And the Prize Goes To ...

And now the most absorbing two minutes in television, the latest from the wartime grapevine.

President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have reportedly been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by a conservative Norwegian legislator who cited their leadership in the war against terrorism. The British newspaper The Guardian quotes Harald Tom Nesvik, a member of Norway's party of progress, as saying, "sometimes you have to use force to secure peace." The Guardian said former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani was among the other nominees.

Another news organization has imposed restrictions on the use of the word "terrorist." At the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, if you are an Al Qaeda member, you might be labeled a terrorist. The newspaper says that's in part because the organization has been identified by the United States and other countries as a terrorist organization. But so have the anti-Israel groups Hamas and Hezbollah, but the Star-Tribune does not allow them to be called terrorist. Assistant Managing Editor Robert Buoen says the paper takes "extra care to avoid the term terrorist in articles about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because of the emotional and heated nature of that dispute."

The Los Angeles Times, which has no particular reputation for sneaky polling, has an unusual question on Enron and the Bush administration in its latest poll. It asks if the administration did the right thing or the wrong thing in not bailing out Enron. Nothing unusual about that. It then asks if the administration did the right thing or the wrong thing in "keeping the bailout meetings with Enron executives private." The problem is that, so far as is known, there have been no meetings with Enron executives on a bailout, only phone calls, which have been made public.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says that Catholic judges who follow the church's teaching that capital punishment is wrong should resign from the bench. Scalia, himself a Catholic who has upheld capital punishment, was asked about the issue in an appearance at Georgetown University here in Washington. He said, "any Catholic Jurist (who cannot support the death penalty) would have to resign. You couldn't function as a judge."

And that American flag that was found in the rubble of the World Trade Center and flew at the Super Bowl. Well, the International Olympic Committee says it can be flown at the Winter Games in Salt Lake City beginning on Friday, but it "cannot" be carried into the opening ceremonies by the U.S. team.  The IOC said many nations had suffered and the U.S. team carrying the flag would not be proper.  An American IOC member, Anita DeFrantz, said, "As Americans we have to understand it's a world event and also that we are a guest even though we are the host nation."