Your customized headlines for Wed, Mar 28, 2012

There's no shortage of depressing numbers about the state of the nation's housing market. Home prices continue to fall, a key index showed Tuesday. Sales of new and existing homes recently declined. U.S. borrowers owe a collective $700 billion more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. Foreclosures are ramping up again in many places — more than 25,000 Maryland homeowners have received notices this year.

Days before the MF Global brokerage firm collapsed, leaving many of its clients without access to their money, a top executive was troubled that the firm appeared to be putting customer funds at risk, the executive says.

House Republicans on Tuesday failed for the second time in as many days to extend federal transportation funding before it expires at midnight on Saturday.

"Unfortunately, this has turned into a political 'gotcha' game," said House Transportation Chairman John L. Mica (R-Fla.), whose own transportation bill stalled in the face of bipartisan opposition. "I've done everything I can to move this forward."

The Supreme Court's conservative justices appeared deeply skeptical Tuesday that a key component of President Obama's sweeping health-care law is constitutional, endangering the most ambitious domestic program to emerge from Congress in decades.

The Environmental Protection Agency issued the first-ever limits on greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants Tuesday, but stopped short of imposing any restrictions on the nation's existing coal-fired fleet.

— For the second day in a row, the House failed to pass an extension of the highway bill. Remember, at midnight on Saturday, everything goes kablooey.

— The future of nuclear power: small reactors?

— The rules that govern Roadrunner/Wile E. Coyote cartoons.

Randy Barnett is professor of law at Georgetown University, as well as a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the Goldwater Institute. He has also been perhaps the key legal thinker developing the case against the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate. We spoke Tuesday afternoon, and a lightly edited transcript follows.

Emily Seay wasn't sure what to expect when she decided to travel from Rockville, Md. up to the Supreme Court Tuesday morning, to rally in support of the Affordable Care Act. Seay, 39, is a nurse who attended a number of town halls in the summer of 2009, hosted by Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) when Congress was debating the health overhaul. She remembers opponents of the law dominating those meetings.

The Florida special prosecutor investigating the Trayvon Martin shooting is bringing in independent voice analysis experts to enhance 911 tapes to learn more about the actions of George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer who shot and killed the teen.