America/Conor O'Clery: On Wednesday night, aides to President George Bush warned reporters: "Please check your e-mail for release of information from the White House."This unusual alert sent reporters scrambling, only to find that the e-mail contained a document headed "Dental Examination" with a summary of a "full mouth periapical" administered to George W. Bush on January 6th, 1973 in Alabama.
The dental record, which concluded he was fit to fly as a National Guard pilot, showed that the president served at Dannelly Air National Guard Base in Alabama on that date, said White House press secretary Scott McClellan.
At issue is a row over whether Mr Bush fulfilled his duties as a member of the home-based National Guard during the Vietnam War, which has obsessed White House reporters who sense a cover-up.
The White House cannot find anyone who remembers Mr Bush when he was supposed to be serving part of his time in Alabama.
A veterans' organisation offered a $1,000 reward for proof that he wasn't MIA (Missing in Alabama), but no one came forward.
The New York Times tracked down 16 Guard members who should recall George Bush but did not. Reporters asked McClellan if there were records, where were the medical records?
He retorted sarcastically that someone would now suggest that "this is only his teeth" and "doesn't show that he was there". Indeed a Washington Post article said that Mr Bush had said he returned to Texas before January 1973 and asked: "So what was his mouth still doing in Alabama?"
Another document released by the White House from Mr Bush's National Guard file encouraged more conspiracy theories. It contained blacked out answers to the question: "Have you ever been arrested, indicted or convicted?"
Mr McClellan was forced to explain that the censored bits referred to a youthful prank at Yale, two speeding tickets and two minor teenage car accidents.
The most worrying development of all, however - the dental records showed that Mr Bush is missing three of his wisdom teeth.
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A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows a majority of Americans - 54 per cent - believe Mr Bush either lied or deliberately exaggerated evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and for the first time a minority - 48 per cent - thinks the war in Iraq was not worth fighting.
Also, if elections were held today, John Kerry would beat George Bush by 52 per cent to 43.
Against this background, Mr Bush's allies in conservative talk radio have launched an all-out offensive against John Kerry over his record as a protester against the Vietnam War. They have seized on a photograph that a retired Green Beret dug up of Kerry attending a 1970 anti-war rally with Jane Fonda, the actress whose visit to Hanoi still today rouses bitter memories among many vets.
Broadcaster Rush Limbaugh has been making much of this, and of the Drudge Report's allegation of a Kerry affair. After Republican chairman Ed Gillespie claimed on Thursday that Mr Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, donated $50,000 to an environmental group that has run ads on his behalf, the Kerry campaign protested that the donation was four years ago and asked Mr Bush to call off his "right-wing slime machine".
The Gillespie charge showed this was "the dirtiest, most ruthlessly political White House since Richard Nixon," said a Kerry aide.
Gillespie retorted in a speech: "It's only February and they have made clear they intend to run the dirtiest campaign in modern presidential politics." A new war is clearly under way, with both sides looking for weapons of character destruction.
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While firing broadsides against Kerry, the right wing commentators have, alarmingly for the White House, been scolding Mr Bush himself. Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal said of the president's performance on Meet the Press on Sunday that he was "unsure and often bumbling".
Fox News anchor Bill O'Reilly, pilloried by liberal comedian Al Franken in his bestseller, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, apologised on ABC News for supporting pre-war claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, saying: "I am not pleased about it at all and I think all Americans should be concerned about this."
MSNBC commentator Joe Scarborough said when he first spoke out against the deficit, many Republicans protested but now the lack of fiscal restraint was "hurting the party and it's hurting the conservative cause". Even Rush Limbaugh, scourge of the Clintons and subject of another Franken book, Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot, weighed in saying: "Bush has outspent Clinton. I hate to say this, I'm sorry folks."
The strains between Bush and his conservative base are not as serious as those between his father and the right in 1992, but in an election year they are serious enough. Bush campaign officials are not worried that Republicans will vote for Senator John Kerry, but that they might stay at home.
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New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has banned smoking in the Big Apple, last weekend enjoyed the company of diners puffing on cigars in the posh St Regis Hotel. The occasion was the annual black-tie dinner of Wall Street's most secretive society, Kappa Beta Phi.
"Sure, there were cigars passed out," said Alan Greenberg formerly head of Bear Stearns, "and some people even had the guts to smoke them, including me."
Mr Bloomberg's protest that he didn't see anyone smoking was greeted with some scepticism by New Yorkers who asked about his sense of smell.
Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair, has been fined for just having empty ashtrays in his Times Square office.
A former buddy of Bloomberg, Carter recently penned a furious editorial recalling that the mayor mentioned nothing about a smoking ban when running for office.
He was like a groom who tells a new bride that he has decided that henceforth they will be vegans, and will live longer, wrote Carter, adding that the dumbfounded bride would no doubt reply: "Darling, it will only seem longer."