A suburban Denver pot grower who tried to use state medical marijuana law in his defense is due to be sentenced in federal court.

Christopher Bartkowicz is scheduled to appear in court Friday. Judge Phillip Brimer must decide whether to accept the five-year prison term that's part of a plea deal Bartkowicz reached with prosecutors or impose a sentence of his own.

Bartkowicz pleaded guilty to three drug charges after federal drug agents raided his Highlands Ranch home last February and seized hundreds of pot plants growing in his basement.

The raid came after a Denver TV station promoted a story in which Bartkowicz bragged about how much money he would make growing pot under Colorado's medical marijuana law.

The Illinois Supreme Court has refused to review a lower court decision in favor of Chicago's acquisition of a cemetery that's in the path of a planned runway in the $15 billion O'Hare International Airport Modernization Program.

Spokesman Joseph Tybor says the court's decision means the appellate court decision stands.

Earlier this month, Chicago Aviation Commissioner Rosemarie Andolino said the city planned to resume unearthing bodies at the cemetery as soon as the Supreme Court made a decision in its favor.

Plans call for the 900 buried at St. Johannes Cemetery in Bensenville to be relocated.

Attorney Joseph Karaganis, who represents cemetery owner St. John's United Church of Christ, says Wednesday's decision is technically "not the end of the line" for the issue, but is pretty close to it.

Two of the central promises of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul law are unlikely to be fulfilled, Medicare's independent economic expert told Congress on Wednesday.

The landmark legislation probably won't hold costs down, and it won't let everybody keep their current health insurance if they like it, Chief Actuary Richard Foster told the House Budget Committee. His office is responsible for independent long-range cost estimates.

Foster's assessment came a day after Obama in his State of the Union message told lawmakers that he's open to improvements in the law, but unwilling to rehash the health care debate of the past two years. Republicans want to repeal the landmark legislation that provides coverage to more than 30 million people now uninsured, but lack the votes.

Foster was asked by Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., for a simple true or false response on two of the main assertions made by supporters of the law: that it will bring down unsustainable medical costs and will let people keep their current health insurance if they like it.

A memorial service is scheduled Tuesday in Staunton for former Virginia Supreme Court Justice and state legislator George Moffett Cochran.

An obituary posted on Henry Funeral Home's website says Cochran died Saturday at his home in Staunton. He was 98.

Local historian Katharine Brown told The News Leader that Cochran was among a handful of people who fought against Virginia's "Massive Resistance," the state-sanctioned response to the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision that ruled unconstitutional school segregation.

Cochran served on the Virginia Supreme Court from 1969 until he retired in 1987. He also was a state delegate from 1948 to 1966 and a senator from 1966 to 1968.

Tuesday's service will be held at 3 p.m. at Trinity Episcopal Church in Staunton.

Nearly 150 years after Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant fought in northern Virginia, a conflict over the battlefield is taking shape in a courtroom.

The dispute involves whether a Walmart should be built near the Civil War site, and the case pits preservationists and some residents of a rural northern Virginia town against the world's largest retailer and local officials who approved the Walmart Supercenter.

Both sides are scheduled to make arguments before a judge Tuesday.

The proposed Walmart is located near the site of the Battle of the Wilderness, which is viewed by historians as a critical turning point in the war. An estimated 185,000 Union and Confederate troops fought over three days in 1864, and 30,000 were killed, injured or went missing. The war ended 11 months later.

The 143,000-square-foot space planned by the Bentonville, Ark., retailer would be outside the limits of the protected national park where the core battlefield is located. The company has stressed the store would be within an area already dotted with retail locations, and in an area zoned for commercial use.

The Orange County Board of Supervisors in August 2009 approved the special use permit Wal-Mart needed to build, but the National Trust for Historic Preservation and residents who live within three miles of the site challenged the board's decision.