The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Friday said it will rule on September 5 whether to whether to delay the recall election.

Civil rights groups are calling for the Oct. 7 election to be delayed, contending that the hurry-up timeframe is forcing counties to change their voting plans in ways that disenfranchise minority voters -- and that such changes require federal approval under the Voting Rights Act.

Under federal law, the Department of Justice must pre-clear any revisions to the voting process in Monterey and three other California counties with a history of low voter participation.

Unless federal lawyers approve Monterey County's plan to conduct the vote on short notice by consolidating some polling places, the judges could delay the election on whether to recall Gov. Gray Davis, perhaps until the March presidential primary.

Accused terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui won another round in court in his battle for witness access.

Friday, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, granted Moussaoui's request for testimony from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the reputed architect of the hijacking attacks on New York and Washington, according to sources familiar with the ruling.

A joint team of Pakistani and FBI agents caught Mohammed and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, one of the hijackers' alleged moneymen, March 1 at an al Qaeda safe house in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, a few miles from the capital, Islamabad.....Mohammed and al-Hawsawi are both being held at undisclosed military locations.

Previously, the Judge ruled Moussaoui must be allowed to interview Ramzi Binalshibh. He has also asked to interview al-Hawsawi.

The Government is expected to appeal this latest ruling which remains under seal.

A law banning the possession of small amounts of maijuana has been ruled unconstitutional by an Alaska appeal court.

The ruling affirms a 1975 Alaska Supreme Court decision that found it legal to possess less than four ounces of marijuana in one's home. That ruling found that the state constitution's strong privacy law superseded legislative attempts to ban marijuana.

For background on the issues involved in the decision, go here.

Update: Marijuna Ruling Smokes Foes

Via Tom Tomorrow and Oliver Willis we learned that Iraqi Blogger Salam Pax, who was highly touted by the American and British media (and pro-war bloggers) during the war, had his house searched by American soldiers. It wasn't pleasant.

Here's some, but go read the whole thing:

They came at around 12 midnight they were apparently supposed to do a silent entrance and surprise the criminal Ba’athi cell that was in my parents house, unfortunately for them our front gate does a fair amount of rattling so my brother heard that and opened the door and saw a couple of soldiers climbing on our high black front gate....

Sen. Hillary Clinton absolutely has ruled out a 2004 bid for the Presidency.

"I am absolutely ruling it out," Clinton said during a visit to the New York State Fair in Syracuse, N.Y. She had insisted in recent months that she will not consider entering the race for president this year even if that is what some Democrats want.

Smart move....she'll be killer in 2008.

Update: Sorry, We meant 2012.

A new CBS News poll shows public confidence is dropping for Bush's handling of Iraq:

Asked whether the U.S. is in control in Iraq, 42 percent said yes, and 47 percent said no.

Republicans remain more supportive of Bush than Democrats and Independents. Bush's approval rating remained at 55%.

Don't miss Daily MoJo on the connection between the film The Battle of Algiers, the prison camp at Guantanamo and Israel's secret prison. It's all in World Behind Bars.

South Dakota Congressman Bill Janklow has been charged with second degree manslaughter , a felony carrying a maximum ten year sentence, arising from his recent car accident in which a motorcyclist was killed.

One life ended, one life forever tarnished. Both were avoidable. How sad.

Dave Cullen of Conclusive Evidence has been following the Air Force Academy rape scandal for over six months, writing about it for Salon, Slate and others. With the news today that a report shows that 12% of the female cadets have reported being raped, Cullen says as horrible as that is, it's really only one of three scandals. The second scandal:

Send your daughter--or yourself--to another university, and your chances for rape are probably even worse. Much worse.

The third scandal? The press has known about scandal #2 and not reported it.

The least-necessary scandal: The press knew about this all through the Air Force Academy scandal all spring. They focused on the horror of dozens of women reporting sexual assault (last I checked the number was up to 56 reported over ten years, including sexual harassment). We should be so lucky that it is only 56. That's a BS number and the press knows it. The number across the country is in the millions.

Dave says:

Watch the press on this story. Watch them fixate on the Air Force Academy, ignoring Harvard, Princeton and everywhere else. Just watch.

Attorney General John Ashcroft is slipping--in the polls and in the eyes of conservative Republicans in Congress.

New Harris Poll numbers released this week also show Ashcroft's overall popularity slipping below 50 percent for the first time this year, while the percentage of those who disapprove of his performance has climbed to nearly 40 percent.

....Ashcroft has drawn the left's ire for the reach of the government's war on terrorism; for overruling local prosecutors in death penalty cases; for altering the government's decades-old interpretation of the Second Amendment's right to bear arms; and for overseeing continued raids on facilities that provide marijuana for medical purposes. Now some conservatives, concerned that the war on terrorism has eroded civil liberties, are joining the criticism of Ashcroft's policies for the first time.

The Republicans' chief concern with Ashcroft centers on the Patriot Act. Ashcroft's visit to Idaho this week brought the critics out front:

More news regarding the Massachussetts prison system's handling of defrocked Priest John Geoghan:

The protective custody prison unit where defrocked priest John J. Geoghan was sent for committing nonviolent offenses four months before being slain was designed for inmates with records of extremely aggressive behavior, according to a written summary of a correction officials' meeting last year.

....Lawyers who represented Geoghan in prison said yesterday that they pushed hard for his transfer out of MCI-Concord -- but only because he was desperate to escape harassment by prison guards and fellow inmates, which the lawyers said included people urinating and defecating on Geoghan's bed, fouling his food, and verbally taunting him, sometimes after guards intentionally left his cell door open.

The Houston Chronicle reports that indicted former Enron Treasurer Ben Glisan, Jr. is negotiating a plea bargain and cooperation agreement with federal prosecutors.

Glisan, one of the highest ranking Enron officials before he was fired for his involvement in a side-deal, is charged with two dozen counts of money laundering, fraud and conspiracy. His charges are part of a 109-count indictment against Glisan, former Enron Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow and former Enron executive Dan Boyle.

"When Glisan flips, this could be a bloodbath," said one lawyer familiar with the Enron investigation. Glisan was installed as Enron treasurer in 2000 and was known as a protege of both Fastow and ex-CEO Jeff Skilling.

The Enron case appears to be heating up. More indictments are expected to be handed down regarding a "side deal" by Enron concerning a Nigerian barge. A superseding Indictment is expected on the portion of the case regarding Enron's broadband internet business, although that could just involve a fine-tuning of the charges rather than the addition of new defendants.