The Supreme Court has upheld a federal law that bars "material support" to foreign terrorist organizations, rejecting a free speech challenge from humanitarian aid groups.

The court ruled 6-3 Monday that the government may prohibit all forms of aid to designated terrorist groups, even if the support consists of training and advice about entirely peaceful and legal activities.

Material support intended even for benign purposes can help a terrorist group in other ways, Chief Justice John Roberts said in his majority opinion.

"Such support frees up other resources within the organization that may be put to violent ends," Roberts said.

Justice Stephen Breyer took the unusual step of reading his dissent aloud in the courtroom. Breyer said he rejects the majority's conclusion "that the Constitution permits the government to prosecute the plaintiffs criminally" for providing instruction and advice about the terror groups' lawful political objectives. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor joined the dissent.

The law allows medicine and religious materials to go to groups on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations.

A central figure in Pennsylvania's legislative corruption case — former lawmaker Mike Veon — is scheduled for sentencing in Harrisburg.

The former state House Democratic whip is to appear Friday before Dauphin Court Judge Richard Lewis.

Veon stands convicted of 14 counts of theft, conspiracy and conflict of interest, involving the illegal use of public resources for political campaigning. Veon was one of 25 people arrested in the investigation into alleged corruption among Democrats and Republicans in the Legislature.

The state attorney general's office is seeking a 12- to 17-year prison sentence for Veon.

Veon's lawyer says he will ask for a sentence that includes probation but no prison time.

An anti-abortion protester arrested in 2007 had a First Amendment right to demonstrate on a sidewalk near the entrance the building that houses the Liberty Bell, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The decision overturns lower-court rulings that upheld the arrest of Christian evangelical leader Michael Marcavage. Marcavage, who lives in suburban Lansdowne, had been sentenced to a year's probation for refusing a National Park Service order to move to a nearby designated demonstration area.

The appeals court tossed the two charges on free-speech and procedural grounds. The three-judge panel said Marcavage caused no more of a disturbance than other people near the Liberty Bell entrance, including a cancer-survivors group and the drivers of horse-drawn carriages hawking their services.

Marcavage founded a group, Repent America, that opposes abortion, homosexuality and the teaching of evolution.

He has been arrested repeatedly during protests up and down the East Coast. He successfully challenged a 2004 arrest for picketing at a Philadelphia street festival for gays and lesbians, but a Massachusetts court last year upheld a disorderly conduct conviction based on his refusal to stop using a megaphone at Salem's famed Halloween celebration.

President Barack Obama met on his own turf with top BP officials on Wednesday to press his demands that the London-based oil giant pay into a claims fund for victims of the worst oil spill in the nation's history.

BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg, CEO Tony Hayward, and other officials walked slowly as a group from the Southwest Gate of the White House, where they were dropped off, and climbed the steps leading to the West Wing.

The meeting comes the morning after Obama vowed to an angry nation that "we will make BP pay for the damage their company has caused." BP is the majority owner of the deep water well that blew out on April 20, killing 11 rig workers and triggering the spill.

It was Obama's first meeting with BP officials since the spill. While Hayward has served as the voice of the company, the White House has been emphasizing the role of the company's chairman, Svanberg, instead.

Obama in his speech to the nation from the Oval Office backed creation of a fund administered by an independent trustee to pay damages and clean up costs associated with the spill.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and other Democrats have suggested the fund be established with $20 billion from BP.

A death row inmate set to be executed by firing squad Friday is scrambling to block his execution after losing an appeal at the Utah Supreme Court and failing to persuade the state parole board to grant him clemency.

Ronnie Lee Gardner's attorneys are now ramping up a federal civil rights lawsuit filed last week against the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole. Gardner contends the commutation hearing process is tainted because lawyers that represent the board and the state prison all work for the Utah attorney general's office — the same entity that sought Gardner's death warrant and argued against a commuted sentence.

The case is assigned to U.S. District Judge Tena Campbell, but no hearing had been set Tuesday.

The parole board on Monday rejected Gardner's efforts to get his death sentence reduced to life in prison without parole, and hours later, the Utah Supreme Court unanimously denied Gardner's appeal.

In its 57-page ruling, justices said it was too late for Gardner to challenge his sentence and that he had been treated fairly throughout his 25 years of appeals.

The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from a Canadian engineer who was caught up in the U.S. government's secret transfer of terror suspects to other countries.

The court did not comment Monday in ending Syrian-born Maher Arar's quest to sue top U.S. officials, including former Attorney General John Ashcroft. Arar says he was mistaken for a terrorist when he was changing planes in New York on his way home to Canada, a year after the 2001 terrorist attacks. He was instead sent to Syria, where he claims he was tortured.

Lower courts dismissed Arar's lawsuit, which asserts the U.S. purposely sent him to Syria to be tortured. Syria has denied he was tortured.

The Canadian government agreed to pay Arar $10 million and apologized to him for its role in the case.

A Canadian investigation found that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police wrongly labeled Arar an Islamic fundamentalist and passed misleading and inaccurate information to U.S. authorities.

The inquiry determined that Arar was tortured, and it cleared him of any terrorist links or suspicions.