The House Judiciary Committee is demanding documents and testimony from President Bush's closest advisers about the firing of federal prosecutors.

When the White House refused, the Democrat-led committee went to court. Lawyers called the president's actions the most expansive view of presidential authority since Watergate.

Late Friday night, the Bush administration responded with court documents of its own, similarly steeped in history. Lawyers called the lawsuit unprecedented. Citing George Washington and Grover Cleveland, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, they said these types of clashes get resolved without going to court.

"For over two hundred years, when disputes have arisen between the political branches concerning the testimony of executive branch witnesses before Congress, or the production of executive branch documents to Congress, the branches have engaged in negotiation and compromise," Justice Department lawyers wrote.

The idea the Congress can't order the president or his advisers to do something is a principle known as executive privilege. That privilege isn't spelled out in the Constitution and courts are rarely asked to decide exactly what it means. And when they have been asked, judges have tried to avoid getting too specific.

"Never in American history has a federal court ordered an executive branch official to testify before Congress," lawyers for the White House wrote.

That makes for a murky area of law and the Bush administration is urging U.S. District Judge John D. Bates not to tidy it up. The ambiguity fosters compromise, political solutions and the kind of give and take that the Founding Father envisioned, attorneys said.

Clearing it up "would forever alter the accommodation process that has served the Nation so well for over two centuries," attorneys wrote.

Congress wants to know whether the Bush administration fired several U.S. attorney for political reasons. That controversy contributed to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigning last year.

The Judiciary Committee subpoenaed former White House counsel Harriet Miers to testify and demanded documents from President Bush's chief of staff, Josh Bolten.

The 5-2 decision affects up to 20 universities, community colleges, school districts and governments in Michigan with policies covering at least 375 gay couples.

Gay rights advocates said the ruling was devastating but were confident that public-sector employers have successfully rewritten or will revise their benefit plans so same-sex partners can keep getting health care.

The ban, a constitutional amendment approved in November 2004, says the union between a man and woman is the only agreement recognized as a marriage "or similar union for any purpose."

The court ruled that while marriages and domestic partnerships aren't identical, they are similar because they're the only relationships in Michigan defined in terms of gender and lack of a close blood connection.

William Earl Lynd was scheduled to die Tuesday evening. He would be the first person to be executed since the court ruled last month that lethal injection is constitutional.

No one has been put to death since September, when the justices agreed to rule on a challenge to lethal injection procedures in Kentucky, similar to practices in roughly three dozen states.

The justices did not comment on their action Tuesday. Lynd was convicted of kidnapping and killing his live-in girlfriend nearly 20 years ago.

Georgia is poised to become the first state in the nation to execute an inmate since the U.S. Supreme Court decided in September to review Kentucky inmates' claims that lethal injection is unconstitutional. The court ruled last month that Kentucky's method of executing inmates, also used by about three dozen other states, is constitutional.

The last execution in the U.S. was Michael Richard of Texas on Sept. 25, 2007.

These are some of the executions that have been scheduled since the U.S. Supreme Court ruling last month:

GEORGIA: William Earl Lynd, 53, scheduled to die at 7 p.m. Tuesday. He was convicted of kidnapping and killing his live-in girlfriend, 26-year-old Ginger Moore, and shooting her three times in the face and head nearly 20 years ago.

MISSISSIPPI: Earl Wesley Berry, 49, on May 21, for the 1987 slaying of Mary Bounds. Berry was convicted of kidnapping Bounds from the parking lot of the First Baptist Church in Houston, Miss., and beating her to death.

OKLAHOMA: Terry Lyn Short, 47, on June 17, for throwing a homemade explosive into an Oklahoma City apartment building in 1995, resulting in the death of 22-year-old Ken Yamamoto.

TEXAS: Jose Medellin, 33, on Aug. 5, for his participation in the gang rape and strangulation deaths of two teenage girls 15 years ago in Houston.

Robert Stevens died Oct. 5, 2001 after being exposed to the deadly substance. It was in an envelope mailed to the offices of American Media Inc., which publishes the National Enquirer, Sun and Globe newspapers.

His wife sued the federal government and a private laboratory, claiming they both had a duty to protect the public from anthrax. The court is hearing arguments on Monday in the case.

Kreuscher (CROY'-shir) says the new name would symbolize the help God gave him through tough times.

The 57-year-old man also told the (Arlington Heights) Daily Herald he's worried that atheists may succeed in removing the phrase "In God We Trust" from U.S. currency.

He recalls that the phrase "God Reigns" was removed from the Zion city seal in 1992 after courts deemed it unconstitutional. Zion was founded as a theocracy — by a sect that believed the Earth was flat.

The school bus driver and amateur artist in the northern Chicago suburb says he has filed a petition to change his name in Lake County Circuit Court.