"I've always preferred my idea of a commission of inquiry to look at all these issues," Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said Sunday.

Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., head of the intelligence committee, suggested that the George W. Bush administration broke the law by concealing a CIA counterterrorism program from Congress.

The Wall Street Journal, anonymously citing former intelligence officials, reported Monday the secret program was a plan to kill or capture al-Qaida operatives.

The Journal's sources said the plan, which was halted by CIA Director Leon Panetta, was an attempt to carry out a presidential finding authorized in 2001 by President George W. Bush.

The Journal said the agency spent money on planning and maybe some training, but it never became fully operational. The plan was highly classified and the CIA has refused to comment on it.

The assertion that Vice President Dick Cheney ordered the program kept secret from Congress came amid word that Attorney General Eric Holder is contemplating opening a criminal probe of possible CIA torture.

The Senate Judiciary Committee opened the historic confirmation hearing for Sonia Sotomayor, the first nominee to the Supreme Court by a Democratic president in 15 years, at 9:58 a.m. today with Democratic and Republican senators beginning to frame the debate over her nomination.

In a packed hearing room of the Hart Senate Office Building, Sotomayor, 55, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, made her first public appearance since President Obama on May 26 chose her to fill his first vacancy on the nation's highest court. Five minutes before the hearing began, Sotomayor wore a broad smile and a royal blue suit as she walked into the paneled room, accompanied by the committee's chairman,  Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.)

Moments before the Senators began their opening statements that are to occupy most of the hearing's first day, Leahy invited the nominee to introduce her family members occupying the room's front rows. "If I introduced everyone who was family-like," Sotomayor replied, "we'd be here all morning."

The Democrats picked the bouffant-haired Hatoyama to replace his scandal-hit predecessor in a May leadership race, seeing him as best able to hold the sometimes fractious party together.

He was not, however, the most popular candidate with the public, who saw him as being under the shadow of previous party leader Ichiro Ozawa.

Hatoyama attracts more support than Prime Minister Taro Aso in opinion polls, but many voters say they see neither as suitable to be premier.

"His best quality is that he's not Aso," said Jeff Kingston, professor of Asian studies at Temple University's Tokyo campus. "He's a bit of a cipher. He's prominent, but he doesn't leave a strong impression."

Aso, the grandson of a former prime minister, has been criticized as out of touch with ordinary Japanese because of his wealthy background.

But Hatoyama, a Stanford University PhD once nicknamed "the alien" for his prominent eyes, hails from an even wealthier family of industrialists and politicians. His mother's father founded Bridgestone Corp, one of the world's largest tire makers.

A lawyer says the artist who created the "Hope" poster of President Barack Obama will plead guilty to some of the vandalism charges he faces in Boston, while other charges will be dropped.

Shepard Fairey was in Boston Municipal Court on Friday. His attorney Jeffrey Wiesner says they are finishing details of the agreement with prosecutors, but says Fairey will plead guilty to some of the 13 vandalism charges.

Fairey, of Los Angeles, was arrested in February when he was in Boston to kick off an exhibit.

Prosecutors have already dropped 14 charges that claimed the 39-year-old artist placed stickers on public property.

Fairey says he dramatically changed an Associated Press image to make the "Hope" poster. The AP has said the uncredited and uncompensated use violates copyright laws.

Opponents of General Motors Corp.'s plan to sell the bulk of itself to a new government-controlled company face a noon deadline to file appeals and find a way to get the sale halted.

But with their options dwindling and time running out, it's increasingly likely that U.S. Judge Robert Gerber's order approving the sale will go through at noon Eastern, paving the way for the automaker's speedy exit from Chapter 11.

GM's lawyers are working to get documents ready to close the sale quickly if the deadline passes and the sale is legally allowed to go through.

"We'll do it as quickly as possible," GM spokesman Tom Wilkinson said Thursday morning.

The sale is the centerpiece of Detroit-based GM's government-endorsed plan to emerge from court oversight. Once it becomes final, the automaker will be largely free to emerge from bankruptcy protection.

Gerber issued a ruling approving the sale late Sunday, but gave its objectors a four-day window to file appeals. The ruling followed a three-day hearing the week before during which attorneys for several groups including argued against its approval.

Some of the most vocal objectors included groups of people with product-related claims against the automaker. Under the current sale plan, liability for claims related to incidents that occurred before GM's bankruptcy filing won't carry over to "new GM."

That means that those people who claim they were injured as a result of a defective GM product before June 1 will be forced to seek compensation from "old GM," the collection of assets and liabilities leftover from the sale, where they will have to fight with the company's other creditors for a share of what's left.

One of the product liability groups filed papers to appeal Gerber's ruling and asked that the appeal be sent directly to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals for action.

The California Supreme Court has joined a handful of other courts in the country that have said Breathalyzer results mean different things for different people and ruled that suspected drunken drivers can attack the test results in court.

Defense attorneys lauded Thursday's unanimous ruling for deferring to science, which has shown for years that the test results are highly variable. Prosecutors, however, predicted the move will undermine California drunken driving cases.

At issue is how authorities use booze breath to determine how much alcohol is in the bloodstream.

When consumed, alcohol is absorbed in the blood and carried through the brain to the liver and heart before diffusing in the lungs, where it is exhaled in breath.

Authorities now use a nationally accepted scientific formula known as "Henry's law" to convert the amount of alcohol vapor in the lungs to a blood-alcohol level.

The scientific problem is that breath-to-blood ratios vary greatly throughout the population and fluctuate individually, influenced by such factors as body temperature, atmospheric pressure, medical conditions and the precision of the measuring device.