Lawyers for NBC Universal Inc., had asked the high court to overturn a lower court order that the cable TV news network include the Ohio congressman or pull the plug on broadcasting the debate Tuesday night with Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards.

An hour before the debate, the state Supreme Court's unanimous order said that blocking the debate unless Kucinich got to participate would be "an unconstitutional prior restraint" on the news network's First Amendment rights. The justices also said the lower court exceeded its jurisdiction by ordering Kucinich's participation even though he first requested and was denied relief from the Federal Communications Commission.

"It's a matter of being on stage and answering questions. That's the issue," lawyer Bill McGaha argued for Kucinich during a hearing before four justices in Las Vegas. Three other justices participated by closed-circuit video conference from Carson City.

Donald Campbell, a Las Vegas lawyer representing NBC Universal, accused Kucinich of trying to make a jurisdictional "end run" around the FCC and federal courts by suing in Nevada state court to be added to the debate.

FCC broadcast rules do not apply to cable TV networks, Campbell said, adding that forcing MSNBC to add Kucinich or not broadcast the debate amounted to prior restraint and would be a "clear and unequivocal" violation of First Amendment press freedom.

"Mr. Kucinich's claim ... undermines the wide journalistic freedoms enjoyed by news organizations under the First Amendment," Campbell said in his appeal.

Campbell said MSNBC decided to go with the top three candidates after the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries. Kucinich drew less than 2 percent of the Democratic vote in the New Hampshire primary, after attracting little support in the Iowa caucuses.

The two-year study by the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission is the first to propose broad changes after the devastating bridge collapse in Minneapolis last August shone a spotlight on the deteriorating state of the nation's infrastructure. Calling for immediate action, the congressionally created panel warned that "applying patches" is no longer acceptable. It said the nation risks tens of thousands of highway casualties each year and millions of dollars lost in economic growth.

"The crisis is now," the report said.

The 68-page compilation of findings and recommendations, which were supported by nine of the 12 members on the commission, is expected to re-ignite congressional and political debate over raising gasoline taxes. The gas tax has not been increased since 1993, and recent efforts by Congress to increase it have faltered, over the objections of the Bush administration.

The commission was expected to present its findings Thursday to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and to a Senate panel later this month, but House Republican leaders quickly said they would oppose a tax hike.

"A dramatic increase in the gas tax does not stand a snowball's chance in hell of passing Congress," said Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., the top Republican on the House Transportation panel.

In a 10-page dissent, the commission's chairwoman, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, and two other members agreed with several aspects of the report but sharply criticized the proposal for higher gasoline taxes. She and the two commissioners are calling instead for sole reliance on tolls and private investment, which Peters said would avoid sending millions of dollars of new tax revenue to Washington that end up as congressional pork. Department spokesman for said the three commissioners opted not to appear at the news conference to avoid a public display of internal division.

Under the proposal, the current tax of 18.4 cents per gallon would be increased by 5 cents to 8 cents annually for five years and then indexed to inflation afterward to help fix the infrastructure, expand public transit and highways as well as broaden railway and rural access. The increase is designed to take effect in 2009, after President Bush leaves office.

Other sources of revenue could come from tolls, peak-hour "congestion pricing" on highways, freight fees and ticket taxes for passenger rail improvements, the report said.

"A failure to act will be catastrophic to this nation," said Jack Schenendorf, the commission's vice chairman. He contended the tax increase would amount to "less than a cost of a candy bar and a fifth of the cost of a cafe latte" for the average U.S. motorist.

"We saw what happened with Katrina," he said, referring to the 2005 hurricane which overwhelmed aging levees. "We don't want to see the transportation system to see the same fate of the New Orleans levees."

Commissioner Paul Weyrich, a Republican appointee to the commission and chairman of the Free Congress Foundation, said he is philosophically opposed to higher taxes but decided to support it this time in light of the growing transportation problems.

The recommendations, if implemented, are expected to cost $225 billion each year for the next 50 years:

The commission, established by Congress in 2005, also called for the country to rebuild and expand its rail network to meet a growing demand for alternatives to congested highways and to promote partnerships between the public and private sectors at U.S. ports. Its report comes as state governments and several business groups call on Washington to raise gas taxes to pay for substantial transportation improvements. The Minneapolis bridge collapse, which killed 13 people and injured about 100, also drew new calls for additional spending.

"The time is now to work together to find a solution to this complex problem," said John Engler, president and CEO of the National Association of Manufacturers, which is open to a tax increase but isn't formally supporting it. "The U.S. will soon be facing a competitive disadvantage if we don't develop a national plan to improve the quality of our infrastructure system."

A former office manager for a Columbia law firm pleaded guilty yesterday to stealing almost $706,000 from the company - one of the largest embezzlement cases in county history, according to the state's attorney's office.

Christine McClain-Sloane, 41, used company checks to pay for personal expenses for six of the 11 years she worked at Nagle and Zaller PC, the Howard County state's attorney's office said.

McClain-Sloane pleaded guilty to two counts of felony theft scheme, and Howard Circuit Judge Diane O. Leasure revoked her bail. Sentencing was scheduled for March 28.

The state will ask that McClain-Sloane serve an 18- to 22-year sentence and repay the firm the $705,915, according to the state's attorney's office.

After analyzing the firm's financial and bank records, the state determined that from 1998 to 2005, McClain-Sloane wrote nearly 250 fraudulent company checks and made nearly 1,400 unauthorized personal charges to her company credit card, according to the statement of facts by Senior Assistant State's Attorney Lynn M. Marshall.

The firm's partners discovered that McClain-Sloane had stolen money after she resigned and moved to Lexington, Ky., in 2005, according to the statement of facts.

"This should be a wake-up call to any professionals and business people because what it really is, is a violation of the trust that was given to her," said P. Michael Nagle, founding partner of the firm, yesterday.

"It's really very important for businesses to have safeguards in place, which I did not have in place," he said.

The court ruled against investors who alleged that two suppliers colluded with Charter Communications Inc. to deceive Charter's stockholders and inflate the price of the cable TV company's stock.

Charter investors do not have the right to sue because they did not rely on the deceptive acts of Charter's suppliers, said the majority opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Kennedy pointed to the Securities and Exchange Commission as a protector of investors in similar cases and that the regulatory agency has used its enforcement power to collect more than $10 billion over the past five years.

The decision is likely to have an impact on a similar class-action lawsuit by shareholders who invested in scandal-ridden Enron Corp.

Investors in Enron, once the nation's seventh-largest company, are seeking more than $30 billion from Wall Street investment banks, alleging they schemed with Enron to hide its financial problems.

In the Supreme Court, the lawsuit against Charter's suppliers has been closely watched by business and industry, which argued that an adverse ruling would clear the way for a flood of lawsuits.

In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said the court is conducting a continuing campaign to undercut investor lawsuits.

A liberal Supreme Court in 1971 endorsed investor lawsuits under antifraud provisions of securities law at issue in the current lawsuit. In 1994, a more conservative Supreme Court imposed limits on such lawsuits, prohibiting cases against third parties for aiding and abetting a company's misstatements. The Republican-controlled Congress enacted the restrictions into law the next year.

In a scheme allegedly designed to inflate the cable TV company's revenue picture, Charter got Motorola and Scientific-Atlanta to buy advertising with money that Charter provided. Charter supplied the funds by paying a $20 premium on each of hundreds of thousands of cable TV set-top boxes, for a total of $17 million. The amount of the overpayments equaled the amount the two suppliers paid for the ads.

Charter reported the advertising payments as revenue, a step that helped Charter meet Wall Street's expectations for the fourth quarter of 2000.

Motorola and Scientific-Atlanta allegedly backdated the contracts for the set-top boxes to make the advertising and the set-top boxes transactions appear unrelated. Scientific-Atlanta allegedly submitted documentation to Charter attributing the price increase to increased manufacturing expenses.

Justice Stephen Breyer disqualified himself from the case because he owns stock in Cisco Systems Inc., which now owns Scientific-Atlanta.