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Republican John McCain agreed to attend the first presidential debate Friday night even though Congress doesn’t have a bailout deal, reversing an earlier decision to delay the event until Washington had taken action to address the crisis.

With less than 10 hours until the debate was scheduled to start, the McCain campaign announced that the Arizona senator would travel to the University of Mississippi. The campaign said that afterward McCain would fly back to Washington to continue working on the financial crisis.

Obama had always planned to attend the debate and was onboard his plane preparing to take off when McCain’s announcement was made.

The McCain campaign’s statement said he was optimistic that there has been progress toward a bipartisan agreement. But earlier in the week, McCain said he would delay the debate “until we have taken action to address this crisis.”

“He is optimistic that there has been significant progress toward a bipartisan agreement now that there is a framework for all parties to be represented in negotiations,” the McCain campaign said in a statement.

It was a different position than McCain had taken Wednesday, when he announced, “I’m directing my campaign to work with the Obama campaign and the Commission on Presidential Debates to delay Friday night’s debate until we have taken action to address this crisis.”

McCain had taken a gamble with that position, trying to appear above politics and as a leader on an issue that had overshadowed the presidential campaign and given him trouble. But Democratic rival Barack Obama had not bowed to McCain’s challenge, and instead questioned why the Republican nominee couldn’t handle two things at once — the debate and involvement in the bailout negotiations.

An Associated Press-Knowledge Networks poll out Friday just before McCain’s announcement showed the public overwhelmingly wanted the candidates to debate, 60 percent to 22 percent, with the rest undecided.

By Friday morning, it appeared McCain was looking for a face-saving way to get to the debate even though a deal had not been reached. He met with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, before heading to his campaign headquarters and the issuing the statement that blamed others in Washington for the failure to reach an agreement.

“John McCain’s decision to suspend his campaign was made in the hopes that politics could be set aside to address our economic crisis,” the statement said. “In response, Americans saw a familiar spectacle in Washington. At a moment of crisis that threatened the economic security of American families, Washington played the blame game rather than work together to find a solution that would avert a collapse of financial markets without squandering hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ money to bail out bankers and brokers who bet their fortunes on unsafe lending practices.”

Just before McCain’s announcement, Obama told reporters that he had spent Friday morning on the phone with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and congressional leaders and he was optimistic that progress was being made toward a bailout deal.

“At this point, my strong sense is that the best thing that I can do, rather than to inject presidential politics into these delicate negotiations, is to go down to Mississippi and explain to the American people what is going on and my vision for leading the country over the next four years,” Obama told reporters aboard his campaign plane as they prepared to travel to Mississippi.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a McCain supporter, said the Republican made a “huge mistake” by even discussing canceling the debate.

“You can’t just say, ‘World, stop for a moment. I’m going to cancel everything,’” Huckabee told reporters Thursday night in Alabama before attending a benefit for the University of Mobile. He said it’s more important for voters to hear from the presidential candidates than for them to huddle with fellow senators in Washington.

Both McCain and Obama had returned to Washington on Thursday at the urging of President Bush, who invited them to a meeting with congressional leaders at the White House. But a session aimed at showing unity in resolving the financial crisis broke up with conflicts in plain view.

McCain’s campaign said the meeting “devolved into a contentious shouting match” and implied Obama was at fault — on a day when McCain said he was putting politics aside to focus on the nation’s financial problems.

Democrats differed, saying the refusal of McCain and other Republicans to support the plan worked out by congressional negotiators was creating a road block.

“The insertion of presidential politics has not been helpful,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Friday.

When asked whether the meeting was a mistake, Obama replied, “I’m not sure it was as productive as it could have been. I think at this point it’s important to just move forward.”

Several medical associations and 13 state attorneys general voiced their opposition Wednesday to a proposed federal rule that they fear would open the door for hospitals and physicians to deny access to contraception.

In late August, the Bush administration proposed stronger job protections for doctors and other health care workers who refuse to participate in abortions because of religious or moral objections. Abortion foes called it a victory for the First Amendment, but abortion rights supporters said they feared the rule could stretch the definition of abortion to include birth control.

The public comment period for the proposed rule ends Thursday. As the deadline nears, opponents have orchestrated a highly public call for the administration to rescind the rule. While the regulation states that it would not limit access to health care, groups such as the American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics disagreed.

They said doctors and nurses are already not required to perform abortions or sterilizations. They can refuse to do so. But each health care professional is ethically bound to inform patients about all of their treatment options. If health care professionals cannot or will not provide a certain service, they are ethically obligated to refer patients in a timely manner to someone who can.

“Implementation of this regulation would effectively allow health care providers‘ personal beliefs to override patients’ right to full disclosure of accurate information and available health care resources,” the medical associations wrote.

Separately, 13 attorneys general complained the rule was too vague about what health care procedures may be withheld.

“The proposed regulation completely obliterates the rights of patients to legal and medically necessary health care services in favor of a single-minded focus on protecting a health care provider’s right to claim a personal moral or religious belief,” the attorneys general said in a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services.

HHS spokeswoman Christina Pearson said she would not “speculate” on the department’s course of action.

“We have an open comment period, so I’m unable to comment on what will happen beyond here,” said Pearson.

Pearson said that Secretary Mike Leavitt has written extensively on his views about the need for the rule in a series of blogs available through the department’s Web site. Leavitt has said the rule is directly focused on the protection of practitioner conscience.

Worried Democrats want Barack Obama to get tougher, show more passion. Why is he so calm, supporters ask, so close to an election that looks so tight. “Just keep steady,” Obama tells the nervous Nellies. “I’m skinny but I’m tough. I’m from Chicago,”

Obama hears the concern, from senior Democrats and big-money contributors, from columnists and supporters along the rope lines at campaign events. He heard it again as he stood in an hour-long receiving line in Hollywood to pose for pictures with donors who paid $28,500 to be with him Tuesday night.

“I know that a lot of you, just in conversations while we were in the photo lines, had all sorts of suggestions,” Obama said. “And a lot of people have gotten nervous and concerned. `Why is this as close as it is? And what’s going on?’”

“We always knew this was going to be hard, and this is a leap for the American people,” Obama said. “And we’re running against somebody who has a formidable biography, a compelling biography. He’s a genuine American hero, somebody who served in uniform and suffered through some things that very few of us can imagine.”

Urging Democrats not to worry about his cool demeanor, Obama said, “The reason I’m calm is I have confidence in the American people.”

But many of his supporters are upset that polls show the race is pretty much even, even with Obama running against a Republican who used to brag that he voted 90 percent of the time with the unpopular President Bush. The economy is teetering, and the country is still at war, but seven weeks from Election Day the race is far from the slam-dunk that Democrats dreamed about.

And there does seem to be more bite in Obama’s daily remarks.

With unemployment rising and big financial firms failing, Obama and Republican rival John McCain both have pushed the economy to the front of their speeches. “The entire campaign has shifted,” Obama said.

He bought a two-minute television commercial to speak to voters on Wednesday, attempting to empathize with people struggling to pay for groceries, gas and health insurance. Taped in a living-room-like setting, Obama spoke directly to the camera and did not mention McCain.

But this week, Obama has noticeably toughened his speeches and sharpened his criticism of his rival. He still comes off as cool and unflappable, but there is more heat in his rhetoric.

On Wednesday in Elko, a conservative, rural mining community, Obama mocked McCain’s response to Wall Street’s meltdown.

“Yesterday, John McCain actually said that if he’s president he’ll take on — and I quote — `the old boys network in Washington.’ I’m not making this up,” Obama said. “This is somebody who’s been in Congress for 26 years, who put seven of the most powerful Washington lobbyists in charge of his campaign.

“And now he tells us that he’s the one who’s going to take on the old boys network,” Obama said. “The old boys network. In the McCain campaign that’s called a staff meeting. Come on.”

“Then John McCain went on to say how angry he was at the greedy corporate interests on Wall Street,” Obama said. “He is so angry that he wants to punish them with $200 billion worth of tax cuts for them. And if they’re not careful he’ll give them even more tax cuts for shipping our jobs overseas. I mean, who’s he getting these lines from, the lobbyists who are running his campaign?”

Some in the audience said they were perfectly satisfied with Obama’s tone.

“I think he needs to keep doing exactly what he’s doing, which is speak softly, show it through,” said Paul Barnhart, a retired real estate appraiser in the Elko crowd of about 1,500 people. “I think most Americans are pretty fed up and sick and tired of the bickering and the battling back and forth. I am.”

Holly Black, a special education teacher in Elko, agreed. “I don’t believe in the trash-talking. I believe he is aggressive.”

As for the tight campaign, David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist, said, “We never anticipated anything but a close race and now (after the political conventions) it’s settled back to where we expected it to be, which is a very close, competitive race.”

“We have a lot of targets of opportunity in states that were Bush states in 2004,” Axelrod said. “We expect to battle right to the end.” He also said Obama has started preparing for next week’s first of the three campaign debates that will help Americans decide.

“He’s been doing a lot of reading,” Axelrod said.

The 17-year-old unmarried daughter of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is pregnant, Palin said on Monday in an announcement intended to knock down rumors by liberal bloggers that Palin faked her own pregnancy to cover up for her child.

Bristol Palin, one of Alaska Gov. Palin’s five children with her husband Todd, is about five months pregnant and is going to keep the child and marry the father, according to aides of Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

Bristol Palin made the decision on her own to keep the baby, the aides said.

The Palins, in a statement released by the McCain campaign, said Bristol “came to us with news that we as parents knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned” and that their daughter “has our unconditional love and support.”

“We ask the media to respect our daughter and Levi’s privacy as has always been the tradition of children of candidates,” their statement said.

Senior McCain campaign officials said McCain knew of the daughter’s pregnancy when he selected Palin last week as his vice presidential running mate, deciding that it did not disqualify the 44-year-old governor in any way.

McCain officials said the news of the daughter’s pregnancy was being released to rebut what one aide called “mud-slinging and lies” that have circulated on liberal blog sites.

According to these rumors, Sarah Palin had faked a pregnancy and pretended to have given birth in April to her fifth child, a son named Trig who has Down syndrome. The rumor was that Trig was actually Bristol Palin’s child and that Sarah Palin was the grandmother.

PRO-LIFE GROUPS OFFER SUPPORT

Palin is staunchly anti-abortion, and pro-life groups welcomed the decision to keep the child.

James Dobson, an influential Christian evangelical conservative, said his Focus on the Family group had always counseled young mothers to see their pregnancies through, “even though there will be of course challenges along the way.”

“That is what the Palins are doing, and they should be commended once again for not just talking about their pro-life and pro-family values, but living them out even in the midst of trying circumstances,” he said in a statement.

Charmaine Yoest, head of Americans United for Life, said, “We join them in welcoming this new life.”

The McCain campaign was outraged by the blog rumors.

“There’s no doubt that liberal blogs such as one called www.barackoblogger.com and some in the mainstream media were pushing a false story about Gov. Palin’s most recent pregnancy with fervor,” said senior McCain adviser Nicolle Wallace.

A senior McCain official said its camp had no evidence that the campaign of Democrat Barack Obama was pushing the story, but said the blog rumors circulating on websites that appeared to support Obama had the effect of being “a real anchor around the Democratic ticket.”

OBAMA OFFENDED

Speaking to reporters in Monroe, Michigan, Obama said he was offended by the McCain aide’s statement and that he considered people’s families off-limits.

“We don’t go after people’s families. We don’t get them involved in the politics. It’s not appropriate and it’s not relevant. Our people were not involved in any way in this and they will not be. And if I ever thought there was somebody in my campaign that was involved in something like that, they’d be fired,” Obama said.

Obama also said: “This shouldn’t be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin’s performance as a governor or potential performance as a vice president. So I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories.”

The news broke as Republicans gathered in St. Paul for their convention to formally nominate McCain and Palin as the party’s candidates. Palin is only the second woman picked as a U.S. vice presidential nominee.

In the short period since she was announced last Friday, Palin has helped to energize the Republican Party’s conservative base, giving McCain fresh energy going into the campaign for the November 4 election against Obama and his No. 2 Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware.

A year after the worst U.S. bridge collapse in a generation brought calls for immediate repairs to other spans, two of every three of the busiest problem bridges in each state — carrying nearly 40 million vehicles a day — have had no work beyond regular maintenance.

An Associated Press review of repairs on each state’s 20 most-traveled bridges with structural deficiencies found just 12 percent have been fixed. In most states, the most common approach was to plan for repairs later rather than fix problems now.

The bridges reviewed by the AP — 1,020 in all — are not in imminent danger of collapse, state engineers and highway officials say. But the officials acknowledge the structures need improvement, many sooner rather than later.

The collapse of the eight-lane Interstate 35W bridge into the Mississippi River on Aug. 1, 2007, killed 13 people and brought immediate calls for repairs to bridges across the nation.

The failure to follow through was not because of lack of effort, officials said. Soaring construction costs, budget shortages, election-year politics, a backlog of bridge projects, competing highway repairs and bureaucracy often held bridge work to only incremental progress.

The AP gathered information on repair status from 48 states and Washington, D.C. In six states, data could not be obtained for some locally owned bridges. Louisiana and Nevada failed to respond.

The AP findings:

_Sixty-four percent of the bridges received no work beyond regular maintenance, though most were targeted for some kind of future work.

_Twelve percent had their structural defects fixed — usually through a major rehabilitation or outright replacement.

_An additional 24 percent have seen a partial improvement, either through a short-term repair to temporarily address the defect or an ongoing project that is not yet complete.

The worst were Indiana, Oklahoma, New Hampshire and South Carolina, where work was conducted on only one of each state’s 20 most heavily traveled structurally deficient bridges.

“At some point, relying on miracles is not going to be the best way to manage our system,” said Pete Rahn, the transportation commissioner of Missouri. “I would pray we don’t have to have another disaster to bring about the right attention to this. I see very little political will there.”

Adds Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell: “The Minneapolis incident obviously caused people to stand up and take notice, but I think it got dwarfed by the bad economic news.”

“There’s plenty of blame to go around,” said Rendell, who has joined a national campaign to demand more federal investment in infrastructure. He argues the federal government bears a larger share than states, which are struggling to make do with limited help.

Rahn, one of many state transportation officials interviewed who said it is long past time for Congress and the states to invest in bridges and roads, blames the federal government most of all.

But as Congress debates highway spending, some members criticize states for not devoting enough highway money to bridges. Also, the Bush administration has promised to veto the latest $1 billion proposed increase, itself a fraction of the estimated $140 billion needed for repairs on bridges alone.

“Thirteen people were killed and not much happened,” said engineer William Schutt, a critic of the status quo of bridge assessment and repair. “Who’s to blame? Congress, the American people — for putting up with it.”

Bridges deemed structurally deficient have elements that need monitoring and parts that need to be scheduled for repair or replacement. The designation does not necessarily mean a bridge is unsafe, although it is one of the factors used to determine when a bridge is at risk, and which ones quality for federal money.

“Structural deficiency ultimately determines whether a bridge will stand or fall,” said Kris Kolluri, New Jersey’s transportation commissioner. But recognizing the problem is only the first step.

“If you look at the full picture of bridges and the task that transportation professionals have,” Kolluri said, “it’s an overwhelming task.”

The Minneapolis bridge, one of the busiest in Minnesota, collapsed during a Wednesday evening rush hour into a tangle of steel and concrete and crushed cars. In addition to the 13 killed, 145 people were injured. A school bus with 52 children aboard that came to rest on an angled piece of pavement provided one of the enduring images of the tragedy.

Investigators have yet to issue their final determination on the cause of the Minneapolis collapse but have said an error in the original design was the critical factor. Certain gussets — steel plates that fastened the trusses together — were roughly half the 1-inch thickness they should have been, investigators said. A National Transportation Safety Board lab report made public Tuesday noted at least two gussets broke partially along lines of corrosion.

The disaster has generated a rush of emergency bridge inspections, an extra $1 billion from Congress for bridge repairs so far and vows from leaders to tackle the problems spotlighted by the tragedy.

Washington state Gov. Chris Gregoire called the I-35W collapse a “wake-up call to this nation.” She vowed to tackle two of her state’s overdue bridge projects, telling state lawmakers: “We need to take them down, not leave it to Mother Nature!” The Alaskan Way Viaduct along Seattle’s waterfront is to be demolished by 2012, and work to replace the SR 520 floating bridge over Lake Washington should begin the same year.

In all, 17 states proposed ambitious bridge and road spending totaling $13.7 billion. To date, $8.3 billion has won approval in six states, including $160 million in Maine, $600 million in Missouri and $6.6 billion in Minnesota.

But in 33 states and Washington, D.C., there was no significant new spending, and little debate.

The AP started its review by identifying the 20 most heavily trafficked structurally deficient bridges in each state, using a Federal Highway Administration inventory of data submitted by states.

But the inventory, which includes about 70,000 structurally deficient bridges nationwide, doesn’t reflect the latest work — most of that information from the states was gathered before the collapse.

So the AP asked state transportation departments to explain the current status of repairs on each of those bridges and disclose future plans and whether officials had identified any new heavily trafficked, structurally deficient bridges since the last update to the federal government.

Some states wound up with more than 20 structurally deficient bridges in the AP analysis because they had additional, newly categorized, busy bridges that were structurally deficient.

Understandably, Minnesota’s response has been among the most vigorous.

The Democratic-controlled Legislature, with some Republican help, overrode GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s veto of the $6.6 billion transportation spending plan, which raised the gas tax, local sales taxes and vehicle registration fees. The Senate then sacked his transportation commissioner, who had resisted the increased spending and higher taxes.

In June, a new commissioner outlined a $2.5 billion draft bridge improvement plan that would replace 11 major spans over the next decade using the new money. By 2018, 120 bridges that lack structural redundancies — like the doomed I-35W bridge — or that rank poorly on the structural sufficiency scale would be repaired, replaced or under construction.

Minnesota officials abruptly closed or partially closed three busy bridges after those inspections found flaws. The state also moved swiftly to replace the I-35W bridge.

Contractors aim to complete work by Sept. 15 — 100 days ahead of the deadline.

Missouri was another bright spot, where the Legislature moved ahead on a stalled bridge-improvement plan that was put on a fast track weeks after the Minneapolis collapse.

Lawmakers agreed on a measure to award a single 30-year contract to fix and maintain 802 of the state’s worst bridges, despite a price tag of $600 million that analysts say could easily double over the contract’s lifetime.

Politics dashed ambitious plans in Colorado and Virginia.

Despite initial support from the governor, months of study and accusations that opponents were playing “structurally deficient bridge roulette,” Colorado lawmakers killed proposals to raise car registration fees, sales and gas taxes.

In Virginia, transportation may have been the biggest single issue of the last several years. The governor’s $1 billion transportation plan became a political, partisan showdown and, despite a special session in July, wound up a stalemate.

The debate echoes from statehouses to Washington.

Last week, the U.S. House overwhelmingly approved another $1 billion for bridge work, though the White House has opposed the increase and has promised a veto.

The nation’s bridges depend significantly on the federal government. In 2004, $10.5 billion was invested across the country on bridge improvements, according to the FHWA. The federal Highway Bridge Program provided $5.1 billion, with another $1.5 billion coming from other federal aid; states and local government paid $3.9 billion.

Much of the federal support comes out of the Highway Trust Fund, which is financed largely through fuel taxes — a potential problem because high pump prices have led people to drive less.

“The federal government has basically ignored infrastructure at every level,” said Rendell, who, with California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, has launched a group called Building America’s Future to demand infrastructure investment. “They’ve just literally abdicated their responsibility.”

According to the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, a projected $14 billion shortfall means only about $27 billion in federal money will be available next year to states and local governments for new highway and bridge investments — a 34 percent reduction — even though the current federal highway act calls for spending $41 billion a year.

The risks of another Minneapolis-style collapse aren’t getting smaller as bridges age and traffic and weather take their toll.

Even annual inspections — twice as often as the standard federal requirement — don’t guarantee a bridge is safe.

On Saturday afternoon, 1,200 pounds of concrete chunks fell from the underside of a 50-year-old bridge in St. Paul over I-35E, a few miles from last summer’s fatal collapse.

Two cars were damaged but nobody was injured. The bridge was inspected last August; since it is structurally deficient, it was due for another inspection soon.

The bridge is safe to carry traffic, said Dan Dorgan, Minnesota’s chief bridge engineer, though the previous inspection had noted that deteriorating concrete had been fixed.

“It is not acceptable for us to have concrete falling off a bridge,” he said.

___

Associated Press Writer Steve Karnowski reported from Minneapolis, AP National Writer Robert Tanner reported from New York, and Associated Press Writer Frank Bass reported from East Dover, Vt.

1. Absolutely!!

2. No. The President needs to be intelligent and powerful enough not to be a puppet.

3. Nope.

4. Oh my god no. She is the freakiest person I ever heard of. She makes absolutely no sense when she talks. She speaks in that government speak and does not make any sense. Have I mentioned she makes no sense?

5. Possibly, a black woman being president would be GREAT, but I don’t think there’s a chance she would ever run. She does seem to agree with EVERYTHING Bush does, other than that I think she could handle the job.

6. From what I have seen of her, I would seriously consider her as a viable candidate.

7. I would sooner vote for Condie than for Hillary

8. Helllllllllllllllllllllll Nooooooooooooooooooo!

9. It depends on who she ran against but she is definitely very highly regarded by me.

10. nope…no way …not a frig’n shot, she’s as bad as bush and darth cheney

11. Possibly, yes. IMHO, she’s the most qualified woman in America. However, she has never held an elected position in government. I say that she’d be a good VP running mate for the republican party … that would get Hillary’s and the democrat party’s panties in a bunch!

12. I would vote for her before I would Hillary Clinton. And with the way she handling foreign relations and the mid-eastern peace talks I think she would make a good president.

13. Maybe, depend on the other choice

14. She was so weak as the national security adviser and the Secretary of state that Donald Rumsfeld and the defense department bullied their way in to dictating what state department policy should be.

She would be a weak president.

15. depends on her stances and ideals, but i wouldn’t out right rule it out.

16. You bet. It’s nice to have a leader with class. And she’s tough and is a good speaker.

Joey, what a great idea!

17. No, since I never voted for her in anything in the first place. I want to know who the People get to nominate? All we get is a premade selection of choices that I would never make in the first place.

Counteract Violence with Knowledge…educated yourself about the situation at hand and seek out peaceful, collaborative and empowering alternatives. Violence spawns from an attempt to recover what one believes was pilfered. Whether this was money, land, dignity, etc—violence is only a temporary fix to secure these lost assets and rational, intelligent avenues to make the self whole yield the most sustainable results.

Counteract Anger with Understanding…pause, listen and truly hear the angry voice. Anger is frustration and becomes louder because no one will listen. Often anger can be diffused significantly when given a passive audience. You do not have to agree with the position to support the human behind it.

Counteract Hate with Love…hate is toxic. And perhaps my answer is cliché, but in my personal experience…it is the only way. Every individual is human (with good parts and not so good parts) applying this ideology inhibits the reciprocation of this hate. Hating the hate gives it an excuse to hate more, but by loving the hate…the diseased cycle is starved

Attorneys choose jurors by using a system known as voir dire. This is where each side of a case has the opportunity to ask questions of the jurors to determine who would not be suited to serve on this case due to underlying biases. This is where the differences between federal and state court arise. In federal court, the judge is the one who generally conducts voir dire. the attorneys submit questions to the judge who will ask the questions to the jurors. In state court, generally each attorney is permitted to ask questions to the jurors in an alloted time period. At the end of voir dire, the attorneys are permitted to use for cause challenges to get rid of the jurors from the jury pool who would be tainted from delivering a verdict. This means for example if it is a murder case, juror fourteen’s sister was murdered. This juror would be struck for cause because it would be hard for this juror to think about this murder case differently than they would think about their own sister’s murder case. Then each side has an opportunity to exercise their preemptory challenges to get rid of a juror. This is where Batson challenges can arise. It is pretty complicated going into the ins and outs of jury selection but this is a bare bones summary.

Attorneys choose jurors by using a system known as voir dire. This is where each side of a case has the opportunity to ask questions of the jurors to determine who would not be suited to serve on this case due to underlying biases. This is where the differences between federal and state court arise. In federal court, the judge is the one who generally conducts voir dire. the attorneys submit questions to the judge who will ask the questions to the jurors. In state court, generally each attorney is permitted to ask questions to the jurors in an alloted time period. At the end of voir dire, the attorneys are permitted to use for cause challenges to get rid of the jurors from the jury pool who would be tainted from delivering a verdict. This means for example if it is a murder case, juror fourteen’s sister was murdered. This juror would be struck for cause because it would be hard for this juror to think about this murder case differently than they would think about their own sister’s murder case. Then each side has an opportunity to exercise their preemptory challenges to get rid of a juror. This is where Batson challenges can arise. It is pretty complicated going into the ins and outs of jury selection but this is a bare bones summary.

Liberty is the essential heart of freedom. Liberty means being able to choose one’s own actions, without intrusion by government. Every law that restricts your movement, your actions or your words is one that restricts your liberty.

Privacy is the notion that the government will not intrude upon actions that you intend to be private. For instance, intercepting someones mail violates their privacy, as it is expected that only the recipient of the mail will read it.

Every infringement upon privacy can therefore potentially result in a infringement of liberty. For example, a wiretap could lead to an arrest.

People have a right to privacy, that is, they have a right to expect that the government will do as little as necessary to intrude upon their rights. This right is expressly provided for in the bill of rights. These rules govern due process. This is why the police must obtain a warrant to do a search.