Retired Supreme Court Justice O'Connor visits SC

Issues dealing with church and state will always be among the toughest the nation's courts deal with and there's no easy test for deciding them, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said Monday.

"Religious pluralism lies at the very heart of the American political tradition and I think it remains a major concern as our country becomes ever more the home of larger and larger communities of people from widely different ethnic and religious backgrounds," the first woman appointed to the high court told a legal symposium focusing on a constitutional test she proposed in a high court ruling almost 30 years  ago.

The symposium at the Charleston School of Law was sponsored by the Charleston Law Review and the Riley Institute at Furman University.

O'Connor's endorsement test proposed that a government action can violate the First Amendment's separation of church and state if a reasonable observer sees that action as either endorsing or disapproving religion. But O'Connor, who is 83 and who retired from the court in 2006, said that there is no grand unified theory for applying to such cases. Over the years the Supreme Court has made seemingly contradictory decisions.

Doctor to plead guilty in CA prescription case

A Southern California doctor has agreed to plead guilty to charges of illegally prescribing drugs to his patients at nightly meetings in Starbucks stores.
Court documents show 44-year-old Alvin Mingczech Yee entered into a plea agreement earlier this week. He is expected to plead guilty to seven counts at a April 17 hearing.
Prosecutors say Yee saw up to a dozen patients nightly at Starbucks coffee stores across suburban Orange County at meetings that cost up to $600. Prosecutors say Yee barely examined them but prescribed drugs including OxyContin and Vicodin.
Yee was arrested in October 2011 at his Irvine office and has been free on bond.