December 11, 2003

Kitchens have long been primary gathering place in home, and nowadays people prefer cooking area that opens to greatroom or living room, which is helping turn kitchens into area for working on computers; advent of broadband connections is partly responsible for moving computer into kitchen, focal point for family activity; photos (L)

Supreme Court votes, 5 to 4, to uphold all major provisions of campaign finance law that Congress passed last year to try to curb flood of money into national politics; decision rejects First Amendment challenge to law brought by coalition of unlikely allies, including National Rifle Assn, American Civil Liberties Union, Republican National Comm and AFL-CIO; plaintiffs argue that ban on unlimited contributions to political parties, or soft money, and restrictions on some campaign-season television advertising paid for by corporations and labor unions, violates First Amendment rights of free speech and association; in three separate majority opinions, court finds new restrictions amply justified by political system's recent experience; principal opinion, which Justices John Paul Stevens and Sandra Day O'Connor sign as authors and Justices David H Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G Breyer support, refers to 'reams of disquieting evidence' that existing contribution limits have been widely circumvented, with corrosive effects; heart of debate within court is defining type of political corruption that Congress could properly address; court's dissenters, Justices Anthony M Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Chief Justice William H Rehnquist, define corruption as trading votes for dollars; new law's defenders urge court to look at more subtle effects of soft money and to bring those within definition of corruption; photos (L)

David Pogue State of the Art column compares operating systems for multifunctional cellphones; systems are from Microsoft, Palm and Sony Ericsson; features and prices noted; photos (M)

Joyce Purnick Metro Matters column discusses increasing willingness of businesswomen to blow whistle on their bosses and colleagues for unethical or illegal behavior, like late trading and insider trading (M)

DaimlerChrysler AG chairman Jurgen E Schrempp resumes testifying in federal court and gives his first in-depth explanation of 2000 interview that demoralized Chrysler workers and enraged its former top shareholder Kirk Kerkorian; interview, in Financial Times of London, is basis for lawsuit brought against DaimlerChrysler by Kerkorian; Schrempp, in interview, said he labeled deal 'merger of equals' for psychological reasons but added that he had always intended to make Chrysler a division; photo (M)