Cheat Sheet

President Bush may be planning preemptive war-related pardons for his administration before his term ends, but that, apparently, won’t save his vice president. Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales have been indicted on separate charges stemming from alleged prisoner abuse in federal detention centers, CNN reports. A grand jury in Willacy County, Texas, indicted the two men; a lawyer for another lawmaker indicted, Democratic state Senator Eddie Lucio Jr., called the county’s district attorney, Juan Angel Guerra, a “one-man circus.” “In the March 2008 Democratic Primary, 70 percent of the Willacy County voters elected to remove Juan Guerra as Willacy County District Attorney,” Michael R. Cowen said in a statement. “Now, with only a few weeks left in his term, Mr. Guerra has again chosen to misuse his position in an attempt to seek revenge on those who he sees as political enemies.” A Cheney spokeswoman Megan Mitchell said simply, “The vice president has not received an indictment.”

For those fearful of a nuclear Iran, an update: After years of delays, Iran plans to launch its first nuclear power plant in 2009. Russia, which has a $1 billion contract to build the Bushehr plant, has delivered nuclear fuel to the Gulf Coast site. The country’s official Islamic Republic News Agency today quoted a spokesman for the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization as saying: “The commissioning stage of Bushehr nuclear power station has begun and we are hopeful the power station will be commissioned in 2009 as per the agreement we have had with the Russian party…There is a good environment prevailing in our relations with the Russians and we are hoping they will honor their commitments.” Iran has maintained that its nuclear program is strictly for civilian use, though the Bush administration has warned that Tehran aims to acquire atomic weapons.

Out of all the post-election memoirs sure to flood Barnes & Nobles, no account comes attached with a more unique backstory—or with a higher price tag—than Sarah Palin's. Times Online reports that a book deal could fetch Palin $7 million. "Every publisher and a lot of literary agents have been going after her," says Jeff Klein of Folio Literary management. No surprise there, given Palin's current status—one similar, if not quite identical, to Barack Obama's following his rousing 2004 Democratic National Convention speech. With a conservative Republican group running television advertisements during Thanksgiving thanking Palin for her political efforts, the price presumably will only go up.

Remember Natalee Holloway, the teenager who disappeared three-and-a-half years ago on a class trip to Aruba? According to CNN, police are investigating two new tips. A new witness has emerged who can place prime suspect Joran van der Sloot and his father near a pond on the island at 4 A.M. on the day of her disappearance. The pond was not searched in the earlier stages of the investigation. Three other witnesses have emerged, including an ex-girlfriend of van der Sloot. The head prosecutor also said that he expects that a videotaped interview, in which Van der Soot admits that a friend helped him to get rid of the body, will be admissible in court.

When Eliot Spitzer reappeared to write a piece about the financial crisis for The Washington Post, Steve Benen was “reminded that the nation could use someone who knows a little something about cleaning up Wall Street and combating its excesses.” Should Spitzer’s personal indiscretions really cost him his political future? “Yes, he hired a call girl,” writes Benen, “but so did Sen. David Vitter, and he's still a sitting Republican senator in good standing, who apparently plans to seek re-election.” Benen goes on to name other adulterers who still inhabit the hallowed halls of government. Spitzer probably is an unrealistic choice to take Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat, but what about a post for him in the Obama administration? Benen thinks chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission could be a good destination for the former Wall Street scourge.

Barack Obama has said that he will appoint Republicans to his Cabinet, but aside from speculation that Robert Gates will stay on as Secretary of Defense, there’s been little indication of who exactly he will choose. As a nice service, The Wall Street Journal presents a list of “Republicans who might logically serve in senior Obama administration posts.” Chuck Hagel, Richard Lugar, and Colin Powell are all there. Off-the-beaten-path choices include Christine Todd Whitman, the former governor of New Jersey and EPA chief who resigned over disagreements with President Bush on global warming; and Matthew Dowd, the top strategist for Bush’s 2004 reelection campaign who has made open his liking of Obama and could prove a useful liaison to Republicans.

"The country is no more," a Congolese man tells Le Monde. His town was looted by government soldiers fleeing rebels from the National Congress for the Defense of the People. The hospital he works at is in complete disarray. The doctors have fled, there is no electricity, and soldiers have pilfered the medicine. Only a handful of nurses remain to combat new cases of cholera that could spread into an epidemic. Outside the hospital, fear and outrage have taken hold of the population. "Soldiers came into my home," says an old man at the hospital. "All I had left were my turkeys. They took them, and now they're feasting as people are dying."

The discovery of a 4,600-year-old grave containing a mother, father, and two sons in Germany provides the first evidence that the nuclear family existed in the Stone Age, a rather happy discovery except for one thing: They were murdered. The family, whose members were buried in each other's arms, is believed to have died in a massacre along with nine other bodies found nearby. One female skeleton had a stone projectile in her spine, another a fractured skull, and others had cuts on their hands and forearms, indicating self-defense. DNA testing confirms the relations in the four-person family, but this does not mean the nuclear family was the dominant social model at the time. Other evidence points to polygamous unions.

Pulsing beneath the action in Quantum of Solace is the narrative of a nontraditional James Bond willing to “defy the white-tie set” and act “more Michael Moore than Roger Moore” by risking his livelihood to save a Bolivian leftist regime, writes Juan Cole, president of the Global Americana Institute. Past Bond films were less right-wing than the Ian Fleming novels, assigning villainous tasks to far-reaching terrorist organizations rather than individuals, Cole writes; however, in Quantum lies a Bond “at odds” with the United States, one who harshly questions “the way the wealthy and powerful in the Bush era casually overthrew (or tried to overthrow) foreign governments in the global south to get at the resources they coveted.” The mission to rescue the Bolivian government is paralleled by the quest for vengeance of Olga Kurylenko’s character, equating her personal task with a more global one. Coles writes that he hopes “President Barack Obama can adopt the sort of policies that can get Bond back on our side.”

A congressionally mandated scientific panel has found what tens of thousands of Gulf War veterans have maintained for years: Gulf War syndrome is real. The report comes after nearly two decades of government denials and seems to vindicate the 175,000 U.S. troops who say they are afflicted with the disorder. Research indicates that the syndrome “is a result of neurotoxic exposures during Gulf War deployment,” the report states. Those neurotoxics include the drug pyridostigmine bromide, which was given to troops to protect against nerve gas, and pesticides used to protect against insects. Troops with the syndrome have reported symptoms that include persistent headaches, concentration problems, general fatigue, and in some cases, chronic digestive and respiratory problems. The panel that conducted the study recommended that Congress appropriate $60 million a year to find a cure.

A Baghdad resident tells The Guardian that if anyone had suggested building a subway in the war-torn capital a year ago, “they would have been sent to one of Saddam’s old mental homes and never heard from again.” But if investors sign on, Baghdad will have a $3 billion metro with two subway lines running a combined 24 miles of track from Sunni dominated areas to Shia ones. Baghdad may have antique sewers, intermittent electricity, and no postal service, but as another resident put it: “Even if this is just talking, at least it's giving us hope."

It looks like President Bush has taken a page from his successor's playbook. The AP reports that Bush called Libya's Moammar Gaddafi yesterday—the first time an American president has spoken with the African leader. Bush congratulated Gaddafi on completing an agreement to pay $1.5 billion into a fund that will pay claims for the 1988 Pan Am 103 bombing over Scotland and the 1986 bombing of a German disco. According to the AP, "The payment cleared the last hurdle in restoration of full normalization of diplomatic relations between the United States and Libya."

With a standoff breaking out between Mormons and gays, this will probably add some fuel to the fire: Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park, are working on a Broadway musical entitled Mormon Musical. On board is a creator of Avenue Q and actor Cheyenne Jackson, who starred in the hit musical Xanadu. "It's hilarious—very acerbic and biting. It offends everybody but does what 'South Park' does best, which is by the end it comes around and has something great to say," Cheyenne told Pop Wrap.