The group asked the judge on Thursday to demand an explanation regarding alleged inconsistencies between testimony at a congressional hearing last week and what the White House told a federal court in January.

"This evidence demonstrates defendants' blatant disregard for the truth and the processes of this court," Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington told U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy in court papers.

CREW wants the judge to compel the Executive Office of the President to explain why it should not be held in contempt of court.

In a sworn declaration, White House official Theresa Payton told the court on Jan. 16 that "substantially all" e-mails from 2003 to 2005 should be contained on back-up computer tapes.

However, at a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Feb. 26, the panel's Democrats released a White House document that called that claim into question.

E-mail was missing from a White House archive for the period of Sept. 30-Oct. 6, 2003 from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, the White House document states. The backup tape covering that seven-day period was not created until Oct. 21, 2003, raising the possibility that e-mail was missing from the earlier period. That time span was in the earliest days of the Justice Department's probe into whether anyone at the White House leaked the CIA identity of Valerie Plame. Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was eventually convicted by a jury of four felonies in the leak probe.

The congressional panel also released written statements by a former White House technical supervisor saying that a 15-person team conducted an extensive multi-phase assessment that resulted in a final 250-page analysis on the problem of missing White House e-mail.

In her sworn declaration to the federal court in January, the White House official said she was aware of a chart created by a former employee regarding missing e-mails, but said nothing about the 250-page analysis.

The immediate impact of the ruling was not clear. Attorneys for the state Department of Education were reviewing the ruling, and home schooling organizations were lining up against it.

"Parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children," Justice H. Walter Croskey wrote in a Feb. 28 opinion for the 2nd District Court of Appeal.

Noncompliance could lead to criminal complaints against the parents, Croskey said.

An estimated 166,000 students in California are home schooled, but it was not known how many of them are taught solely by an uncredentialed parent.

To earn a five-year preliminary teaching credential in California, a person must obtain a bachelor's degree and complete multiple examinations.

Until now, California allowed home schooling if parents filed paperwork to establish themselves as small, private schools; hired a credentialed tutor; or enrolled their child in an independent study program run by an established school while teaching the child at home.

The ruling stems from a case involving a Los Angeles-area couple whose eldest child reported "physical and emotional mistreatment" by the father, court papers said.

The father, Phillip Long, vowed to take the case to the state Supreme Court.

"I have sincerely held religious beliefs," he told the Los Angeles Times. "Public schools conflict with that. I have to go with what my conscience requires me."

They did not identify the people or companies concerned, but they said "the background is the number that has been rising for years of criminal complaints by the holders of patent rights in the run-up to CeBIT."

Police said they filled 68 boxes with gadgets, documents and advertising material. The gadgets included cell phones, navigation devices, electronic picture frames and flat-screen devices, a police statement said.

All the exhibitors who were searched cooperated, except one who was briefly taken to a police station, police said. Of 51 exhibitors affected, 24 were from mainland China, three from Hong Kong and 12 from Taiwan. Another nine were German, and one each were from Poland, the Netherlands and Korea.

The alleged patent violations largely concerned devices with MP3, MP4 or digital video broadcast functions, as well as DVD players and blank CDs and DVDs, police said.

Investigators were also scrutinizing surveillance video and forensic evidence after a bicycle-riding bomber struck the landmark station Thursday, scarring one of the world's most recognizable locations.

Authorities said there was no connection between the blast and a letter sent to as many as 100 members of Congress bearing the words "Happy New Year, We Did It."

The lengthy anti-war letters — which arrived with photos of a man standing in front of the recruiting office before it was damaged — contained no threats, officials said.

Laura Eimiller, an FBI spokeswoman in Los Angeles, said an individual was questioned there about the letters to Congress and "there is no evidence linking the letters, which contained no threat, to the bombing."

But Mamdouh Habib almost certainly was mistreated during his three years of detention without trial in four countries after being arrested in Pakistan in late 2001, during which he suffered extreme stress and trauma, the judge found.

The findings came in a judgment in Habib's case against Sydney's The Daily Telegraph newspaper in which he claimed that the paper defamed him by implying he lied about being tortured.

A jury in 2006 found in Habib's favor, but the paper's publisher, Rupert Murdoch's Nationwide News Pty. Ltd., sought to knock down the case by proving that there was some truth to its article.

On Friday, Justice Peter McClellan of the New South Wales state Supreme Court upheld News' case, and ruled Habib would get no payout. Habib vowed to appeal.

Habib, an Egyptian-born Muslim immigrant, was arrested in late 2001 in Pakistan, where he says he was held for 28 days and interrogated by Americans before he was transferred to Egypt, then six months later to the U.S. military base at Bagram, Afghanistan and then to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Habib told the court he had been beaten and electrocuted by his captors while he was in Pakistan and Egypt, kept drugged and shackled, had his fingers broken, and was sexually molested.

He claimed that Australian officials were present during parts of his ordeal.

Habib said that while at Guantanamo he was regularly beaten before interrogation sessions, kept shackled and often naked, and had his cell sprayed with pepper spray.

In his ruling, McClellan said he could not accept a lot of Habib's evidence because it was inconsistent with previous statements he had made. The judge also found Habib was "prone to exaggerate," and "evasive" when pressed on details.

"I have no difficulty in accepting that the experiences which Mr. Habib suffered were traumatic" and were an "extraordinarily stressful experience," McClellan said.

"I also have little doubt that from time to time he was mistreated," he said, citing electric shocks, kicks and the use of hot and cold water as included in the likely abuse.

"However, the evidence he gave was disjointed and on many occasions he failed to respond to a question," the judge said. "I have ultimately concluded that I cannot accept the allegations of mistreatment in the detail which he gave the evidence in this court."

"That does not mean that I have concluded that these events did not happen but merely that I cannot be satisfied that they did happen," he said.

Pearlman's Transcontinental Airlines Inc. didn't have 41 airplanes, as he represented to investors. He had two, he said in court.

And he didn't have a German investment partner with a $50 million line of bailout capital, he acknowledged. In fact, that guy was also trying to get money out of him.

"I'm accepting full responsibility," Pearlman said in a roughly 50-minute change of plea hearing.

He will be sentenced May 21, and faces up to 25 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

Pearlman also pledged to help prosecutors locate coconspirators and any remaining assets, but couldn't explain to U.S. District Judge G. Kendall Sharp where the money went.

"In different investments," he said. "Aircraft, living expenses, working capital."

Pearlman acknowledged setting up a fake accounting firm to create business documents and tax returns for himself and his companies. He also admitted using the signature of a deceased former associate, Harry Milner, to push off anyone seeking repayment. Milner hadn't worked with Pearlman since 1989, the mogul acknowledged, and died in 2003.

Miller Canfield's Kalamazoo law office has relocated into a 32,000-square-foot suite on the top two floors of the new building that bears its name in downtown Kalamazoo.

The 151,000-square-foot Miller Canfield Building at 277 S. Rose St. is being called the first Class A office building to be built in downtown in more than 20 years.

Catalyst Development Co., part of building owner The Greenleaf Cos., has placed the building cost at $32 million. Construction redeveloped a space that had held an older office building and parking lot.

"We're pleased to be a part of Kalamazoo's renaissance," Miller Canfield Resident Director John R. Cook said in a press release. "This new building represents our commitment to the community, while the state-of-the-art facility will allow us to expand and provide services to clients around the block and around the world."

The office's 40 lawyers and staff of 36 relocated from 444 W. Michigan Ave. They are part of an 800-attorney law firm established in Detroit in 1852 that has offices in Michigan, Illinois, Massachusetts, Florida, New York, Canada and Poland.

According to information provided by the firm, it has grown from 18 lawyers in 1984, when Brown, Colman & DeMent merged with Miller Canfield.

Its legal practices include business law, securities, mergers and acquisitions, real estate, banking, intellectual property law, bankruptcy, litigation, labor, tax, health law and corporate-discovery-management services.

http://www.millercanfield.com