Look what's under the rock!
The Sun weighs in (two articles) on the Georgie Galloway story mentioned below:

There have long been questions over the way a nonentity backbencher like Galloway could afford his lavish lifestyle of fast cars and fast women.

His constant travel, always first class, could never be funded by an MP’s pay or from proceeds of his litigious pursuit of so-called defamation claims.

Galloway is a silver-tongued bully who has always been surrounded by a cloud of suspicion over his shifty activities, his manipulation of other people’s cash and his readiness to punch anyone he could not sue.

He left a slippery trail of scandal wherever he went, from the finances of the once mighty charity War on Want to the funding of his local constituency Labour Party.

Once, while quizzed too closely for comfort on his dodgy dealings, he amazed journalists by admitting extra-marital "carnal" relations to put them off the money trail.

Well, that one's understandable - he's married to Yasser Arafat's niece.

Georgie's always been a very busy boy:

Galloway, 48, first entered politics aged 26 in his home town of Dundee - where he flew the PLO flag over the town hall and withdraw the city’s hospitality to visiting NATO warships.
...
A vicious anti-Israeli ranter, he boasted that he sometimes dreamed he was part of an army wading ashore waving a Kalashnikov and driving the Jewish nation into the sea.

But he has a sensitive heart.

...he remarked about the shy, gentle way Saddam greeted him, eyes downcast in his desert bunker.

"There, in a corner of the room, glancing shyly downwards briefly as I strode towards him, was the most demonised man on the planet," he wrote.

"He has a gentle handshake and is surprisingly diffident."

Galloway remarks on the way nervous servants were sweating despite the air-conditioning.

Three guesses why the servants were sweating, dingbat.

Your 15 minutes are way over, Georgie.

A modest proposal
Charles Krauthammer in the WaPo - Lift the Sanctions Now:

But if the State Department sentimentalists who worship at the shrine of the United Nations insist on a pilgrimage to Turtle Bay, we should go to the Security Council and submit a one-line resolution: "Whereas the sanctions were imposed on the regime of Saddam Hussein; whereas that regime is no more; whereas sanctions are now needlessly preventing Iraq's economic recovery; the sanctions are hereby abolished."

No "modalities." No negotiations. No deals. Dare France and Russia to veto.

More by following the link.

And Jack Kemp in a similar vein - De nova in Iraq:

Let's get one thing straight from the outset about Iraq. The Iraqi people need wait upon no one - military general, foreign government or international organization - to govern themselves, engage in commerce domestically and sell their property on world markets. Sovereignty resides in the Iraqi people and cannot be conferred by any outside entity or authority.

It will not be the United Nations that confers legitimacy on the new Iraqi government; formal diplomatic recognition will come about the old-fashioned way - one nation at a time as the new Iraqi government exchanges ambassadors, signs treaties and engages in commerce and trade on a bilateral basis with individual countries around the world.

Well that will certainly cut down on the UN bureaucrats' walking around money.

Well looky here!
Andrew Sullivan reveals Paid by Saddam:

If this turns out to be true, it's a bombshell. The chief left-wing anti-war campaigner in Britain's parliament, Labour Party MP George Galloway, has his name on several documents discovered in Baghdad by the Daily Telegraph. The documents allegedly show a huge pay-off scheme from Saddam's oil profits to the anti-war activist - worth up to $500,000 a year - in return for his political work in defense of Saddam. Here are the relevant documents. Here are details of the alleged Jordanian go-between.

More details by following the links. It doesn't surprise me, Georgie is one of those irrepressible types who always has a scam going.

And he was also one of the characters who got together the weekend after 9/11 to form the Stop the War coalition.

UPDATE: David Blair reveals How I found the papers in a looted foreign ministry office and Georgie opts for the tin foil beanie defense and threatens to sue.

Hmmm, I wonder if he paid the taxes on his loot?

UPDATE 2: I posted the Sun's take on Georgie up above.

Poor Impulse Control Alert!
What's with the ladies and motor vehicles? Jealous Woman Crashes Mercedes Into Boyfriend's House:

GREENWOOD VILLAGE, Colo. -- A woman crashed her Mercedes through her boyfriend's garage door Saturday and attacked him with a baseball bat after she became suspicious that he was with another woman, authorities said.
...
When he didn't answer his door or telephone, she rammed the garage door several times, crawled through a 3-foot opening and went up to the bedroom, where she threw drawers, knocked over a lamp and ripped a picture from a wall, Robinson said.

Holmes also attempted to attack a woman who was at the home, Robinson said.

Can you say hanky panky?

Meanwhile, out in Oakland - Fan allegedly threw cell from second deck of stadium:

A 24-year-old man accused of throwing a cell phone that hit Texas right fielder Carl Everett in the back of the head during a game faces a charge of assault with a deadly weapon.
...
"I don't think this guy wanted to wake up on Easter morning in prison,'' Rinetti said. "Hopefully he learned a valuable lesson.''

He threw his cell phone? And yes, spirituous liquors were involved.

Everyone needs a hobby
Quebec man suing Loto-Quebec for not winning:

SHERBROOKE, Que. (CP) -- A Quebec man is suing Loto-Quebec, saying it fooled him and that the provincial lottery only sells losing tickets.

The man, who is on welfare, spent $840 last March on a variety of tickets that didn't win. He is now suing Loto-Quebec for $879.58.

He shouldn't be such a piker. How about some punitive damages?

And then in London. there's Fugitive caught after appearing on TV game show:

LONDON (AP) - An Irish fugitive wanted on charges of causing death by dangerous driving was arrested by police in London after he appeared on a TV game show, winning its top prize.

At a court hearing today, a judge ordered that Michael Furlong, 26, be extradited back to Ireland to face the charges.

Police sources later said Furlong was recognized by viewers of the Channel 4 game show Boys and Girls when he was plucked from the audience to participate. He went on to win the 100,000-pound ($235,000) prize offered by the battle of the sexes game in an edition of the show broadcast two weeks ago.
...
Furlong, who wore jeans and a black T-shirt with "Available" written on it for the hearing at Bow Street Magistrate's Court, was placed in police custody. No date was fixed for his return to Ireland.

All dressed up and no place to go.

All the usual idiots
Grandstanding bloviator, Rep. Chris Shays drops into Iraq for a photo op:

Bucking protests from the U.S. military and the State Department, Rep. Chris Shays, R-Conn., crossed over the Kuwait border into Iraq (news - web sites) Wednesday and complained that humanitarian aid isn't getting to the Iraqi people fast enough.
...
"I had to use the Save the Children's network to get in. And (the State Department) led me to believe I was doing something that they didn't want me to do," he said. "I saw a lot of poverty, I saw a lot of bad living conditions ... I just wish other members of Congress had seen what I got to see."

Poverty in Iraq! I'm shocked! Fortunately Chris spared us a detailed account of his thought processes.

I can't say the same for G. Pascal Zachary in the SF Chronicle who provides unintended levity with Secession! Why stick around? The Bay Area is already a nation unto itself:

"I tell my friends I'm safe in the Bay Area," one German said. "People here even apologize to me for what Americans are doing in Iraq. They say they are sorry."

"Berkeley isn't America, and neither is San Francisco or Oakland," a second German added. A third interjected, "I don't think I would live anywhere else."

Listening to the conversation, I felt glad to be a resident of the Bay Area ...
...
The Nader saga illustrates the dilemma of Bay Area "social democrats." We are, like children in an English novel, not to be seen nor heard.

I wish to propose an immodest remedy for this sorry situation: We, the people of the Bay Area, need to leave the United States. We are held prisoner by a foreign power, colonized by an alien civilization. We require cultural and social self-determination. We demand, in short, a declaration of independence -- and our own nation.

Zack, don't let the door hit you where the Lord split you.

It's just our pals alert!
David Harrison in the Telegraph - German spies offered help to Saddam in run-up to war:

Germany's intelligence services attempted to build closer links to Saddam's secret service during the build-up to war last year, documents from the bombed Iraqi intelligence HQ in Baghdad obtained by The Telegraph reveal.

My, my - someone's been naughty.

Ruh Ro!
Chinese SARS patients hidden:

BEIJING - Chinese authorities ordered doctors in Beijing to hide patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, from World Health Organization (WHO) experts last week in an attempt to downplay the epidemic, Chinese doctors and other sources said yesterday.

Authorities transferred about 40 SARS patients to a hotel on the grounds of one hospital and at another facility bundled more than 30 SARS patients into ambulances to prevent the WHO team from finding them, the sources said.
...
"It was done to avoid detection by the WHO. We drove the patients around Beijing," said a senior medical official at the hospital. "We were ordered by the Beijing government."

As I have mentioned before, they also still just make up their economic statistics. Sounds like the bad old days.

Hmmm, I wonder if it is safe to shop at Wal-Mart?

Comments are casters up
My comment service, SquawkBox, has been down for the last two days. I have removed the links for the moment to improve page load times. We'll see if they recover on Monday.

No shame alert!
Cuban intellectuals ask for end to criticism:

HAVANA -A group of world-renowned Cuban intellectuals released a letter to their colleagues around the world Saturday, asking them to stop criticizing harsh measures recently employed here.

Titled Message from Havana to our friends in faraway places, the letter was published Saturday in the Communist Party daily Granma.

Signed by 27 of Cuba's best-known cultural figures, the letter describes the ''surprise and pain'' felt when liberal intellectuals around the world criticized Cuba for its crackdown on dissidents and the executions of three ferry hijackers.

Hey, we understand.

Antonio Jorge, a Cuba expert at Florida International University, said he was not surprised by the letter.

''All these people who signed this letter are long-time loyalists of Fidel Castro,'' said Jorge, who teaches economics and international relations. ``These people are almost state functionaries, who are totally committed to the goals and values of the Communist Party in Cuba.''

And we all know about those "goals and values".