A Chicago jury today returned a verdict recommending life without parole for Juan Luna, whom it convicted last week of murdering seven people at a restaurant.

The sentencing deliberations took only two hours. Luna was 18 at the time of the killings. The defense argument:

Today, during closing arguments in the defense portion of the death penalty phase, Luna's lawyer Burch asked jurors to disregard prosecutors' portrayal of Luna as a cold-blooded monster.

"The state portrayed Juan Luna as an evil individual who has no heart. … They are trying to dehumanize him, make him less than a person and then step on him,'' Burch said as he stomped his foot in the courtroom. "He's a human being. The same blood flowing through his heart and veins is flowing through ours."

"I'm asking you to lean toward life, lean toward life because justice has been served,'' Burch said." Death is not the answer, taking life for a life. … Temper justice with mercy. I'm pleading with you to express mercy."

Eric Zorn in the Chicago Tribune says the case is a signal it's time to end the death penalty.

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Update: Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are skeptical. They say the bill needs to be improved in the Senate. I agree, particularly with respect to the family separation issues, the need to go back to the home country and wait, possibly for years, to return and the onerous path to permanent residency and citizenship.

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The 300 page immigration reform bill won't be publicly available until tomorrow. Here is a summary of key provisions:

— Undocumented immigrants who came to the United States before Jan. 1, 2007 — an estimated 12 million — would get immediate, but probationary, legal status and ability to work and travel if they pass background checks.

— Undocumented immigrants and their families could get new “Z'’ visas good for four years, but renewable indefinitely, by paying a $5,000 fee per head of household. After eight years, holders of Z visas could apply for permanent legal residence — a green card — by returning to their home countries and paying another $4,000 penalty.

— Between 400,000 and 600,000 foreigners would be able to come every year to work. They could stay for two years on new “Y-1′’ visas then return home for one year and could renew the visas for a total of six years in the country. They could bring their families with them for one two-year period.

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The number of Republicans calling for the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales rose to 5 today....and Democrats are calling for a "no confidence" vote.

Democrats proposed two versions of a nonbinding resolution expressing what senators of both parties have said for weeks: that Gonzales has become too weakened to run the Justice Department.

White House response:

"A 'no-confidence' vote is nothing more than a meaningless political act, not that that's stopped them before," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said. "The attorney general has the full confidence of the president."

Kelly O'Donnell asked Bush at a press conference today if he sent Gonzales to Ashcroft's hospital room to sign off on the extension of the warrantless NSA wiretapping program. Bush refused to answer. Instead, he said the program was and is necessary.

Update: New York Times article on the resolution here.

CNN reports. I'll look for a story with more details.

NYTimes says:

Breaking News 6:12 PM ET: Paul Wolfowitz to Resign as President of the World Bank as of June 30, Bank Official Says.

Update (TL): ABC News has more.

An internal panel tasked with investigating the lucrative pay and promotion package Wolfowitz arranged in 2005 for girlfriend Shaha Riza found him guilty of breaking bank rules.

The committee also found that he tried to hide the salary and promotion package from top ethics and legal officials within the bank. The report added that there is a "crisis in the leadership" at the World Bank. Wolfowitz is the first World Bank president to ever leave the bank under a cloud of scandal.

Wolfowitz is said to be angry and upset.

Via Devil's Tower, Vice President Cheney makes an extraordinary argument:

Attorneys for Vice President Cheney and top White House officials told a federal judge today they cannot be held liable for anything they disclosed to reporters about covert CIA officer Valerie Plame or her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.

. . . Attorneys for Cheney and the other officials said any conversations they had about Plame with each other and reporters were part of their normal job duties because they were discussing foreign policy and engaging in an appropriate "policy dispute." Cheney's attorney went farther, arguing that Cheney is legally akin to the president because of his unique government role, and has absolute immunity from any lawsuit.

"So you're arguing there is nothing -- absolutely nothing - these officials could have said to reporters that would have been beyond the scope of their employment [whether it was] true or false?," U.S. District Judge John D. Bates asked.

The argument is akin to the absolute immunity granted to judges and prosecutors and the qualified immunity granted state actors in Section 1983 and Bivins suits. Except Cheney is arguing that the Vice President is like the President.

Does the argument make any sense? Does Jones v Clinton shed any light on this, considering the Jones suit was for alleged acts when Clinton was not President? I'll explore these issues on the flip.

President Bush refused to answer this question:

Q: There’s been some very dramatic testimony before the Senate this week from one of your former top Justice Department officials who describes a scene that some Senators called stunning, about a time when the warrantless wiretap program was being reviewed. Sir, did you send your then chief of staff and White House counsel to the bedside of John Ashcroft while he was ill to get him to approve that program, and do you believe that kind of conduct from White House officials is appropriate?

BUSH: Kelly, there’s a lot of speculation about what happened and what didn’t happen. I’m not going to talk about it. It’s a very sensitive program. . . .

No one asked him about the program. The question was a simple one - did he send Card and Gonzales to visit Ashcroft?

Atrios has the nuts*:

Back in those happy days in the 90s, if Clinton had refused to answer a question like this a shitstorm would've erupted. Ted Koppel would've put up a "17 days and still no answer" clock. Tweety would have had 37 blond conservative lawyers on every night to demand "accountability." etc... etc...

• in the poker sense.

KagroX writes a misinformed post on the efficacy of not funding the Iraq War:

Let's see that first one again:

Was it a full-bore data-mining program of some sort, akin to the TIA program that Congress had de-funded? (John Yoo suggests as much in his new book.)

What jumps out at me there is this: the possibility that we're talking about the reincarnation of a program that Congress had de-funded.

That'd be idle speculation but for the mention that John Yoo apparently makes such a suggestion himself.

It's idle speculation particularly because it is from John Yoo. Let's consider what John Yoo was doing in 2003:

Professor Yoo was a visiting professor at the University of Chicago Law School in 2003.

John Yoo was not at Justice when the program in question was not funded as it was originally. He does not know anything about it and could not. It is by definition idle speculation.

The Senate has reached a deal with the White House on immigration reform.

The proposed agreement would allow illegal immigrants to come forward and obtain a "Z visa" and — after paying fees and a $5,000 fine and returning to their home countries — ultimately get on track for permanent residency, which could take between eight and 13 years.

They could come forward right away to claim a probationary card that would let them live and work legally in the U.S., but could not begin the path to permanent residency or citizenship until border security improvements and a high-tech worker identification program were completed.

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Arivaca, Arizona is making a big stink over proposed surveillance towers planned for the Mexican Border. They liken it to Big Brother.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency is installing a network of nine towers with ground radar and night vision cameras to monitor a 28-mile (45-km) stretch of border near Arivaca, southwest of Tucson.

It is the first trial for the communications and technology arm of the government's Secure Border Initiative announced in 2005. Dubbed "SBInet," authorities say it will be extended across some 6,000 miles of the Mexican and Canadian borders in segments in coming years.

The town's population of 1,500 is very upset. They say the entire town will be under surveillance. I think they are right. They cost a bundle too.

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The Iraq Supplemental funding fight has been something I consider of less importance because it has long been clear to me that the issue of setting a date certain for ending the war (I believe NOT funding it is the only way, but earlier versions discussed "binding timelines") would not be in it. And indeed, the talk is all of short leashes and benchmarks, not date certains for ending the war. The initial House bill, while supported by Move On and the Netroots, was in fact the worst deal possible, as it would have ostensibly set an end date two months before the 2008 elections, thereby insuring that in fact, the Debacle would continue past the end of the Bush presidency. It truly was a terrible bill.

Since then, the House passed a so-called "short leash" bill that provided 2 months of funding with a release of remaining funds in July. For those who favor the "ratcheting up the pressure" approach, this bill makes good sense. I do not think much of that approach, but it does notwork against a date certain for not funding approach I favor, the framework embodied in the McGovern Amendment and in Reid-Feiongold.

Now we see what is lkely to emerge as the Senate proposal, and it is something Bush will sign. GOP Senator John Warner proposed it:

Via Atrios, Al Gore's new book takes us all to task:

A large and growing number of Americans are asking out loud: "What has happened to our country?" People are trying to figure out what has gone wrong in our democracy, and how we can fix it. . . . It is too easy—and too partisan—to simply place the blame on the policies of President George W. Bush. We are all responsible for the decisions our country makes. We have a Congress. We have an independent judiciary. We have checks and balances. We are a nation of laws. We have free speech. We have a free press. Have they all failed us? Why has America's public discourse become less focused and clear, less reasoned? Faith in the power of reason—the belief that free citizens can govern themselves wisely and fairly by resorting to logical debate on the basis of the best evidence available, instead of raw power—remains the central premise of American democracy. This premise is now under assault.

As is apparent, I spend a great deal of time writing about ending the Iraq Debacle. Particularly on ending it by not funding it after a date certain. To me it is easy to decry Republican disconnect from reality. But where is the condemnation of Democratic disconnect from the reality of the Constitutional mandate to the Congress to exercise its Spending Power? We are all to blame now. From those of us who always opposed the war, like Barack Obama, to those who learned what a mistake the Iraq Debacle was after supporting it, like Tom Friedman. The truth is that too few are accepting that Bush will never end the war and that the Democratic Congress must exercise its Constitutional power and end it - by not funding it.

Meteor Blades writes:

According to many, defunding isn’t just bad because it’s impossible, it’s a bad idea per se because the polls say most Americans don’t support it. And, they say, if too many elected Democrats do support it, they are going to screw up the party’s prospects for winning the Presidency and perhaps even retaining a majority in the Senate and House come 2008.

Where do these false memes come from? The first is obviously false. As of today, an Iraq Supplemental funding bill has not become law because President Bush vetoed the bill Congress passed. NOT funding is merely a function of not passing a bill, it does not require passage. Right now the Democratic Congress is grappling with a way to force an end date to the Iraq Debacle by means other than NOT funding it. Benchmarks, timelines, "short leashes," etc. are ways that, given a President less obstinate and incompetent and more respectful of the American People, would likely work. But the President IS George Bush.