...included members of both houses of parliament, Cabinet members, top judges, and religious leaders, assembled in the Marble Hall of the Kremlin. Putin called Chechnya an ''extreme example'' of the government's failure to assert its authority...

...Court listened and questioned the Bush and Gore lawyers for 90 minutes last Friday, retreated to the privacy of their marble halls to consider the case, and had the decision issued while they were on the bench, hearing a case about a soccer mom...