Free Republic

The U.S. government has zero investment in retaining Paul Wolfowitz as president of the World Bank, but millions of poor people rely on the economic health and credibility of the institution. Wolfowitz is an impediment, a liability, who ought to be sacked if he is too dense and proud to quickly step aside. He is in trouble because he lied about getting his girlfriend a promotion and pay raises after she left the World Bank for a job at the State Department when he became president of the international lending organization. Over the weekend, the board of the 185-member World...

We know no spectacle so ridiculous," wrote Macaulay about the vilification of Lord Byron, "as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality." Change the word "ridiculous" to "contemptible," and the words "British public" to "American press," and you have some sense of the eagerness for prurience, the readiness for slander, and the utter want of fact-checking that have characterized Paul Wolfowitz and Shaha Riza as if they were not only the equivalent of Byron seducing his half-sister, but as if they were financing their shameless lasciviousness out of the public purse and the begging bowls of...

When it comes to media reports of bad conduct by Administration officials and appointees, it is a good idea to Just Say No to the first accounts you read. Chances are the story was cooked up and peddled by political partisans (often one way or another funded by George Soros) or that disgruntled bureaucrats leaked to a lazy, gullible, if not complicit, press. The media conniption fit over Paul Wolfowitz' supposed "conflict of interest" at the World Bank is a prime example. Based over on claims by disgruntled staffers, non-government agencies and some World Bank officials, the Financial Times painted...

ON Sunday, World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz vowed to stay in the job, despite revelations that he ordered a $US60,000 ($72,000) pay increase for his lover before seconding her to the US State Department. Australia's Treasurer Peter Costello, lobbied by Wolfowitz at the annual World Bank meeting last week, observed that we "want to see a good example coming out of the World Bank". -SNIP- Wolfowitz began his World Bank tenure with the arrogance so characteristic of the Bush administration. For instance, he demanded an increase in a salary that already approached $US400,000 so he would earn as much as...

PAUL WOLFOWITZ'S enemies were undoubtedly out to get him from the moment the man best known as the architect of the Iraq war walked through the door of the World Bank. Just as surely, he has handed them ample cause to demand his resignation as the bank's president. But the real shame in this story is that Wolfowitz's most worthwhile initiative — the World Bank's fight against global corruption — may fall victim to the appearance of corruption in his personal life. On taking the job in 2005 after stepping down as deputy defense secretary, Wolfowitz was obliged to do...

World Bank chief fights for his job over pay deals for his girlfriend By Edmund Conway in Washington Last Updated: 2:15am BST 13/04/2007 Paul Wolfowitz: chastened and sombre Paul Wolfowitz, the president of the World Bank and once a pillar of the Bush administration, was fighting to save his career yesterday when he apologised over pay rises and promotions given to his former colleague and partner. Mr Wolfowitz admitted approving large pay rises for Shaha Ali Riza, a British woman of Libyan origin, who has been his partner since he separated from his wife six years ago. Mr Wolfowitz was...

Mar. 25 - For at least two days, neighbors at a city apartment complex noticed an acrid aroma, black smoke and leaping flames coming from two barbecue grills on the balcony of a second-floor apartment. What, neighbors at the Red Oak Place apartments wondered, was going on in the unit where 27-year-old Timothy Wayne Shepherd lived? What was he burning at all hours, for days at a time? The answer turned their stomachs. According to law enforcement officials, Shepherd dismembered, and then burned the body of his former girlfriend, Tynesha Stewart, a 19-year-old Texas A&M University student. Nothing remains of...

(03-24) 15:05 PDT SAN DIEGO -- The man who once sang as the police officer in the Village People band has been arrested. Again. Police in Universal City arrested Victor "Macho Man" Willis, 55, early Friday morning. A woman, who described herself as Willis' girlfriend, told police she had been choked and threatened with a knife. The woman told officers that Willis had been abusive and was out on bail on a similar assault charge from last month, police said. Last year, when Willis was arrested in San Francisco for drug possession, he gave officers a fake name. They didn't...

The actress that plays Chloe on the Fox mega-hit '24' wants to set the record straight. Mary-Lynn Rajskub tells a popular men's magazine the straight dope - at least when it comes to her alleged relationship with conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh. The blonde actress and Rush sent tongues wagging over the summer when they were spotted smooching it up at the Heritage Foundation. Best Week Ever called it this way in June: Rajskub, who in the past has been romantically linked to the decidedly liberal likes of David Cross and Jon Brion, is as odd of a match...

CONCORD, N.C. - Greg Biffle's girlfriend faces a reprimand from NASCAR about her pit-road confrontation with Kurt Busch's fiance after the two drivers wrecked at Texas Motor Speedway. Busch hit the back of Biffle's car early in Sunday's race, causing an accident that ended Biffle's day. Biffle, the defending race winner, had led 49 of the first 82 laps before the crash and wound up 42nd. Moments after the wreck, TV cameras caught girlfriend Nicole Lunders slamming a water bottle on Biffle's pit box. She then marched down pit road and climbed halfway up Busch's box and had a heated...

Drug test subject 'looks like elephant man' says girlfriend (Filed: 15/03/2006) The girlfriend of a man fighting for life after taking part in a pharmaceuticals trial has said the drugs he was given have left him looking "like the Elephant Man". Myfanwy Marshall Myfanwy Marshall, 35, said her boyfriend, a 28-year-old British man who had taken part in drug trials before without adverse side effects, felt ill 80 or 90 minutes after being given the drug on Monday. He is now in the intensive care unit at at Northwick Park hospital in north-west London. Five other men were also admitted...

In his first political firestorm since taking office in January, Gov. Jon S. Corzine said Wednesday that he provided $5,000 in bail money to a lobbyist accused of stalking a state assemblyman. "I reacted as a human being responding to someone in need," the multimillionaire Democrat said. "However, in light of my position as governor, I realize this was a mistake." Karen Golding, a government relations manager for insurance giant Prudential Financial, is accused of breaking into the government-issued car of Assemblyman Joseph Cryan, a Democrat, and of writing threatening letters and making threatening calls to Cryan and others. Authorities...

Women working full-time are 29 per cent more likely to get divorced than those who stay at home and raise children. Research to be published this week in the European Sociological Review finds that the probability of divorce is in direct correlation to the number of hours a woman worked. Marilyn Stowe, a female divorce lawyer, suggested that working women had the economic freedom to consider life beyond marriage. She added that they had greater confidence in their ability to make new friends and find new partners. "You suggest going out to work to a woman who has been at...

FL AG Charlie Crist/GOP Candidate for FL Gov ...CRIST'S COMPANION: From a White House Christmas party to this morning's Martin Luther King breakfast in St. Petersburg, the couple are being spotted more and more: Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist and Katie Pemble, the chief operating officer of the Bank of St. Petersburg. "We're dating," the longtime banker confirmed last week. Pemble, 41, and Crist, 49, have been seeing each other for several months. And in terms of politics (which, of course, is how The Buzz views everything) this relationship has loads of small world wrinkles. A former regional executive with...

LONDON - Chris Taylor, a 30-year-old British computer programmer, grew suspicious of his live-in girlfriend when his pet parrot began to imitate her saying, “I love you, Gary.” Ziggy, an 8-year-old African gray parrot, would also make kissing noises whenever the name Gary was mentioned on TV and would mimic Suzy Collins saying, “Hiya, Gary,” every time she answered her mobile phone.

After 80 years in Hundred Acre Wood Winnie the Pooh is to get a female friend, replacing Christopher Robin, according to reports. The Walt Disney Company has decided to pair Pooh up with a red-haired six-year-old tomboy for its 2007 series, newspaper USA Today reported. Disney said My Friends Tigger and Pooh will keep the "trust, friendship and happiness" of AA Milne's stories. Pooh is being re-branded as part of its 80th anniversary celebrations. Active side "We got raised eyebrows even in-house at first, but the feeling was these timeless characters really needed a breath of fresh air that only...

Living in Minnesota, I'm no longer surprised at the punishments be handed out in the courts. Today's news is that Clarence Dunn Sr. was found guilty of killing his girlfriend with a hammer. For murdering her, this formerly violent felon, Clarence received a 25.5 year sentence and could get out in 17 years. The judges and legislators have learned nothing. The good citizens of tired of the recolving door in the prisons that continues to release violent people. This girl would be alive today if there was justice in the courts. That's my opinion.

Sofia Vergara

A St. Paul woman who bit off a piece of her boyfriend's tongue after an argument in June was sentenced Tuesday to 90 days in jail and ordered to undergo mental-health and chemical-dependency treatment.

A BRITISH fugitive held in Spain over the brutal murder of a British woman has claimed in a letter to the Daily Mirror that he killed her, then ate her, the mass circulation newspaper said today. Writing from his prison cell on the Costa Blanca, Paul Durant, 44, who was arrested in February over the killing of Karen Durrell, 41, confessed to having killed her, then cut her up in the town of Calpe in a fit of cannibalism. "After I killed her, I cut her body into small parts, eating what part of her I found eatable," he wrote,...