Go Back to Iraq or Attend a Chamber of Commerce Function? Tough Call.

More From Zalmaybe

The traditional eighth-year jostling by appointees trying not to be the last one out the door has already begun in earnest.

Our man at the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, who was one of the first out of the box, was on Afghan television Wednesday saying he would resign "in the next few months" -- as, we should note, will everyone else.

"My decision is that I will resign from my official work in the next few months and start a private business," Khalilzad told Afghanistan's Ariana Television Network in Dari, one the country's main languages. His comments were translated by the Associated Press.

Richard Grenell, Khalilzad's spokesman at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, said Khalilzad "has no immediate plans to resign." (This is the standard follow-up gambit.)

The Afghan-born Khalilzad has long been rumored as a potential candidate for president of Afghanistan, but has dismissed the rumors in less than categorical terms.

"I have said earlier that I'm not a candidate for any position in Afghanistan, but I am at the service of the Afghan people," he told Ariana. Hmmmm . . .

Tanner Available

Keeping up with Justice Department voting rights section chief John "Minorities Die First" Tanner, who's been wandering around the department since his unfortunate remarks at a Latino conference in October.

Tanner is now "on loan" to work and teach at two law schools in his home state of Alabama, the Associated Press reports.

As of last week, Tanner was at the Alabama Law Institute at the University of Alabama, where he will work on election issues -- while he is paid through next spring by the Justice Department under a federal program. He'll teach there in the fall and then at Samford University's law school.

Alabama Law Institute Director Bob McCurley said Tanner contacted him in January about working on election matters "in the field," the Associated Press reported. "It's not costing me anything," McCurley said.

Talk About Role Reversal

A first in the acting-diplomatic world. Thandie Newton, the actress director Oliver Stone has cast to play Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in "W," the movie Stone is making about President Bush, also played Thomas Jefferson's mistress, Sally Hemings, in the movie "Jefferson in Paris." (Rice, we hear, preferred Halle Berry, even though Newton was dynamite in "Mission: Impossible II.")

Surely this is the only time anyone has played the roles of both secretary of state and the mistress of the secretary of state, which was Jefferson's job in Paris before he became president.