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Arizona v. Gant - Click here to read the full opinion.Today the U.S. Supreme Court limited the circumstances under which officers may search the passenger compartment of a vehicle after it’s driver had been arrested. The Court ruled that an officer can only search a vehicle if it is for officer safety or if there is reason to believe that there is evidence in the car that relates to the crime which the driver was arrested for.The searches that we are talking about here are called searches incident to arrest. Don’t confuse this with an inventory search, which is done whenever a vehicle is impounded.The practical application of this case will be moderate, but this isn’t a huge opinion for most people that get arrested. People that have a sober passenger to drive the car, can turn the car over to them and avoid the inventory search. If there is somebody that can come pick up the vehicle, that would work too.If the officers want to get around this, all they have to do is start towing every vehicle and do inventory searches instead of searches incident to arrest. I guess I am a cynic.

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After two days of confusion over whether North Carolina’s 58 community colleges may admit illegal immigrants, federal officials cleared the air somewhat on Friday, stating that “it is left for the school to decide whether or not to enroll” those students, The News & Observer reported today.
In a statement released by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, the officials said, “The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not require any school to determine a student’s status.” The statement, issued at the request of the newspaper, noted that illegal immigrants were subject to being prosecuted and deported. But the statement said colleges were not required to report such students unless they had violated the terms of their student visas under the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System.
Earlier this week, a lawyer in the North Carolina attorney general’s office issued a letter advising the colleges to drop their policy of admitting […]

Source: Andrew Mytelka

Robert H. Bork, the rejected Supreme Court nominee and longtime scourge of liberals, has settled his $1-million lawsuit against the Yale Club of New York City, where he tripped, fell, and hurt himself while stepping onto a dais in 2006.
Mr. Bork’s lawsuit, filed last year, accused the club of “wanton, willful, and reckless disregard for the safety of its guests,” and blamed it for the “excruciating pain” he has suffered since the accident and subsequent surgery.
According to the Associated Press, the terms of the settlement are secret, so it’s not clear if Mr. Bork, who is 81, won justice or the $1-million he sought.
One thing’s for sure, however. The settlement keeps the case out of court, and spares the litigants any further unwelcome moments in the spotlight. —Andrew Mytelka

Source: Andrew Mytelka

Stephen P. Goodwin, chairman of West Virginia University’s Board of Governors, announced today that he would step down from its top position in July, the Associated Press reported. However, he said he would not leave the board before his term ends, in 2010.
Mr. Goodwin has close ties to the university’s embattled president, Michael S. Garrison. And Mr. Goodwin himself has come under fire as part of the wide-reaching controversy over the university’s awarding of an unearned degree to the daughter of West Virginia’s governor. He acknowledged that his decision to cede the leadership role was related to the uproar over the degree, which led two top administrators to resign last week.
“I don’t anticipate it will satisfy my critics,” Mr. Goodwin told the AP. “I just don’t want it to be the story. I want to take it out of the equation.”
Mr. Goodwin’s announcement came four days after the university’s Faculty […]

Source: Paul Fain

Information overload is one of the defining trends of the last 10 years. The explosion of email, social media, and cellular technologies have created 24/7 leashes that drown us in information.
As publishers (and citizens) we have a responsibility to help today’s kids build good information habits in this new world.
I’ve written elsewhere about how our old behavior patterns make this worse than it needs to be. The question for today is - are you managing your information diet or is the information managing you?
When you sit down to your Cheerios tomorrow morning will you read the paper or will you read a book? In the paper you HOPE to learn something - anything really. If you have picked out a book you INTEND to learn something - something specific you can use.
It is the same 30 minutes a day but at the end […]

Source: Eric Kelderman

All universities in Lebanon were ordered to cancel classes today by the Ministry of Higher Education, following an outbreak of fighting in Beirut on Thursday between Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group, and Sunni government forces.
Among the institutions that suspended classes are the American University of Beirut, Lebanese American University, Lebanese University, and Beirut Arab University.
LAU, which posted a brief statement on its Web site, also canceled entrance exams to be held on Saturday.
Ada Porter, AUB’s communications director in New York, said in an e-mail message that most people seemed to be staying home until the situation changes. But many people are leaving Beirut for safer cities around the country, and others are trying to leave Lebanon altogether, she said.
Beirut was paralyzed by strikes earlier this week. Tensions escalated after Hezbollah said that a government threat to shut down its private telephone network was an act of war. Fighting broke […]

Source: Beth McMurtrie

Michael V. Bhatia, a graduate student in political science who was serving as a civilian employee of the U.S. Army’s Human Terrain program, died on Wednesday in Afghanistan.
Mr. Bhatia graduated from Brown University in 1999 and was pursuing a doctorate in political science and international relations at the University of Oxford. Since late last year, he had been working with the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division as part of the Human Terrain program, a controversial effort in which scholars advise military personnel about local social structures.
The program has prompted widespread criticism, but Mr. Bhatia strongly supported it, according to a memorial notice that was posted on Thursday by Brown’s Watson Institute for International Studies.
The institute quoted a November 2007 letter in which Mr. Bhatia wrote, “The program has a real chance of reducing both the Afghan and American lives lost, as well as ensuring that the US/NATO/ISAF strategy becomes better attuned […]

Source: David Glenn

A day after the state attorney general’s office advised North Carolina community colleges to drop their policy of admitting illegal immigrants who meet other eligibility criteria, the state’s governor is urging colleges to continue admitting immigrants, according to The News & Observer.
The earlier advice, in a letter to the system’s general counsel, suggested that the policy conflicted with federal law, but Gov. Michael F. Easley, a Democrat, said in a written statement today that federal law on the issue was not settled. He added that he was asking the attorney general to seek clarification from Washington on whether illegal immigrants were eligible to attend community colleges. —Charles Huckabee

Source: Charles Huckabee

The California budget crisis has taken a toll on the University of California at Berkeley’s department of East Asian languages and cultures, which has announced that this fall it will eliminate classes for 1,500 students to make up for an unexpected financial shortfall.
The cuts are a response to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed state budget, which would reduce spending on Berkeley by $30-million to $40-million, the Daily Californian reported. The university has asked several academic departments to make cuts to courses and faculty members to close the gap, but hardest hit will be departments that employ many adjunct lecturers and graduate-student instructors.
As a result, the East Asian department, which expects to lose $300,000 in support, will cut 40 percent of its courses in Japanese, 54 percent of those in Chinese, and 66 percent of those in Korean. It will also not renew contracts for 13 lecturers. According to a notice on […]

Source: Paula Wasley

Washington — For women contemplating careers as science professors, the numbers are daunting. More than half of the bachelor’s degrees in science and engineering these days go to women, but they run into a high hurdle when it comes to securing academic jobs. Fewer than one in three science and engineering professors are female, and the numbers for full professors drop to one in five. So Congress held a hearing today to consider how to raise those odds.
A draft bill introduced by Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, a Texas Democrat, would promote the use of workshops “to increase awareness of implicit gender bias in grant review, hiring, tenure, promotion, and selection for other honors based on merit,” according to a news release issued by the House Science Committee’s Subcommittee on Research and Science Education. The committee has not yet released the proposed legislation, and the details of such workshops remain unclear. […]

Source: Rich Monastersky