Early returns show voters rejected Initiative 1098 being rejected with about 65 percent of the vote to 35 percent in unofficial returns.

Initiative 1098 would institute a new state tax on the top 1 percent of incomes to pay for education and health programs while trimming state property and business taxes. The campaign follows January’s overwhelming decision by Oregon voters to increase taxes for corporations and wealthier households.

"I'm particularly gratified the way Initiative 1098 is going down to defeat. I don't think we're going to see that kind of initiative back anytime soon," said former Senator Slade Gorton.

Initiative 1098 campaign was referred to as the "battle of the billionaires."

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and his father are among the wealthy Washingtonians who joined labor unions and other traditional Democratic allies to support the tax-the-rich ballot measure. Opposing 1098 were Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Boeing, Russell Investments, Paccar Inc., software billionaire Charles Simonyi and members of the Nordstrom family.

And, big money was thrown into the fight. Supporters of the initiative spent more than $6.1 million, while the campaign against it spent more than $5 million of the $6.4 million raised.

California voters rejected a ballot measure on Tuesday that would have made it the first U.S. state to legalize marijuana for recreational use.

The "no" vote on Proposition 19 had 56 percent of the vote to 43 percent for "yes," with 20 percent of precincts counted. CNN projected the measure's failure.

The nation's eyes were on Prop 19 because legalization would have put the state at odds with federal drug laws and the Obama administration said it would continue to prosecute individuals in California for possession or growth of pot.

A maverick move by California could also have inspired other states, as has been the case with medical marijuana.

California in 1996 led the nation with a ballot measure approving cannabis for medical purposes and 13 other states have since followed suit.

Passage of Prop 19 would also have had a financial impact because it cleared the way for local governments to regulate the "business side" of pot, including commercial cultivation and taxation.

Prop 19 supporters argued that ending prosecutions of marijuana possession would free up strained law enforcement resources and strike a blow against drug cartels, much as repealing prohibition of alcohol in the 1930s crushed bootlegging by organized crime.

A panel of 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday blocked a U.S. district judge from demanding that the military enforce her order against the Pentagon's 'don't ask, don't tell' policy that bars gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military.

The immediate effect of the decision is to leave in place indefinitely a congressional ban that U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips had found in September was unconstitutional because it infringed on the First Amendment rights of gay and lesbian soldiers, sailors and Marines. In October, she ordered the Pentagon to stop enforcing the ban, a ruling that briefly ended 'don't ask, don't tell,' the repeal of which has foundered in Congress, despite pledges by President Barack Obama to end it.

In its ruling, the panel said it had found "convincing" the government's arguments that suddenly ending the prohibition on gays and lesbians serving openly would have a deleterious effect on the military. "The public interest in ensuring orderly change of this magnitude in the military — if that is what is to happen — strongly militates in favor of a stay," the court said.

The panel also questioned whether Phillips' opinion would be upheld in the end.

"The district court's analysis and conclusions are arguably at odds with the decisions of at least four other circuit courts of appeals: the first, second, fourth and eighth," the panel said. The panel said the 9th Circuit was obligated by precedent not to interfere with the decisions of a "sister circuit" until it had undetaken a full hearing on the merits of the case.

The Supreme Court is refusing to take up a constitutional challenge to provisions of the Patriot Act from a lawyer who was once wrongly suspected in deadly terrorist bombings in Spain.

The justices on Monday turned down an appeal from Brandon Mayfield, the Oregon lawyer who was arrested by federal agents after they mistakenly matched him to a fingerprint from the train bombings in Madrid in 2004.

It turned out the fingerprint didn't belong to Mayfield, who got an apology and $2 million from the federal government. But a federal appeals court blocked Mayfield's challenge to the Patriot Act, the post-9/11 law that was used to arrest him. The high court left the appeals court ruling in place.

The U.S. Supreme Court has for now cleared the way for states to use foreign sources in obtaining a lethal injection drug used in carrying out the death penalty.

Although the Supreme Court has upheld death by lethal injection, the regimen it has approved includes injection with a dose of sodium thiopental that is approved by the Food and Drug Administration to render the prisoner unconscious so he does not feel pain. In recent months, Hospira Inc., the only U.S. manufacturer of the drug, has been unable to meet demand, citing unspecified problems with its raw material suppliers. The shortage has left death penalty states scrambling to find alternatives.

Enter Arizona and the case of Jeffrey Landrigan. Landrigan's lawyers sought to block his execution because state officials would not say where they were getting the drug for the execution, and defense lawyers contended that there was no way to evaluate the safety of the drug without knowing where it came from. Pressed by a federal judge, the state admitted it was using a drug from a foreign country, but wouldn't specify which one.

The highest court in Massachusetts has rejected an appeal by a former high school student who was convicted of planning a Columbine-style attack at his high school in Marshfield.

Joseph Nee was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and served nine months in prison.

Nee appealed his conviction based on the legal defense of “renunciation,” arguing that he had abandoned the plan by a group of teens in 2004 to blow up Marshfield High School and shoot everyone on a hit list of students, teachers and emergency workers.

In its ruling yesterday, the Supreme Judicial Court said Nee was not entitled to a renunciation defense because he did not acknowledge that he conspired with other students to commit a crime.

The court said Nee failed to reveal and renounce his own crime.