So who was it who, out of the goodness of their heart, paid for Linda Tripp's plastic surgery? Off the top of my head I can think of only a few million better causes, but that's me.

Speaking of fatsos, who would have thought Helmut Kohl was corrupt? The president of Israel has also just been found to have taken a rather large bribe.

But on the integrity side, the parents of Britain's millennium baby did not accept the hundreds of thousands of pounds they could have done. They want their baby to have privacy. Some day the kid will look back and become deeply depressed.

The political games-playing re Elian whatsis, the Cuban boy, goes on. All 6 Republican candidates support his being kept in the US. The Clinton admin wants to make it go away without their ever having to take an actual decision, by getting the father to come to the US, at which point he has the legal right to leave the country with his son. Your mother has just died in front of you and you were found floating in an ocean, what will you do now? I'm going to Disney World! If he were Haitian he'd have been expelled as an illegal alien long since.

As part of the peace deal, if it ever comes, Syria wants to be removed from the US list of states which sponsor terrorism.

Dubya has presided over 113 executions. In the week following the Iowa primaries he is scheduled to execute 3 who were 17. Guess what else they all have in common? If you said, they are black, pat yourself on the back for your excellent understanding of the judicial system.

The Clinton Admin is calling on the Supreme Court not to hear an appeal of the discrimination in Alabama prisons (and others) against HIV-positive prisoners, who are barred from educational and religious and recreational programs, including work-release programs which would get them out of prison faster.