Brown in Demand?

Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:

Brown in Demand?

Former FEMA director Michael Brown — who resigned after vigorous criticism of his handling of relief for Hurricane Katrina — now has a firm that gives advice on how not to get into the situation he was in.

Brown has formed a consulting firm on emergency planning and says, that despite his problems with FEMA, there is great demand for his services. Brown tells the Rocky Mountain News, "I think people are curious: 'My gosh, what was it like? The media just really beat you up... You made mistakes. I don't want to be in that situation. How do I avoid that?'"

And, after taking a beating from the press, Brown plans to offer his advice on how to handle the media — saying reporters, "can't be trusted to... always get the message correct."

War of the Worlds?

A former Canadian minister of defense is speaking out against the "warlike" Bush administration, but he's not concerned about Iraq.

Instead, Paul Hellyer warns that the U.S. military is about to get the world involved in an intergalactic war with space aliens and he's asking the Canadian parliament to hold public hearings on exo-politics — or relations with extraterrestrials.

Hellyer says the Bush administration has approved a base on the moon to shoot at visitors from outer space. And, while he admits that he doesn't have any inside information on the alien presence, Hellyer insists, "UFOs are as real as the airplanes that fly over your head."

Political Pitcher

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson is revising his biography, after an investigation by the Albuquerque Journal found no record of the governor having been drafted by baseball's Kansas City As in 1966, as Richardson had repeatedly claimed.

A former college pitcher — who also happens to be a possible Democratic candidate for president in 2008 — Richardson has talked about having been drafted into professional baseball as far back as his 1982 Congressional campaign and says he believed it was true, insisting he was told he "would or could" be drafted by pro-baseball scouts.

Richardson calls the misunderstanding an honest mistake.

Political Pop Quiz

A Vermont high school teacher is under fire from administrators after giving his students a vocabulary quiz ripping President Bush and the extreme right.

Bret Chenkins asked students to choose between two words to complete a sentence. In one, where the right word choice was "coherent," the sentence read:

"I wish Bush would be 'coherent' for once during a speech, but there are theories that his everyday diction charms the below-average mind, hence insuring him Republican votes."

The school superintendent called the quiz "absolutely unacceptable." But the teacher says his liberal views are presented "tongue in cheek," adding that he'll include conservative questions if the current ones are "going to cause a lot of grief."

— FOX News' Aaron Bruns contributed to this report