Dear CDT Reader,

After a New Year's blast that left the Celebrity Death Trio staff trying to catch its breath and twisting in the wind, it's nice to sit back and take stock of things. 2006 was a big year, and the number of CDTs made us realize that none of us is getting any younger, most certainly not any of our iconic celebrities. Think about it: Paul Newman's about to turn 82, Doris Day is 82, Mickey Rooney is 86, and Johnny Carson's almost ... Wait a second. Johnny's dead. Okay, so you see where weÕre going with this. The point is that there are lots of celebrities who helped define celebrity in the last century who are lining up to cash their checks. We're pretty sure the celebrity morgue this year is going to look like a downtown EZ-Cash center on payday.

That's something to consider as this young year kicks up its heels. But death doesn't stop to ponder intellectual issues for long, so it's time to dive head first into the shallow end and get back to work. Our initial list of three headed to Hades this week consisted of the three children confirmed to have committed suicide in the wake of seeing Saddam Hussein do the choked chicken dance on TV. However, that's a morbid way to start off 2007, even for us. Let's look at something a little more uplifting in the Death Department, shall we?

Three high-profile bureaucrats checked out of their offices for good this past week. In each case, the career-killing move came from out of the blue, as if each of the participants had been suddenly tempted, childlike, to imitate Saddam Hussein's choked chicken, er ... uh, nevermind. Herewith, the departed.

* John Negroponte
Former U.S. National Intelligence Director.

Negroponte bit the Bush bullet and now he has to go over to the State Department to play Number Two to Condoleeza Rice's Number One. What that means is up for question, but he is leaving a cabinet-level position to take a job where he essentially handles the things that Condi doesn't want to be bothered with. It's an interesting career choice for a man that was once the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

*Stanislaw Wielgus
Almost the brand spanking new Archbishop of Poland.

Bishop Wielgus was one hour away from taking over as head of the Catholic Church in Poland when he realized that he'd forgotten to take "stooge for the Communist secret police" off of his resume. We're wondering if that really bothered Pope Benedict, who had been supportive of Wielgus as evidence about his long ago agreement to spy on fellow citizens arose last month. Despite the fact that the Polish secret police mercilessly beat and killed priests during the Cold War, Wielgus claimed to have done nothing wrong. Former Polish archbishop Karol Wojtyla -- that's Pope John Paul II to you -- who helped bring about an end to Communism in Poland, is surely spinning in his grave.

* Danial Akhmetov
Former prime minister of Kazakhstan.

Akhmetov resigned without explanation, and was quickly succeeded by his longtime rival, Karim Masimov. The CDT knows very little about Kazakhstan -- we even had to look it up three times to make sure we spelled it correct -- but weÕre wondering if the movie Borat and its portrayal of the Kazakhstanis as lovers of wine made from horse urine didn't help speed up Akhmetov's departure. And this isn't the last you're going to hear about Kazakhstan this year. The country is as big as all of Western Europe combined and has nearly fiver percent of the world's oil reserve. You like?



RIP, one and all.