A former stockroom worker for Abercrombie & Fitch Co. sued the clothing retailer in federal court Monday, saying she was illegally fired after refusing to remove her Muslim headscarf while on the job.

Hani Khan said a manager at the company's Hollister Co. store at the Hillsdale Mall in San Mateo hired her while she was wearing her hijab. The manager said it was OK to wear it as long as it was in company colors, Khan said.

Four months later, the 20-year-old says a district manager and human resources manager asked if she could remove the hijab while working, and she was suspended and then fired for refusing to do so.

It's the latest employment discrimination charge against the company's so-called "look policy," which critics say means images of mostly white, young, athletic-looking people. The New Albany, Ohio-based company has said it does not tolerate discrimination.

Still, Abercrombie has been the target of numerous discrimination lawsuits, including a federal class action brought by black, Hispanic and Asian employees and job applicants that was settled for $40 million in 2004. The company admitted no wrongdoing, though it was forced to implement new programs and policies to increase diversity.

A prep school teacher who downloaded thousands of kiddie porn images pleaded for leniency Monday because he was "no monster" -- but a judge sentenced him to 6½ years in jail.

As his mother and sister looked on, John Thomas, 28, told a Manhattan federal judge he'd never been in trouble and even read a letter one of his grade-school students wrote him.

The judge said he was only fooling himself.

"You were a monster, it's just that you were successful in hiding it," Judge Kevin Duffy said, noting that no parent would let Thomas teach their child if they had known the truth about him.

A lactating Ohio woman was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct after she sprayed sheriff's deputies with breast milk as they tried to remove her from a vehicle, police said on Monday.

Stephanie Robinette, 30, was arrested and charged with domestic violence and assault linked to a domestic dispute, as well as resisting arrest and disorderly conduct, the Delaware County Sheriff's Office said on Monday.

It said Robinette's husband told authorities the pair had been attending a wedding when his wife got drunk and started a dispute. He said that she hit him multiple times before locking herself in her car outside a banquet facility on Saturday.

Sheriff Walter L. Davis III said that when police approached the car to speak to her, she yelled profanities and refused to get out.

Chicago - Rod Blagojevich, who won two terms as Illinois governor before scandal made him a national punch line, was convicted Monday of a wide range of corruption charges, including trying to sell President Barack Obama's Senate seat.

The verdict, coming after his first trial ended last year with the jury deadlocked on most charges, was a bitter defeat for Blagojevich, who spent 2½ years professing his innocence on reality TV shows and later on the witness stand. His defense team insisted that hours of FBI wiretap recordings were just the ramblings of a politician who liked to think out loud.

Blagojevich becomes the second straight Illinois governor convicted of corruption. His predecessor, George Ryan, is now serving 6½ years in federal prison.

Up to 50 Americans are set to sail from a Greek port on a U.S.-flagged ship that is part of an international flotilla carrying humanitarian aid and letters of support for Gaza's 1.5 million Palestinian residents. Its fate is now in limbo under the weight of U.S.-Israeli pressure and Greece's economic turmoil. Israel insists it will enforce its blockade on Gaza, which it says is aimed at stopping weapons from reaching the Hamas government. "The Israelis have a right to interdict arms traffic. We are bearing letters," says Ray McGovern, former Senior CIA analyst and passenger on the U.S. aid ship. "How can these letters be considered a threat to security of Israel?" Democracy Now! producer Aaron Maté and Hany Massoud is in Athens to cover the journey of The Audacity of Hope, named after President Obama's best-selling book. He is the only journalist with the U.S. delegation, and files this exclusive report.

To download the podcast, read the transcript, and for all of Democracy Now!'s reports on the 2010 and 2011 humanitarian aid flotilla sailing for Gaza, visit http://www.democracynow.org/

An interview Sarah Jones conducted with Vyckie Garrison, a courageous woman who left the biblical patriarchal Quiverfull movement.

Sarah Jones: Can you define "Quiverfull movement" and what you've identified as the patriarchal beliefs behind it?

Vyckie Garrison: I like to define Quiverfull as a very powerful head trip. It's an all-encompassing vision of a big, happy family which infects the mind and affects every aspect of a Believer's life. The term "Quiverfull" comes from a reference in Psalm 127 which likens children to "arrows" in the hands of a mighty man, "blessed is the man who has his quiver full of them."

Quiverfull Believers eschew all forms of birth control in favor of "trusting the Lord" with their family planning. The Quiverfull ideal embraces a "biblical" model (read, fundamentalist) of the traditional family which insists that the husband is the head of the household and the wife is the submissive "helpmeet."

Sarah Jones: How do those beliefs manifest for wives and female children? Can you give us some examples of expectations of wives and daughters that might surprise our readers?

Vyckie Garrison: In practice, the Quiverfull ideals often result in larger-than-average families (think, Jim Bob & Michelle Duggar of TLCs 19 & Counting fame) in which the woman stays at home having babies, homeschooling, homesteading, dressing "modestly," and most importantly, serving and submitting to her "lord," i.e., her patriarchal husband.

The Quiverfull lifestyle is extremely demanding and the only way a woman can hope to succeed is to rely heavily on her older daughters. It is expected that a Quiverfull daughter will be fully capable of running the household, including all meal-preparation, laundry duties, child care and homeschooling of younger siblings by the age of twelve. Many girls are doing all this by the time they're eight or ten because their mothers are so consumed with birthing more and more "arrows" to fill the quivers of their husbands.

A Quiverfull daughter is taught from a young age that her purpose in life is to serve the man whom God has placed in authority over her. She serves her father while she lives at home (she does this primarily by assisting her mother in domestic duties and child care). She absolutely must remain a virgin and is taught to expect to meet and marry her future husband through a father-led match-making process called "courtship." Her education is geared toward developing domestic skills--college is generally considered unnecessary and even dangerous for her spiritual well-being.

The Supreme Court on Monday ended its term by striking as unconstitutional California's attempt to ban the sale of violent video games to minors.

By a 7-2 vote, the court upheld a lower court's decision that California's attempt to impose a $1,000 fine on those who sell or rent violent video games to minors violated free speech rights. But there was more disagreement on the court than that tally would indicate.

Only four other justices joined in full Justice Antonin Scalia's soaring majority opinion that the First Amendment does not allow what he called "the latest in a long series of failed attempts to censor violent entertainment for minors."

"No doubt a state possesses legitimate power to protect children from harm," Scalia wrote in his 18-page opinion. "But that does not include a free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed."

"Whether the arrival of WikiLeaks has fundamentally changed the way journalism is made, I will leave to others and to history," wrote Bill Keller in his sprawling account of working with Julian Assange that The New York Times Magazine published in January. "Frankly, I think the impact of WikiLeaks on the culture has probably been overblown."

Don't tell Hollywood. Or Bill Keller's agent. At latest count, at least four studios are working on at least five movies about the WikiLeaks story. And with Assange somewhat out of pocket while on house arrest, plenty of option deals are going to journalists who are covering the secretive organization.

Washington - The Supreme Court has tossed out an Arizona law that provides extra taxpayer-funded support for office seekers who have been outspent by privately funded opponents or by independent political groups.

A conservative 5-4 majority of justices on Monday said the law violated free speech, concluding the state was impermissibly trying to "level the playing field" through a public finance system.

Arizona lawmakers had argued there was a compelling state interest in equalizing resources among competing candidates and interest groups.

The cases are McComish v. Bennett (10-239) and Arizona Free Enterprise Club's Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett (10-238).

OverTheGeicoE writes:

"TSA employees at Logan International Airport believe they have identified a cancer cluster in their ranks, according to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and released by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. They have requested dosimetry to counter 'TSA's improperly non-monitored radiation threat.'