"The need for the court to review the profound issues presented by Chrysler's novel bankruptcy sale far outweighs the cost of delaying" a sale, lawyers for the pension funds and the Indiana attorney general said in seeking an immediate stay.

The pension and construction funds also argued the U.S. government, which kept Chrysler afloat with emergency loans before the automaker's bankruptcy and financed its Chapter 11 filing, overstepped its legal authority by using bailout funds Congress intended for banks.

"The public is watching and needs to see that, particularly, when the system is under stress, the rule of law will be honored and an independent judiciary will properly scrutinize the actions of the massively powerful executive branch," the lawyers said.

Kenneth Sodomsky wants the high court to suppress the videos found on his computer, which he had taken into a Circuit City in Wyomissing, Penn., to get a DVD burner installed into it. While the computer was in the store, a worker looked through some of the files and found movie files with "questionable" names referring to boys of various ages. The worker then found a video of a hand reaching toward a penis and called the police.

Police seized the computer, obtained a warrant and found child pornography. Sodomsky moved to suppress the discovery, saying the Circuit City employees had no right to search his computer and show any of its contents to police.

A trial judge agreed, but a state appellate court overturned that decision, saying Sodomsky ran the risk of his illegal files being found and viewed by taking the computer out of his house and to the store.

Circuit City Stores Inc. closed the last of its stores in March.

The justices said they will not get involved in the dispute between a half-dozen Western tribes and the Arizona Snowbowl ski area north of Flagstaff. The tribes wanted to block the expansion because the resort plans to use treated wastewater to make artificial snow on the mountain.

The tribes have argued that the proposal violates a federal law on religious freedom, but the federal appeals court in San Francisco last year disagreed.

The full 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said the treated sewage could be used on the ski slopes, reversing the decision of a three-judge panel on the same court. The panel had held earlier that using wastewater on a mountain sacred to the tribes would violate the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

The full court, however, said the tribes will still have full use of the mountain for their ceremonies and the snowmaking would not affect that. No plants would be harmed, no ceremonies would be physically affected and no places of worship would be made inaccessible, the court said.

"I think she sounds like a very interesting and good nominee," Bush said of Sonia Sotomayor, the federal appeals judge Obama picked.

Mrs. Bush said in an interview broadcast Monday on ABC's "Good Morning America" that "as a woman, I'm proud that there might be another woman on the court. I wish her well." She was interviewed in Dallas, where the Bushes moved after their White House tenure.

On another subject, Mrs. Bush said her husband will have no comment on any Obama decisions. He feels that as a former president, "he owes President Obama his silence on issues and there's no reason to second-guess any decisions he makes," Mrs. Bush said.

The two were found guilty of a "grave crime" against North Korea and of illegally crossing into the reclusive nation's territory, according to North Korea's state-run news agency.

Former U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson on Monday called the sentencing part of "a high-stakes poker game" and said the time might be right for the United States to work out the release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee with the country's leaders in Pyongyang.

"It is harsher than expected," Richardson said on NBC's "Today" show.

At the White House, deputy spokesman William Burton said in a statement: "The president is deeply concerned by the reported sentencing of the two American citizen journalists by North Korean authorities, and we are engaged through all possible channels to secure their release."

Richardson, who was instrumental in negotiating the release of U.S. citizens from North Korea in an incident in the 1990s, said "the good thing is that there is no charge of espionage." He also said now that the legal process has been completed, he thinks negotiations for their "humanitarian release" can begin.

Richardson said officials of the Obama administration had been in contact with him for his thoughts on how to proceed.