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:

More....

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?

Nicely said:

Just a few years ago, the United States could hold its head high for the freedoms enjoyed by those residing within its borders as well as its energy, leadership, and openness and compassion. Today we are fast becoming a closed society, suspicious not only of “outsiders” but of many within our borders who are in some way “not like us.” The lists of our freedoms have turned into lists of our enemies, giving them an unmerited significance that in turn diminishes the country’s international standing. Persuasion has been replaced by coercion, honor sacrificed to a corrupted “duty,” and morality to expediency.

Military analyst Dan Smith examines the administration's assault on civil liberties post 9/11.

Four soldiers on active Army duty and a reserve police officer were arrested in Greensburg, Kansas for looting a grocery store that was destroyed by a tornado. The soldiers were in uniform, but were not assigned to the disaster area. Only National Guard troops were providing disaster relief.

I'm swamped by work today, so here's an open thread.

Check out Big Tent's article in The Guardian on the netroots (a form of which was originally published here on TalkLeft)

There are some new diaries up as well:

• Mutiple Deployments To Iraq Breaking Our Military
• The Cabal
• Priming the Deadeye impeachment pump

Former Westchester County D.A. and unsuccessful N.Y. Attorney General Candidate Jeanine Pirro is in the news again.

It seems Ms. Pirro used to tape-record some of her calls. And before leaving office, she asked an investigator to destroy some of the tapes.

One of the reasons this is of interest is that that Ms. Pirro's successor now is in possession of a tape suggesting Ms. Pirro failed to disclose evidence that could have helped a man whom Ms. Pirro subsequently charged with murder. But the existence of any tapes immediately raises the question of whom Ms. Pirro was talking to over her years in office and what conversations, whether of a political or legal nature, might be recorded in the surviving tapes.

"The fact that the then District Attorney secretly recorded certain conversations in her office and on her telephone came to light during a still continuing federal grand jury investigation conducted jointly by the United States Attorney and this Office," Mr. Hecht wrote.

[Hat tip Crooks and Liars.]

The New Jersey Senate will vote Thursday on a bill to abolish the state's death penalty.

New Jersey is set to consider becoming the first state to abolish the death penalty legislatively since capital punishment was reinstated 31 years ago. A Senate committee is slated Thursday to consider replacing the death penalty with life imprisonment without parole.

The initiative stems from a January report from a special commission appointed by the Legislature. The panel determined New Jersey’s death penalty costs taxpayers more than paying for prisoners to serve life terms and concluded there was no evidence the death penalty deters people from committing murders.

“There is increasing evidence that the death penalty is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency,” the report said.

Will it happen? It's possible. Both Gov. Jon Corzine and the leaders of both houses in the legislature oppose the death penalty.

More...

The ACLU has filed objections to the Real I.D. Regulations.

A hearing is scheduled tomorrow before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Calling the Real ID Act "unworkable and an intolerable threat to privacy and civil liberties," the American Civil Liberties Union today filed comments asking the Department of Homeland Security to withdraw its proposed Real ID regulations and to join with the expanding list of states, organizations and individuals pushing Congress to overhaul the ill-conceived measure.

"This is a bad law, and DHS' regulations won't make it any better," said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "The ACLU national office and state affiliates have been campaigning against Real ID for more than two years, and the effort is beginning to pay off. Our efforts helped create a genuine rebellion against this law."

"Real ID is a flimsy house of cards doomed to an inevitable collapse. The regulations do not--and cannot--fix its many problems," said Barry Steinhardt, Director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Project.

Opposition to the Real I.D. Act is spreading. You can view a map showing progress across the country here.

Chris Bowers writes a couple of posts that seem to argue against striving for diversity in the progressive blogosphere. Chris writes:

[T]he famous and thoughtful Kid Oakland . . . wrote the following:

Of course we want diversity in the blogosphere. We want the blogs to reflect the party and the nation...not perfectly...but as much as possible.

I have to seriously ask--why? Since when is blogging such an incredibly important public institution, ala our education system, government or business world, that the entire public needs to be represented in it? I'd like to think blogging is that important, but it just isn't.

As Chris himself notes, he has not always been so dismissive of the importance of the progressive blogs, but let's leave that aside. For Chris goes further. Chris argues that striving for diversity in the progressive blogosphere would actually be harmful:

I could not more strongly disagree with Kid Oakland's statement that this is something we would even want. If every individual subset of the larger institution were equally diverse as the institution as a whole, then all of the niches and different functions that each subset fills would be entirely erased. . . .

Come again? Diversity in the progressive blogosphere would erase its function? Wow!