WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Supreme Court's newest justice cast his first vote Wednesday, then was sworn in ceremonially at the White House.

In his first vote, Samuel Alito joined the eight other justices in rejecting Missouri's effort to immediately end a stay of execution for convicted killer Michael Taylor.

The move had little practical effect, because the stay was already set to expire Wednesday afternoon. Further appeals in the case are pending.

Less than an hour after the decision was announced, Alito was at the White House for a ceremonial swearing-in for the cameras. (Watch as Alito becomes Justice Alito -- 7:52)

The justice said he was "overwhelmed by the occasion."

He added, "I simply pledge to do everything in my power to live up to the trust placed in me."

President Bush said he is confident his nominee "will make a superb justice on the United States Supreme Court."

Six justices attend ceremony

Chief Justice John Roberts administered the oath, witnessed by Justices Antonin Scalia, David Souter, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.

Others attending included Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and White House counsel Harriet Miers, who was originally tapped by Bush to fill the seat of retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Miers withdrew after criticism from conservatives over her judicial credentials, and went on to help in the Alito selection process. Alito thanked her during the ceremony.

Tuesday also was a whirlwind of activity for the 55-year-old jurist: a 58-42 confirmation vote; a private, official swearing-in at the Supreme Court; an appearance at President Bush's State of the Union address ; and the initial demands of the court's never-ending caseload.

In his first official legal business as an associate justice, Alito backed out of participating in two emergency applications from inmates facing execution in Texas and Florida.

Alito will spend the next few days moving into O'Connor's former office and hiring a staff, including law clerks. The court is in the middle of a four-week recess, and oral arguments do not resume until February 21.

Key cases ahead

In coming weeks, the former federal appeals court judge and the other justices will have several important appeals and cases awaiting them:

Alito joins the court in midterm. The court already has heard arguments and issued rulings in a number of cases, creating potential problems. If there is a deadlock in pending cases, Alito may be asked to break the tie, or the cases could be reheard with him in the fall.

The Senate confirmed Alito Tuesday on a mostly partisan vote after weeks of criticism over his judicial record by Democrats and liberal interest groups. A last-minute attempt by several senators to delay a final vote failed to materialize. (Full story)

Private ceremony Tuesday

Bush nominated him October 31 to fill the vacancy when O'Connor announced she would step down. She and several other justices, including Stephen Breyer, were on hand after Tuesday's vote when Alito took the constitutional and judicial oaths in a private ceremony in the court's conference room.

Chief Justice John Roberts swore in Alito, allowing him to begin his work immediately as a member of the Supreme Court. Alito's wife, Martha-Ann, also attended.

Wearing their judicial robes, Breyer and Justice Clarence Thomas joined Roberts and Alito at the president's address Tuesday night.

Bush drew applause when he praised the court's newest justices: "The Supreme Court now has two superb new members, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Sam Alito. I thank the Senate for confirming both of them. And I will continue to nominate men and women who understand that judges must be servants of the law and not legislate from the bench." (Full story)

On Wednesday, the high court announced new circuit assignments for the justices. Each is assigned at least one of 13 areas of the country and federal government where emergency applications and other appeals originate.

Alito will hear such cases from the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri and Arkansas. He most recently was a judge on the 3rd U.S. Circuit of Appeals, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but Justice David Souter will continue to have control over that area.

Alito will sit on the far right of the bench during oral arguments, the traditional spot for the junior justice. His neighbor will be Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a member of the high court since 1993.

I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as
a war criminal. Fortunately, we were on the winning side.
US General Curtis LeMay, commander of the 1945 Tokyo fire bombing operation.[1]

"Asked whether he wants to apologize for the suffering he caused, he looks genuinely confused, has the interpreter repeat the question, and answers ‘No'. ... ‘I want you to know that everything I did, I did for my country.'"
Journalist Nate Thayer interviewing a dying Pol Pot, 1997 [12]

"I tell you how I feel. I would like to be remembered as a man who served his country, who served Chile throughout his entire life on this earth. And what he did was always done thinking about the welfare of Chile."
General Augusto Pinochet, under house arrest in England, 1998 [13]

Unfortunately, as you know, many doubts have already been raised about the impartiality of your Tribunal. In the early days of the conflict, after a formal and, in our view, justified complaint against NATO leaders had been laid before it by members of the Faculty of Law of Belgrade University, you appeared at a press conference with one of the accused, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who made a great show of handing you a dossier of Serbian war crimes. In early May, you appeared at another press conference with US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, by that time herself the subject of two formal complaints of war crimes over the targeting of civilians in Yugoslavia. Albright publicly announced at that time that the US was the major provider of funds for the Tribunal and that it had pledged even more money to it.[15]

I am obviously not commenting on any allegations of violations of international humanitarian law supposedly perpetrated by nationals of NATO countries. I accept the assurances given by NATO leaders that they intend to conduct their operations in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in full compliance with international humanitarian law. I have reminded many of them, when the occasion presented itself, of their obligation to conduct fair and open-minded investigations of any possible deviance from that policy, and of the obligation of commanders to prevent and punish, if required.[16]

Question: Does NATO recognize Judge Arbour's jurisdiction over their activities?

Jamie Shea: I think we have to distinguish between the theoretical and the practical. I believe that when Justice Arbour starts her investigation [of the Serbs], she will because we will allow her to. ... NATO countries are those that have provided the finance to set up the Tribunal, we are amongst the majority financiers.

A former American occupation official in Iraq is expected to plead guilty to bribery, conspiracy, money laundering and other charges in federal court on Thursday for his actions in a scheme to use sexual favors, jewelry and millions of dollars in cash to steer reconstruction work to a corrupt contractor, according to papers filed with the court.

The official, Robert J. Stein Jr., served as a comptroller and funding officer in 2003 and 2004 for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which governed Iraq after the American-led invasion. Four Americans, including Mr. Stein and the contractor, Philip H. Bloom, have been arrested in the case. Mr. Stein's plea, apparently with the understanding that he will cooperate with prosecutors, is the first to be made public.

The court papers depict a sordid exercise in greed and corruption that was spread much more widely that previously known. Including the four people already arrested, the papers indicate that a minimum of three other still unnamed co-conspirators also played a role in the scheme. In order to give more than $8 million in contracts and millions more in stolen cash to Mr. Bloom, the papers say, the conspirators accepted bribes, valuable goods and other favors.

Two of the Americans already arrested, Lt. Col. Debra Harrison and Lt. Col. Michael Wheeler, are senior Army reserve officers. The court papers indicate that the remaining unnamed co-conspirators are also Army reserve officers, for a total of at least five officers involved. But the papers suggest that others, identified only by opaque designations like "person H," may also have been involved in one way or another.

The goods included first-class plane tickets, watches and other jewelry, alcohol and cigars, the court papers say. They add that Mr. Bloom kept a villa in Baghdad where women dispensed "sexual favors" in exchange for official actions in his favor or for refraining from exposing the scheme.

Mr. Stein is accused of stealing outright at least $2 million in cash of American taxpayer money and Iraqi money that had been set aside for the reconstruction of Iraq by the American occupation. He also accepted more than $1 million in bribes and at least $600,000 of additional goods and cash that were the property of the C.P.A., the papers say.

The actions took place in a vast territory surrounding the Iraqi city of Hilla, south of Baghdad, where Mr. Stein was put in charge of at least $82 million of reconstruction money despite a previous conviction for felony fraud, which his Pentagon background check apparently missed. Mr. Bloom and some of the others wired money back to the United States to buy weaponry like grenade launchers and machine guns that Mr. Stein was prohibited from owning because of his conviction or that were illegal in themselves.

The court papers indicate that Mr. Stein has agreed to plead guilty in Federal District Court in Washington to counts of conspiracy, bribery, money laundering conspiracy, a felon in possession of a firearm and possession of a machine gun.

The e-mail exchanges between Mr. Stein and Mr. Bloom, as detailed in the papers, are remarkable in their illustration of the daily business of apparently greed and graft. "I love to give you money," Mr. Stein wrote on Jan. 3, 2004, as he began steering work on an Iraqi police academy to Mr. Bloom.

At other times, Mr. Stein warns Mr. Bloom about others who are threats to expose their scheme or may want to get in on it themselves. "I will warn you to be very careful what you say around him," Mr. Stein writes on Jan. 27, 2004, about someone identified only as person D. "If he ever knows what we are doing he will want 'his cut!' "

Other exchanges show the day-to-day realities of doing business in Iraq with Westerners who are far from the routine pleasures of home. "Thanks for the booze," Mr. Stein wrote on Jan. 27. "That will give me some bargaining material here and there."

Feb. 1, 2006 - President Bush may have broken some ground when he admitted in his State of the Union speech that the country is "addicted to oil," but he did not mention the other massive issue that's tied to oil ... global warming.

The vast majority of scientists now agree that global warming is real and well under way.

"It may have sounded new to some, but it wasn't — there was nothing really new there," says American economist Gary Yohe, who has focused for years on the economic challenges and dangers posed by global warming. "As long as they remain voluntary, meaningful cuts in greenhouse gas emissions simply won't happen in the U.S."

An extremely gloomy assessment of the dangers of global warming was published this week in Britain by prominent Earth systems scientist James Lovelock. In "Gaias's Revenge," Lovelock concludes that catastrophic global warming cannot be avoided; Lovelock does not expect that the United States, China or India will make the necessary emissions cuts over the next few years to avoid catastrophic global warming, and he expects it will occur soon.

Before the end of the century, says Lovelock, too many climate system tipping points will have passed, taking the planet into a runaway greenhouse effect that will raise temperatures so sharply that people will be "dying by the billions" with only a "few breeding pairs left" at the poles, the only places that will be at all tolerable.

Leading American climate scientist James Hansen of NASA says there is still time, that planetary catastrophe can be avoided, "but we have to get started with the emissions cuts now ... [get them] well under way within the next 10 years."

While virtually all climate scientists agree new emissions-free energy technologies are vital if there is to be any chance of averting drastically disruptive climate change, many say that even the most promising new technologies would take years to become effective, and they argue that in the meantime there must be major cuts in greenhouse emissions.

"There is some new money in the Advance Energy Initiative that Bush announced last night, but it pales in comparison to the tax breaks he's offering the oil companies," says Susan Joy Hassol, an independent climate analyst who has written several major international assessments of global climate change.

"Compared to the incremental increases Bush is offering for the development of new energy technologies — increases of millions or tens of millions of dollars — in the overall energy bill, the president is giving billions in tax breaks to the oil and gas drillers — and all this at a time when oil company profits are soaring," Hassol says.

Hassol also points out that the president's speech "made no mention of fuel efficiency, the best and cheapest way to reduce our dependence on foreign oil as well as reduce greenhouse gas emissions." Hassol complains that "this administration has consistently stood in the way of raising fuel-efficiency standards."

The president made no reference in his address to global warming or to curbing greenhouse gas emissions, other than one mention of continuing research in emissions-free, coal-fired energy plants.

This contrasts sharply with the messages coming from the office of British Prime Minister Tony Blair over the past few days. Blair has tried to draw attention to those new scientific studies that conclude that global warming has accelerated and is much closer to dangerous tipping points than scientists had recently thought.

This week Cambridge University Press is publishing "Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change," which gathers 41 studies by established scientists from around the world.

"These studies each quantify, in a variety of ways, the risks we are already dealing with in the global warming that is clearly well under way," says economist Yohe, one of the book's editors.

"This shows the statements by the president's science adviser to be simply wrong when he states that we can't quantify the risks of global warming," says Yohe.

President Bush's chief science adviser, John H. Marburger III, was quoted in The Washington Post on Sunday as saying, "We know these things are possible, but we don't have enough information to quantify the level of risk."

Yohe also says Marburger's quoted statement that "There's no agreement on what it is that constitutes a dangerous climate change" is meaningless.

Yohe has focused on evaluating numerous studies by scientists who have constructed possible "dangerous climate change" scenarios — scenarios that he says are critical to taking any responsible action in the face of the enormous dangers of accelerating climate change, and which, he points out, are by definition crucial portraits of possible effects of global warming that can never be known precisely until they happen.

Yohe quoted a famous climetologist's saying: "These are experiments that we really don't want to be trying with the only planet we have."

Winter in Riga