LA Police Chief William Bratton has demoted and disciplined officers involved in shooting rubber bullets at and using batons on immigration rights protesters in last week's march.

At a City Hall news conference, Bratton said a two-star deputy chief, Cayler "Lee" Carter Jr., and his second-in-command, Louis Gray, were the ranking officers at MacArthur Park on May 1, when officers swept through the park swinging batons and firing rubber bullets indiscriminately. Carter has been moved down a rank in the department and has been told to stay home from work indefinitely. Gray has been reassigned within the department.

"As chief of the department, I have to be comfortable with the leadership team I have around me," Bratton said. "This is not a witch hunt."

There were several injuries resulting from the police misconduct:

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More "dehumanizing and degrading" behavior by prison guards, this time in Florida:

Prosecutors issued arrest warrants Tuesday for eight former prison employees accused of abusing inmates, including forcing some to clean toilets with their tongues.

The eight were among 13 prison employees who had already been fired from the 605-inmate medium and minimum security at the Hendry Correctional Institution in the Everglades. The previous warden and an assistant warden resigned, and three others were reassigned after an inmates was beaten and choked by guards in March.

Cleaning toilets with your tongue? If true, what scum these guards are.

Here's a group and event that deserves some notice:

Hear Us Out
Wednesday, May 16, 2007 @ 7:00 PM
The Thurgood Marshall Center*
1816 12th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20009

Hear Us Out will feature the writings of 16 and 17-year olds who have been charged and incarcerated as adults in the DC Jail. Poems will be read by Free Minds members who have been released and are now living and working in the DC community. Come celebrate their successes at this free community event!

Though I am behind these bars I'll start my life anew
Despite these walls around me
My sun will still shine through
by Leon, age 17, "Sunshine"

You are invited to bring a new or used paperback book for the DC Jail's new lending library. Invite your friends. Light refreshments will be served.

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Six men from the former Yugoslavia and the Middle East have been arrested for an alleged planned attack on military members at Fort Dix.

Authorities say there is no evidence connecting them to al-Qaida.

``If these people did something, then they deserve to be punished to the fullest extent of the law,'' said Sohail Mohammed, a lawyer who represented scores of detainees after the 2001 attacks. ``But when the government says `Islamic militants,' it sends a message to the public that Islam and militancy are synonymous.''

``Don't equate actions with religion,'' he said.

A point well taken.

Update: The suspects: Four of the suspects were born in the former Yugoslavia, one in Jordan and one in Turkey, said Michael Drewniak, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office in Newark, New Jersey.

Save the Children and the National Center for Health Statistics have released their latest studies of infant mortality rates around the world. While the rate in the U.S. remains about the same, the rate in Iraq is soaring:

Two wars and a decade of sanctions have led to a huge rise in the mortality rate among young children in Iraq, leaving statistics that were once the envy of the Arab world now comparable with those of sub-Saharan Africa.

A new report shows that in the years since 1990, Iraq has seen its child mortality rate soar by 125 per cent, the highest increase of any country in the world. Its rate of deaths of children under five now matches that of Mauritania.

Via KagroX, some are saying September is the key month on Iraq:

"Many of my Republican colleagues have been promised they will get a straight story on the surge by September," said Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.). "I won't be the only Republican, or one of two Republicans, demanding a change in our disposition of troops in Iraq at that point. That is very clear to me."

Via Talex, Obama agrees:

Presidential candidate Barack Obama on Sunday launched a public campaign to win enough votes to override a presidential veto of a troop withdrawal from Iraq. . . . Obama said he believed a phased troop withdrawal could be pushed through Congress this fall if the public applies enough pressure on Republicans over the summer. . . . "I think by the fall, if there's been concerted pressure over the summer (it could happen)," he said. "

This Rudy meltdown was inevitable. I can not imagine what he was thinking when he decided to run for the GOP nomination. Anyway, here is another nail in the coffin of his campaign:

®ecords show that in the '90s he contributed money at least six times to Planned Parenthood, one of the country's leading abortion rights groups and its top provider of abortions.

What is funny to me is how he is contradicting himself with the very damage control operations he is running now:

Asked how Giuliani could reconcile personal opposition to abortion with a contribution to Planned Parenthood, a Giuliani spokeswoman said "Mayor Giuliani has been consistent in his position -- he is personally opposed to abortion, but at the same time he understands it is a personal and emotional decision that should ultimately be left up to the woman," said Maria Comella.

"Giuliani gave a noncommittal answer to the question of whether it would be a good day for the country if Roe v. Wade were overturned. "It'd be OK," Giuliani responded."

Okaaaay.

Paul Wolfowitz' tenure as President of the World Bank grows shorter each day.

The latest is that a deal is in the works, whereby he resigns and the U.S. gets to pick his replacement.

The Europeans worked to arrange a quick exit for Mr. Wolfowitz as a special bank committee concluded that he was guilty of breaking rules barring conflicts of interest in arranging for a pay raise and promotion for Shaha Ali Riza, his companion and a bank employee, in 2005.

Wolfowitz was told of the committee's finding Sunday night.

Then there's the sudden resignation of his top aide:

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Deborah Jeane Palfry, the accused D.C. Madam has a new lawyer: Preston Burton, a partner in the Washington office of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe.

Burton was appointed by the Judge after Palfrey complained she and her initial court-appointed lawyer, A.J. Kramer, didn't see eye to eye.

Palfry is eligible for a court-appointed lawyer because the Government seized her assets, leaving her without funds with which to retain counsel.

So what about her civil lawyer Blair Montgomery Sibley, and his less than brilliant strategy to leak her client roster to ABC News and plan on issuing subpoenas to clients in the hope they would say their escorts didn't provide sex?

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler said she does not recognize Sibley, a controversial and flamboyant figure in the civil case Palfrey has filed against former escorts, as a legal party in Palfrey's criminal defense. Last week, the judge barred him from entering the well of the court to sit with his client.

It's official. The Justice Department will allow the House Judiciary Committee to offer limited immunity to Monica Goodling for her testimony about the U.S. Attorney firings and Alberto Gonzales' role in them.

The move means that Goodling is likely to testify in front of the House Judiciary Committee on a broad range of questions about the firings that she helped coordinate, including the extent of involvement by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and the White House, officials said.

I'm not sure what the "limited" qualifier means in this case. According to the letter sent by DOJ, it sounds like they are agreeing to whatever immunity the House asks for.

The Judge is expected to grant the request Friday.

Update: Another name to add to the mix: Jay Apperson. The line that caught my eye:

When he was counsel to a House subcommittee in 2005, Jay Apperson resigned after writing a letter to a federal judge in his boss's name, demanding a tougher sentence for a drug courier. As an assistant U.S. attorney in Virginia in the 1990s, he infuriated fellow prosecutors when he facetiously suggested a White History Month to complement Black History Month.

It's burdensome to defend against any homicide charge, but the burden can be crushing when the defense must address not just the charge but unrelated allegations of distant misconduct. Phil Spector is on trial for the 2003 shooting of Lana Clarkson, but the prosecution wants to prove his "pattern of threatening women with guns," leading to testimony that he tried to have sex with a woman at gunpoint in the 1980's and that he threatened another woman with a gun "and hit her on the head when she tried to leave his Pasadena home."

Spector's alleged pattern of using guns and being violent toward other women doesn't tell us much about his role in Lana Clarkson's death in 2003. The case against Spector should be made on its own merits, not on the assumption that Spector probably killed Clarkson because he (allegedly) committed other violent acts at other times against other women.

A guy went to the doctor and the doctor gave him six months to live. Six months later when the fellow hadn't paid his bill the doctor gave him another six months to live. -Henny Youngman

Here is a story I find funny:

A British man who went on a wild spending spree after doctors said he only had a short time to live . . . John Brandrick, 62, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer two years ago and told that he would probably die within a year.

He quit his job, sold or gave away nearly all his possessions, stopped paying his mortgage and spent his savings dining out and going on holiday. Brandrick was left with little more than the black suit, white shirt and red tie that he had planned to be buried in.

. . . [A] year later . . . . his suspected "tumor" was no more than a non-life threatening inflammation of the pancreas. . . . [H]e is considering . . . suing the hospital that diagnosed him.

Funny but I see his point. Reliance right?