A Minnesota court says pulling up the saggy pants of a crime suspect is not an illegal search, even if it turns up a gun.

The Minnesota Court of Appeals ruling Tuesday came in a case that arose after a drug suspect was stopped by St. Paul police officers.

The St. Paul Pioneer Press reports that the man's jeans fell down when he put his hands up, prompting an officer to hoist up the droopy drawers. In the process, the officer found a gun.

The man was later sentenced to five years in prison for illegally possessing a firearm.

On appeal, his attorney argued the gun was found in an illegal search.

But the appeals court determined the officer had hoisted the pants "presumably to conceal rather than to reveal."

A federal judge has brought Microsoft one step closer to seizing control of 276 domains controlled by the Waledac botnet.

A magistrate judge in the U.S. District Court of Eastern Virginia decided Sept. 3 to recommend that a default judgment be granted in Microsoft's favor. The defendants in the case were given 14 days to object; if they do not, the judgment will be final.

“In this case, Microsoft presented evidence to the court that although the defendants did not come forward, they were aware of the case and actively tried to retaliate, attempting to launch a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack against the law firm that filed the suit and even going so far as to threaten one of the researchers involved in the case,” according to Microsoft.

The legal action was the result of a joint investigation known as ‘Operation b49’ that also involved Symantec, Shadowserver Foundation, the University of Washington and others. Once capable of sending out more than 1.5 billion spam messages a day, the number of unique infected IP addresses has continued to decline, going from 64,000 during the week of July 23 to 58,000 as of Aug. 30.

The voice of Charles Thomas O'Reilly is the last one about 140 people Texas death row inmates have heard over the past six years.

O'Reilly has been the warden of the state prison simply called the Huntsville Unit, where he presided over more lethal injections than any other warden. O'Reilly retired Monday after more than 33 years with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

He said he leaves with no reservations, no nightmares, having "always been a proponent of capital punishment."

He said that before the lethal drugs were administered, he would ask inmates if they wanted to make a statement. He said he tried to avoid using the words "last" or "final."

Divorces are as common as plastic surgery in Hollywood, but the divorce trial between Frank and Jamie McCourt that begins Monday has a chance to be the most titillating drama in this city since Lindsay Lohan's late-night capers.
This trial could determine the fate of the Los Angeles Dodgers and, ultimately, who will own the storied franchise.

It's possible that once the 11-day trial is over, with legal fees estimated to approach $20 million, neither will be able to afford the franchise, forcing a sale. Commissioner Bud Selig says he won't talk about the trial until it concludes, but Thomas Ostertag, general counsel of Major League Baseball, is expected to testify.

The trial does not hinge on child custody issues, divvying up their seven homes, extramarital affairs, or excessive use of their in-home makeup and hair stylists.

This trial is solely about whether the Dodgers franchise and its assets belong solely to Frank McCourt, or whether Jamie is entitled to half of the franchise, valued between $750 million and $1.5 billion.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor predicted Thursday that the nation's high court will be asked again to weigh issues of national security versus free speech because of the recently leaked classified war documents posted on the WikiLeaks website.

Sotomayor told high school and college students at the University of Denver that she couldn't answer a student question about the security questions and free speech because "that question is very likely to come before me."

The release of the WikiLeaks documents, which included names of Afghans working with American forces, has been blasted by the Pentagon. It said the publication of those documents put lives at risk, while WikiLeaks employees insisted the website provides a public service for whistleblowers.

Sotomayor said Thursday that the "incident, and others, are going to provoke legislation that's already being discussed in Congress, and so some of it is going to come up before (the Supreme Court)."

She added that the balance between national security and free speech is "a constant struggle in this society, between our security needs and our First Amendment rights, and one that has existed throughout our history."

Sotomayor compared the current question to the debate over allowing publication of the Pentagon Papers, a secret Pentagon study about the Vietnam War. The New York Times published those in 1971 after the Supreme Court declined to block their publication over the objections of the Pentagon.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday reinstated a televangelist's defamation lawsuit claiming ABC's "20/20" news program used a fictionalized sermon portraying himself as a wealthy braggart out of context.

A trial court judge had earlier tossed out the lawsuit filed by the Rev. Frederick Price, ruling that the video apparently showing the founder of the Crenshaw Christian Center boast about his wealth didn't leave the audience with the wrong impression of the preacher: Price is wealthy and he does boast, going as far as calling himself a "prophet of prosperity."

But the problem for ABC is that the clip of Price it aired was actually a sermon on greed in which the preacher slips into the role of a fictional character who is wealthy but unhappy.

"I live in a 25-room mansion," television viewers saw Price preach. "I have my own $6 million yacht. I have my own private jet, and I have my own helicopter, and I have seven luxury automobiles."

Because none of that was true but was presented as fact, a unanimous three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the trial court to reconsider the lawsuit and determine whether Price suffered any harm to his reputation because of the clip.

Court records show that Price owns an 8,000 square-foot house worth $4.6 million, drives a Rolls Royce, wears an $8,500 watch and travels the world in a Gulfstream jet owned by the church, which he describes as a $40 million operation.