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ByMarkSherman The Associated Press WASHINGTON The Su- preme Court issued its strongest defense of abor- tion rights in a quarter- century Monday, striking down Texas' widely repli- cated rules that sharply re- duced abortion clinics in the nation's second-most- populous state. By a 5-3 vote, the jus- tices rejected the state's ar- guments that its 2013 law and follow-up regulations were needed to protect women's health. The rules required doctors who per- form abortions to have ad- mitting privileges at nearby hospitals and forced clinics to meet hospital-like stan- dards for outpatient sur- gery. The clinics that chal- lenged the law argued that it was merely a veiled at- tempt to make it harder for women to get abortions by forcing the closure of more than half the roughly 40 clinics that operated before the law took effect. Justice Stephen Breyer's majority opinion for the court held that the regula- tions are medically unnec- essary and unconstitution- ally limit women's right to abortions. Breyer wrote that "the surgical-center require- ment, like the admitting privileges requirement, provides few, if any, health benefits for women, poses a substantial obstacle to women seeking abortions and constitutes an 'undue burden' on their constitu- tional right to do so." Thirteen states have sim- ilar requirements, enacted as part of a wave of abortion restrictions that states have imposed in recent years. Others include limits on when in a pregnancy abor- tions may be performed and the use of drugs that induce abortions without surgical intervention. Amy Hagstrom Miller, the owner of several Texas clinics among her eight fa- cilities in five states, pre- dicted that the decision would "put a stop to this trend of copycat legisla- tion." Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said the law "was an effort to improve minimum safety stan- dards and ensure capa- ble care for Texas women. It's exceedingly unfortu- nate that the court has taken the ability to pro- tect women's health out of the hands of Texas citi- zens and their duly elected representatives." Justices Anthony Ken- nedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined Breyer's ma- jority. Ginsburg wrote a short opinion noting that laws like Texas' "that do lit- tle or nothing for health, but rather strew imped- iments to abortion, can- not survive judicial in- spection" under the court's earlier abortion-rights de- cisions. She pointed specif- ically to Roe v. Wade in 1973 and Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992, of which Kennedy was one of three authors. Chief Justice John Rob- erts and Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented. Thomas wrote that the decision "exemplifies the court's troubling tendency 'to bend the rules when any effort to limit abortion, or even to speak in opposi- tion to abortion, is at is- sue.'" Thomas was quoting an earlier abortion dissent from Justice Antonin Sca- lia, who died in February. Scalia has not yet been re- placed, so only eight jus- tices voted. Alito, reading a sum- mary of his dissent in court, said the clinics should have lost on tech- nical, procedural grounds. Alito said the court was adopting a rule of, "If at first you don't succeed, sue, sue again." Abortion providers said the rules would have cut the number of abortion clinics in Texas to fewer than 10 if they had been allowed to take full effect. 5-3 VOTE Texas illegally curbs abortion clinics, Supreme Court rules By Matthew Daly The Associated Press WASHINGTON Hillary Clin- ton never personally denied any requests from diplo- mats for additional secu- rity at the U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya, according to Democrats on a select House panel who absolved the former secretary of state and the U.S. military of wrongdoing in the deadly Sept. 11, 2012 attacks. In a report Monday pre- empting the Republicans, the panel's five Democrats said after a two-year inves- tigation that the military could not have done any- thing differently that night to save the lives of four Americans killed in Libya. U.S. Ambassador Chris Ste- vens died in one of the two assaults at the diplomatic facility and CIA annex. Democrats' release of their own report height- ened the partisanship of the inquiry, which has been marked by finger-pointing on both sides. Republicans accuse the Obama adminis- tration of stonewalling im- portant documents and wit- nesses, while Democrats say the panel's primary goal is to undermine Clinton's presidential bid. The Libya attacks be- came immediate political fodder, given their timing in the weeks before Pres- ident Barack Obama's re- election, and that has not abated despite seven pre- vious congressional inves- tigations. The panel's Republican majority missed a self-im- posed deadline to issue a report "before summer," but the Democrats' move in issuing their report could spur the GOP's final prod- uct. Whatever the timing, the Republican report is cer- tain to have repercussions for Clinton, the presump- tive Democratic presiden- tial nominee. The investi- gation led to the revelation that Clinton relied on a pri- vate email server to con- duct government business, a practice now the subject of an FBI probe. Democrats said they re- gretted that their 344-page report was not bipartisan, but said Republicans left them little choice after con- ducting "one of the longest and most partisan congres- sional investigations in his- tory." The inquiry has lasted nearly 25 months and cost more than $7 million so far. Democrats blamed in- adequate security in Beng- hazi on decisions made by mid-level officials at the State Department and said that contrary to repeated claims by some Republicans and conservative commen- tators, neither Clinton nor anyone else intentionally delayed the military's re- sponse or ordered a "stand- down." The report also disputes a Republican charge that the White House intention- ally misled the American public by casting the Beng- hazi assault as one of the many protests over an of- fensive, anti-Muslim video, instead of a calculated ter- rorist attack that occurred on Obama's watch. BENGHAZI INVESTIGATION Dems: Clinton didn't deny security (530) 529-1220 100 Jackson St. Red Bluff UnlimitedTanning $ 25 .00 only JUNE Tanning Special! Wild Willy's Smokehouse ANNUAL CLEARANCE & REBATE SALE! Shop early for best selection of smokers, grills, BBQ accessories, sauces, spices, cookbooks, and fuels. Now is the time to buy a wood-pellet smoker/grill that will last a lifetime with Traeger rebates of up to $100 available in June. 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