We've got a remarkable story from contributor James Robinson in the new issue of the Phoenix that raises questions about the 40-year-old conviction of Clarence Spivey on charges of rape, kidnapping, and assault.

Spivey, one of Rhode Island's longest-serving inmates, was at the center of a racially charged case involving a young white woman dragged from a hospital parking lot by a black man and brutally raped in a nearby vacant apartment.

The Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation has caused quite a stir with its demand that the city of Woonsocket take down a World War I and World War II memorial, featuring a cross, on city land.

Public opinion in Rhode Island is clearly pro-monument. And every pol who can plausibly lay claim to the case - from Woonsocket Mayor Leo Fontaine to Attorney General Peter Kilmartin - is wrapping himself in the cloak of the Good Lord.

In the "in case you missed it" category:

Interesting item in the Wall Street Journal this week - it had appeared on wsj.com's Law Blog a week earlier - focused on Rhode Island US Attorney Peter Neronha, who brought a big case against Google for knowingly running ads for rogue online pharmacies. It resulted in a $500 million settlement.

Of all the pontificating about what the Supreme Court will do on Obamacare - Kennedy and Scalia as swing votes, Chief Justice Roberts seeking the broadest majority possible - one of the more interesting takes comes in the form of a survey of high court insiders.

The right-leaning American Action Forum and the left-leaning Blue Dog Research Forum conducted a poll of former Supreme Court clerks and lawyers who have argued before the court.

Attorney General-elect Peter Kilmartin has announced that he is hanging on to some key staffers from the Patrick Lynch era - Deputy Attorney General Gerald Coyne, civil division chief James Lee, and criminal division chief Stacie Veroni.

But Kilmartin will face some pressure to differentiate from Lynch, whose gubernatorial ambitions leant a political feel to the office and whose ties to disgraced Central Falls Mayor Charles Moreau raised embarassing questions, fair or not, about the office's willingness to go after public corruption.

From the Associated Press - a warning from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse that Republicans may be crossing the line in their opposition to Rhode Islander Jack McConnell's nomination as a federal judge:

Senate Democrats said Thursday that Republicans were preventing votes on some of President Barack Obama's U.S. district court nominees, a game-changing tactic that would bring retaliation against a GOP president some day.

This just in: the Senate Judiciary Committee has just recommended approval of Rhode Island lawyer Jack McConnell's nomination to the U.S. District Court in Rhode Island on a 13-6 vote. The nomination now goes to the Senate floor for a vote by the full chamber.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has mounted an unusually high-profile campaign against McConnell, a major Democratic donor who was involved in the historic $248-billion tobacco settlement and high-profile lead paint litigation in Rhode Island.

The governor has affixed his signature to a law that will drop the highest marginal tax rate from 9.9 percent to 5.99 percent in what officials are hoping will be a public relations coup with the unfortunate reputation for a bad place to do business.

But the national press, at least today, is focused on the tales of economic ruin that Rhode Island has been broadcasting for months on end.

President Obama's nomination of Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court has quickly become a political football in the run-up to a crucial fall election. Senate candidates from New Hampshire to Illinois are invoking her name. The GOP sees the upcoming Senate confirmation vote as a powerful reminder, to conservative voters, of the importance of Republican power in the chamber.

With President Obama's nomination of Elena Kagan for Supreme Court, the Phoenix takes a less-than-flattering look at her record. An excerpt:

Long before Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens’s April 9 announcement that he will retire this June, legal observers had already picked a front-runner for the seat Stevens has occupied for 34 years: former Harvard Law School dean and current US Solicitor General Elena Kagan.

Though never on the short list for a Supreme Court nomination, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse saw his name bandied about quite a bit on Capitol Hill and in the blogosphere after Justice John Paul Stevens announced his retirement. Now, he tells DC publication The Hill that he is not interested:

Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.

In 2006, then-Senator Lincoln Chafee was the only Republican in the chamber to vote against President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, Samuel Alito.

Chafee's vote contributed to the closest call on a recent high court nominee, with Alito prevailing 58-42 in the end. But, as Steve Kornacki points out on Salon, the Senate has rejected just one Supreme Court nominee in the last quarter-century - Robert Bork.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse has a piece in Politico today blasting the Supreme Court's decision in the Citizens United case. That decision opened the door for unlimited corporate spending on campaigns and Whitehouse argues that it is part of a broader, pro-corporate agenda driving the court's "activist conservative bloc."

A key House committee has voted unanimously to approve the nomination of state Supreme Court Justice Paul A. Suttell to the post of chief justice.

The 13-0 vote is no great surprise. Gov. Carcieri's nomination of the well-liked judge has engendered little opposition from the Democratic legislature, in a welcome break from the partisanship that has roiled Smith Hill for the better part of the last six years.