The two-year study by the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission is the first to propose broad changes after the devastating bridge collapse in Minneapolis last August shone a spotlight on the deteriorating state of the nation's infrastructure. Calling for immediate action, the congressionally created panel warned that "applying patches" is no longer acceptable. It said the nation risks tens of thousands of highway casualties each year and millions of dollars lost in economic growth.

"The crisis is now," the report said.

The 68-page compilation of findings and recommendations, which were supported by nine of the 12 members on the commission, is expected to re-ignite congressional and political debate over raising gasoline taxes. The gas tax has not been increased since 1993, and recent efforts by Congress to increase it have faltered, over the objections of the Bush administration.

The commission was expected to present its findings Thursday to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and to a Senate panel later this month, but House Republican leaders quickly said they would oppose a tax hike.

"A dramatic increase in the gas tax does not stand a snowball's chance in hell of passing Congress," said Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., the top Republican on the House Transportation panel.

In a 10-page dissent, the commission's chairwoman, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, and two other members agreed with several aspects of the report but sharply criticized the proposal for higher gasoline taxes. She and the two commissioners are calling instead for sole reliance on tolls and private investment, which Peters said would avoid sending millions of dollars of new tax revenue to Washington that end up as congressional pork. Department spokesman for said the three commissioners opted not to appear at the news conference to avoid a public display of internal division.

Under the proposal, the current tax of 18.4 cents per gallon would be increased by 5 cents to 8 cents annually for five years and then indexed to inflation afterward to help fix the infrastructure, expand public transit and highways as well as broaden railway and rural access. The increase is designed to take effect in 2009, after President Bush leaves office.

Other sources of revenue could come from tolls, peak-hour "congestion pricing" on highways, freight fees and ticket taxes for passenger rail improvements, the report said.

"A failure to act will be catastrophic to this nation," said Jack Schenendorf, the commission's vice chairman. He contended the tax increase would amount to "less than a cost of a candy bar and a fifth of the cost of a cafe latte" for the average U.S. motorist.

"We saw what happened with Katrina," he said, referring to the 2005 hurricane which overwhelmed aging levees. "We don't want to see the transportation system to see the same fate of the New Orleans levees."

Commissioner Paul Weyrich, a Republican appointee to the commission and chairman of the Free Congress Foundation, said he is philosophically opposed to higher taxes but decided to support it this time in light of the growing transportation problems.

The recommendations, if implemented, are expected to cost $225 billion each year for the next 50 years:

The commission, established by Congress in 2005, also called for the country to rebuild and expand its rail network to meet a growing demand for alternatives to congested highways and to promote partnerships between the public and private sectors at U.S. ports. Its report comes as state governments and several business groups call on Washington to raise gas taxes to pay for substantial transportation improvements. The Minneapolis bridge collapse, which killed 13 people and injured about 100, also drew new calls for additional spending.

"The time is now to work together to find a solution to this complex problem," said John Engler, president and CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers, which is open to a tax increase but isn't formally supporting it. "The U.S. will soon be facing a competitive disadvantage if we don't develop a national plan to improve the quality of our infrastructure system."

The court ruled against investors who alleged that two suppliers colluded with Charter Communications Inc. to deceive Charter's stockholders and inflate the price of the cable TV company's stock.

Charter investors do not have the right to sue because they did not rely on the deceptive acts of Charter's suppliers, said the majority opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Kennedy pointed to the Securities and Exchange Commission as a protector of investors in similar cases and that the regulatory agency has used its enforcement power to collect more than $10 billion over the past five years.

The decision is likely to have an impact on a similar class-action lawsuit by shareholders who invested in scandal-ridden Enron Corp.

Investors in Enron, once the nation's seventh-largest company, are seeking more than $30 billion from Wall Street investment banks, alleging they schemed with Enron to hide its financial problems.

In the Supreme Court, the lawsuit against Charter's suppliers has been closely watched by business and industry, which argued that an adverse ruling would clear the way for a flood of lawsuits.

In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said the court is conducting a continuing campaign to undercut investor lawsuits.

A liberal Supreme Court in 1971 endorsed investor lawsuits under antifraud provisions of securities law at issue in the current lawsuit. In 1994, a more conservative Supreme Court imposed limits on such lawsuits, prohibiting cases against third parties for aiding and abetting a company's misstatements. The Republican-controlled Congress enacted the restrictions into law the next year.

In a scheme allegedly designed to inflate the cable TV company's revenue picture, Charter got Motorola and Scientific-Atlanta to buy advertising with money that Charter provided. Charter supplied the funds by paying a $20 premium on each of hundreds of thousands of cable TV set-top boxes, for a total of $17 million. The amount of the overpayments equaled the amount the two suppliers paid for the ads.

Charter reported the advertising payments as revenue, a step that helped Charter meet Wall Street's expectations for the fourth quarter of 2000.

Motorola and Scientific-Atlanta allegedly backdated the contracts for the set-top boxes to make the advertising and the set-top boxes transactions appear unrelated. Scientific-Atlanta allegedly submitted documentation to Charter attributing the price increase to increased manufacturing expenses.

Justice Stephen Breyer disqualified himself from the case because he owns stock in Cisco Systems Inc., which now owns Scientific-Atlanta.

EPA concluded that its existing standard for ozone exposure was inadequate to protect public health and the agency has estimated it will cost $9.6 billion a year in increased costs for polluters to comply with the new one.

When regulators relax a standard as opposed to imposing a tougher one, the Clean Air Act contains a section designed to ensure that air quality won't deteriorate in an area.

Safeguards, which regulators refer to as "anti-backsliding" requirements, call for control measures on polluters.

Industry objected in the case of the revised ozone standard when EPA concluded it could use the "anti-backsliding" requirements, even though the agency was imposing a tougher standard rather than easing one.

In raising the ozone standard, regulators had dropped a few of the requirements, but they were reimposed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which ruled against industry.

The EPA is imposing requirements, regardless of whether they are needed to attain the new, more stringent ozone standard, industry lawyers wrote in asking the Supreme Court to take the case.

Petitioning the court were the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association, the American Chemistry Council, the American Petroleum Institute and the Utility Air Regulatory Group.

Separately, businesses in Baton Rouge, La., also asked the Supreme Court to hear their objection to EPA's position on the new ozone standard.

Lawyers for the businesses said that if Louisiana is forced to revise its pollution control plan, over 150 Baton Rouge businesses will be forced to pay $65 million to $100 million a year, threatening thousands of jobs in an economy still overwhelmed by the impact of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, local business groups told the court.

U.S. District Judge Neal Biggers on Tuesday granted the request by Joey Langston and Billy Quin of the Langston Law Firm to withdraw as attorneys for Scruggs, according to court records filed Tuesday in federal court in Oxford.

Scruggs, his son Zach and three others were indicted Nov. 28 on charges they conspired to bribe a judge in a case involving disputed fees related to lawsuits from Hurricane Katrina.

On Wednesday, Anthony Farese, an attorney for Zach Scruggs, also asked to withdraw from the case. He said in court papers that Zach Scruggs has "terminated his services" and intends to hire a new lawyer.

Biggers declined the request because the younger Scruggs has not yet named a replacement for Farese.

The elder Scruggs, a brother-in-law of former Sen. Trent Lott, is best known for making millions from tobacco litigation.

One of Langston's former law partners, Timothy Balducci, pleaded guilty Dec. 4 to conspiracy in the bribery case and is helping investigators. He had been one of those indicted along with Scruggs and his son.

On Dec. 10, the FBI searched the Langston Law Firm. FBI officials would not say what they were looking for, but Farese said at the time that they took records from cases that Balducci had worked on before he left the firm.

Quin and Langston did not respond to several messages left Tuesday by The Associated Press. John Keker, another attorney for the elder Scruggs, would not comment on why the two would no longer be working on the case.

In a separate case, a judge ruled Wednesday that an insurance company can question Richard and Zach Scruggs about their handling of leaked documents in a Hurricane Katrina insurance case.

Richard Scruggs wore "two hats" as the employer and lawyer for two key witnesses in that case, U.S. District Judge L.T. Senter Jr. ruled.

After Hurricane Katrina, Scruggs announced that sisters Cori and Kerri Rigsby, former employees of a State Farm contractor, were helping him build cases against insurance companies over their handling of storm claims. The sisters gave him thousands of internal State Farm records.

Scruggs hired the Rigsby sisters as consultants for $150,000 a year and served as their lawyer. State Farm wants to know more about those relationships.

Scruggs has said the leaked records proved that State Farm fraudulently denied the claim of policyholders Thomas and Pamela McIntosh, whose Biloxi home was destroyed by the storm on Aug. 29, 2005.

Also on Wednesday, attorney Kenneth Coghlan notified Biggers that he intended to represent Richard Scruggs in the bribery case.

Biggers refused to allow Coghlan, however, because the attorney represented another defendant in the case — former state auditor Steven Patterson — before withdrawing last month.

Allowing Coghlan to represent Scruggs could be a conflict of interest if one defendant testifies against the other, Biggers said.

An appeals brief filed Tuesday contends that Minnesota's disorderly conduct law "requires that the conduct at issue have a tendency to alarm or anger 'others'" — underscoring the plural nature of the term.

Craig's brief goes on to cite other convictions that were overturned because the multiple-victim test wasn't met. His lawyers apply the same logic to his case.

The Republican senator pleaded guilty in August after his arrest two months earlier at the Minneapolis airport. It was part of a broader undercover push targeting men soliciting sex in public restrooms.

Craig was arrested June 11 by an undercover officer, Sgt. Dave Karsnia, who said Craig tapped his feet and swiped his hand under a stall divider in a way that signaled he wanted sex. Craig has denied that, saying his actions were misconstrued.

"Appellant's alleged conduct in this case affected only a single individual — Sergeant Karsnia," the Craig brief says. "It did not — and could not affect 'others' as the disorderly conduct statute requires, and therefore, does not satisfy that element of the statute."

The brief also argues that Karsnia himself could not have been offended by the alleged conduct because "he invited it." The alleged conduct, Craig's lawyers added, doesn't rise to the level of being "offensive, obscene, abusive, boisterous or noisy."

Craig's earlier attempt to withdraw his plea was turned down by a district court judge, and the case is now before the Minnesota Court of Appeals.

Besides attacking the law he was prosecuted under, Craig's legal team argues that the hand signal allegedly used to communicate a desire to engage in sexual conduct would be constitutionally protected speech. They also say the plea is technically flawed because it lacked a judicial signature.

Patrick Hogan, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Airports Commission, which oversees the Minneapolis airport and which brought the charges, said he was confident the guilty plea will stand.

"Facts are resilient, and Sen. Craig's continued, transparent efforts to escape them don't change the truth of his behavior in an airport restroom or the fact that he admitted guilt last August," Hogan said.

Prosecutors have 45 days to respond, and then the case will be scheduled for oral arguments. Once heard, a ruling is required within 90 days.

Craig has said he will finish his term, which ends in January 2009.