And now the most illuminating two minutes in television, the latest from Special Report's "Political Grapevine."
A "whacky" encounter
In a two-part confrontation at New York's Penn Station last week, it appears that Monica Lewinsky struck Washington lawyer and former prosecutor Victoria Toensing with a shopping bag.
The Washington Post reports an encounter between the two women at a newsstand at the station in which Lewinsky told Toensing, a frequent talk-show guest during the Clinton impeachment saga, that she owed Monica's mother an apology for suggesting that Monica's mother had faked being emotionally overcome during her grand jury testimony in the case. Toensing shot back, "You had a lousy lawyer."
And, later, as Toensing was boarding the train to Washington, she says Lewinsky brushed past her and, "whacked" her with a shopping bag. Police were called but got there as the train was about to leave and were unable to locate Lewinsky. The Post says the porter who was helping Toensing with her luggage confirmed her account.
Considering a run for Congress
William Kennedy Smith, the one-time celebrated and acquitted rape defendant who has emerged as a crusader against land mines, is reportedly considering a run for Congress from Chicago. A new poll suggests he might have a good chance.
The Chicago Sun-Times survey of people living in the fifth Illinois congressional district -- that's on Chicago's north side -- found 53 percent said they would support a Smith candidacy.
Smith, you may recall, was found not guilty in 1991 of rape charges that grew out of a night out with his Uncle Ted in a bar in Palm Beach, Florida.
In recent years, Smith, a doctor, has been active in the group Physicians Against Land Mines of which he is founder and president.
Increased Iraqi aggression in the no-fly zone
Pentagon officials are confirming that a U.S. surveillance pilot did see an Iraqi anti-aircraft missile while flying over Saudi Arabian airspace. Officials say the pilot, who was flying a U.S. AWACS plane equipped with sophisticated warning radar, visually sighted the surface-to-air missile, which he estimated was about 200 miles away.
There was no electronic or other detection of the missile, and officials say they cannot be sure the pilot didn't make a mistake, but the report fits a pattern of increasingly aggressive Iraqi resistance to those no-fly zones enforced since the Gulf War by the U.S. and Britain.
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