Photo by Glynn Wilson

The Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth at Don Siegelman’s sentencing

The Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth, 85, a major civil rights pioneer from Birmingham, Alabama, was hospitalized Wednesday after suffering a mild stroke, according to a hospital spokesman in Cincinnati.

He was in intensive care and listed in fair condition.

“He’s improving, he’s responding,” Ruby Bester, one of Shuttlesworth’s four children, told the Associated Press Friday. “God has been good to him.”

The length of his hospital stay has not been determined, his daughter said, but he canceled a planned weekend trip to Birmingham, where he was a leader in the fight against racial segregation in the 1950s and worked with the late Martin Luther King Jr. in the cause of civil rights.

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Shuttlesworth was beaten by a mob and had his house bombed, although he walked out of the flame-charred house alive and ready to continue the fght.

He moved to Cincinnati in 1961 and retired as pastor of the Greater New Light Baptist Church in 2006.

He was last seen in Alabama in June lending moral support to former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman during the sentencing phase of his case in Montgomery.

Alberto Gonzales, the nation’s first Hispanic attorney general and perhaps one of the most incompetent and corrupt, announced his resignation Monday in a terse statement, ending a wrenching standoff with congressional critics over his honesty and competence at the helm of the Bush Justice Department.

Republicans and Democrats alike had demanded his resignation over the botched handling of FBI terror investigations and the firings of U.S. attorneys, among other things, but President Bush had defiantly stood by his Texas friend until accepting his resignation last Friday.

Gonzales, whom Bush once considered for appointment to the Supreme Court, is the fourth top-ranking administration official to leave since November 2006.

Donald H. Rumsfeld, an architect of the Iraq war, resigned as defense secretary one day after the November elections.

Paul Wolfowitz agreed in May to step down as president of the World Bank after an ethics inquiry.

Bush’s top political and policy adviser, Karl Rove, announced earlier this month that he was stepping down.

Reacting to Gonzales’ resignation,Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said that the Justice Department had “suffered a severe crisis of leadership that allowed our justice system to be corrupted by political influence.”

As attorney general and earlier as White House counsel, Gonzales pushed for expanded presidential powers, including the eavesdropping authority. He drafted controversial rules for military war tribunals and sought to limit the legal rights of detainees at Guantanamo Bay - prompting lawsuits by civil libertarians who said the government was violating the Constitution in its pursuit of terrorists.

One matter still under investigation is the 2006 dismissal of several federal prosecutors, who serve at the president’s pleasure. Lawmakers said the action appeared to be politically motivated, and some of the fired U.S. attorneys said they felt pressured to investigate Democrats before elections.

“Better late than never,” said Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, summing up the response of many to the resignation, according to the Associated Press.

US Attorney General Gonzales Resigns

Analysis: The Gonzometer Moves to ‘Gone’

Paris Hilton smokes a joint

Just as poor, skinny Paris Hilton is on the verge of doing a little jail time for driving while here license was suspended and failure to appear in court for DUI, pictures have surfaced of her smoking pot backstage at last month’s Coachella music festival, according to the London Daily Mail.

Paris attended the festival with a group of friends weeks before her court hearing, but clearly wasn’t concerned about keeping out of trouble in advance of the case.

Hilton now faces a 45-day jail term for for driving while her licence was suspended, although it is doubtful that with her money, she will actually have to do the time.

Hilton has appealed to California Gov. Arnold Schwartzenegger for a pardon in an online petition. The online Free Paris Hilton petition has gathered more than 25,000 signatures.

But unfortunately for the reality TV bimbo, a rival campaign, Jail Paris Hilton, is twice as popular, with more than 60,000 supporters.

As I have written in the past, I interviewed Paris Hilton and partied with her at the Girl’s Gone Wild Mardi Gras party on a Bourbon Street balcony in New Orleans while working for People magazine in 2003. She wasn’t quite so famous then, just a few months before her reality show “A Simple Life” went on the air.

And as far as I was concerned, she didn’t seem particularly bright either.

As I’m drinking my coffee this morning and posting this, I’m wondering why I bother to write anything about her at all. She’s just another rich bimbo who is famous for being famous. Who cares, really?

But hey, part of the job of a blog is to spoof the tabloid press. When there’s a photo, run with it, right?