The Supreme Court's conservative bloc sounded poised Wednesday to strike down on free-speech grounds a 102-year-old ban against corporations spending large amounts of money to elect or defeat congressional and presidential candidates.

If the justices were to issue such a ruling in the next few months, it could reshape American politics, beginning with the congressional campaign in 2010. Big companies and industries -- and possibly unions as well -- could fund campaign ads to support or defeat members of Congress.

For example, the health insurance industry would have a much greater ability to target for defeat lawmakers who supported a so-called public option for medical insurance. Banks and investment firms could oppose representatives who favored stricter regulation of the financial industry.

And far more money could flow into elections. Last year, the political parties spent about $1.5 billion on campaigns, while corporations earned more than $600 billion in profits.

Since 1907, federal law has prohibited corporations from giving money to candidates. And since 1947, corporations and unions have been barred from spending money on their own to urge voters to elect or defeat federal candidates.

Of course, corporate executives, as individuals, can contribute money to a corporate political action committee, or PAC, but these amounts are modest compared with the funds available to corporate treasuries.

An appeals court panel upheld on Wednesday the conviction of a pharmacist for conspiracy to unlawfully distribute prescription drugs through a Wichita-based Internet pharmacy.

But the panel from the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver also threw out the conviction of a co-defendant who worked as a computer technician for Red Mesa Pharmacy.

Pharmacist Jerry Lovern and computer technician Robert Barron were convicted in February 2008 of one count of conspiracy and three counts of unlawfully distributing controlled substances.

Prosecutors said Red Mesa Pharmacy distributed more than 9,200 orders between December 2005 and March 2006 for prescriptions approved by doctors who did not physically examine the buyers or have any communication with them. The prescriptions cited included Ambien, a controlled drug used for insomnia; and phentermine, a stimulant that is sometimes contained in prescription drugs used for weight loss.

Red Mesa's owner, Dr. Wilbur Hilst of Wewoka, Okla., is serving a 33-month sentence after pleading guilty to conspiracy to unlawfully distribute prescription drugs.

Federal prosecutors have asked an appeals court to stay its decision that government agents illegally seized the drug testing records and samples of more than 100 baseball players.

The move could keep baseball's infamous drug list from being destroyed for at least a few months.

In a filing late Monday with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the U.S. attorney's office in San Francisco said the Solicitor General, in consultation with the criminal division of the Justice Department and the U.S. attorney's office, was considering whether to ask the Supreme Court to review the decision.

The deadline for a filing with the Supreme Court is Nov. 24.

"There is good cause for a stay," the government wrote in a motion filed by Joseph P. Russoniello, the U.S. attorney in San Francisco, and signed by Barbara J. Valliere, chief of his appellate section.

The ruling by a three-judge panel will allow the lawsuit to go forward and put the Texas delegate system closer to facing a potential review by the Justice Department, which Latino advocates sought in the aftermath of last year's intense Democratic primary between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

In a lawsuit filed last year, the Latino groups argued that the way Texas Democrats awarded presidential delegates unfairly discriminated against Latinos by awarding fewer presidential delegates to heavily Hispanic areas. They did not contest to whom the delegates were awarded, but rather how the allotment was made.

Latino advocates saw Tuesday's ruling as clearing the way for the party's complex process of awarding delegates through a primary and caucus to be done away with entirely.

Oral arguments will be made in St. Paul before a three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. The NFL hopes for a quick ruling that would let it suspend the players for four games at the start of the season.

The players took the weight-loss supplement StarCaps, which contained an unlisted but banned diuretic that can mask the presence of steroids.

Their legal fight remains alive in a Minnesota state court. But the NFL is asking the federal appeals court to rule that the players' union contract and federal law trump state law in this case.

"We close at 5," Judge Sharon Keller told a court staffer Sept. 25, 2007.

The appeal was never heard, and four hours later, convicted killer Michael Wayne Richard was executed. Now it's Keller who will be before a judge, facing charges that could end her career in a special trial that begins Monday in San Antonio. Denying the rights of a condemned man is among five judicial misconduct charges that Keller, the presiding judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, is up against.

Nicknamed "Sharon Killer" among critics for a tough-on-crime reputation crafted over the years, Keller is the highest-ranking judge in Texas to be put on trial by the state Commission on Judicial Conduct. The judge overseeing the trial will submit a report to the commission, which could dismiss the charges, issue a censure or suggest Keller be removed from the bench.

Keller, a Republican who has served on the court since 1994, has not spoken publicly since being charged in February. Her attorney, Chip Babcock, said the widely repeated narrative of what happened the day Richard was executed isn't accurate.

"When Justice Sotomayor put her hand on that Bible and took that oath ... we came yet another step to the more perfect union that we all seek," Obama told a White House reception for Sotomayor.

The ceremony was packed with family and friends of Sotomayor, who has become the first Hispanic and third woman on the high court bench. Lawmakers, issue advocates, Hispanic community leaders and others who helped shepherd her confirmation through the Senate came to watch as she appeared with the president for remarks.

"While this is Justice Sotomayor's achievement, the result of her ability and determination," Obama said, "this moment is not just about her. It's about every child who will grow up thinking to him- or herself, `If Sonia Sotomayor can make it, then maybe I can too.' "

Following Obama at the lectern, Sotomayor spoke emotionally about wending her way from a modest background to the highest court in the land. She grew up in public housing projects in South Bronx, N.Y., before getting an Ivy League education and starting her legal career.

"It is our nation's faith in a more perfect union that allows a Puerto Rican girl from the Bronx to stand here now," she said, a line that earned her huge applause and a standing ovation from the audience.