Chicago Police lieutenants and captains would face random alcohol testing at any time, mandatory drug and alcohol testing whenever they fire their weapons and be prohibited from drinking four hours before duty, under contracts ratified Monday by a joint City Council committee. Some aldermen expressed concern that City Hall may be over-reacting to high-profile incidents involving officers and alcohol. Jim Franczek, the city's chief labor negotiator, said there would be a sliding scale of disciplinary actions for those who test positive in random tests.

Sales taxes today mainly hit sales of tangible goods like cars and couches. Faced with the worst budget crisis in a generation, many states are looking to expand sales taxes to services, such as lawn care or accountants' advice. The goal, legislators say, is to broaden the tax base to cover a broader swath of the economy as traditional sources of tax revenue decline. Although in early stages, service taxes are being considered by legislators around the country.

The Obama administration knew that there'd be a lot of interest in the $7.2 billion stimulus package for high-speed Internet projects. But officials had no idea that the demand for the cash would be so overwhelming. They also were bombarded with questions and challenges from large cable and phone companies. The combination has swamped the agencies in charge and created a bottleneck that might threaten disbursement. After nearly a year, only about 7 percent of the funds have been assigned to specific projects.

P.K. Agarwal, the director of the state Office of Technology Services, has launched an online "crowdsourcing" tool where registered users can submit in writing their ideas for how California can improve its IT portfolio, and vote up or down on users' proposals.

During the 2 1/2 years that his wife, Sarah, was governor of Alaska and then a vice presidential candidate, Todd Palin inserted himself into a host of state decisions, including judicial nominations and gas pipeline bids, according to recently released e-mails.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers both Oklahoma and Utah, ruled on two of the Oklahoma law's provisions that also are in a bill passed by the 2009 Legislature that enacted Utah's comprehensive immigration reform.

Gov. Rick Perry has asked the U.S. Department of Defense to deploy a Predator -- the unmanned aircraft used by the military both for gathering intelligence and carrying out missile strikes -- to help improve border security and provide "real-time" data. "The federal government has been an abject failure at sealing our international border," Perry said. Predators are now in use at the Arizona border for surveillance of drug and migrant smuggling.

Deep inside millions of computers is a special chip -- a "Trusted Platform Module" or TPM -- with the locks to highly guarded secrets, including classified government reports and confidential business plans. Now a former U.S. Army computer-security specialist has devised a way to break those locks. The new attack discovered by Christopher Tarnovsky is difficult to pull off, partly because it requires physical access to a computer. But laptops and smart phones get lost and stolen all the time.

The growth of charter schools has promoted segregation both in California and nationwide, increasing the odds that black, Latino and white students will attend class with fewer children who look different from themselves, according to two new studies. Charter school advocates contend that the researchers' presumptions about racial separation are out of date. They said parents -- including low-income minority parents -- are turning to charters for a quality education that traditional schools have not provided.

Chicago Transit Authority riders for years have been warned of service-cut "doomsdays." This time, with the agency facing a $95 million budget deficit, doomsday came. Starting Sunday, the CTA cut 18 percent of bus service and 9 percent of rail service, and the agency is cutting 1,057 jobs.