Well, I figured out that uhci_hcd was the culprit for the previous wakeups. uhci_hcd provides USB 1.1 support, which I can disable because my laptop is all USB v2. As you can see below the menu governor for 2.6.23-rc5 + hrt patch doesn’t work quite as well versus 2.6.23-rc4 + hrt patch because the CPU stays in C2 60% of time with the Wifi turned on. lspci output just for kicks.
PowerTOP 1.8    (C) 2007 Intel Corporation Collecting data for 15 seconds
Cn              Avg residency
C0 (cpu running)        ( 0.8%)
C1          0.0ms ( 0.0%)
C2         49.1ms (66.5%)
C3          0.7ms ( 0.0%)
C4         22.3ms (32.7%)
P-states (frequencies)
1.87 Ghz     0.0%
1.60 Ghz     0.0%
1333 Mhz     0.0%
800 Mhz   100.0%
Wakeups-from-idle per second : 28.5    interval: 15.0s
no ACPI power usage estimate available
Top causes for wakeups:
39.3% ( 10.1)       <interrupt> : ipw2200, lan0
14.8% (  3.8)       <interrupt> : acpi
9.6% (  2.5)          gkrellm2 : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
7.8% (  2.0)   xfce-mcs-manage : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
7.0% (  1.8)                 X : do_setitimer (it_real_fn)
5.5% (  1.4)    wpa_supplicant : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
2.1% (  0.5)           wpa_cli : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
2.1% (  0.5)              slim : do_setitimer (it_real_fn)
1.8% (  0.5)          events/0 : ipw_gather_stats (delayed_work_timer_fn)
1.6% (  0.4)       <interrupt> : ide0
1.0% (  0.3)     <kernel core> : neigh_table_init_no_netlink (neigh_periodic_timer)
0.8% (  0.2)           ifplugd : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
0.8% (  0.2)              init : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
0.8% (  0.2)     <kernel core> : page_writeback_init (wb_timer_fn)
0.5% (  0.1)              gaim : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
0.5% (  0.1)         ssh-agent : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
0.5% (  0.1)             cupsd : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
0.3% (  0.1)       <interrupt> : PS/2 keyboard/mouse/touchpad
0.3% (  0.1)              gaim : sk_reset_timer (tcp_write_timer)
0.3% (  0.1)     <kernel core> : ipw_net_hard_start_xmit (delayed_work_timer_fn)
0.3% (  0.1)      cifsdnotifyd : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
0.3% (  0.1)     <kernel core> : init_nonfatal_mce_checker (delayed_work_timer_fn)
0.3% (  0.1)              bash : start_this_handle (commit_timeout)
0.3% (  0.1)         xfdesktop : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
0.3% (  0.1)   xfce4-menu-plug : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
0.3% (  0.1)     <kernel core> : end_that_request_last (laptop_timer_fn)
0.3% (  0.1)           pdflush : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)
0.3% (  0.1)     <kernel core> : neigh_update (neigh_timer_handler)
0.3% (  0.1)     <kernel core> : init_sunrpc (delayed_work_timer_fn)
0.3% (  0.1)       cifsoplockd : schedule_timeout (process_timeout)