• But Did She Inhale?
• No Name, No Job
• Clinton Prose Fetches Top Dollar
• Seeking A Common Agenda In Chicago
• Nader: Small Parties On The Rise

But Did She Inhale?

WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, July 26) -- GOP keynote convention speaker, Rep. Susan Molinari (R-N.Y.), admits that she experimented with marijuana in her college days at the State University of New York. Molinari, 38, said she would, if asked, submit to a drug test before the August 12-15 Republican convention in San Diego. "Looking back on it, it was the wrong thing to do," Molinari told the Washington Post. "If I knew then what I do now, I wouldn't have done it."

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No Name, No Job

NEW YORK (AllPolitics, July 26) -- "Primary Colors" author Joe Klein has resigned from CBS News after coming under fire for lying about his role as the author of the best-selling novel. Klein, on leave from his job as a columnist for Newsweek, apologized for the trouble that he caused the network by writing the book. "This has been a confusing and exhausting few weeks for me -- and I feel a strong need to simplify my life at this point," Klein stated in his resignation letter.

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Clinton Prose Fetches Top Dollar

HEWLETT, N.Y. (AllPolitics, July 26) -- Bill Clinton's 1968 love letter to girlfriend Kathy McClanahan sold yesterday for $9,900, the second highest price ever paid for a letter by a living person. A letter by Ronald Reagan fetched $12,500 in 1981. The Clinton letter, written when he was a 22-year-old student at Oxford University, thanks McClanahan for sending a picture of herself saying, "It's beautiful and you know it, so there's no need for you to accuse me of throwing you a line." The letter was purchased by a Long Island collector who wished to remain anonymous.

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Seeking A Common Agenda In Chicago

CHICAGO (AllPolitics, July 26) -- Former NAACP head Rev. Benjamin Chavis, now president of the National African-American Summit Leadership Summit, will begin to hear testimony today on housing, education, economic development and welfare to devise a strategy to help blacks. "It's a national agenda for America, stressing inclusiveness," said Chavis. Rev. Jesse Jackson plans to meet with black leaders in Chicago to draft a common agenda and increase black participation in politics. Hoping to flex some electoral muscle this year, Jackson stated that "Our mission is to change public policy."

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Nader: Small Parties On The Rise

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AllPolitics, July 26) -- Consumer advocate Ralph Nader says smaller parties will have larger roles in the American political scene by the turn of the century. Nader, the leading contender to be the Green Party's presidential nominee, told reporters that the current political system is one of "corporate welfare" with a "government by the Exxon, for the General Motors, by the DuPonts." The Greens hold their convention in L.A. next month, and Nader says that the Democratic and Republican parties are driving increasing numbers of voters to alternative parties. "By the year 2000, I think that we will begin to see the beginning of a negotiated political process, where both parties will have to negotiate with smaller parties on either side of them . . . or to suffer a growing draining-away of voters," he said. Nader is currently on the ballot in California, Alaska, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Maine and Oregon.