Given that VECO Corp. has admitted that it bribed Republican politicians in Alaska, should other Republican politicians, including President Bush, untaint themselves by returning the campaign contributions that they accepted from VECO?

Since 1990, Anchorage-based VECO, its employees and their family members gave the state and national Republican parties, GOP congressional candidates and Bush slightly more than $1 million, according to an analysis by watchdog Center for Responsive Politics.

One of the VECO executives who entered a guilty plea to bribery, CEO Bill Allen, was the state financial co-chairman of Bush's 2000 campaign. Heckuva job there, Billy.

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 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.

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.

There's a lengthy profile in today's news of Blair Montgomery Sibley, lawyer for accused D.C. Madam Deborah Jeane Palfry.

It's kind of bizarre, to put it mildly. What do you make of it?

I wrote here that I doubted new names would be aired on tonight's 20/20 in the D.C. Madam case and they weren't. 20/20 has aired and gone, and no new names were revealed.

I also laid out what I thought would be the probable strategy of those clients she threatened to call in her defense:

The clients are hardly going to be willing witnesses. What if they just tell her lawyer, when they get their subpoenas, there was sex involved? Surely, she won't publish their comments since it would be adding to the Government's case against her and hurtful to her defense. Nor would she dare actually put them on the stand.

At least one of the clients' defense lawyers apparently agrees.

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The Judge was hard on Paris Hilton today, sentencing her to 45 days in the L.A. County Jail for violating probation by driving while her license was suspended.

Hilton had been serving 36 months of probation after pleading no contest to a charge of alcohol-related reckless driving related to her Sept. 7 arrest in Hollywood. She also had been fined $1,500.

Paris' defense was a little weak -- she said her aides hadn't told her about the driving restriction.

Still, 45 days is stiff.

Her mother's reaction:

Hilton appeared stunned by the ruling and began to cry. Hilton's mother also began to show her displeasure visibly, shaking her head -- and had be warned by a court official to stop....

....Her mother, Kathy, told the prosecutor after the judge's decision: "You're pathetic."

Did Paris get a stiffer sentence because she's a celebrity?

Having spent all day in a county jail visiting clients denied bond in federal cases, I can tell you it's no walk in the park. And I bet the LA County Jail is a nightmare by comparison.

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D.C. Madam, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, facing racketeering charges, explains why she gave ABC her client roster and is outing them via the media. She's seeking witnesses. She fully expects her customers, especially the prominent Washingtonians among them, like Randall Tobias who resigned as Deputy Secretary of State last week, to say there was no funny business going on, just legal escort services.

She wants these deniers as defense witnesses, to counter the Government's assertion that her escorts provided sexual services.

Pretty desperate strategy, if you ask me. The clients are hardly going to be willing witnesses. What if they just tell her lawyer, when they get their subpoenas, there was sex involved? Surely, she won't publish their comments since it would be adding to the Government's case against her and hurtful to her defense? Nor would she dare actually put them on the stand.

Just in time for sweeps week, she'll be on 20/20 this Friday. I doubt she'll drop any famous names during the show, though the reporters may.

This is taking sleaze media to the extreme.

When the North Carolina Attorney General declared the three charged Duke Lacrosse players innocent of sexual assault and stated there was no credible evidence to support that any attack had taken place that night, he promised he would be releasing a report.

The report was released today. You can read it here (pdf).

His findings:

• The accusing witness’s testimony regarding the alleged assault would have been contradicted by other evidence in the case from numerous sources;

• The accusing witness’s testimony regarding the alleged assault and the events leading up to and following the allegations would have been contradicted by significantly different versions of events she told over the past year;

• No testimony or physical evidence would have corroborated her testimony;

• The accused individuals were identified through questionable photographic procedures;

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Journalist Dave Cullen, who is writing a book on the Columbine killers, and wrote a diary at TalkLeft on the Virginia Tech killings, The Myth of the School Shooter Profile, has an op-ed (free link) in today's New York Times, proposing a compromise solution to allow the parents of Virginia Tech killer Seung-Hui Cho to talk about his early years and psychiatric issues so that the public can glean some insight, without being exposed to lawsuits.

In Columbine, the federal court sealed the depositions of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold's parents for 20 years, to protect their privacy.

Dave first explores the questions the public wants the answers to:

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Opening arguments are underway in the Phil Spector murder trial.

The LA Times is providing updates from the courtroom, blog-style.

You can watch the trial live on the internet (for a fee) at Court TV's extra.

There are nine women and three women on the jury. Testimony begins tomorrow.

An acquittal in a South Carolina rape case. The defense had argued the two teenage girls lied and set him up. They were really after his marijuana. He testified he had consensual sex with one hours before the alleged rape.

....during the six-day trial, Hinson said the girls had consensual sex with him just hours before the alleged crimes took place, which explained why evidence on one of the girl's shirts was consistent with Hinson's DNA. He also described in detail a trip to a sex shop with one of his accusers to purchase a sexual device about a week before the alleged crimes and identified the device in court.

When Hinson saw police cars arrive at his property, he said he assumed they were after the four pounds of marijuana stashed in the underground room so he panicked and hid in the nearby woods.

As to the dungeon,

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