Valentine's Day a Vice?

Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:

Police on Patrol

The religious police in Saudi Arabia are now out on the streets in full force looking for anyone violating a ban on Valentine's Day celebrations. Retailers are banned from selling anything with red in it including red roses, or red teddy bears. And waiters are advised to keep red out of their uniforms.

The Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice says Valentine's Day is a Christian holiday that Muslims should reject. Violators could be jailed for days. Saudi citizens, however, have created somewhat of a black market for red sales items. Red flowers, for instance, are now being sold out of the backrooms of shops and are going for quadruple their normal price.

Executive Decision

CNN executive Eason Jordan resigned this past weekend after suggesting three weeks ago that U.S. troops had targeted journalists in Iraq, a notion he has since said he doesn't believe. Internet sites, known as Web logs, were the first to report his comments.

This is how a managing editor at the Columbia Journalism Review which calls itself "America's Premier Media Monitor” responded to Jordan's resignation: "The salivating morons who make up the lynch mob prevail. ... This convinces me more than ever that Eason Jordan is guilty of one thing, and one thing only — caring for the reporters he sent into battle, and haunted by the fact that not all of them came back. Like Gulliver, he was consumed by Lilliputians."

Jewish Almuni Upset

A group of Jewish alumni from Columbia University is threatening to cease all future financial contributions, unless "free speech" is restored to the school's classrooms.

This after a documentary showed Columbia students upset that their professors were using the classroom to promote anti-Israel activism, squash free discussion on the Israeli-Arab conflict and vilify pro-Israel students. In one reported instance, a Mideast Sciences professor told a Jewish student, "You have green eyes. You're not a Semite. I'm a Semite. I have Brown eyes. You have no claim to the land of Israel."

In a letter to Columbia President Lee Bollinger, quoted by the Jerusalem Post, the Jewish alumni say, "This is not the Columbia [we] ... take pride in and not the Columbia we intend to support."

Know Of Any Potential Candidates For 2006?

National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman and New York Congressman Tom Reynolds has received a voicemail asking if he knows of any potential congressional candidates in his district for 2006. The message says, "Right now we have one name on our list. We are trying to get some additional names so that we can make sure we are getting the best candidate we can in the field."

That message, though, isn't as romantic as it may sound. It was from the field director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — wondering if he knew of any Democrats that should run.

— FOX News' Michael Levine contributed to this report