A San Diego-based defense contractor pleaded guilty Monday to offering bribes to a Navy official who, in return, placed $300,000 worth of orders from the company for military aircraft.

Jesse Denome, owner of JD Machine Tech, Inc., admitted that from June 2004 to September 2005 he gave a Navy official a bicycle worth nearly $2,500, a model airplane engine worth $449 and made $18,000 in payments on the official's personal credit card.

In exchange, prosecutors say the official placed over 100 orders from the company for a Navy's aircraft program.

The Navy is still investigating the official, identified only as D.V.

Prosecutors say Denome was trying to illegally win valuable Navy contracts over the competition.

According to court documents, Denome also filed false tax returns in 2005, 2006 and 2008, claiming $300,000 less than his income and passing off vacations and hobbies as business deductions. Prosecutors say as a result, he owes the government more than $80,000.

Denome, 47, faces up to eight years in prison and more than $500,000 in fines. He is scheduled to be back in court for sentencing in August.

The Supreme Court has declined to hear a dispute over whether students challenging a private Hawaiian school system's admissions policy must be identified.

The court on Monday left in place lower court rulings against four non-Hawaiian students who object to the Kamehameha Schools' policy that gives admissions preference to those of Hawaiian ancestry. Only a few non-Hawaiians have ever been admitted.

The challengers wanted to file their suit anonymously because of concerns about public humiliation and retaliation if they are identified.

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to revive a lawsuit challenging a controversial post-Sept. 11 CIA program that flew terrorism suspects to secret prisons.

The appeal asked the court to examine two controversial aspects of the U.S. response to the 9/11 attacks, "the extraordinary rendition" program that sent the suspects to secret prisons and the "state secrets privilege."

The high court has refused several other appeals based on the government's invocation of state secrets to derail lawsuits.

The case involved five terrorism suspects who were arrested shortly after 9/11 and said they were flown by a Boeing Co. subsidiary to prisons around the world where they were tortured. A divided 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco cited national security risks in dismissing the men's case last year.

The terror suspects sued Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan in 2007, alleging that the extraordinary rendition program amounted to illegal "forced disappearances." They alleged that the San Jose-based subsidiary conspired with the CIA to operate the program.

A trial court judge quickly dismissed the lawsuit after the Bush administration took over defense of the case from Chicago-based Boeing and invoked the state secrets privilege, demanding a halt to the litigation over concern that top secret intelligence would be divulged.

The Supreme Court is brushing aside an atheist's challenge to religion in government, refusing to hear a complaint about President Barack Obama adding "so help me God" to his inaugural oath of office.

The high court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from Michael Newdow, who argued that government references to God are unconstitutional and infringe on his religious beliefs.

Many presidents have added "so help me God" to the oath.

Newdow sued to keep Obama from doing so and lost. He wanted overturned an appeals court's ruling saying it would be useless to ban Chief Justice John Roberts from prompting Obama to say "so help me God" because the president could have easily found someone else to administer the oath.