It just keeps getting better
Anthony Barnett in the Guardian says Foster used past lover to infiltrate the Blair circle:

New details have emerged of how Peter Foster used an American economics professor who had been his lover to wheedle his way into Cherie Blair's inner circle.

The revelations come amid reports that the Australian conman is trying to sell his story to the media and growing evidence that Foster has cynically targeted the Blairs since early this year and was willing to use any contact to get close to them.

The Observer has discovered that Foster used his relationship with ex-girlfriend Leah Marcal to get close to the Prime Minister's wife.

Foster met Marcal - a friend of Cherie's lifestyle guru, Carole Caplin - in the summer of 2001. Marcal, a professor of economics at California State University, was in Fiji advising the island's New Labour Party in the general elections. She and Foster became lovers and Foster donated more than £50,000 to the party. When it emerged that the convicted fraudster had helped to fund New Labour, it became a major political scandal.

If you can't tell the players without a scorecard, the Sun has a compact one and the Observer has a fluffy backgrounder. A quick visit to Google News will provide more reading than one really wants.

I'm afraid this whole thing sounds to me rather like a plot for a Danielle Steel bodice ripper, but then I don't have a life style consultant. In any case, here's a snap of Leah from her website - you can even take quizzes from her Econ 160 course.

Steel Cage Death Match Alert!
The NY Sun reports Sharpton Blasts ‘Favorite Son’ Plan:

The Rev. Al Sharpton, moving ever closer to a run for president, yesterday blasted a leading Democrat’s plan to steer black voters away from him in 2004.

Al Gore’s former campaign manager, Donna Brazile, says she may push popular black officials to run for president in their home states as "favorite sons." That strategy, she says, would increase black voters’ impact, while pulling the rug out from under Mr. Sharpton in key southern states.

Ms. Brazile’s plan - and Mr. Sharpton’s response - mark the beginning of a back-and-forth some Democratic insiders fear will poison the party’s 2004 primaries and undermine their chances of unseating President Bush.

The best part about favorite son candidacies is that they make the nominating convention such compelling entertainment. Zzzzzz.

Peanut brain of doom alert!
Marni Soupcoff on The Most Respected American?

CNN’s Jonathan Mann told Carter: "Mr. President, you are arguably the most respected American on the planet today."

I’ll let that just sink in for a moment before going on, but let’s just say that arguably has got to be the operative word in that sentence.

O.K., have you thought about it? Played around with the idea a little? James Earl Carter the most respected American on the planet? Surely Mr. Mann must have made some kind of mistake. Perhaps he was thinking of James Earl Jones, whose voice is indeed the stuff of power and can elicit reverence and veneration even when it’s only advertising a phone book. Or perhaps Mann was confusing the former President with basketball great Vince Carter whose performance in the NBA All Star Game slam dunk competition did inspire awe all across North America, if not the planet.

But he couldn’t possibly have been serious in suggesting that Jimmy Carter is the most respected American on the planet. The same Jimmy Carter whose most aggressive move as President came in 1979 when he was attacked by a killer rabbit and raised a paddle in self-defense? The same Jimmy Carter who failed to show similar protective mettle (or any action at all) when it came to the Iranian hostage crisis that saw 52 Americans detained inside the embassy in Tehran for 444 days (ending only after Carter left and Reagan entered office)? The same Carter so many Americans still associate with inflation and immeasurably long lines at the gas pumps during the oil shortages of the late 1970s? The same Carter whom Fidel Castro conned into embracing thousands of Cuban crooks and welcoming them into the U.S. as refugees?

Darn that right wing media bias. And I'd have to say that, arguably, Jimmy Carter was the worst President in the history of the Republic.

It's a miracle!
Joe Soucheray in the St. Paul Pioneer Press:

Latino immigrants, apparently intending to bring their Catholicism to the argument, gathered outside a St. Paul courtroom the other day holding roses in honor of the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. They weren't necessarily praying, but they were presupposing that Our Lady would have joined them in their opposition to having visa expiration dates printed on their licenses.

Nice try, but Our Lady of Guadalupe last appeared in public in 1531 at Tepeyac, near Mexico City, and left her image on a piece of cactus cloth that, miraculously, shows little sign of decay. There is nothing on the sacred image about driver's licenses.
...
The administrative ruling that Weaver managed to get accomplished despite a reluctant Legislature also requires a photograph with the license. I have to have mine on there. You have to have yours. But that is under protest as well from those who say that they should be allowed to decline having their photograph taken for religious reasons. Well, that's too bad. If I have to carry around a photograph on my license that makes me look like Nick Nolte after a three-day bender you can ask your maker for forgiveness for one lousy snapshot.

It's against my religion too.

You can't make this stuff up!
The BBC relates a Man's anger at 'crazy car decision':

Police have told a Gloucester man he risks breaking the law if he forces his way into a vehicle which has been parked in his drive, blocking his own car in a garage.

The mystery car has been parked across Roger Windo's drive since Sunday morning. (story date was Wednesday)
...
But neither the police nor Gloucester City Council will help because the T-reg Toyota Picnic is not causing a public obstruction.

Police told Mr Windo they could not disclose the identity of the owner because giving him the information would break data-protection legislation.
...
"It's crazy," said Mr Windo. "I have a relative in hospital in Standish and have had to take a taxi to visit them, because I can't get my own car out of the garage through no fault of my own.

Which Euroweenie are you?
No Replacement for Displacement has a really tough questionnaire. I did my best to fill it out in the highest tradition of respect for cultural diversity, life affirming nonviolence, concern for the environment, general cluelessness, and strange compulsions to consume Brie. Look what popped out!

Which Euroweenie are you?

Brought to you by
No Replacement For Displacement

Hmmm! Who's got my Nobel Prize check?

Mark Steyn alert!
Mark sends up "vicar" Harold Pinter in 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer had a very shiny nose,' Pinter continued. 'You know why that is? Depleted uranium':

Although many toddlers had to be escorted from the church, older boys and girls shrugged off the vicar's horrific catalogue of seasonal gore. "He does this sermon every Christmas," said Cameron, the eight-year-old son of television favourite Ulrika Jonsson. "And most months in between, too. The best bit is when he describes how the Easter Bunny had his throat cut on the orders of Don Rumsfeld in 1983 and that he's now just Ferdinand Marcos in a protective rabbit suit."

First it was two mentions of Tracey Emin this week and now two mentions of Harold Pinter. Things are certainly going to hell around here. It's time for some posts on dipping snuff and fishing.

Somebody rent him a clue!
Another Hollywierdo weighs in.

Sounds like a bad Star Trek plot
Jan McGirk titillates in the Independent with In Foreign Parts: GI Janes flaunt their sports bras as body search arrives in cultural minefield of Afghan frontier:

I idly mention to my translator in Peshawar how a war photo published in all the Pakistani dailies has outraged everyone who has seen it.

Janula Hashim Khan is usually rather bored by my attempts to make polite conversation, but he suddenly comes to life, eyes ablaze. "Yes, I know the photo. It's a disgrace to see our sisters and mothers mauled like that," he says. To my amazement, he pulls a carefully folded newspaper clipping out of his wallet. "Is this the one you mean?"

The picture shows an Afghan woman being subjected to a body search by an American soldier.

The photo had provoked weeks of venomous letters to the editor condemning this practice. The same shot had been blown up and used for the Yank-bashing election campaign that swept the clerics into unprecedented power in the provinces closest to the Afghan border. To most Pakistanis and Afghans, this photo is hyper-offensive, showing a demure Islamic beauty disrespected by an American brute.

The latent feminist in me cannot be stifled. There is some potent propaganda to be countered. "Look a little closer," I said. "That is a woman soldier who is patting the Afghan lady down."

"Impossible," all the Muslim men in the room say in unison. The masculine ambience of this frontier city near the Khyber Pass is so pervasive that, at least in a warlord's antechamber, a female soldier is utterly inconceivable, even if you have a picture of her in front of you.

"Look again," I insist. "Under the helmet, her hair is bunched at the neck. The US army has plenty of women soldiers, just like this one."

In fact, I later learnt that the original caption, never used in Pakistan, identified her as Sergeant Nicola Hall. The bearded men are unconvinced.

"Well, then look at her childbearing hips," I continue. "Broad. Like mine." Khan blanches and hesitates before he translates my words. The men scowl.

Sgt. Hall was the one who detected some of the "ladies" smuggling weapons under their burkas. You can see the picture here and a profile picture here. So what's the solution?

Now American female soldiers start gun raids in Afghanistan by bounding out of helicopters and stripping down to their sports bras. Only then do they take village women aside to be searched. It is a quick way to prove their femininity to Afghan elders unaccustomed to seeing women in trousers. I reckon it must leave quite a few of the old boys slack-jawed and goggle-eyed.

Of course on Star Trek, the guys wore leotards and the women dressed like cocktail waitresses. Then they set their Norelco razors on stun.

Unemployed rhapsodist alert!
The Newark Star-Ledger reveals that Imamu Amiri Baraka (aka Everett Leroi Jones) is going to have to hit the bricks in Poet's post is being written out:

A Senate panel yesterday acted to abolish the post of New Jersey poet laureate as a way to oust controversial Newark poet Amiri Baraka.

The move to eliminate the post altogether is the latest twist in the effort by lawmakers and Gov. James E. McGreevey to remove Baraka, who has been under fire for writing a poem critics contend is anti-Semitic.

McGreevey had wanted to fire Baraka, but his attorney general said the 1999 law creating the post had no provisions for removing him. Lawmakers then drafted legislation giving the Governor the power to remove the poet laureate, but yesterday opted to simply get rid of the post. The bill cleared the Senate State Government Committee in a unanimous vote.

Baraka, 67, a nationally known poet and playwright, did not attend the committee meeting and did not make himself available for comment.

Nobody defended him before the committee; five people called for his ouster.

Baraka has refused to resign and has threatened to take the issue to court if he loses the poet laureate position. McGreevey has cut off his $10,000 state stipend.

No to worry, Imamu! There's an opening in the poet laureate biz that's right up your alley!

Communist Vietnam's 'poet laureate'

To Huu, Vietnamese poet and politburo member
Born: October 1920, in Hue
Died: 9 December, in Hanoi, aged 82

Currently Huu's doing a briquet imitation in Hell.