Also from the LA Times, lawmakers in the California Assembly — the equivalent of New Mexico’s House of Representatives — elected the first openly gay lawmaker to become Assembly Speaker, one of the most powerful posts in California government.

Private security guards from Blackwater Worldwide participated in some of the CIA’s most sensitive activities — clandestine raids with agency officers against people suspected of being insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and the transporting of detainees, reports the New York Times.

Mark this under the category of ‘No movie stunt, tourists gawk over real gunfight in Times Square.” Yep, a NYPD police officer and rogue street vendor traded bullets yesterday in that busiest of tourist areas. The vendor died, the officer escaped injury. The shootout had its very scary moments, and not just for the two people involved. One tourist was parking his SUV at a nearby hotel about 60 feet away from the confrontation. His pregnant wife and two small children were in the vehicle. The Boston tourist was confused at first.

“At first I wasn’t sure: Was it real, or was it a movie?” the tourist said, adding that when he realized it was real, he was stunned.

From the media world, the New York Times, having gotten 74 newsroom folks to take buyouts, now turns to laying off as many as 26 newsroom employees to meet its edict to trim 100 positions from the newsroom, reports the New York Post. It’s a sad, sad day.

Continuing with that thought, I read the news yesterday that Nielsen was folding Editor & Publisher, a decades-long mainstay in newspaper industry coverage, and I got nostalgic for all the newsrooms I’ve labored in over the years. And right on cue, someone shared this story on Facebook, which I greedily devoured and then shared on my own FB page. Man, this story brought back memories.

Finally, two organizations that help set technical policy for the Internet are joining forces, the Wall Street Journal reports. The Internet Society and the World Wide Web Consortium promote what they call open technical standards, which are free for use by anyone, as opposed to technology developed and controlled by individual companies, the paper reports.

“The risk is without open standards, like ISOC and W3C produce, Internet applications that users have available won’t interoperate,” said Ralph Swick, the W3C’s acting chief operating officer.

A federal judge in San Francisco has refused to throw out a challenge to California’s Proposition 8, The San Francisco Chronicle reports. California voters passed Prop 8 last November, effectively overturning a ruling by California’s top court that gays and lesbians had a constitutional right to wed. Opponents immediately challenged the law in federal court. The judge’s refusal Wednesday to throw out the challenge to Prop 8 isn’t the last word on the issue. Backers of the proposition are likely to appeal that ruling.

I’ve written several times over the past week or more about the seeming scandal engulfing Texas Gov. Rick Perry regarding his role in the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham in 2004. Perry gave his most spirited defense of his decision not to stop Willingham’s execution Wednesday, the Dallas Morning News reports.

Calling Willingham “a monster,” Perry said he harbors no doubt that the unemployed mechanic purposefully set fire to his Corsicana home in 1991 and killed his three children.

A Texas state commission was looking into reports by seven independent fire experts who all found that no credible evidence of arson existed at the Willingham house. Two days before the commission was to hear from its own hired independent expert earlier this month, Perry replaced his four appointees, including the chairman, and the meeting was postponed, Christy Hoppe of the Morning News writes.

O.K., now the New York Times says it’s not going to sell the Boston Globe. Talk about an about face. The last few months have been hell for New England’s largest newspaper. The Times, which bought the Globe in 1993 for $1.1 billion, threatened to close the Globe earlier this year. That announcement led to a torturous negotiations with employee unions, which in the end took pay cuts and reduced benefit packages. Then the Times announced it was selling the storied newspaper, the winner of nearly 20 Pulitzer Prizes over the past 45 years. The ups and downs of the Globe’s fate were so dramatic over the past year that it all seemed surreal. Now, less than a week before bids are due, the Times in a twist takes the Globe off the market.  I mean, wow!

USAToday can no longer claim to have the country’s largest newspaper circulation apparently. The Wall Street Journal, the perennial No. 2 in circulation, apparently has kicked USAToday off the throne, reports Editor & Publisher.

What will investigative journalism look like in the Internet era? Here’s an interesting take from Paul Steiger, editor-in-chief of ProPublica. If you don’t know ProPublica, find out. The non-profit is testing out a relatively new approach to “accountability” journalism, and has had a pretty successful run in its short life. By the way, you’ll occasionally see ProPublica stories on our site. That’s because they offer their stories free to other media outlets. (And we’re cheap.)

McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, that quirky, creative literary journal in San Francisco started by Dave Eggers a few years back, is going retro. Yep, its next installment will be in the form of  … wait for it … a newspaper. That’s the news from the New York Times’ Arts Beat.  McSweeney’s quarterly installments are known for experimenting with content and packaging. And its editors believe the American newspaper has a lot of life left in it, despite the doomsday predictions. Times reporter Bruce Webber quoted McSweeney’s managing editor, Jordan Bass, as saying, next month’s installment is either a newspaper inspired by a literary quarterly, “or a literary quarterly inspired by a newspaper. One or the other.”

A few days back I posted a link to a story that reported that conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh was part of a team of investors interested in purchasing the St. Louis Rams. Well, that group of investors has dropped Limbaugh from the effort, the Associated Press reports.  “Limbaugh was to be a limited partner in a bid led by St. Louis Blues chairman Dave Checketts, but Checketts said in a statement Wednesday that Limbaugh’s participation had complicated the effort. The group will move forward without him,” the story said.