The World Bank meeting on Paul Wolfowitz has adjourned at the request of the U.S. until 2:30 pm ET.

Speculation is he will resign today. From ABC's The Blotter:

World Bank officials say the bank's board is completing an "exit strategy" that will allow World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz to resign this afternoon and "still save some face" over the issue of his efforts to seek a promotion and pay raise for his girlfriend at the bank.

The officials say the bank's board will accept Wolfowitz's resignation but will also acknowledge that the World Bank's Ethics Committee bears "some responsibility" for giving him bad advice on the issue of his girlfriend.

Good riddance to him.

Today's vote on Reid-Feingold should have a salutary effect on the creeping hometeamism that had captured progressive activists and the Netroots and brings into stark relief what still ails the Democratic Party - political cowardice.

For months the cheerleading from progressives and the Netroots for the House Supplemental and all the noisemaking coming from the Democratic Party has been a serious impediment to efforts to truly end the Iraq Debacle.

We kept hearing about the need to "ratchet up the pressure" on Bush and the Republicans. I think it is clear now that the pressure needs to be placed on those segments of the Democratic Party that likes to talk a lot about ending the war but clearly has felt no pressure from its base to do what is necessary to end this catastrophic war.

Jim Webb told President Bush, Democrats would show the way, as did others. It is clear that Jim Webb, Jon Tester, Claire McCaskill, Jack Reed, Carl Levin, et al, have no intention of leading on Iraq.

Yet again, as in 2006, it will require the base of the Democratic Party to lead its leaders. This vote today leaves no doubt what must be done by progressives, the Democratic grassroots and the Netroots. We must all take on those segments of our Party who do not want to end the war, but rather merely say they want to end the war.

And for this important insight, today was a good day.

It was an ugly, brutal crime, the murder of two young children, one of whom was raped and the other had nails driven into his skull. Byron Halsey served 19 years in prison for the crime. But, he didn't do it. DNA proved it and yesterday, a New Jersey Judge ordered him released.

Barry Scheck, co-director of the Innocence Project, the Manhattan legal clinic that revived the case, said: “It’s a miracle that Byron is here with us, because if ever there was a case where there was a risk of executing an innocent man, it was this case. Because the facts of the case were so horrible.”

Here's what the DNA showed:

The Amendment to cut off funding for the Iraq War went down to defeat today. Here's the roll call vote. 67 to 29, with 4 not voting.

[Via Think Progress.]

Politics TV has the video of James Comey's testimony yesterday about his rush to the hospital to pre-empt Alberto Gonzales and Andy Card's attempt to get former Attorney General John Ashcroft to sign off on the extension of the warrantless NSA wiretap program.

Update: Don't miss Marcy Wheeler on Comey in The Guardian today, The Constitution is in Intensive Care.

Via Jane at Firedoglake, Glenn Greenwald provides context and the Washington Post editorial calls the White House actions alarming.

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Yes, I lived through 9/11 too. Oh, Rudy meant he was in NYC during 9/11. So did 8 million other people. But those 8 million people were not the bonehead who put the City's emergency response headquarters in the World Trade Center over the objections of experts - who objected to Rudy's plan because, maybe Rudy did not know this, the WTC was attacked by terrorists in 1993:

"Your director of emergency management suggested, recommended, that you not put it [in the World Trade Center] because it had been a target in 1993. Why did you do that?" asked Wallace.

"My director of emergency management recommended 7 World Trade Center," replied Giuliani.

"I've got a copy right here of Jerry Hauer's directive to you," Wallace came back, "and I -- there were meetings in which Jerry Hauer said that it's a bad idea and the police chief, Howard Safir said it was a bad idea."

As someone who lived through 9/11, I have to question the sanity of the notion that a blustering fool whose only talent is self-promotion and whose most important decision related to 9/11, where to put his command center, was as idiotic as one could imagine, is running for President on the strength of his stupidity. Yes, for it was his stupidity in placing the command center precisely where it was recommended NOT to be that made his endless 9/11 press conferences necessary.

Rudy is a poster boy for the absurdity of politics.

I haven't been excited about the U.S. Sentencing Commission's long awaited report urging a slight reduction in crack cocaine penalties, because the reduction is just that: slight.

The report was forwarded to Congress today. You can read it here.

From a policy perspective, as the ACLU says, it's a good first step, but that's all it is.

But 2007 marks the fourth time in 20 years that the commission has issued such a report, and Congress has yet to address the problem. Years of medical and legal research have shown no appreciable difference between crack and powder cocaine, and no justification for allowing the vast sentencing gap between them to stand. We urge Congress to put aside politics and act now to fix this discriminatory federal drug sentencing policy."

From the practical standpoint of my clients and everyone else's clients doing double-digit sentences, it only takes a year or two off.

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California prison authorities proposed their new plan for executions today, aimed at alleviating criticism over past practices, in which there was no assurance the dying inmate wasn't feeling pain.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger praised the new plan.

Aiming at ending a 16-month legal moratorium on capital punishment in California, state corrections officials today proposed new lethal injection execution procedures they say "will result in the dignified end of life" for condemned inmates.

The state acted in response to a December decision by U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel, who concluded that the state's implementation of the death penalty amounted to cruel and unusual punishment and may have subjected six inmates to excruciatingly painful ends.

The new proposals are listed below:

Too funny, particularly the hokey voice-over. [Via Alternet]

On the Fox post-GOP Debate fest, Alan Colmes asked John McCain how will the terrorists follow us home from Iraq? His answer? Like the Fort Dix "terrorists." I see. So like those guys followed us home 23 years ago?

Three brothers [Dritan "Anthony" or "Tony" Duka, 28; Shain Duka, 26; and Eljvir "Elvis" Duka, 23] charged in the alleged Fort Dix terror plot have been living illegally in the U.S. for more than 23 years and were accepted as Americans by neighbors and friends who had no idea they would scheme to attack military bases and slaughter GIs.

So they "followed us home" at the ages of 5, 2 and newborn? Um,"[t]he brothers entered the United States near Brownsville, Texas, in 1984, the source said, which would put their ages at 1 to 6 when they crossed the border. . ."

Precocious, these "terrorists."

Good news to report on the Student Loan Forgiveness Bill. It passed the House today. The Senate companion bill has passed the Judiciary Committee. There's yet another hurdle: If enacted, the repayment program must be funded through separate legislation in order to take effect. From CQ (subscription only):

CQ TODAY
May 15, 2007 – 3:44 p.m.
House Lawmakers Pass Bill on Student Loan Forgiveness
By Seth Stern and Ben Halpern-Meekin, CQ Staff

Law school graduates who take jobs as criminal prosecutors and public defenders would be eligible for student loan forgiveness under a bill House lawmakers passed Tuesday.

Considered under suspension of the rules, the bipartisan measure (HR 916) passed by 341-73. It would provide a maximum of $10,000 per year — up to a total of $60,000 — for law school graduates who committed to working at least three years as state or local prosecutors or federal, state or local public defenders. Federal prosecutors are already eligible for loan forgiveness.

....Graduates can carry up to $100,000 in law school debt, in addition to debt from their undergraduate educations. Many find it financially difficult to take jobs as prosecutors and public defenders, which typically pay less than entry-level positions in the private sector.

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Like Senator Obama, Senator Hillary Clinton does not get it. While ostensibly supporting Reid-Feingold, Senator Clinton seems not to understand the imperative for it. She seems not to accept or understand that President Bush will not be affected by "ratcheting up the pressure" nor will Republicans provide a "veto-proof" majority. Instead Senator Clinton sees Reid-Feingold as:

Senator Clinton will vote for cloture on both the Feingold-Reid and Reed-Levin Amendments, to send the President a clear message that it is time to change course, redeploy our troops out of Iraq, and end this war as soon as possible.

Reid-Feingold is not about sending messages. It is about understanding that President Bush is oblivious to messages. It is about telling the American People that the Democratic Congress will not fund the Iraq Debacle past a date certain. And that it is then incumbent on President Bush to NOT abandon the troops in the middle of the civil war raging in Iraq.