A lawyer for the British plaintiffs, Michael A. Galpern, said they will be considering whether to appeal to the New Jersey Supreme Court.

"We believe today's decision took an unrealistic view of English Law, and entirely disregarded the plain fact that the United Kingdom's loser pays system means that pensioners must now run the risk that Merck may take their house if they lose this case," Galpern said.

He said it was ironic that Merck said New Jersey was an inconvenient location to defend itself.

"The effect of today's ruling will be to make it much cheaper and easier for American companies to injure and kill non-U.S. residents," Galpern said.

Merck lawyer Charles W. Cohen applauded the ruling, asserting that the lawsuits should be filed in Britain, where the plaintiff's medical records and witnesses are located.

He noted that a similar finding was reached last year by the judge handling all the federal lawsuits, who dismissed lawsuits from residents of France and Italy.

Merck pulled Vioxx from the market in 2004 after research showed it doubled cardiovascular risks. The number of pending personal injury lawsuits against Merck have declined recently, to about 26,950, as some claims were dismissed. The company maintains it will not change its strategy of fighting each lawsuit.

Cases filed in New Jersey are all being handled by one judge, state Superior Court Judge Carol Higbee in Atlantic City.

Cases filed in various federal courts have been sent to New Orleans, where they are before U.S. District Judge Eldon E. Fallon.

Merck has won nine cases and lost five that have reached verdicts; it is appealing all its losses and faces retrials involving three other plaintiffs.

On Tuesday, the House voted 411-to-8 to approve the bill with only 2 Republicans voting against the bill, despite criticism from GOP leaders. In the Senate, Democrats predict they, too, will have the votes to pass the measure because few lawmakers want to go home to explain a vote against a measure whose title is the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act.

Still, House Republican leaders called the bill a "hollow shell of reform" and complained that they had been blocked from any role in drafting final language, which was released Monday.

"The legislation is far from perfect, but the fact that they were able, finally, after all these efforts, to get it together to do this is highly significant," says Norman Ornstein, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington and a longtime critic of congressional ethics.

The House and Senate have each already voted some version of ethics and lobby reform. In the House, some reforms were adopted as rules, during the first 100 hours of the new Congress. But reformers say it's essential that the new standards be passed as law in both the chambers.

"There was a strong temptation on the part of many to say, 'We've done this, let's move past it,'" says Mr. Ornstein. It's significant that much of the drive to pass a new law came from the former and current chairs of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Reps. Rahm Emanuel (D) of Illinois and Chris Van Hollen (D) of Maryland, he says.

"What does that tell you? Nobody is closer to the ground [than they are] in understanding what you want your candidates to run on." In the wake of congressional corruption scandals in the last Congress, Democrats knew they needed "a credible case that Congress has cleaned up its act or they couldn't ask voters to send them back," Ornstein adds.

In the run-up to this week's vote, public-interest groups who had rallied behind lobby and ethics reform fell out over whether the reform had gone far enough. A key sticking point is proposed language over how lawmakers will disclose member-sponsored projects, or earmarks.

The legislation requires that earmarks included in bills and conference reports, and their sponsors, be identified on the Internet at least 48 hours before the Senate votes. But the revised bill leaves it to the Senate majority leader or committee chairmen, rather than the Senate parliamentarian, to certify that all earmarks have been identified. The original Senate language allowed members to raise a point of order against individual earmarks on the floor of the Senate. Under the proposed new law, they could raise objections only if the required list were not provided.

"Americans are fed up with special interest earmarks that have been at the center of recent scandals," says Sen. Jim DeMint (R) of South Carolina, who blocked moves to a conference on lobby and ethics reform until he had assurances from Senate majority leader Harry Reid that strong earmark provisions would remain in the final bill. "It is ironic that Senator Reid has seen fit to rewrite a bill in secret that is supposed to provide transparency and sunlight. I'm especially disappointed in Speaker Pelosi, who started this debate with strong rhetoric for earmark disclosure. She completely yielded to Reid and pressure from lobbyists," he said in a statement.

Some public interest groups are backing Senator DeMint in what they see as a lively floor fight in the Senate, expected on Thursday. "The taxpayers' worst fears have been realized. Prototypical of Washington backroom deals, House and Senate Democrats have conjured up a deal that benefits only the powerful appropriators and the special interests that game the system at the expense of average Americans," said Tom Schatz, president of the Council of Citizens Against Government Waste.

But many other open-government groups praise the legislation for moving reform further than it has gone in any previous Congress.

"If you compare where we were in 2006, it's a giant step forward. It could have been two giant steps forward," says Bill Allison, senior fellow for the Sunlight Foundation, a public interest group that promotes transparency in government.

A key provision that was dropped in the final version of this bill would have made lists of congressional earmarks available on a searchable database. The new version makes that requirement only "if technically feasible."

"This is something Amazon.com does every day with its eyes closed," says Mr. Allison. "We're still going to be in a situation where public interest groups are going to have to get earmarks in a form that's usable. Congress should have done this itself and didn't."

If Friedman decides eBay has not designed around the patent, MercExchange could collect "hundreds of millions" of dollars in ongoing infringement fees, said Gregory Stillman, MercExchange's lawyer and a partner in the Hunton & Williams LLP law firm.

"The functionality of 'buy it now' is exactly the same as it was four years ago," Stillman said Monday.

MercExchange spokesman Michael Caputo called eBay a "rank infringer."

An eBay representative wasn't immediately available for comment.

MercExchange may appeal the district court decision on the injunction, Stillman said. That would continue a long battle between the two companies, one in which the U.S. Supreme Court has gotten involved.

The district court originally denied MercExchange's request for a permanent injunction, but the Virginia company appealed the ruling.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit took the case and granted MercExchange an injunction, continuing the court's long-standing practice of granting injunctions in nearly every patent infringement case. But the Supreme Court, in May 2006, overturned the appeals court ruling, saying judges must weigh several factors before granting an injunction.

The Supreme Court sent the case back to Friedman to determine whether an injunction was warranted.

Friedman ruled that the injunction request did not pass the four-part test now required by the Supreme Court. MercExchange has tried to sell patent licenses and its patents to other companies, suggesting that monetary damages are adequate, Friedman wrote.

Since the original judgment in the case, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has also issued two interim findings that the MercExchange patent is invalid, Friedman wrote.

A permanent injunction would also hurt the public, the judge wrote.

"EBay is a multi-billion dollar corporation whose online marketplace brings together tens of millions of buyers and sellers around the world and eBay unquestionably has a substantial impact on the United States' economy," he wrote. "In contrast, MercExchange is a company with two employees that work out of their homes and appear to specialize in litigation and obtaining royalties based on the threat of litigation."

The district court's ruling on the injunction isn't surprising, given the Supreme Court decision and district court's original ruling, said Sarah King, a partner in Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin PC's intellectual property litigation group in San Francisco.

But the ruling is part of a "creeping sea change" in patentholder rights since the Supreme Court ruling, she said. "No longer will patentholders necessarily have the power to shut a company down for patent infringement," she said. "It really removes from the quiver of the patentholder a very powerful arrow that they hold against infringers."

NEWSWEEK: Why did you file this suit?

Robert Levy: First, because I’m a fervent believer in the Constitution, including the Second Amendment, and I read the Second Amendment as securing an individual’s right to keep and bear arms. In most jurisdictions, the courts have read the Second Amendment only to protect members of militias.  In D.C., that issue has not been resolved.  I saw an opportunity, with my two co-counsels, to vindicate Second Amendment rights and to establish a precedent that, if it reached the Supreme Court, would be applicable across the nation.

You don’t own any guns personally.  Why not?

While I believe the Constitution secures my right to own guns, as a practical matter, I don’t sense the need to do so.  I live in a safe area, a relatively affluent area, and crime isn’t a major issue where I live.  I don’t have the same need for self-defense as the six plaintiffs in the Parker case.

Why is the Second Amendment so important?

Originally it was important as a protection accorded to American citizens against a tyrannical government. But even before the Constitution was written, even before the U.S. government was formed, the right existed.  It was a means of self-defense, and today the right to bear arms protects us against predators.  It’s important to note that the Second Amendment doesn’t grant a right to bear arms.  It says the right to keep and bear arms “shall not be infringed,” meaning that it already existed.

How expansive is your view of what the Second Amendment protects?  What if I want to walk around carrying a fully automatic machine gun?

The right to keep and bear arms, like all other rights, is not absolute.  Under the First Amendment, we can’t incite other people to riot. Under the Fourth Amendment, reasonable searches are permitted.  Well, in the case of the Second Amendment, there can be reasonable regulations.  It’s quite clear that some weapons can be regulated, weapons of mass destruction, for instance.  Some persons can be regulated against bearing arms, minors for instance.  Some uses can be and are regulated.  Uses of guns in crimes, for instance.  The question is what constitutes reasonable regulation.

D.C.’s mayor, Adrian Fenty, says that the gun laws have saved countless lives by keeping guns out of the hands of those who would hurt themselves or others.  What's your response to that?

I've looked at the evidence.  I've taught regression analysis and statistical inference, so I know a little bit about how to understand what it means, and the evidence is that gun laws do not help.  Gun restrictions tend to increase violence.  So, on both a constitutional basis and as a general matter, these gun restrictions have been counterproductive.  The evidence is that more gun laws lead to increased crime and more guns lead to decreased crime.

You're paying for this case out of your own pocket.  How much has it cost you?
I have paid for the whole thing, but a good part of this case was put together on donated time on the part of the attorneys involved.  My co-counsel Clark Neily and I are working on this pro bono, and our lead counsel, Alan Gura, is working at subsistence-level wages.  But I've spent a sizable sum of money, a substantial five-figure number.

Attorneys at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis – home to Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr – have donated more money to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign than to all the top Republican candidates combined.

Lawyers at Chicago-based Kirkland – also home to Bush administration official Jay Lefkowitz – have contributed $111,950 to Clinton and another $82,651 to fellow Democrat Barack Obama. Donations to Republicans Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and John McCain total $84,750.

Kirkland attorneys gave 28 percent more to George Bush than to Al Gore in 2000, and 34 percent more to Bush than to John Kerry in 2004, Bloomberg.com reports.

In an even more glaring example of politics making for strange bedfellows, lawyers at the firm Jones Day, which represents the Republican National Committee, have contributed more than three times as much to Clinton, Obama and John Edwards than to GOP candidates.

"Firms want to be on the good side of who they think is going to be the incumbent, whether or not that person is good for business,” Bruce MacEwen, a nonpartisan legal consultant in New York, told Bloomberg. "The conventional wisdom is that the Democrats are going to win the White House.”

The largest contribution to Clinton’s campaign came from a law firm – $241,220 from the attorneys at DLA Piper. The fundraising efforts there were led in part by Jim Blanchard, a partner and former governor of Michigan.

Blanchard told Bloomberg that the shift to Democrats "has a lot to do with the war in Iraq, Guantanamo, torture” and controversies surrounding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

© NewsMax 2007. All rights reserved.

"Given that the attorney general and inspector general have closed their investigations and found no violations of law, the appointment of a special prosecutor is unnecessary," Spitzer spokeswoman Christine Anderson said.

Investigations Committee Chairman George Winner, a Republican senator from Elmira, said naming a special prosecutor was "the bipartisan, responsible way to move forward."

Winner said he was surprised Spitzer "continues to stonewall," adding, "I just think that's unfortunate because this whole thing will continue to fester."

In a report last week, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo found that two top Spitzer aides had, with the help of the State Police, gathered information about Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno's use of state vehicles in New York City and released it to the media. They were attempting to smear Bruno's reputation, the report said. The aides did not break any laws, nor did the GOP senator's use of the helicopter, Cuomo found.

Spitzer, a Democrat, has said repeatedly that he did not know what his staffers had done. He apologized and disciplined two of them.

Monday, Winner said he sent a letter to Spitzer earlier in the day requesting the governor appoint Cuomo as a special prosecutor "with full subpoena power" to investigate the administration's alleged misuse of the State Police.

In the letter, he said such an inquiry could assure the public Spitzer was not involved.

Winner said the special prosecutor could also be someone appointed by Cuomo.

The scandal came to light after Cuomo released his report last week that two of Spitzer's appointees ?Darren Dopp, communications director, and Richard Baum, secretary to the governor ?declined to be interviewed by Cuomo's investigators. Instead, they submitted sworn statements. Baum has said he was not aware of what Dopp, who was placed on unpaid leave indefinitely, and William Howard, deputy homeland security secretary, were doing. Howard has been reassigned to a position outside Spitzer's office.

Last week, the state Ethics Commission announced its own investigation into the matter.

But Winner questioned the commission's independence, noting members are appointed by the governor and the body has limited jurisdiction. Spitzer has made one appointment to the five-member commission and nominated a current member when he was attorney general.

Meanwhile, Anderson said the governor's office has turned over records to the Ethics Commission. She said the records were delivered Friday and are the same e-mails and other documents turned over to the Attorney General's and Inspector General's offices. They include e-mails involving Baum.

The Attorney General's Office declined to comment on Monday's developments. "The findings of our report speak for themselves," said Jeffrey Lerner, a spokesman for Cuomo.

Bruno said in a statement Monday that he was disappointed the governor rejected the call for a special prosecutor.

"In light of this, the Senate will continue to review all options that are available to assure that we get to the truth and to assure that all who were involved in this unfortunate situation are held accountable."