Supreme court refuses to block law

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Supreme court refuses to block law
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A sharply divided supreme court on Tuesday
allowed Texas to continue enforcing abortion
restrictions that opponents say have led more
than a third of the state's clinics to stop
providing abortions. The justices voted 5-4 to
leave in effect a provision requiring doctors who
perform abortions in clinics to have admitting
privileges at a nearby hospital. Prior to the U.
S. Supreme Court, the lower courts ruled that
abortion restrictions are allowed so long as they
do not impose an "undue burden" on a woman's
ability to obtain an abortion. Justice Antonin
Scalia, writing the majority opinion for the high
court order on Tuesday, said the justices may not
overturn a ruling, "unless that court clearly and
demonstrably erred. He wrote, in other words,
that the lower court did things properly and so
the law should be allowed to continue.
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In Other News

• The eldest daughter of Walt Disney, Diane Disney
  Miller, has died at 79. Miller died in Napa,
  California, the result of injuries sustained in a
  fall.
• An air ambulance has gone down off the coast of
  South Florida after dropping off a patient flown
  in from Mexico. Four people were on board - two
  pilots, a doctor and a nurse. The bodies of a man
  and a woman have been recovered, but their
  identities haven't been released. The cause of
  the crash is not clear. The pilot issued a
  distress shortly after takeoff, followed by
  "Mayday, mayday, mayday.
• A Florida judge has ordered George Zimmerman to
  give up guns while he awaits trial on charges he
  pointed a shotgun at his girlfriend. The
  condition was part of a 9,000 bail agreement.
  Zimmerman faces a felony charge of aggravated
  assault and misdemeanor counts of domestic
  violence battery and criminal mischief. It was
  just four months ago that Zimmerman was acquitted
  of murdering teenager Trayvon Martin.
• A federal appeals court lifted the stay of
  execution for white supremacist serial killer
  Joseph Paul Franklin early Wednesday morning --
  moving the man blamed for 22 killings and the
  shooting of Hustler magazine publisher Larry
  Flynt closer to death. The next step for
  Franklin's attorneys would be to appeal the case
  to the U.S. Supreme Court. It was not clear early
  Wednesday when, or if, they plan to do so.
  Franklin is on death row for the 1977 murder of
  Gerald Gordon outside a synagogue in St. Louis.
  He's been blamed for a total of 22 killings
  between 1977 and 1980 in a bid to start a race
  war. He is challenging Missouri's decision to use
  the drug pentobarbital in its lethal injection
  protocol, arguing it would violate the
  Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual
  punishment (the Eighth Amendment). If nothing
  changes, Franklin could be put to death sometime
  Wednesday.
• A top Virginia politician lies in a hospital bed
  with multiple stab wounds after what state police
  say was an attempted murder and suicide. State
  Sen. Creigh Deeds is in fair condition. Police
  found his 24-year-old son, Austin "Gus" Deeds,
  dead from a gunshot wound. The incident took
  place at Deeds' home in Millboro, about 150 miles
  west of Richmond.
• A Massachusetts high school football team
  canceled the rest of its season after someone
  scrawled a racial epithet on the home of one of
  its players. "Knights don't need the n-word,"
  the slur read. The Blue Knights are the football
  team at Lunenburg High School, a school 55 miles
  northwest of Boston. The incident has brought the
  FBI to Lunenburg. The boy's mother is white his
  father black. The boy told the station he's been
  dealing with other harassing incidents in recent
  weeks. His cleats were doused in water the tire
  on his bicycle was slashed. School officials
  canceled last Friday's game, and said they will
  forfeit the remaining two games -- including the
  traditional Thanksgiving Day game. Authorities
  are also investigating whether racial slurs were
  hurled at a rival team by Lunenburg High School
  players during a football game earlier in the
  season. The committee said its decision to
  forfeit the games was made the decision out of
  safety concerns "in the emotionally-charged
  environment that has been generated by these
  recent acts."