It was a week filled with the supernatural: Representative Mark Foley’s putatively tipsy instant-messaging flirtations with teen pages came back to haunt him, causing him to give up the ghost on his political career and conjure up tales of his own childhood sexual abuse. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice did her best to exorcise the demonic revelation in Bob Woodward’s new book that she’d been briefed by then–CIA director George Tenet prior to 9/11 on Al Qaeda’s plans to attack the U.S. North Korea’s Kim Jong Il pulled a new rabbit out of his hat, threatening to test a nuclear bomb. Locally, the state Republicans’ dream of Jeanine became ever more nightmarish, with allegations of further Bernie Kerik toil and trouble and a 95-mph speeding ticket that her husband, Al Pirro, got being mysteriously transformed into a parking violation. The Dow hit an otherworldly high, while housing prices continued to defy the laws of nature and logic: Co-op prices fell 16 percent in the last quarter, but housing prices were up 12 percent from a year ago. The baseball playoffs began with Yankees managerial wizard Joe Torre demoting Alex Rodriguez—the Bombers’ Ron Weasley—to the sixth slot, while two Dodgers apparated back-to-back into Paul Lo Duca’s tag at Shea. Shape-shifter Madonna, who recently suggested that a “mystical” Kabbalah fluid could make nuclear waste vanish, borrowed from Angelina Jolie’s bag of tricks by reportedly adopting an African orphan. (Her reps claimed the report was all an illusion.) Former Miss USA Shanna Moakler gave Paris Hilton the evil eye—and a punch in the jaw—at a nightclub for making out with her ex-husband, Blink-182’s Travis Barker. And Mayor Mike Bloomberg used accounting sleight-of-hand to add 70,000 citizens—and the millions of dollars in federal aid that comes with them—to the city’s census tally, bringing the Big Apple’s population to the magic number of 8,213,839.
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