Supreme Court suspends Clinton's privilege to practice before high court.(Chicago Tribune)

WASHINGTON _ Offering a reassurance of continuity to the nation, the Supreme Court started a new term Monday, with justices handing down a number of orders, including temporarily suspending former President Bill Clinton's privilege to practice before the high court.

The specter of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks was not far from the court's opening session, however. Before oral arguments in the first case, Chief Justice William Rehnquist expressed the court's sorrow to the families and friends of those killed and injured, asking for a moment of silence.

Among those listening in the courtroom to Rehnquist's poignant comments was Theodore Olson, solicitor general of the United States, whose wife, Barbara, was a passenger on the jetliner that was crashed by terrorists into the Pentagon on Sept. 11.

In a case that has resonance in the wake of the attacks, the justices declined to hear a racial profiling case from New York state. The appeal was filed by black men who said they were victims of racial profiling by police after a burglary attack against an elderly woman. Law enforcement's use of racial profiling has been in the spotlight in recent weeks because of the investigation of Arab and Muslim suspects in the terrorist attacks.

The justices also declined to hear an appeal for a new trial from Terry Nichols. He and Timothy McVeigh were convicted in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The blast killed 168 people and injured more than 500 others.

Nichols requested another trial earlier this year after the FBI revealed it had withheld thousands of documents related to the agency's investigation of the bombing. Nichols argued that the FBI's lapse hurt his defense during his 1997 trial.

The justices rejected that argument without comment. It was the second time since May when the documents' existence was revealed that the Supreme Court had turned down an appeal from Nichols.