Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:
No Second Term
It turns out that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's vow not to seek a second term wasn't the half of it. Maliki tells The Wall Street Journal that he regrets accepting the job in the first place — and wishes he could get out of it early. Maliki was sworn in for a four-year term last spring. He says he only agreed to the job to serve the national interest. His goal was to reign in secular violence, but the fighting has increased and Bush administration officials have questioned his ability to govern.
Clinton Authorization?
An investigation by the National Archives and Records Administration says former President Clinton signed a letter authorizing Sandy Berger's access to classified documents that later turned up missing.
World Net Daily says the report cites a Clinton letter of April 12, 2002 designating the former national security adviser and another unidentified person to review relevant National Security Council documents regarding Al Qaeda, Usama bin Laden and other subjects.
Berger was accused of smuggling documents out of the archives in his pants, jacket and briefcase. He pleaded guilty in 2005 to taking and destroying copies of classified documents dealing with terror threats during the 2000 millennium celebration. He was given a $50,000 fine but no jail time.
Christmas Card
If you are one of the 75,000 people who received a Christmas card from Senator John Kerry and his wife Teresa — they're waiting for you to send it back.
The Washington Post reports the cards had pictures of trees — and spoke of gratitude for their beauty. The cards also came with instructions to send them via a return envelope to a recycling company — so they could be made into new carpet tile. The card said the Kerrys want "a world without waste where every product either returns safely to the soil or becomes a new product."
Housing Right
The French government intends to make housing a legal right — just like health care and education. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin says homeless people, poor workers and isolated women with children should have a legal right to housing by the end of next year. And he wants to extend that right to people in inadequate public housing in the year 2012.
A draft of the legislation — which would make legal redress available to those without housing — is expected by the end of February. An advocacy group called "The Children of Don Quixote" forced the issue last month by setting up dozens of tents across Paris's canal Saint Martin and calling on Parisians to sleep out in the cold.
The group wants the government to open 24-hour-a-day shelters throughout the year and build more public housing.
—FOX News Channel's Martin Hill contributed to this report.
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