Do not miss Georgetown Law Professor David Cole's new article in The Nation- On the Road With Ashcroft. Cole delivers the goods and explains why Ashcroft has chosen to limit his audiences to law enforcement groups and how he has fudged on the details and effect of the Patriot Act. Cole also explains why the public is becoming so concerned about the Administration's unprecedented grab for power and erosion of civil liberties. Here's a small sample, but go read the whole thing:

Public concern is not limited to the Patriot Act's four corners but arises from a whole range of measures this Administration has advanced, from secret detentions to ethnic profiling to "Total Information Awareness" and the "enemy combatant" designations. The Patriot Act has become shorthand for these excesses. Ashcroft's defense, however, ducks virtually all this criticism, focusing only on a handful of the act's provisions. He doesn't mention, for example, its most troubling sections, those affecting immigrants. They allow the government to exclude foreign nationals for their speech, to deport them on the basis of wholly innocent associations with any group Ashcroft blacklists and to lock them up on his say-so, without showing that they are dangerous or a flight risk (the only two constitutionally recognized justifications for preventive detention). Nor does he bother to defend a provision authorizing freezing of assets based on secret evidence. And his website makes only passing reference to the act's dramatic expansion of FISA power to authorize search warrants in criminal investigations without probable cause of criminal activity.

The Horse has the results of the newest Zogby poll:

George W. Bush’s job performance ratings have reached the lowest point since his pre-Inauguration days, continuing a steady decline since a post-9/11 peak, according to a new Zogby America poll of 1,013 likely voters conducted September 3-5.

Less than half (45%) of the respondents said they rated his job performance good or excellent, while a majority (54%) said it was fair or poor.

A majority (52%) said it’s time for someone new in the White House, while just two in five (40%) said the president deserves to be re-elected.

The poll also has Dean leading the Democratic contenders.

He is followed by Massachusetts Senator John Kerry (13%), Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman (12%), and Missouri Congressman Richard Gephardt (8%). No other candidate polled more than 3%.

Update: Our report on the CNN/Time poll from yesterday is here.

Here are the details of the "new evidence" in the Michael Skakel/Martha Moxley murder case. The source of the information, Tony Bryant, who kept it quiet for 26 years, is coincidentally, a cousin of Kobe Bryant.

The essence of the new information is this: Three young black males, including Bryant, traveled to Belle Haven the night of the murder. They were hanging out with another Belle Haven kid who was then 11, and who died of a drug overdose at 17. Two of the black males were obsessed with Martha and planned to kill her "caveman style." The third, Tony Bryant (Kobe's cousin) wanted no part of it and returned to New York. Days later, the other two reportedly confessed to Bryant, telling him they had picked up a golf club on the Skakel's lawn and used it to bash Martha's head in. Bryant sat on the info until December, 2001, when he told another classmate, Tres Mills, who had been trying to write a screenplay about the murder and had sought out Bryant's help.

Bryant and Mills attended the same private school in Greenwich as Moxley. Mills said Bryant refused to tell his story to the police, even after Skakel was convicted. Mills says he approached both the prosecution and defense before the trial with Bryant's story but wouldn't reveal Bryant's name. He identified him only as "one of two blacks in the class."

Skakel's new lawyers confirm that Bryant has now "reluctantly" told his story to their investigators. Tres Mills now speaks publicly about the incident. He used to work for CBS News but was fired after he shook up Dorothy Moxley with his story during one of her appearances there.

How viable is the new information?

The judge presiding over the Terry Nichols death penalty case has granted Nichols' change of venue request ruling that Nichols cannot receive a fair trial in Oklahoma City.

The trial will be moved to another Oklahoma county. The Judge will announce which county on Monday.

Nichols' lawyers had requested a three year abatement so that the prejudicial pre-trial publicity could die down, or alternatively, that the trial be moved outside Oklahoma. The judge denied both requests, saying he had faith in the jury system and that he lacked authority to move the trial outside Oklahoma.

One glimmer of hope: The Judge said he will dismiss the charges if twelve impartial jurors cannot be found during jury selection. The trial is scheduled to begin on March 1, 2004.

In the "Emily Litella Never Mind" department:

A scientific study warning of great risks associated with ecstasy use has been retracted.

A report submitted for publication last year by the team conducting a study on Ecstasy at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine claimed that one night's use of ecstasy could result in permanent brain damage and symptoms resembling Parkinsons' Disease. Other scientists said hogwash, it would take massive doses of the drug to cause brain damage.

Turns out the scientists got their drugs mixed up. They hadn't injected ecstasy at all into the monkeys and baboons who were the test subjects, but d-methamphetamine.

California Governor Gray Davis has signed into law the bill passed by the state legislature granting drivers' licenses to undocumented residents. The bill allows state residents to apply for a driver's license using a state-issued identification number rather than a Social Security number. This will allow the thousands of undocumented California residents to obtain licenses. Gubernatorial candidate Cruz Bustamante supports the law. Arnold opposes it, as do the other major Republican contenders for Governor. It is estimated that there are up to 2 million undocumented persons in California.

To obtain a license, an applicant must show a federal taxpayer identification number (but not a Social Security number, which requires lawful residence and permission to work) and other documents, such as a foreign passport, foreign driver's license or an identification card issued by foreign consulates, such as the matricula identification cards issued by the Mexican government.

We wrote about this earlier today and it provoked a lot of comments, many asking what benefits the bill would provide.

The American Immigration Lawyers' Associaton (AILA) says:

• Licensing noncitizens enriches our domestic intelligence by allowing law enforcement authorities to verify and obtain the identities, residences, and addresses of millions of foreign nationals. Restrictive licensing will deprive authorities of this information.

• The proliferation of fraudulent documents that will result from restrictive licensing will impede law enforcement efforts by contaminating intelligence regarding who is present in the United States.

We have to say we are very impressed with candidate John Edwards weblog.

Check it out. It's a Slash weblog which is different other kinds of blogs. For example, Edwards' readers can register (anonymously and free) and post, as well as comment and rank the comments of others.

Second, Edwards' blog is actually 51 separate blogs. There is a national blog to discuss and read about Edwards and issues nationally--and one for each state where you can write about and discuss Edwards with folks from your state. The only thing missing is links to other blogs.

We like Edwards. Since we remain undecided on our favorite candidate, we read Dean and Clark's blogs almost every day. We'll be reading Edwards now too.

Thanks to Oliver Willis for the link.

A three judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals today refused to delay the Oct. 7 recall vote.

The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund had filed suit, charging that the county's plan to eliminate more than 100 polling places and cut the number of bilingual poll workers would disenfranchise Latino voters.

But the three-judge panel, with one Democratic and two Republican appointees, refused to block the vote.

CNN reports on a new CNN/Time poll showing that Bush's reelection in 2004 is no sure thing:

41 percent of all registered voters say they will definitely vote against Bush; just 29 percent say they will definitely vote for him. So Bush must woo about seven in ten swing voters -- not a difficult task for a popular incumbent, but far from a certainty.

The top preferred Democrats are Kerry, Lieberman, Dean, Gephardt, in that order. Sharpton is ahead of Bob Graham and Kucinich is last, behind Carol Mosley Braun.

So who won the Democratic debate last night? According to Washington Post editor Dan Balz, the answer is there was no winner.

The consensus after the debate was that no one was the true winner. Most of the campaign staffs were happy with the performance of their candidates and there wasn't a lot of heavy spinning afterwards, a sign that this debate probably did not change things much in terms of the state of the Democratic race.

Balz analyzes the debate at length in answering readers' questions in the online chat, the transcript is at the above link.

Arnold Schwarzenegger has made his first serious misstep in our view. Yesterday he vowed to fight the bill passed by the California legislature granting drivers' licenses to illegal immigrants. Gray Davis has said he will sign the bill.

Bye, Arnold. Vote No on Recall.

In a speech to hundreds of military officers, Retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, a former U.S. Commander in the Middle East who remains a consultant with the State Department, has blasted Bush's war policies.

A former U.S. commander for the Middle East who still consults for the State Department yesterday blasted the Bush administration's handling of postwar Iraq, saying it lacked a coherent strategy, a serious plan and sufficient resources...."There is no strategy or mechanism for putting the pieces together," said retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, and so, he said, "we're in danger of failing."

Zinni cannot be dismissed as a malcontent or Bush opponent:

Zinni's comments were especially striking because he endorsed President Bush in the 2000 campaign, shortly after retiring from active duty, and serves as an adviser to the State Department on anti-terror initiatives in Indonesia and the Philippines. He preceded Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks as chief of the U.S. Central Command, the headquarters for U.S. military operations in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Here's the best part --Zinni's speech was well-received.

Zinni's comments to the joint meeting in Arlington of the U.S. Naval Institute and the Marine Corps Association, two professional groups for officers, were greeted warmly by his audience, with prolonged applause at the end. Some officers bought tapes and compact discs of the speech to give to others.

Update: We've decided to reprint the email we received tipping us to the article--it's from defense lawyer Terry Kindlon, a former marine sergeant in Vietnam, who was at the speech. Please read it: