A little advice for the Bush administration: Don't lie to us. That's the one thing, guaranteed, that will bite you in your golf-pants– and Sansabelt-clad behinds. The American public really hates a prevaricator. While we know that thing about George Washington and the cherry tree isn't strictly true, that's a lie about lying that we like, a little piece of apocryphal mythology that, you know, holds up the illusion of a transparent and inclusive democracy.

Is she or isn't she? That is the question stalking Meryl Streep's portrayal of a power-mad senator in The Manchurian Candidate. Is the actress pulling a Hillary or what? In June, Matt Drudge fanned the rumors prior to the film's release, linking to a blogger who claimed that Paramount Pictures had found Streep's “brilliantly scary and evil” rendering of her character too close to Clinton for comfort. As a result, claimed the blogger, the studio had asked director Jonathan Demme to re-edit the film to remove the “more Hillary-esque gestures.”