Gonzales didn't mention this latest controversy, instead, sticking to his speech to law enforcement.

"My promise to this group and to the parents of America is that I'm committed. I will not rest, even after I'm no longer attorney general, until this nation is better able to shield our children from crimes," he said.

Gonzales has resisted calls from members of Congress to step down as attorney general. The White House defended Gonzales on Thursday against accusations he gave misleading testimony to Congress. A key Republican senator critical of Gonzales said there was no sign that President Bush's support for the attorney general was weakening.

Sen. Arlen Specter, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, accompanied Bush on an Air Force One on a trip to Philadelphia. At a hearing on Tuesday, the Pennsylvania Republican had told Gonzales, "I do not find your testimony credible, candidly."

The senator Thursday that Bush was sticking by Gonzales out of personal loyalty, despite the attorney general's deteriorating support on Capitol Hill. "The hearing two days ago was devastating (for Gonzales). But so was the hearing before that and so was the hearing before that," Specter said.

Rubin, who’s representing himself at his drug trial, says members of his Temple 420 believe that marijuana is the tree of life mentioned in the Bible.

Though ordained in 1990 by the Universal Life Church, police and prosecutors describe Rubin as a drug dealer. He faces up to seven years in prison if convicted of possessing marijuana for sale.

The 41-year-old Rubin has no legal experience, and says he spent last weekend praying and smoking marijuana with Indians in a sweat lodge at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

A California man has been charged by a federal grand jury in Los Angeles with operating an Internet-based obscenity distribution business and related offenses, Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney George Cardona of the Central District of California announced today.

The indictment returned yesterday charges Ira Isaacs, doing business as Stolen Car Films and LA Media, with four counts of using an interactive computer service to sell and distribute obscene films on DVD, two counts of using a common carrier to distribute obscene DVDs, and two counts of failing to label sexually explicit DVDs with the name and location of the custodian of records containing age and identification information for performers in sexually explicit films. The maximum penalty is five years in prison on each count.

The court will issue a summons directing Isaacs, who is believed to reside in the Hollywood Hills, to appear in United States District Court in Los Angeles for arraignment in August. The indictment also seeks the forfeiture of all obscene materials produced and transported by Isaacs and any proceeds derived from the sale of such materials.

The charges contained in the indictment are merely accusations, and the defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

The case is being prosecuted by Trial Attorney Kenneth Whitted of the Justice Department’s Obscenity Prosecution Task Force and Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Missakian of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California. The Task Force was formed to focus on the prosecution of adult obscenity nationwide. The investigation was conducted by the FBI’s Adult Obscenity Squad, a national initiative of the FBI based in the Washington, D.C. Field Office, and agents from the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office.

The court found that the agency, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, a unit of the Department of Transportation, had ignored the results of a database it commissioned to catalog more than 50,000 truck accidents from 1991 to 2002. Using the data, the study extrapolated that the risk of fatigue-related accidents would be substantially higher in the extra hours of service allowed by the new rules.

“F.M.C.S.A. failed to provide an adequate explanation for its decision to adopt the 11-hour daily driving limit,” the court said.

The new rules had been adopted after heavy lobbying by politically connected leaders of the trucking industry. The changes were part of the broader strategy by the Bush administration to reduce regulations on businesses.

Safety experts and insurance analysts challenged the changes. They said longer driving hours have contributed to the high number of truck accidents. About 100 people die each week in truck-related accidents, making trucking America’s most treacherous industry as measured by overall deaths and injuries.

Supporters of the loosened standards say they have made it faster and cheaper to move goods across the country. They say the changes promote safety because shorter hours would force the industry to put more drivers with little experience behind the wheel. And they note that the fatality rate, or the number of deaths per miles traveled, has continued a long decline.

Still, the fatality rate for truck-related accidents remains nearly double that involving only cars. And the Bush administration has repeatedly missed its own targets for reducing the number of fatalities from truck accidents.

The decision today came in a case filed by Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group. It was the third time in three years that the courts have been critical of the motor carrier agency.

A different appeals panel criticized the agency in December 2005 for failing to issue adequate rules for the training of drivers, saying the agency had ignored its own studies on the need for more comprehensive training.

And in 2004, a third panel of the appeals court struck down virtually identical new hours of service rules as the ones at issue in Tuesday’s decision, saying that they had been “arbitrary and capricious.”

After Congress, at the urging of the Bush administration and the trucking industry, intervened to block the enforcement of the 2004 court order, the motor carrier agency issued the 2005 rules. At the time, the agency said it had addressed the concerns raised by the appeals court’s 2004 decision.

In a regulatory impact analysis accompanying the 2005 changes, the agency concluded that the economic costs to the industry of tightening the hours of service rules, as consumer groups had proposed, outweighed the safety benefits.

But the court said today that analysis was flawed. The opinion was written by Judge Merrick B. Garland and signed by Chief Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg and Judge Karen Lecraft Henderson.

Safety groups hailed Tuesday’s ruling and said the court had confirmed their view that the agency had failed to adequately justify relaxing the rules.

“The court is saying once again, no,” said Jacqueline S. Gillan, vice president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, an alliance of consumer, health and insurance organizations. “For three and a half years this agency has tried every which way to defend a rule that would result in longer consecutive driver hours and longer total work hours. This has a dramatic dangerous impact on the lives of truck drivers and on the lives of everyone sharing the roads with trucks. And once again the court has said, ‘No, you cannot go ahead with a rule when it violates the law and you clearly have not justified it.’ ”

The agency would not say whether it would appeal the decision or seek a stay of the court’s order, which is set to go into effect in September.

“We are analyzing the decision issued today to understand the court’s findings as well as determine the agency’s next steps to prevent driver fatigue, ensure safe and efficient motor carrier operations and save lives,” said a statement issued by the agency.

The American Trucking Associations, which defended the changes to the rules in the proceeding, said they would ask the court to stay its ruling to give the agency time to provide a better justification of the changes.

Mr. James is accused of charging more than $58,000 in personal expenses on city-issued credit cards during his two decades as mayor and of selling city land at below market rates to Ms. Riley, who the authorities said then resold the property at an enormous profit.

Judith Germano, an assistant United States attorney, told Judge Martini that Mr. Ashley represented someone referred to in the criminal complaint as “Individual 1.” The person, who is not named in the indictment but who is “close to both defendants James and Riley,” lent $10,000 to Ms. Riley to help her pay for several properties in Newark and later received checks from Ms. Riley, according to prosecutors.

Ms. Germano said the other person Mr. Ashley represented was “an attorney in a number of real estate transactions” that are part of the case. In response, Mr. Ashley said, “I don’t see that there’s a conflict.” The judge told Ms. Germano to submit a brief with her concerns.

During the hourlong court appearance, Mr. James, 71, wearing a dark blue suit, smiled and seemed relaxed, limiting himself before and after the hearing to a single, repeated comment to reporters: “God is good all the time.” He and Ms. Riley, 38, who also pleaded not guilty, waived their right to a speedy trial.

Ms. Riley, whose relatives sat in the small, packed gallery, looked more anxious than Mr. James. She wore a black suit, flipped through legal papers, and did not smile.

Prosecutors said the evidence against Mr. James and Ms. Riley was largely contained in 40 banker’s boxes, each holding roughly 200 documents. Perry Primavera, a special assistant United States attorney, said that the prosecution would call about 60 witnesses, and that the trial would last about 12 weeks. The trial is tentatively set to begin in early February.

Mr. Ashley, a well-known criminal defense lawyer here, once represented Mr. James’s chief of staff, Jackie R. Mattison, who was found guilty in 1997 of taking bribes. After Monday’s court hearing, Mr. Ashley said of the prosecutors: “I didn’t know they were going to try to have me removed. I anticipated it could be an issue. They were never too happy with my representation.”

In court, Ms. Germano said that Mr. Ashley himself could be called as a witness in the case, to give evidence about a personal trip Mr. James and his companions made to Martha’s Vineyard in 2003, which prosecutors said cost the city of Newark more than $3,500.

"Contrary to the position of the government, the record on review consists of all the information a tribunal is authorized to obtain and consider," the court ruling stated.

The court also ruled that detainees' lawyers should have access to classified information relating to clients' cases. "Certain highly sensitive information" may be withheld from the lawyers, but not from the court, the judges ruled.

Lawyers for the detainees argued in mid-May that being able to review all documents compiled by the U.S. government, not just those presented to the military tribunal, could help them clear the detainees, some of whom have been jailed for more than five years.

There are about 385 detainees at Guantanamo, which was set up to handle prisoners captured by the United States following the September 11 attacks.

U.S. government attorneys have argued that any evidence that could help clear prisoners would have been turned over to the military tribunal that made the "unlawful enemy combatant" determination.

In rejecting that argument, the court ruled that an adequate review of the tribunal's determination cannot be made "without seeing all the evidence, any more than one can tell whether a fraction is more or less than one-half by looking only at the numerator and not at the denominator."

The court also rejected the government's position that lawyers should only have one eight-hour visit to Guantanamo to obtain approval from a prisoner to represent him.

The judges said a second visit would allow the lawyer "time to earn the detainee's trust."

Democrats in Congress are considering legislation calling for closing the Guantanamo prison, arguing indefinite detentions and allegations of prisoner mistreatment, which the military denies, is hurting the United States' reputation abroad and stoking potential acts of terrorism.