Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:

Senator Bill Clinton?

Hillary Clinton hasn't won a single primary yet, but that hasn't stopped some well-known Democrats from booming her husband o fill her unexpired Snate term if she were elected president—former Bill Cinton aide Harold Ickes is quoted by the Washington Examiner article as exclaiming, "as a senator, he'd be a knockout!"

Another former Clinton advisor, Paul Begala also thinks President Clinton would excel as Senator Clinton: "He excelled as attorney general and governor of Arkansas, he excelled as president and he's been a model of the modern Senate spouse."

Such a scenario is possible—New York's Governor Eliot Spitzer is a Democrat and if Hillary Clinton won the presidency, he would appoint her successor to finish out the final two years of her term.

Iran Delinquent

Russia is delaying construction work on Iran's nuclear reactor. Russian officials say there are a few factors contributing to the delays—the Iranian bank handling the project has recently switched from dollars to euros and the U.N. sanctions placed on the regime in December banned trade of certain atomic equipment.

But the main reason for the work stoppage is because Iran is delinquent on its payments to the Russian State Company in charge of the nuclear plant work. Russia claims Iran has not made payments for more than a month and the delay could derail the launch of the plant scheduled for the fall of this year.

Top Iranian officials deny they are behind.

Tired of Lying

Palestinian Ali Abu Kamal's relatives say they are tired of lying about his motives for opening fire on the observation deck of the Empire State Building back in 1997, killing a tourist and wounding six others before turning the gun on himself.

Back then, Kamal's widow insisted that her husbands motives for the shooting were not political, but his daughter now tells the New York Daily News that was a cover story provided by the Palestinian authority.

Linda Kamal is quoted as saying, "a Palestinian authority official advised us to say the attack was not for political reasons because it would harm the peace agreement with Israel. We didn't know that he was martyred for patriotic motivations, so we repeated what we were told to do."

High Honor

The New York Times received a high honor from communist Cuba Saturday: a marble plaque honoring the interview 50 years ago by New York Times reporter Herbert Matthews that helped create the legend of Fidel Castro.

The memorial is located on the site of Castro's hideout where the intrepid reporter met the future communist leader in 1957. At the time, the Batista-led government was claiming that Castro was dead, but Matthews article showed otherwise. The story made Fidel Castro an international figure overnight.

On February 24, 1957, Matthews wrote: "The personality of the man is overpowering. It was easy to see that his men adored him and also to see why he has caught the imagination of the youth of Cuba all over the island. Here was an educated, dedicated fanatic, a man of ideals, of courage and of remarkable qualities of leadership."

It's not the first time that New York Times correspondents have been honored for their reporting of fledgling communist dictators. In 1931, New York Times reporter Walter Duranty received a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on Joseph Stalin while dismissing the mass starvation of 12 million Ukrainian peasants as simply anti-communist propaganda.

—FOX News Channel's Martin Hill contributed to this report.