Liberals fear him. Conservatives distrust him. But all eyes will be on Kennedy as the court opens its 2007-08 term Monday with a string of major cases on the horizon that appear headed for 4-to-4 deadlocks.

Among them is a dispute over gun rights in Washington, D.C., a battle over the legal rights of terror suspects at the Guantánamo detention center, and a challenge to the president's power to order state judges to uphold international court rulings.

In addition, the high court will examine whether execution by lethal injection in Kentucky is a form of cruel and unusual punishment, and whether the Constitution forbids Indiana from requiring voters to produce photo identification prior to casting a ballot.

The same internal dynamics among the justices that produced a string of conservative victories on abortion, affirmative action, and campaign finance last term will again be on full display. But this term, Kennedy's positions on pending cases are less clear.

Some analysts say the highest-profile cases this year are likely to bring a broader mix of both liberal and conservative victories. But several of the cases appear too close to call, court watchers say.

One of the most anticipated cases involves a landmark legal dispute over the meaning of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. The justices are being asked to decide whether this is an individual right that belongs to the people or a collective right bestowed by the states through organized militias.

The court has not yet agreed to take up the issue, but many constitutional scholars believe it soon will. If so, it would mark the first time since 1939 that the Supreme Court has examined the meaning of the Second Amendment.

Two related cases, District of Columbia v. Heller (07-290) and Parker v. District of Columbia (07-335), involve challenges to gun-control laws in the nation's capital. The disputes will take the justices back to the drafting of the Bill of Rights and the foundations of the republic, analysts say.

"This is 1791 for the Second Amendment," Georgetown Law Center Prof. Nicholas Rosenkranz told a recent conference at the Cato Institute in Washington.

Among cases already on the court's docket, one of the most important involves terror suspects at Guantánamo Bay and to what extent they are entitled to challenge their open-ended detention as enemy combatants.

Lawyers for the detainees filed habeas corpus petitions asking federal judges in Washington to examine the legality of their clients' continued confinement. The Bush administration says that because the detainees are foreign enemy combatants being held outside the United States, they are not entitled to the protections of habeas corpus. In 2006 Congress, then controlled by Republicans, passed a law that stripped federal judges of jurisdiction to hear cases brought on behalf of detainees at Guantánamo.

When lawyers for the detainees first asked the Supreme Court to take up the issue, the justices refused. Then, in a highly unusual move, the justices agreed three months later to hear the appeal. This has led to speculation that the court is primed to overturn an earlier federal appeals court ruling upholding the Bush administration's position and the 2006 law.

Some analysts go even further. "The court took this case to make a larger statement of who we are as a people," says Neal Katyal, a law professor at Georgetown Law Center, who also represents a Guantánamo detainee in a pending case.

Professor Katyal, speaking on a recent panel at Georgetown, said the court will probably rule that fundamental rights apply at Guantánamo. "I expect a broader holding than we have had in the past," he added.

Supporters of the Bush administration say the court is unlikely to take such a dramatic step – even six years after the 9/11 attacks. The US is still at war, they say.

Google is watching you. But you already knew that. Every time you conduct a search using its search engine, Google keeps tabs—and uses the information to send you ads tailored to the interests and tastes suggested by your searches.

Here's something you probably didn't know: The company may let you close the blinds, digitally speaking. Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt told legislators on Sept. 27 that the company is exploring whether to let users keep Google from tracking the sites they're visiting. To do so, the company would enable Web surfers to shut off so-called cookies, the bits of code used to track the sites visited by individual computers and deliver ads related to those sites. Schmidt outlined that and other steps in an e-mail to Senator Charles Schumer read during a Senate hearing concerning Google's proposed purchase of DoubleClick. Google also is investigating technology that would keep user data collected from different sources from being concentrated in one place, and ways to better notify customers of Google's data-collection practices.

Government Influence

The proposals demonstrate the lengths to which Google may go in exchange for government approval of its planned $3.1 billion acquisition of online ad outfit DoubleClick, which specializes in ad placements across the Web. Senators on the Judiciary Committee also heard from Google opponents, including Microsoft, that would like to see the deal blocked. Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, told senators that they should not let the deal go forward without rules governing how information can be collected and used, and how long it can be kept.

Senators can't block the deal, but they can influence the thinking of the Federal Trade Commission, which will ultimately decide whether to let it go forward. The most likely scenario is that the FTC will propose restrictions on how Google and DoubleClick can combine the information they collect—if it decides to do anything at all. In July, the FTC approved a similar $6 billion acquisition by Microsoft of aQuantive, a DoubleClick competitor. The government agency also approved Yahoo!'s  $680 million acquisition of the 80% of online ad exchange Right Media that it did not yet own.

An Industry Issue

Opponents say owning DoubleClick will give Google too much control over online advertising, and in particular the user data collected and stored on Google's massive computers. Google counters by saying the whole online advertising industry is in the midst of consolidation. As the number of Web sites where people spend their time has grown, online ad giants have acquired ad networks to expand the number of users they can monitor and the number of sites on which they can place ads. In testimony before the committee, Google Chief Legal Officer David Drummond argued that despite the search leader's success (more than 60% of searches are performed on the company's site and it brings in roughly 75% of all search ad revenue) it's no different from competing online advertising players, particularly Microsoft. "This is an industry issue," said Drummond. "That is how these issues should be worked out, not in the context of one company."

Google said it would welcome global privacy laws governing how Web companies obtain, combine, retain, and use the massive amounts of data collected on the Web surfing and searching habits on individual computers. But it doesn't want those rules to apply solely to its deal with DoubleClick. Through its general counsel, Brad Smith, Microsoft also said it would support privacy legislation.

Pipeline or Choice?

However, Smith and Scott Cleland, president of Precursor, a telecom research and consulting firm, also argued vehemently for rules that would treat Google differently from its main search competitors. According to Smith and Cleland, Google's dominance of search and access to the advertisers and sites that work with DoubleClick would enable the company to become a "pipeline" through which most of the Web's relevant data would flow. The reason, they argued, is that Google's ability to reach the majority of U.S. Web surfers on the most highly trafficked Web sites would be so great that advertisers would be forced to work with the company.

And, with Google's access to advertisers, any publishers not working with Google would also feel they had to work with the company, further increasing Google's reach. As a result, Google would be able to potentially collect Web surfing data on most Internet users, which would also lead to increased advertiser reliance on the company. "In a lot of ways it would be like combining the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ," Microsoft's Smith said. "Somebody could build an alternative exchange, but would anybody go there to take their company public?…this merger is about creating a single pipeline."

Drummond argued that Google—whose main business is selling ads based on search keywords and then displaying those ads on its search pages, as well as the partner sites those same searchers visit—is not in the same business as DoubleClick, which delivers ads that an advertiser and Web publisher have contracted for outside of DoubleClick's site. "There is no pipe," said Drummond. "A user, at a moment's notice, can go use another and they do all the time…there are all kinds of choices."

Whether the government will single out Google at all is an open question. The hearing was the first round of what Senator Herb Kohl  called a "heavyweight fight." In the next round, Google, Microsoft, and others plan to speak about privacy issues before the FTC at a two-day "town hall" meeting, starting Nov. 1.

At that point, Porter will have saved Craig from yet another of the senator's bizarre errors in judgment.

Compounding his previous errors, the Idaho Republican this week sent lawyers to persuade Porter to undo his guilty plea and let him go to trial. As Craig says, he wants ``to clear my name.''

He probably doesn't mean he wants to clear his name of the taint of a disorderly conduct conviction.

He means, of course, he wants to clear it of any link to homosexuality. He will have a hard time doing that because technically, officially, he isn't charged with homosexuality. Technically, officially, it is no longer a crime in America to be gay. The U.S. Supreme Court said so ages ago, in 2003.

No, Craig was instead charged with being disorderly because the officer in the next stall took his peculiar hand and foot movements as a sexual come-on.

A bogus charge? You betcha, as they say here in Minnesota. There is simply nothing criminal about toe-tapping, shoe-to-shoe contact or someone putting his hand beneath a bathroom stall divider, as one of his lawyers, Billy Martin, told the judge at this week's hearing.

``None of those facts, in and of themselves, constitute a crime,'' Martin told Porter. It would be a ``manifest injustice'' to let the conviction stand, he argued.

Guilty Plea

He's right. But the law makes it almost impossible to set aside a guilty plea. And Craig had weeks to decide whether to admit guilt before he mailed in his plea, as the prosecution noted.

Since then, he has had weeks to think what might happen in the improbable event that he gets a trial.

Police would testify that closeted gay men (like Craig?) pose a menace when they troll public bathrooms for sex.

They might say that this particular bathroom at this particular airport had become famous on the Internet as a rendezvous point for men seeking men.

As for Craig's actual conduct, remember that he exposed no part of his body that is normally covered, nor did he fondle or grope or grab anyone.

But the prosecutor in the case, Christopher Renz, can make even the running of a hand beneath a stall divider sound like soft-core porn.

Stroking the Divider

``Repeated stroking of the stall divider,'' Renz called it at this week's hearing, ``each stroke showing more of his left hand.''

Then there would be the chance that the judge might let the prosecution put on the stand the man who told the Idaho Statesman he had sex with Craig in the men's room of Union Station in Washington.

Does Craig really want that?

In his defense, Craig might raise his ``wide stance'' to explain away the apparent attempt at footsie. And it would be ridiculed, as it has been already, mercilessly.

The best Craig could get is a jury focused only on the facts of what he did, a jury that labors to see whether that conduct met the legal elements of disorderly conduct.

Throw in a little reasonable doubt, and Craig just might get acquitted.

So what? He would stand acquitted of disorderly conduct, which no one cares about anyway, aside from legal wonks like me. There would be no verdict on whether he committed homosexual conduct, which is all his Grand Old Party and his ``family values'' constituents care about.

Muddying His Name

But there would have been lots of testimony that would do more to muddy his name than clear it.

Fortunately for Craig, Porter seemed to be buying none of Martin's argument, except for when he said the law makes it ``next to impossible'' to set aside a guilty plea.

Fortunately for Craig, the judge argued with Martin on matters large and small.

When Martin said his client wanted to plead innocent, Porter interrupted to chide him on a point that was clearly meant to be more rhetorical than legal. There is no such plea in Minnesota, the judge told Porter.

Here, as elsewhere, you are either guilty or not guilty, he said.

It's an obvious point, and yet it is one that Craig seems to have missed. There is no way he will be declared innocent, even if he wins a trial and is found not guilty.

Authorities said they were amazed that someone would wear such a device eight months after a similar scare in Boston, and six years after two of the jets hijacked in the Sept. 11 attacks took off from Logan.

"I'm shocked and appalled that somebody would wear this type of device to an airport," said State Police Maj. Scott Pare, the airport's commanding officer.

Simpson showed "a total disregard to understand the context of the situation she is in, which is an airport of post-9/11," prosecutor Wayne Margolis said at a hearing where a not guilty plea was entered for Simpson and she was released on $750 bail. Margolis had asked for $5,000 bail.

Simpson, of Lahaina, Hawaii, was arrested Friday morning outside Terminal C, home to United Airlines, Jet Blue and other carriers.

She wore the white circuit board on her chest over a black hooded sweat shirt, Pare said at a news conference. The battery-powered rectangular device had nine flashing lights, and Simpson had Play-Doh in her hands, he said.

Two phrases that looked hand-drawn — "Socket to me" and "Course VI" — were written on the back of Simpson's sweat shirt, which authorities displayed to the media. Course VI appears to refer to Massachusetts Institute of Technology's major of electrical engineering and computer science.

"She said that it was a piece of art and she wanted to stand out on career day," Pare said. "She claims that it was just art, and that she was proud of the art and she wanted to display it."

There was a career fair at the university on Thursday, according to the university's Web site.

Simpson is the secretary of MIT's Electrical Research Society, according to her lawyer. She is a graduate of the Hawaii Preparatory Academy, a private boarding school, has won school prizes for chemistry and leadership and had received a Congressional citation for her work in robotics, said Ross Schreiber, who was appointed to represent Simpson.

He said she was not a risk to flee, cooperated with authorities and was a good student with no prior convictions. He said they would fight the charges.

"I would characterize it as almost being paranoid at this point," Schreiber said of authorities' response.

He said Simpson had gone to the airport to meet her boyfriend. "She was there for legitimate purposes," Schreiber said.

A Massachusetts Port Authority staffer manning an information booth in the terminal became suspicious when Simpson — wearing the device — approached to ask about an incoming flight, Pare said. Simpson then walked outside, and the staffer notified a nearby trooper.

The trooper, joined by others with submachine guns, confronted her in front of the terminal.

"She was immediately told to stop, to raise her hands and not to make any movement, so we could observe all her movements to see if she was trying to trip any type of device," Pare said. "Had she not followed the protocol, we might have used deadly force."

He added, "She's lucky to be in a cell as opposed to the morgue."

The terminal was not evacuated and flights were not affected, airport officials said.

Boston was the focus of a security scare Jan. 31 when dozens of battery-powered devices that featured a character making an obscene gesture with a finger were discovered in various locations. Bomb squads were deployed and some transportation links were closed temporarily. They turned out to be a promotion for the Cartoon Network. Two men were charged in that incident, but prosecutors dropped the charges after they apologized and performed community service.

Whenever something of value changes hands, the Internal Revenue Service is usually going to want its cut.

But if you plan ahead and employ tax-smart strategies, you can make sure more of your wealth goes to your nephew Steve than to Uncle Sam.

Although many people would rather share their wealth with family while they're alive, the IRS often makes this a tall task -- but not impossible.

The Gift of Gifting

The easiest way to share your wealth, of course, is by simply giving money or assets away. There is a limit, however, to how much you can give before the IRS starts taking its cut. And the tax consequences can turn a gift into a burden -- just ask the Oprah audience members who discovered they owed thousands to the IRS after the generous host gave them all cars in 2004.

This year, the inflation-adjusted annual gift tax exclusion is $12,000 per donee (there is no limit if the recipient is a spouse and a U.S. citizen). That means you can give as much as $12,000 to any individual each year without incurring taxes, and there is no limit to the number of beneficiaries.

So you can give to as many people as you want, as long as each one doesn't receive more than the annual limit. In addition to benefiting your loved ones, the added advantaged to gifting is that it also reduces your taxable estate, and thus the estate tax burden on your heirs.

The gift tax rules, however, don't apply only to cash, but to assets such as property and equities. And in some cases this may be even more advantageous than giving away just cash. Because of inflation, cash depreciates in value over time, while stocks have the ability to increase in value. Even if you give away a stock that appreciates, for tax purposes it will be taxed on its market value as of the day of transfer.
A Trustworthy Strategy

Another effective way to share your wealth while limiting your tax exposure is with a grantor retained annuity trust. A GRAT is an irrevocable trust set for a specific amount of time, during which you receive a set annual payment. At the end of the trust's term, the length of which you set, the assets in the trust are passed along to your heirs.

For example, you can create a GRAT and fund it with $500,000 that generates an annual cash flow of $50,000. Under the terms of the GRAT, you receive that annual annuity for 10 years. At the end of the term, the remainder, including any appreciation, is passed along to your beneficiary. However, once established, you can't add to the trust during its term.

Another trust useful for transferring wealth is an irrevocable life insurance trust, or ILIT. This is a trust that takes ownership of your life insurance policy and, like the GRAT, removes it from your taxable estate. On the other hand, if, for example, you have a life insurance policy that pays out $5 million and it is included in your estate, your heirs will be burdened with a hefty estate tax bill.

With a GRAT, you can not only give to your loved ones, but you can dictate the terms under which they are entitled to receive benefits. This means that if you are concerned one of your heirs is not responsible enough to handle their whole inheritance at once, you can have the trust distribute a predetermined amount of the proceeds over a specified period of time.

But it's important to remember that the terms and conditions of any irrevocable trust cannot be changed once it has been created. To learn more about choosing a life insurance provider see "How to Measure Your Life Insurer's Health."
529 and Feeling Fine

While the IRS may seem to be the bane of your financial existence, it can be of some help too. One such example is with section 529 of the Internal Revenue Code, better known as a 529 plan or qualified tuition plan.

These tax-advantaged savings plans allow you to sock away money to help pay for future college costs. While contributions to the plan are not deductible on your federal tax return, the investment grows tax-deferred and distributions to pay for the beneficiary's college costs are free of federal taxes. You can make withdrawals from the plan, however, the funds must be used for eligible expenses, such as tuition, books and housing. If they are not, you will be subject to income tax plus a 10% federal tax penalty.

Each state, and Washington, D.C., offers its own 529 plan with various investments, though you don't have to live in the state whose plan you use. You can contribute as much as $12,000 each year to the 529 plan ($24,000 for married couples), and under a special five-year averaging election, you can contribute as much $60,000 in a lump sum ($120,000 for married couples).

Cullen challenged his conviction on the grounds that the act does not apply to captive-bred birds and that its failure to specifically define the term "personal pet" rendered it unconstitutionally vague.

But the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected those arguments in United States v. Cullen, 06-0607-cr.

Judges Richard Cardamone and Chester Straub, along with Southern District of New York Judge John Koeltl, sitting by designation, decided the appeal.

Writing for the court, Cardamone noted that judges frequently describe odd legal provisions or ingenious arguments as a "rare bird."

"We have before us as the subject matter literally a rara avis in terris or a rare bird of the earth," he wrote.

The court described Cullen as "an internationally known professional falconer." He was hired at one time by the City of New York to help restore bald eagles to Inwood Hill Park. Cullen once claimed to own one of the largest collections of birds of prey in the country. At the time of his trial, he maintained 47 birds of prey in Goshen.

But Cardamone added that Cullen "also has a history of questionable activity involving exotic birds."

According to the court, Cullen wanted to add the black sparrowhawk to his collection, but he did not meet the criteria for any of the four exceptions to the Act's importation ban: he had not been away from the United States for more than a year, so he did not come within the personal pet exception; he was not conducting scientific research; he was not involved in zoological breeding or display programs; and he was not engaged in cooperative breeding programs.

The government alleged Cullen used an American couple living in London, Joseph and Kristen Kulak, as a front for the importation in 1999 of three black sparrowhawks said to be the couple's personal pets.

One of the birds died in transit, and a Wildlife Service inspector at JFK Airport refused to believe Cullen's claim that he was just picking up the remaining birds for the Kulaks. The officer quarantined the birds pending an investigation.

A second bird died while in quarantine. The lone remaining bird was turned over to Cullen in 2000 with the understanding that he would return it to the Kulaks.

Instead, Cullen made a breeding arrangement with the owner of the only other black sparrowhawk in North America. That failed and the bird was returned to Cullen.

Kulak testified against Cullen, pursuant to a nonprosecution agreement, at a jury trial in 2005 before Southern District Judge Colleen McMahon. Cullen was convicted of knowingly importing exotic birds and making false statements about his activities. However, he was acquitted of illegally importing saker falcons.

WILD VERSUS CAPTIVE

At the 2nd Circuit, Cardamone addressed first Cullen's contention that Congress passed the Wild Bird Conservation Act because it was concerned about protecting birds in the wild -- not captive-bred birds.

"Yet, nothing in the language of the statute itself supports Cullen's assertion," Cardamone said. "Quite the contrary -- the statute provides that any exotic bird listed ... is covered, with no limiting language as to where or how an exotic bird is bred."

The judge added that a "Wild Bird Act provision mandating the Secretary of the Interior to exempt selected captive-bred species from the act's prohibitions on importation ... conclusively demonstrates that Congress aimed to have all other captive-bred species, like the Black Sparrowhawk, covered under the act. Otherwise, this exemption would be meaningless."

Cullen's complaint about the vagueness of the personal pet exception required the court to employ the requirement that a law must give "fair warning" to the accused of exactly what activity it prohibited.

"Although we recognize in many English words there lurk uncertainties ... to meet the fair warning prong an ounce of common sense is worth more than an 800-page dictionary," Cardamone wrote. Here, he said, the words personal and pet are "comprehensible to an ordinary person."

"The common meanings of these words, coupled with the Wild Bird Act's explicit provisions as to who qualifies for the personal pet exception, gave adequate notice to defendant that the activities he was planning did not fit within the pet exception," Cardamone said.

Peter Ginsberg of Crowell & Moring in New York represented Cullen.

"We're obviously disappointed in the circuit's opinion," Ginsberg said. "Tom has dedicated his life to protecting and expanding the bird population and if he made a technical mistake in how he obtained some birds -- and it's clear the jury did think he made mistakes -- it was certainly not out of malice or the desire to break the law."

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jesse Furman, Stephen Ritchen and John Hillebrecht represented the government.