Attorneys for Jim Ellis and John Colyandro, who operated Texans for a Republican Majority during the 2002 campaign, argued that the 3rd Court of Appeals should toss out their indictments because the laws used against them were vague and too broad.

In arguments made to the appeals court two years ago, Travis County prosecutors disagreed, urging the court to let the prosecution continue.

In a lengthy opinion issued Friday, the court affirmed the finding of a lower court and declined to dismiss the indictments.

"The challenged statutes give constitutionally adequate notice of the conduct prohibited and sufficiently determinate guidelines for law enforcement," 3rd Court of Appeals Justice Alan Waldrop writes in the opinion.

In 2002, Texans for a Republican Majority sent $190,000 in corporate checks to the Republican National Committee. The RNC, in turn, sent $190,000 of money collected from individuals to seven Texas candidates.

A Travis County grand jury indicted Ellis, Colyandro and DeLay on money-laundering charges in 2005.

Prosecutors argue that the transaction was an attempt to turn corporate money that is illegal in Texas elections into legal donations to GOP candidates. The defense argues that it was separate, legal transactions.

DeLay, who resigned from Congress in 2006, was not a party to the appeal.

"I've never stumped before, but I want to be a part of this," Bumgarner said. The retired insurance executive and devout Mormon said his late mother would "turn over in her grave" if she knew that gays and lesbians could marry.

With less than 11 weeks until Election Day, supporters of Proposition 8 are ramping up their field organization and refining their message as they seek to persuade California voters to shut the door on same-sex marriage. It's the first time voters will be asked to weigh in on the issue in either California or Massachusetts — the states where gays have won the right to wed.

An estimated 15,000 backers of the measure, most of them members of Mormon, Catholic and evangelical Christian churches, knocked on doors and distributed campaign literature to registered voters throughout the state this weekend and last, according to Jennifer Kerns, spokeswoman for the Yes on 8 campaign.

The initiative is a constitutional amendment, similar to ones already enacted in 26 other states, that would overturn the California Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage. It needs a simple majority of votes to pass.

Doug Baker of the Michigan attorney general's office made the disclosure during a routine arraignment for Kilpatrick on the charges in one of two criminal cases against him.

Kilpatrick attorney Juan Mateo told Circuit Court Judge David Groner he had just learned of the deal offer and wasn't prepared to respond. Another defense attorney, James Thomas, said after the hearing: "We're preparing for trial."

A not guilty plea on the assault charges was entered on the mayor's behalf. Kilpatrick didn't speak in court.

The mayor is accused of shoving a sheriff's detective into another investigator while they tried to serve a subpoena on one of his friends July 24.

Kilpatrick is a superdelegate to the Democratic National Convention next week in Denver. Thomas said last week the mayor is interested in attending but conditions of his bond in the assault case prevent him from traveling outside the metro Detroit area.

A hearing was scheduled for Monday on Kilpatrick's bond conditions.

Separately, Kilpatrick and his former top aide, Christine Beatty, were charged in March with conspiracy, perjury, obstruction of justice and misconduct in office, mostly tied to their testimony in a civil trial. Sexually explicit text messages between the pair, published by the Detroit Free Press in January, contradict their sworn denials of an affair, a key point in the trial last year involving a former deputy police chief.

Meanwhile, Gov. Jennifer Granholm is scheduled on Sept. 3 to consider a request from the Detroit City Council to have Kilpatrick removed from office. Under Michigan law, a governor can remove an elected official for misconduct. That hearing could last several days.

Granholm declined Friday to discuss anything involving Kilpatrick.

Judge Ernest Murphy and the state Commission on Judicial Conduct have agreed Murphy is "permanently disabled" from performing his judicial duties, according to the order from the state Supreme Judicial Court.

Murphy has said the libel case took a severe physical and emotional toll and he suffers from post-traumatic stress.

The commission initiated a complaint in October, alleging that Murphy suffered from disabilities that affected his performance. The court sealed the complaint and most related documents because they contain personal medical information.

Murphy's attorney, Michael Mone, said he was prohibited from commenting on the agreement.

Howard Neff, a staff attorney for the commission, would not comment on details of the complaint, but said the court accepted the agreement and "ordered that Judge Murphy shall not sit again as a judge in Massachusetts."

The Supreme Judicial Court hasn't decided yet whether to impose on Murphy the commission's recommendation for a 30-day suspension without pay, $25,000 fine and public censure for using court letterhead to write a threatening letter to the Herald's publisher, Patrick Purcell.

The agreement allows Murphy to continue to receive his judicial pay for up to four months. During that period, he must use any accrued vacation and sick time.

In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit threw out a two-year-old rule that may have allowed some refineries, power plants and factories to exceed pollution limits because the Environmental Protection Agency "failed to fix inadequate monitoring requirements ... and prohibited states and local authorities from doing so."

Since 1990, the Clean Air Act has required permits granted to facilities releasing more than 100 tons of any pollutant a year to include enough monitoring to ensure the company is meeting its emissions targets. Approximately 15,000 to 16,000 permits have been issued under the program, mostly by state and local pollution agencies.

"We can't have strong enforcement of our clean air laws unless we know what polluters are putting into the air," said Keri Powell, a staff attorney with Earthjustice, who sued the EPA on behalf of four environmental groups.

The EPA said Tuesday that it was reviewing the court's decision. But an agency spokesman said the monitoring deficiencies should be remedied on the national level rather than on a case-by-case basis.

Appeals court judge Brett Kavanaugh, a former attorney in the Bush White House, wrote the sole dissenting opinion.

He said that while EPA and state and local governments may disagree about whether monitoring requirements will adequately measure compliance, he found "nothing in the statute that prohibits EPA's approach."

After a trial of nearly two months, the jurors in Ventura County Superior Court found on Tuesday that the La Conchita Ranch Co. did not build a sufficient drainage system for its land on a hilltop overlooking the community of La Conchita.

The landslide followed soaking winter storms, and attorneys for the plaintiffs had argued the ranch, which grows lemons and avocados, saturated its orchards and created a "perfect recipe" for a landslide.

The ranch's lawyers countered that the area is geologically unstable and has had at least six landslides, including a 1909 slide that killed four railroad workers.

The Jan. 10, 2005, slide destroyed 13 homes and damaged 23 others in the unincorporated town on California's central coast, 70 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

"I'm glad the ranch is being held accountable," said community leader Mike Bell, sometimes called the "mayor" of the unincorporated town. "They had every opportunity to prevent what happened to our town and hopefully now they're going to pay for it."

Attorneys for both sides declined to comment after Tuesday's findings, citing a gag order that continues until the damages phase of the trial is over. That part of the trial, which the judge has said could take more than a month, begins Monday.

The ranch will not be subject to punitive damages, because the jury ruled that its conduct was not "outrageous" or in "reckless disregard" to property or people.

It took Judge Vincent O'Neill more than an hour to read 50 pages of findings in the case, in which dozens of plaintiffs including property owners and relatives of victims sued the company for wrongful death, personal damage and property damage.

The complex jury verdict also found that some of the plaintiffs who owned property in the area were liable for injuries to other plaintiffs.

The jury exonerated ranch manager David Orr and Ventura County, saying they were not negligent.