New and interesting Opinions issued Thursday included Spargo v. New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct[PDF], in which US District Judge David Hurd of the US District Court for the Northern District of New York threw out most of the rules prohibiting judges and judicial candidates in New York State from engaging in openly political activities. Also Thursday, a panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld Xerox Corporation's claim that Palm Incorporated's handheld computer handwriting software violates Xerox's patent, while remanding the issue of the Xerox patent's basic validity to a lower court for further study. Unfortunately, this Opinion is not yet available online Thursday evening from either the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit or Georgetown University Law Library.

Read statements and press releases from the University of South Florida (Professor Sami Al-Arian's employer), the Anti-Defamation League (supporting the arrest), the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee, the Arab American Institute, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and the Muslim American Society. The United Faculty of Florida, the faculty union defending Professsor Al-Arian, is also providing ongoing updates.

Watch a short video featuring Professor Sami Al-Arian talking about the "clash of civilizations" and the prospect of war in Iraq. The video was produced in November 2002 by Snowshoefilms, a peace-activist media group [note: this link is posted for informational purposes only in light of Professor Al-Arian's arrest and indictment Thursday, and does constitute endorsement of views expressed].

On Wednesday the St. Louis Circuit Court Historical Records Project unveiled its new Freedom Suits Archive of nearly 300 legal petitions for freedom by people of color originally filed in St. Louis courts between 1814 and 1860. The archive makes up the largest corpus of freedom suits currently available to researchers in the United States. See the Freedom Suits Case Files and read the 1821 freedom petition (in digitized manuscript) of Winny, a woman of color, whose case was ultimately appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court, which upheld her petition.

Attorney General John Ashcroft announced Thursday the arrest of four members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a designated foreign terrorist organization, following the return of a 50-count indictment against them and four others by a federal grand jury in Tampa, Florida. Professor Sami Amin Al-Arian of the University of South Florida was the alleged leader of the PIJ in the United States, and Secretary of the "Shura Council," or worldwide governing group of the PIJ. Read the full Department of Justice press release.

UPDATE: The full text of the indictment and streaming video of Attorney General Ashcroft's announcement are now available.

A coalition of 7 state attorneys general announced Thursday that they plan to sue the Bush Administration over its failure to regulate emissions of carbon dioxide from the nation's power plants. Read a press release from the Office of New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and review the official letter of notification[PDF] to EPA Administrator Christine Whitman.

The Federal Communications Commission Thursday voted to give states more power to enforce telecom competition regulations while requiring Bell companies to open up their phone lines to local competitors at steeply discounted rates. Watch streaming video of the FCC open meeting.

On law professors' weblogs Thursday (so far): Eric Muller at the University of North Carolina Law School wonders why more people aren't concerned about the impact of the PATRIOT Act on real estate lawyers... Eugene Volokh at UCLA School of Law has been reading Judge Posner's essay on Justice William O. Douglas... and Lawrence Solum at Loyola Law School Los Angeles runs-down who's presenting what at Thursday's faculty workshops at law schools across the country.

The University of Michigan Thursday posted streaming video of a speech on the Michigan affirmative action admissions cases that UM President Mary Sue Coleman delivered Monday to the American Council on Education.

University of South Florida computer science professor Sami Al-Arian, a Kuwait-born Palestinian, was arrested early Thursday morning by federal agents according to news reports. Al-Arian, who had already been placed on forced leave and banned from the USF campus for allegedly making pro-terrorist comments in the wake of September 11, had previously drawn the FBI's attention in connection with his organization of an Islamic think-tank at USF in the mid-1990s. Review a timeline of events in the Al-Arian controversy through USF's announcement in December 2001 of its intent to dismiss Professor Al-Arian, the transcript from the FOX News O'Reilly Factor TV program from September 26, 2001 that initially got Professor Al-Arian into trouble, university documentation leading up to USF's decision to terminate Al-Arian's employment (including a legal opinion on the University's right to take disciplinary action), the website created by the United Faculty of Florida faculty union in defense of Al-Arian's academic freedom, due process and tenure rights; legal documents from USF's recently dismissed case seeking to clarify its right to dismiss Professor Al-Arian, and an "Academic Free Speech" website hosting statements and op-eds by Professor Al-Arian.

Roger Williams University announced Wednesday that David Logan of Wake Forest University School of Law has been appointed as the new dean of the Roger Williams University School of Law in Bristol, Rhode Island.... Students at Harvard Law School are getting involved in the HLS dean search now underway, while the Harvard Law Record conjures an image of its dream dean.... Students from the University of Pennsylvania Law School were among more than 13,000 law students nationwide who joined Tuesday in an amicus brief[PDF] written by students at the Georgetown University Law Center and filed at the US Supreme Court in support of the University of Michigan Law School's affirmative action admissions policy....

On February 20, 1809, US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall ruled in United States v. Peters that the legal power of the federal judiciary is greater than that of any individual state: "If the legislatures of the several states may, at will, annul the judgments of the courts of the United States, and destroy rights acquired under those judgments, the constitution itself becomes a solemn mockery; and the nation is deprived of the means of enforcing its laws by the instrumentality of its own tribunals."