The Shatzer case asked the Court to determine the scope of a 1981 case titled Edwards v. Arizona.  In Edwards, the Court held that police were barred from interrogating a criminal suspect who had invoked his/her right to counsel (which everyone knows now from watching TV).  Sepcifcally Shatzer asked:  does that right apply to an interrogation that takes place 3 years later?

In an unanimous decision, the Court said "no" and recognized an exception to the Edwards decision and said that a "break in custody" allows police to resume questioning a suspect who had previously asked for a lawyer.  Seven of the nine justices ruled that if the break in custody lasted more than two weeks between interrogations, then the Edwards rule does not apply to suppress a confession.

Crazy stuff. 10K race, 25 laps with lots of switching lanes, and his coach had a brain fart and had him miss a lane switch which disqualified him.

Barack Obama may not realize it, but I may have just helped save his presidency. How? By winning a drawn-out fight to protect his powers as commander in chief to wage war and keep Americans safe.

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Why bother fighting off an administration hell-bent on finding scapegoats for its policy disagreements with the last president? I could have easily decided to hide out, as others have. Instead, I wrote numerous articles (several published in this newspaper) and three books explaining and defending presidential control of national security policy. I gave dozens of speeches and media appearances, where I confronted critics of the administration's terrorism policies. And, most importantly, I was lucky to receive the outstanding legal counsel of Miguel Estrada, one of the nation's finest defense attorneys, to attack head-on and without reservation, each and every one of OPR's mistakes, misdeeds and acts of malfeasance.

I did not do this to win any popularity contests, least of all those held in the faculty lounge. I did it to help our president--President Obama, not Bush. Mr. Obama is fighting three wars simultaneously in Iraq, Afghanistan, and against al Qaeda. He will call upon the men and women serving under his command to make choices as hard as the ones we faced. They cannot meet those challenges with clear minds if they believe that a bevy of prosecutors, congressional committees and media critics await them when they return from the battlefield

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Without a vigorous commander-in-chief power at his disposal, Mr. Obama will struggle to win any of these victories. But that is where OPR, playing a junior varsity CIA, wanted to lead us. Ending the Justice Department's ethics witch hunt not only brought an unjust persecution to an end, but it protects the president's constitutional ability to fight the enemies that threaten our nation today.

Reporting from Washington - President Obama will nominate UC Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday, The Times has learned.

Liu carries credentials that some conservatives love to hate -- including a leadership position in a progressive legal group and a record of opposing the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

But he has conservative admirers too. Liu has supported school choice as a solution to problems in urban education, and has served as faculty advisor to the California College Preparatory Academy, a public charter school. He came to the White House's attention with the recommendation of some conservatives.

If confirmed, he could be the only full-time Asian American judge on a federal appellate court. A senior administration official revealed his nomination on condition of anonymity.

In the political world, Liu is sure to be remembered as an Alito critic. When Alito was nominated to the high court, Liu co-wrote a report critical of his record on capital punishment, saying Alito's appellate opinions "show a disturbing tendency to tolerate serious errors in capital proceedings" and "reveal troubling perspectives on federalism, race and due process of law." Liu testified against Alito during his 2006 confirmation hearings.

Liu, 39, also is chairman of the board of the American Constitution Society, whose mission statement opposes the "activist conservative legal movement."

"Keeping Faith With the Constitution," a 2009 book that he co-wrote, discusses the shortcomings of "originalism," a conservative legal theory maintaining that the Constitution should be interpreted based on its 18th century framers' intent. Progressive judges tend to see the Constitution as a living document, shifting with the times, and to validate rights that they see as logical extensions of it.

Even without a possible ideological fight, the confirmation process is highly charged for Obama nominees, with Republican lawmakers stalling votes even on those whom they later support. At the moment, 26 judicial nominees await Senate confirmation, including seven to appellate courts.