FEMA's 'Unfortunate' Privacy Disaster

But at least there'll be a plan.

Wolfowitz Here Today, but Ghani Tomorrow?

World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz pledged last week to work extra hard to improve relations with the staff at the bank, which has been in an uproar over revelations that he ordered whopping raises and promotions for his girlfriend.

Top officials at the Treasury Department -- the point agency for matters involving the bank -- publicly and privately insist they will not act before studying the results of a new "urgent" review of the situation ordered Friday by the bank's board of directors.

Even so, the buzz around town and overseas was that administration officials had already begun compiling a list of potential replacements for Wolfowitz. The Times of London reported Friday that Ashraf Ghani, a former bank special adviser and the first Afghan finance minister in the post-Taliban government, is near the top of the list.

Highly regarded by the U.S. defense establishment, Ghani, now chancellor of Kabul University, is credited with overhauling the Afghan economy. He would be the first non-American and the first Muslim to lead the bank.

A Few Too Many

There is a certain dull repetitiveness to the dual resignation watches of Wolfowitz and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzale s. Every day, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino repeats the same "president backs him" mantra.

"Does the president ever get tired of having to express his full confidence in the people around him these days?" a reporter asked last week.

"When you're the president of the United States and you have this many folks that you are employing, it's a pretty small number that he's had to express full confidence in," Perino said.

Well, there aren't all that many Cabinet-level people to begin with.

Now Appearing at the FCC

Ellen Engleman Connors, former chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, who was constantly at odds with several fellow board members, is back in town, working at the Federal Communications Commission.

She dropped a re-confirmation bid in December 2005 at the safety board and moved out to take a job as head of the Indiana Association of Realtors.

Party Time in Egypt

Going to the gala wedding of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's son on May 4 in Sharm el-Sheikh? Better watch for flight overbooking -- unless you have your own plane.

The wedding of son and reputed successor Gamal Mubarak, 43, to 24-year-old Khadiga el-Gamal, coinciding with the president's 79th birthday, is the kickoff event of the spring season. Everyone who's anyone will be there.