Carter Catches Heat

Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:

Burying the Big News?

The Army's Chief of Staff, General Peter Schoomaker, told reporters on Thursday that while the Army will probably fall short of its goal of 80,000 new recruits this year, those losses are being offset by soldiers already in Iraq re-enlisting in record numbers.

Oddly enough, the French wire service Agence France Press, got it right. It's headline said, "Army Chief Says Re-Enlistment Strong, Force not Broken." But The Washington Post ran the story under the headline, "Army Likely to Meet August's, But Not Year's, Recruiting Goal."

The Post didn't even mention the unprecedented retention rates... until the seventh paragraph.

Britain Violating Human Rights?

An official with the U.N. Human Rights Commission is threatening to report Great Britain for human rights violations, if it goes ahead with plans to deport foreigners suspected of encouraging terrorism.

The U.N. official, Manfred Nowak, claims Britain can't guarantee that deported citizens will not be tortured when sent to their home countries.

The British did negotiate guarantees from the countries in question that they would not torture those who were sent back, but Nowak says diplomatic assurances aren't enough and that the Brits shouldn't deport them at all.

Carter Catches Heat

Former President Jimmy Carter is taking heat in his home state of Georgia, after he successfully lobbied to save a submarine base in Connecticut at the expense of thousands of Georgia jobs.

Carter wrote a letter last week to the BRAC commission asking them to ignore a Pentagon recommendation to move six subs and more than 3,000 jobs from Groton, Connecticut to Kings Bay, Georgia.

Republican Representative Jack Kingston says Carter went "against the home team" and Republican Governor Sonny Perdue asks, "What was he thinking?"

But Carter says that moving the forces would be "militarily deleterious," adding that the commission's decision was not based his political influence.

The Brazilian and the Restless?

Brazilians are now the second largest group of illegal immigrants captured in the United States, behind Mexicans and popular TV soap opera may be responsible. The show is called "America" and follows illegal immigrants as they risk their lives to find jobs and romance in the U.S.

Half of all Brazilian TV viewers — nearly 40 million people — are tuning in every night and one local lawmaker estimates the show has tripled the number of Brazilians heading for the border.

But the show's creator says the 1.3 million Brazilians in the U.S. who send nearly $2 billion home each year are far more influential than a TV show.

— FOX News' Michael Levine contributed to this report