On scooters, jihadists, La Down, Canada and other Mickey Mouse

- The Washington Post's media writer, Howard Kurtz, in a profile of New York Times' Maureen Dowd, notes, "She insists she is not a liberal columnist, has no overarching ideology and chronicles the political wars as a Shakespearean drama." Uh-huh. After the fashion of Molly Ivins.

- From the cancer front, two items of good news for women: First, a new drug - Herceptin - is showing astounding success against an aggressive form of early breast cancer. Second, Merck and GlaxoSmith-Kline are developing their own brands of a vaccine that protects against cervical cancer.

- With Katrina recovery and continuing costs from the War on Terror, some suggest the budget should be cut perhaps less than 5 percent - with holding down the soaring federal deficit an added incentive. But many, even on the Republican side, object. Given the following percentages, they shouldn't.

- In the five-year period 2001-2005, the nation experienced an inflation rate of 12 percent. In the same period, federal spending in these selected areas grew at far higher percentages: transportation (24 percent), income security programs (39), health care (42), housing and commerce (86) and education (99).

- Canada, a country often put forward as an exemplar in pacifism, drug policy and health care, now is emitting the scent of scandal at the highest levels of government. This, from The New York Times: "A federal (Canadian) inquiry found . . . that the governing Liberal Party had benefited from 'an elaborate kickback scheme' that laundered at least hundreds of thousands of dollars in public money that landed in party coffers in the late 1990s. . . . It (blamed) former Prime Minister Jean Chretien and his chief of staff."

- Oh, and there's this about the enlightened interests of the rich and famous. When Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall ventured across the Pond to the U.S. earlier this month, they capped a stop in San Francisco with a look at the musical revue "Beach Blanket Babylon." The revue draws its inspiration from the collected works of Frankie Avalon of American Bandstand fame and (among other late-1950s masterworks) "Bobby Socks to Stockings" and Annette Funicello - she of the original Mouseketeers on television's "Mickey Mouse Club."