Let's Just Say Obama's the Nominee. So, Who's the Running Mate?

Tubb -- who also treated New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd's stomach flu during Bush's recent trip to the Middle East -- set Charles's hand and wrist in a soft cast so it wouldn't get worse before she returned home.

Bush noticed and signed the cast after a media event in Accra, Ghana. Then he invited Ghanaian President John Kufuor to sign it, too. Yesterday, Bush was at it again. After a photo opportunity, he asked Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf if she wanted to sign the cast, which she did.

Not many people boast a cast with signatures from three heads of state. "When you put it on eBay," Bush told Charles, "I won't expect a commission."

Alberto, Abe and a Slim Crowd

Sometimes it's hard to fill the house, even with someone as controversial as former attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales, who picked up a reported $30,000 to speak to the College Republicans at Washington University in St. Louis on Tuesday night.

In his 24-minute speech, Gonzales "repeatedly made references comparing himself and the Bush administration to the presidency of Abraham Lincoln," the student newspaper reported.

Gonzales noted that Lincoln was much criticized when he occupied the Oval Office but is now considered one of the greats. "In the pursuit of great causes, mistakes will be made," he said. "During my [time in the] arena serving the president, my face was marred by sweat, dust and blood."

"There is a difference between what you do and what people say you do. It's going to take years for the entire story to be told," he said. "If you worry about criticism, you end up paralyzed and do nothing."

Despite substantial controversy on campus -- and 200 protesters outside in orange prison jumpsuits -- only about 600 tickets of the 1,000 available were given away, the student paper reported.

Coulda been worse. Only about 40 students showed up last year to hear a speech by former British prime minister John Major.

Boxing, Hooters and -- a Huckabee?

So there was Janet Huckabee, wife of the former governor and Baptist minister, taking in a middleweight boxing title fight last weekend in Las Vegas and staying at the pride of Sin City, the Hooters Casino Hotel.

Huckabee, whose husband is still in the GOP race for president, told the San Francisco Chronicle that she was there to root for fellow Arkansan and friend Jermain Taylor. She said she never intended to stay at Hooters.

"I had a room at the MGM Grand," she said, but canceled because plans changed and "a friend had two rooms. . . . It was the only thing, quite frankly, that was available."

Besides, hubby Mike Huckabee was down in the warm and beautiful Cayman Islands that weekend, giving a speech because, as he said, "I need to make a living."

Taylor lost to Kelly Pavlik by a unanimous decision.

Ambassador Stepping Down

Subprime-mortgage billionaire and huge GOP contributor Roland Arnall, now our man in The Hague, is leaving his post as ambassador to the Netherlands on March 7.

Arnall, in a letter this week to President Bush, explained that he was leaving after only two years on the job because of his son's Hodgkin's lymphoma.

The prognosis two years ago was "positive and encouraging," Arnall wrote, but his son "has had a relapse and I must be by his side now, with our family, to see him through his battle and healthy again."