Last week the nation’s capital was largely paralyzed by fierce winter weather, and today starts what should be another quiet week as the federal government observes Presidents Day. Both Congress and the Supreme Court are in recess this week. There is some legal news to report, though, so let’s get to it:

POTUS readies SCOTUS noms: Yet another news organization is reporting that the White House is preparing for at least one Supreme Court vacancy to come up soon. (CNN)

I beg your pardon: A woman serving a 27-year prison term for a crack cocaine conspiracy has requested to receive President Obama’s first sentence commutation. (AP)

Urging action: President Barack Obama said automakers have a duty to act “quickly and decisively” to address safety complaints. (Lawyers USA)

New Miranda plan: Under a new plan being considered at the White House, the DOJ and FBI will consult with intelligence officials before deciding whether to read terrorism suspects their Miranda rights. (Washington Post)

As the federal government finally reopens today after digging out from underneath a blanket of more than three feet of snow, Washington lawmakers are unveiling their plan to deal with the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. FEC.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen

Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., have outlined legislation they plan to file addressing the ruling, which eased campaign finance limits on corporate spending in presidential and congressional elections.

Since the ruling found the limits on corporate spending in elections violates the First Amendment, Congress cannot simply pass legislation overturning it. Instead, the lawmakers presented a framework for limiting the potential ill effects they say the Court’s ruling will have.

Among other things, the bill lawmakers are planning would ban

Sen. Charles Schumer

expenditures from foreign interests, federal contractors and TARP recipients, require corporate spending to be publicly disclosed via enhanced reporting, and require CEO and donor information to be disclosed in political ads.

“The legislative framework I am releasing today with Senator Schumer will serve as a guide to our legislative response to this ruling in both the House and Senate,” Van Hollen said in a statement. “We have a multipronged approach to restrict the corrosive influence of special interests and to ensure that corporate activities in campaigns are fully disclosed to the public.”

Schumer said the rules would prevent funders of political messages from hiding behind ‘dummy corporations.”

In other legal news:

X-ray mission: The Food and Drug Administration has launched an initiative aimed at reducing unnecessary radiation exposure from medical imaging procedures. (Lawyers USA)

Text free juries: New proposed jury instructions for federal courts warn jurors against text messaging, tweeting or using other forms of electronic social media to discuss cases. (Lawyers USA)

SCOTUS halfway point: The U.S. Supreme Court term is half over, but there are still many big cases for the justices to decide in the second half of the term. (Lawyers USA)

Lifting the smoke screen: The Food and Drug Administration will for the first time require tobacco companies to disclose ingredients of cigarettes and other tobacco products. (Lawyers USA)

ABA jab: During a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting today, Sen. Harry Reid offered up criticism of the ABA’s process of evaluating nominees for the federal bench, saying judicial experience isn’t necessarily a measure of qualification. (BLT Blog via ABA Journal)

After more than 40 inches of snow blanketed the Washington region in less than a week, just about everything in Washington came to a halt – including Congress.

The House and Senate have been virtually shut down by the “Snowpocalypse of 2010,” and that is halting action on a number of matters from the health care bill, to legislation to repeal antitrust exemptions from medical malpractice insurers and other health industry companies, to nominees seeking confirmation.

And the halls of Congress will be idle for some time – next week Congress is off for the Presidents Day break.

Not all lawmakers stayed away from their offices during this stormy week. Sen. Tom Coburn found himself stranded in his Capitol Hill office, which allowed him to catch up on some chores like cleaning his desk, writing to constituents, and reading.

“The best thing is we’re not passing any legislation, which ultimately will save the government a lot of money,” said the Oklahoma Republican. “We’re not gonna be blamed for this one,” he added, referring to the 1996 budget dispute that shut the federal government down.

Speculation about who President Obama might nominate to the Supreme Court, should a vacancy or two arise, is swirling like the windblown snow in downtown DC.

Obama has mentioned a desire to look outside the federal judiciary for Supreme prospects. But might he look to his own State Department and tap Sec. Hillary Clinton?

That’s the notion being floated by Mark McKinnon and Myra Adams at The Daily Beast.

“Given the Clintons ambition for power, most would agree that Hillary doesn’t see secretary of State as the final chapter in her career,” the authors reason. “Certainly she’d like to be president.  But increasingly, she has to view that prospect as a declining one.”

They argue that the High Court post is one of the very few assignments that would be a step up for Clinton. And, they write, the move would eliminate any lingering bad feelings between the Clintons and Obama in the aftermath of the 2008 Democratic presidential primary. And even in a partisan Senate, they said, she could muster enough Republican support to win confirmation.

This isn’t the first time the prospect of naming Clinton to the Court has been suggested. In 2008, there was a rumor that Hillary wanted Obama to name her to the Supreme Court. She later denied the notion, saying her only aspiration was to “be the best senator from New York that I can be.” Within months, she was the next secretary of State.

UPDATE: Becker’s nomination was blocked in the Senate Tuesday afternoon. The lawmakers voted 52-33 to move forward with Becker’s nominatoin, short of the 60 needed to overcome a filibuster.

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Today Senate Republicans, fresh off the addition of a 41^st member in Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, may test their filibuster power on one of President Obama’s nominees for the National Labor Relations Board.

Members of the Senate are set to take a procedural vote on Craig Becker’s nomination, which would fill one of three vacancies that has hamstrung the normally five-member agency. It takes 60 votes to end debate over Becker’s nomination and send it to a full vote. But if Republicans join in opposition, that number won’t be reached.

Even Sen. Ben Nelson, a conservative Democrat, said he would join GOP members in voting no on Becker.

“Mr. Becker’s previous statements strongly indicate that he would take an aggressive personal agenda to the NLRB, and that he would pursue a personal agenda there, rather than that of the administration,” Nelson said in a statement.

Some lawmakers cite legal writings by Becker supportive of measures such as card check elections. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been vocal in its opposition. But Sen. Tom Harkin, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said the criticism is unwarranted, a single NLRB member couldn’t implement such massive changes to the labor law system even if he wanted to.

“I don’t have any illusions that those important changes can somehow be accomplished administratively and neither does Craig Becker,” Harkin said.

The White House during Saturday's blizzard

After the 100-year storm that dumped more than two feet of snow on the region over the weekend, the federal government is closed today as folks in the region continue to dig out. And with another storm predicted to hit the area tomorrow, there may be more snow days to come this week.

But not even a blizzard stops the news, so here is a look at some legal headlines:

Speedier devices? The Food and Drug Administration has issued guidance on the use of a new statistical method the agency said could result in faster and less costly medical device clinical trials. (Lawyers USA)

Accelerating probe: Lawmakers in Congress have launched an investigation into the safety problems caused by gas pedals in certain Toyota models which led to a massive recall. (Lawyers USA)

He speaks! Justice Clarence Thomas talked about his RV, his favorite movies, hanging out with law students, First Amendment rights of corporations and more during a recent speech. He said when he was younger, “I was really a jerk, very unpleasant,” but now, he said, “I’m content with life.” (The BLT)

We’re still talking about this? At the risk of taking another swing at the dead horse that is the SCOTUS/POTUS/SOTU dustup, it seems that Justice Samuel Alito’s “not true” was directed at the Obama’s characterization of history. (AP)

Speculation over whether the U.S. Supreme Court will start its next term with or without Justice John Paul Stevens has been swirling ever since it was reported that he hired only one clerk for next term instead of the usual four. Now, ABC News is reporting that the Obama administration is preparing for not one, but two possible vacancies on the nation’s highest court.

White House officials are reportedly also preparing for the possible departure of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 76, who last year had her second cancer surgery since taking her seat on the High Court. Despite not missing a single day of oral arguments during treatment for pancreatic cancer, speculation about Ginsburg’s health has continued, spurred by a pair of recent hospitalizations and reports that she dozed off during the State of the Union address last week.

Stevens, 89, less than a year shy of overtaking Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes record to become the oldest justice to serve on the Court, has – like Ginsburg – remained vocal and sharp during oral arguments. But CBS News’ Jan Crawford recently reported that the justice seemed to stumble on his words while summarizing his dissent in the controversial case Citizens United v. FEC from the bench last month, causing more speculation about his future on the Court.

Sources close to Ginsburg threw water on the idea of the justice stepping down, pointing out, among other things, her active participation during oral arguments.

Obama’s short list of potential nominees include Solicitor General Elena Kagan, 7^th Circuit Judge Diane Wood, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, and Leah Ward Sears, former chief of the Georgia Supreme Court, ABC reports.

Meanwhile, while the city braces for yet another winter snowstorm, here is a wrap of the other legal news:

Some boosts in the budget: Despite President Barack Obama’s call for a freeze in discretionary spending, his fiscal 2011 budget calls for a boost in spending for a number of federal agencies and programs that, if adopted by Congress, will have an impact on the work of the nation’s attorneys. (Lawyers USA) (Sub req’d)

Defending the handgun ban: A D.C.-based attorney will argue the Chicago Second Amendment case before the Supreme Court, urging the justices to uphold the city’s strict gun ban. (The National Law Journal) (Sub req’d)

Black history and SCOTUS: In honor of Black History Month, SCOTUSblog is running a series of essays examining race and the Supreme Court. (SCOTUSblog)

Toyota in hot seat: Members of Congress are demanding more answers from Toyota officials concerning problems in 5.6 million of its vehicles which spurred a massive recall operation.(Detroit Free Press)

The new federal hate crimes law is being challenged by a group of pastors and a conservative organization, who claim the law violates several provisions of the Constitution.

Main Justice reports that lawyers from the Thomas More Law Center filed the lawsuit on behalf of Pastors Levon Yuille, Rene Ouellette and James Combs as well as Gary Glenn, the president of the American Family Association of Michigan.

The complaint alleges that the law, passed to stop bias-motivated crimes against gay, lesbian bisexual and transgendered individuals, violates the First, Fifth and Tenth Amendments, as well as the Commerce Clause. It lists Attorney General Eric Holder as the defendant, and is the first constitutional challenge to the new hate crimes law’s provisions.

“[T]he Hate Crimes Act .. promotes [an] Orwellian concept: thought crimes,” the complaint states. “[It] criminalizes certain ideas, beliefs, and opinions, and the involvement of such ideas, beliefs, and opinions in a crime will make the crime deserving of federal prosecution. Consequently, government officials, including Defendant, are claiming the power to decide which thoughts are criminal under federal law and which are not. [The] Hate Crimes Act is intended to send a government endorsed message to those persons who oppose the homosexual agenda on the basis of deeply held religious beliefs, such as Plaintiffs, that their religious beliefs are disfavored and the equivalent of racist beliefs.”

A Justice Department spokesman told Main Justice that the government would “defend these vital protections in court.”

HT: ABA Law Journal

While nominees to the National Labor Relations Board have historically faced a low key and drama-free road to confirmation, recently it seems nothing involving the NLRB is without controversy. And the nomination of Craig Becker, President Barack Obama’s pick to fill one the three vacancies on the Board, is no exception.

As you know, the normally five-member board has operated with only two members for more than two years. And the validity of opinions the Board has issued since January 2008 are now in question, and the Supreme Court is set to decide if the rulings were made by a properly constituted quorum.

President Bush’s nominees to fill the vacancies stalled in the Democratic-controlled Senate. And now Becker’s nomination is facing strong opposition by Republicans and business groups who say the former attorney for the Service Employees International Union and AFL-CIO would usher in anti-business policies.

As Becker appeared at a hearing held on his nomination yesterday – the first time in 17 years that a hearing has been called to vet a NLRB nominee – The U.S. Chamber of Commerce blasted Senate Democrats, accusing them of trying to jam Becker’s nomination through before the Senate’s newest Republican, Sen.-elect Scott Brown, is seated.

“For the first time since 1993, the Chamber is taking the unusual step of opposing a nominee to the NLRB,” said a statement from Randel K. Johnson, the Chamber’s vice president for Labor, Immigration, and Employee Benefits. “It would be an egregious mistake and would set a dangerous precedent for the Senate to push this nomination through during a lame-duck period. The NLRB has the ability to unduly increase union power and leverage it without intervention by Congress. Confirming Becker will tilt the balance in labor law dramatically in favor of union special interests.”

Sen. Tom Harkin, the Democratic chairman of the Senate committee vetting Becker’s nomination, said Democrats have given GOP members what they want.

“We are here, today, to take the rather unusual step of holding a hearing on a nominee for the National Labor Relations Board,” Harkin said at the hearing.  “It has not been the standard practice of this Committee to hold hearings on NLRB nominations…However, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have requested a hearing.  And while I am reluctant to further prolong the consideration of an obviously well-qualified nominee, I was willing to accommodate that request because I think the work of the NLRB is tremendously important and deserves this Committee’s attention.”

But Republicans including Sen. John McCain grilled Becker over issues such as card check elections and how Becker would handle cases involving the unions he worked for in the past.

Becker said he would rule fairly and recuse himself when necessary. “I will abide, Sen. McCain, with the terms of that pledge scrupulously, and as I indicated, if any other matters come up outside of the scope of that pledge where any party might think that I might not be impartial, I will consider the matter…. and if necessary recuse myself from those cases,” he said.

“That’s not good enough,” McCain replied.

“I don’t go because it has become so partisan, and it’s very uncomfortable for a judge to sit there. And there’s a lot you don’t hear on T.V. – the catcalls, the whooping and hollering, under-the-breath comments. So we decided not to go. Some members continued to go and that’s fine, but one of the consequences is that now the court becomes part of the conversation, if you want to call it that, in the speech.”

~Justice Clarence Thomas, speaking at Stetson Law School, on why he chose not to attend the State of the Union address.