judicial watch

A conservative House member from Michigan became the first lawmaker to call for Sen. Larry Craig's resignation on Wednesday, and the White House expressed disappointment in the case of the Idaho senator caught in a men's room undercover police operation.

A 21-year-old man convicted of raping three boys when he was a teenager and sentenced to death has been hanged despite a chief justice's order that the case be reviewed, the man's lawyer and a New-York based rights group said Thursday. Makwan Moloudzadeh was executed late Tuesday and his family told to come pick up his body for burial Wednesday, Human Rights Watch officials said. ''We were expecting an order for retrial by the Supreme Court,'' Saeed Eqbali, the lawyer for the sentenced man, told the Associated Press. ''There would have been no harm in a retrial and it could have saved a life.''

On Thursday the Massachusetts supreme judicial court will hear arguments on the denial of marriage licenses to eight out-of-state gay couples. At issue is a 1913 law that forbids out-of-state couples from marrying in Massachusetts if their union would not be legally recognized in their own state.