Obviously, his involvement raises many questions

A photograph has mysteriously emerged that purports to show the new Iranian president with one of the American hostages in 1979, although the figure in the picture doesn’t resemble Ahmadinejad as he looked at the time. Several of the hostages are also stepping forward to identify him, although it should be noted that many of the hostages were CIA, and probably none of them are especially enamored of the revolutionary government. Bush says he’d like to know if this is true, suggesting that either he’s not reading his briefing papers having Condi read his briefing papers to him, or the CIA still can’t collect basic intel (or manufacture a very credible smear campaign). “But obviously, his involvement raises many questions,” Bush said, presuming the very involvement he just admitted was in doubt.

The speaker of the Belgian parliament was scheduled to have lunch with the speaker of the Iranian parliament, but cancelled because the latter insisted that there be no alcohol.

And in other puritan news, the California prison system will ban smoking, including for the guards and death row inmates. Coincidentally, the state prison system’s health care dept has gone into receivership because of the many many unnecessary deaths of prisoners.

California prisons could take a lesson from the Bush administration’s Africa AIDS program, which just claimed to be treating 32,839 patients despite not having spent a single penny. Now that’s efficiency! So when Bush promises to double aid to Africa....