Kobe Bryant was interviewed by the Los Angeles Times Saturday. He asserted his innocence:

When everything comes clean, it will all be fine, you'll see," Bryant said during a brief telephone interview with the Los Angeles Times.

Bryant declined to discuss the case but said, "But you guys know me. I shouldn't have to say anything. You know I would never do something like that."

Bryant sounded surprised at the rumors being spread about that night. "Man, there's a lot of crazy stories out there," he said.

The New York Times has an excellent article outlining the hesitancy of civilian defense lawyers to participate in military tribunal proceedings .

As Lawrence Goldman, President of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) writes in this month's Champion magazine:

"In view of the extraordinary restrictions on counsel, however, with considerable regret, we cannot advise any of our members to act as civilian counsel at Guantánamo," he wrote. "The rules regulating counsel's behavior are just too restrictive to give us any confidence that counsel will be able to act zealously and professionally."

Among the rules defense lawyers object to:

• Conversations with our clients are subject to being monitored

• Lawyers have to pay for their own transportation to and from Guantanamo, represent the accused for free, and pay for their own security clearances, estimates of which run about $2,800.00. Unlike the federal court system, the Government is not offering compensation at reduced rates, and the trials could take months. Who can afford it?

• Even with a security clearance, defense will not be entitled to see all the documents. Only the military counsel may see everything.

The Government has made two welcome changes in the rules to encourage civilian counsel to particpate. Lawyers will be allowed to confer with colleagues on their cases, and it will not be required that all legal work be done at Guantanamo.

Here's more on the rules and why lawyers are afraid the tribunals will be sham proceedings to which they should not lend legitimacy. And Calpundit reprints a chart from the new issue of the Economist (subscription only) showing the difference between the military tribunals, U.S. Criminal trials and court- martial proceedings (which use the Code of Military Justice). His comment:

This is disgraceful. Our children are going to look back on this the same way we look back on Japanese internment camps and McCarthy-era loyalty oaths.

Two dozen more detainees have arrived at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba from Afganistan.

They join the 625 prisoners currently being held there, some for more than a year. The Government says all are suspected of helping the Taliban in the war against Afganistan.

Amnesty [International] says the U.S. government has arbitrarily imprisoned the detainees and has denied them "the right to humane treatment, to be informed of reasons for detention, to have prompt access to a lawyer, to be able to challenge the lawfulness of the detention, and to be presumed innocent until proven otherwise." Other violations the group has listed include prolonged solitary confinement, heavy shackling, and lack of adequate exercise.

Not to mention there have been 15 suicide attempts, including four in the past three weeks.

We got back this afternoon and are making our way through a few hundred plus emails. Courtesy of one reader, we see that Bushcroft is seeking permission from the Supreme Court to punish physicians for recommending pot to their sick patients.

The administration would revoke the federal prescription licenses of doctors who tell their patients marijuana would help them, a prerequisite for obtaining the drug under the state's voter-approved medical marijuana law.

Justice Department lawyers this week asked the high court to take up the issue in its next term, which begins in October. The department is appealing a ruling by an appellate court in San Francisco that said the proposed penalties would violate the freedom of speech of both doctors and patients.

If the justices agree to review the case, it would be their first look at medical marijuana since May 2001, when they upheld the federal government's authority to close down a pot dispensary in Oakland and others in the state.

The Justice Department's Supreme Court appeal argues that a physician 's "recommendation" under California law is the equivalent of a prescription for illegal drugs, an action the government can forbid without violating free speech. Department lawyers said the federal policy would not penalize a doctor for merely discussing marijuana with a patient -- as long as the doctor makes it clear that the drug is illegal under federal law, that federal authorities consider it dangerous and medically useless, and that the doctor is not recommending it.

Arthur over at Light of Reason has some harsh words for the Administration on this:

FOXNews.com reports that the District Attorney in Eagle, Colorado won't decide whether to file charges against Kobe Bryant until next week. We have court there on Monday, we'll report any buzz we hear.

The Feminist Daily News has this report and action alert on the delay in William Pryor's 11 Circuit confirmation hearing.

The judge in the Robert Blake case has denied a defense request to examine a woman with potentially exculpatory information in advance of trial. The witness allegedly heard Marlon Brando's son Christian comment that Blake's wife "should be shot."

A Lousiana Court has banned the state from issuing "Choose Life" license plates, ruling it infringes on free speech. We always thought the plates could double as an anti-death penalty message.

Gary Condit's wife has settled her libel suit with the National Enquirer. The paper erroneously wrote that Mrs. Condit "story that said she berated Chandra Levy days before the Washington intern disappeared."

Democratic presidential contender John Kerry has called upon President Bush to "tell the truth" about Iraq.

We're off to the Big Apple to do some tv stuff, back Saturday. If we can, we'll post from there. Either way, don't forget to check in with the great sites listed on the right side of TalkLeft--we read them every day, and lately, with all the breaking crime news, haven't touted them or linked to them as much as we should.

Friday nite, tune in to Now with Bill Moyers on PBS (schedule here) who will be covering the William Pryor judicial nomination.

There's a battle in the Beltway over President Bush's judicial nominee William Pryor. Currently the Attorney General of Alabama, Pryor's strong views on Roe v. Wade and gay rights have some Democrats worried that as a judge on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, he would be unduly influenced by his ideological convictions. Republicans contend that once on the bench, Pryor will set aside his personal beliefs and uphold the law.

On Friday, July 11, 2003 at 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings), NOW with Bill Moyers spotlights Pryor and what is shaping up to be on of the administration's most controversial nominations to date. Also on the program, NOW spotlights the cutting-edge satire of Comedy Central's The Daily Show in an interview with its host Jon Stewart.

Sen. Orrin Hatch has announced the confirmation hearing for Alabama Attorney General William Pryor for a seat on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has been delayed until next week.

The American Disability Association is mounting a national campaign to prevent Pryor's confirmation. Read their reasons here. Then check out Independent Judiciary and read all about Pryor, and see the huge list of organizations formally opposing his nomination.

With his vote delayed until next week, you have time to write your Senators if you haven't done so already and oppose Pryor's confirmation.

We wrote last week about a new government surveillance system called "combat zones." Noah Shachtman has a lot more on the system in this week's Village Voice.

Its architects at the Pentagon say it will help protect our troops in cities like Baghdad, where for the past few weeks fleeting attackers have been picking off American fighters in ones and twos. But defense experts believe the surveillance effort has a second, more sinister, purpose: to keep entire cities under an omnipresent, unblinking eye.

....The goal, according to a recent Pentagon presentation to defense contractors, is to "track everything that moves." "This gives the U.S. government capabilities Big Brother only pretended to have," said John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, a defense think tank. "Before, we said Big Brother's watching. But he really wasn't, because there was too much to watch."

An Army report will be released today on the details surrounding the ambush of Private Jessica Lynch and her unit in Iraq. The Los Angeles Times has obtained a copy and reports:

The U.S. Army unit that included Pfc. Jessica D. Lynch was ambushed by Iraqi soldiers last March after the Americans, exhausted and isolated, became lost in the city of Nasiriyah with guns that jammed, radios that malfunctioned and heavy trucks that sank into soft sand and marshland, the Army has concluded.

You can read the Exeuctive Summary of the report on the El Paso Times' website here. The full report is available here.

A sharply divided Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld the President's power to detain an American citizen indefinitely upon designating him an "enemy combatent."

A sharply divided federal appeals court today upheld President Bush's authority to detain indefinitely as an enemy combatant a United States citizen captured on the battlefield and to deny him access to a lawyer.

The judges today did not issue a majority opinion, just an order upholding the January decision. Four of them, however, on either side of the issue, wrote separate, sometimes harshly worded opinions, demonstrating the deep divisions in a case that essentially presents a stark and fundamental clash between the nation's security interests and its citizens' civil liberties.

A dissenting judge, Diana Gribbon Motz said:

The January ruling "marks the first time in our history that a federal court has approved the elimination of protections afforded a citizen by the Constitution solely on the basis of the executive's designation of that citizen as an enemy combatant, without testing the accuracy of the designation."

Our prior coverage of the Hamdi case and the lower court decision is here.

A national poll by the Pew Research Center shows that Bush's overall job performance rating has dropped 14 points to 60%. The reasons are his handling of post-war Iraq, health care and the economy. [link via Media Horse, which has a great graphic depicting the change.]

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Canada will become the first country in the world to sell pot to the medically ill.

Ottawa announced in July 2001 that some patients would be able to use marijuana provided by the government. But plans to grow official pot hit a series of snags, prompting a court in Ontario to give Ottawa until July 10 to come up with a solution.

The 582 sufferers granted dispensation from criminal laws to use the drug will be able to buy dried marijuana for C$5 ($3.70) a gram (0.04 oz) -- about half the current black market rate -- or a pack of 30 seeds for $20 so they can grow their own plants.

"Although this interim policy can be amended or suspended at any time, it is anticipated that it will remain in effect until ... (Ottawa's) roles and responsibilities with respect to a supply of marijuana for medical purposes have been clarified by the courts," the health ministry said in a statement.