The sour grapes of Paul O'Neill.

News Flash Number One: Paul O'Neill, former Treasury Secretary, slams President Bush in Ron Suskind's new book, The Price of Loyalty, saying his boss was disengaged about economic policy in cabinet meetings. Oh, and also that the administration was making plans to invade Iraq shortly after taking office three years ago. (As if Bill Clinton's team wasn't also correctly advocating regime change since at least 1998.) Democrats will seize on Bush-basher Suskind's kiss 'n' tell to further preach to the choir that the president's a moron, which is fair by me.

Never mind that O'Neill was fired less than two years after being sworn in and appeared more interested in swapping stories and dressing up in African garb with Bono, and fretting about global warming, than wearing a suit and tie and focusing on the recession. O'Neill's lone star turn was when he got down in the ditches with Sen. Robert Byrd in a congressional hearing that devolved, amusingly, into a grudge match over which of the two had the smaller outhouse while growing up.

Number Two: Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel, in a Jan. 4 website post, argues against replacing FDR's face on the dime with Ronald Reagan's. Krazy Kat's correct, of course?Reagan, while horribly ill, is still alive and even his wife Nancy is opposed to the measure?but her conclusion is almost as silly as Wesley Clark promising that when he becomes president, there will be no terrorist attacks on American soil. She writes: "Reagan's death is likely to let loose an enormous effort to rename everything, perhaps including the country, but, for now, let's keep Roosevelt's image on the dime and fight the dismantling of what's left of the New Deal."

Unfortunately, far too much of the New Deal has survived. The most glaring example, of course, is the ludicrously outdated Social Security entitlement. One can only hope that if Bush is reelected and doesn't have to worry about another campaign, he'll raise the retirement age to 70 and at least partially privatize Social Security, an issue that's only controversial with Democrats seeking political gain and older Americans, who'd be exempt from any new regulations.

Nevertheless, why can't eager beavers like Grover Norquist, whose time is far better spent advocating tax cuts, lay off gratuitous notions to modernize the country's coins and paper dough? It was bad enough that the $20 bill was colorized last year?ostensibly to combat counterfeiters?the first inevitable step of abandoning what was once the world's most attractive and detailed currency in favor of the European style of flashy bills. This is an issue the Green Party could champion that would make more sense than anything else dreamed up by its fractured leadership.

Number Three: I've yet to finish Mark Kurlansky's generally dislikable 1968: The Year that Rocked the World?criticism of the book has irked my wife, who thoroughly enjoyed the author's Salt: A World History and Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World?but I must revisit a pet peeve about 21st-century publishing. Typos and factual mistakes are still largely unavoidable in daily newspapers, and to some extent weekly magazines, but you'd think that a book, which is allegedly under the scrutiny of lord knows how many editors before its release, would be free of goofs.

Not so with 1968. One example: Kurlanksy opens his chapter "Heroes" with the dubious statement that "1968 was supposed to be [Lyndon] Johnson's year." Read any LBJ biography, most recently Robert Dallek's, and it's clear that the accidental president was eating his spleen as that year began, and was already leaning toward withdrawing from a reelection campaign. Kurlansky says that a month before the critical March 12 New Hampshire primary, Life had labeled Minnesota senator Eugene McCarthy?a fascinating politician of that era who'll get stiffed when it's time for his obituary to run?a "conundrum."

LBJ won the primary, but as Kurlansky writes: "The shock was that the president on that snowy New Hampshire day had defeated the conundrum by a mere 230 votes." In fact, according to a New Hampshire historical website, Johnson received 27,520 votes (49.6 percent) to McCarthy's 21,263 (41.4 percent), a difference of 6257 votes. You might call this quibbling excessive, but where's the pride of book companies, in this case Ballantine Books, getting every fact correct, especially for a title that's purportedly an historical document?

I won't even get into Bobby Kennedy's rank opportunism in the wake of McCarthy's shocking near-win in New Hampshire, after he rebuffed supporters for nearly a year to challenge Johnson. Had Kennedy stuck to his supposedly ironclad decision not to challenge Johnson, he'd have been alive to run in '72?and Teddy Kennedy's Oval Office dreams, snuffed by his Chappaquiddick accident in '69, wouldn't have taken place?and who knows how that would've altered the political culture of the 70s, 80s and beyond.

Number Four: Some may argue the most significant development at the New York Times last week was the return of columnist Maureen Dowd, after a blessedly long vacation, but I'll stick with the more prosaic observation that the daily has once again demonstrated that election-year politics (and of course, today, every year is dominated by battles for the presidency) take precedence over actual news.

Last Thursday, the A-1 story in the Times was about former Enron financial officer Andrew Fastow negotiating a prison-sentence deal with a Houston judge. I don't particularly care what happens to an admitted crook like Fastow, but isn't it odd the Times decided to lead with this story when Bush had just announced the infinitely more significant initiative of partially cleaning up the U.S. disgrace of immigration inequities and allowing undercover workers legal status in the country?

The upcoming denouement of the Enron scandal does rate column inches?if only to quell hysterics like Howard Dean claiming that the Texan rogues were given a legal pass by Bush?but in a period when major national and international developments like the overhaul of immigration come at a breakneck speed, that Fastow's possible plea takes precedence over every other story is astonishing, even for the see-only-evil Times editors.

Number Five: Wouldn't it be swell if today's sanctimonious sportswriters (and George Will) relaxed for a minute, and considered that it's outrageous that Pete Rose isn't in the Hall of Fame? I can't stand Rose?remember Ray Fosse??and it's clear he shouldn't be allowed on a baseball diamond in any managing, coaching or scouting position. (Although who'd be surprised if Gen. Steinbrenner hired Chuck Hustle to keep Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden company?) But as for Cooperstown, it's open and shut: As a ballplayer, Rose set the record for hits?4256?and that's reason enough to place him aside virtuous men like Ty Cobb. I wonder, when the time comes, if baseball typists will consider the use of steroids?hello, Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds?as a barrier to joining the several hundred imperfect men currently enshrined? Doubtful.

Peter Gammons, the insufferable baseball "guru" who writes for ESPN.com, was typical last week in his reaction to Rose's admission of gambling on games. He writes: "I have always maintained that if Bud Selig [probably baseball's worst commissioner] decreed Pete Rose eligible for the Hall of Fame?I would vote for him as a player..." But now that Rose released a book (for profit!) that isn't exactly a model of contrition, Gammons has second thoughts. "Until Pete Rose proves to me," he continues, "that he cares about something other than Pete Rose, he does not have my vote? As far as I'm concerned, Rose can go to Cooperstown and sign tawdry items for those who, like him, have no respect for integrity, baseball or the Hall of Fame."

It follows, then, that Pastor Gammons will similarly vote against current players destined for the Hall on the basis of their baseball skills, who also sell autographs, beat up their wives or girlfriends, get arrested for the possession or sale of illegal drugs or don't know Branch Rickey's birth date.

Number Six: I was sad to read that El Teddy's, a Tribeca fixture for 15 years, closed last Saturday for lack of customers. The restaurant's owner, Christopher Chesnutt?with whom New York Press had a mostly friendly relationship, even though this writer was banned temporarily from El Teddy's after panning a spin-off bistro?cited the 9/11 terrorist attacks for his declining clientele. Similarly, my boys' favorite local hangout, St. Marks Comics, is shuttering its Chambers St. location, also due to decreasing business. So, while the city and state governments futz around with the rebuilding at Ground Zero and the accompanying memorial, precious time has elapsed in which the restoration of Lower Manhattan commerce could be revived.

Chesnutt's planning a seafood restaurant in Williamsburg?I think he missed the last train on that location?but despite his understandably bitter contention that his experience with El Teddy's was "more bad than good," it's a real loss to the neighborhood.

Number Seven: More evidence of the desperate need for significant tort reform was shown last Friday when a Brooklyn jury awarded the widow of a lifelong smoker $8 million in punitive damages in a case stacked against tobacco company Brown & Williamson. According to the Jan. 10 Daily News, Harry Frankson, who died of lung cancer in 1999 at the age of 57, "started smoking Lucky Strikes when he was 14?long before the U.S. surgeon general warned that smoking could be dangerous."

This exaggerates Frankson's naivete; he was 22 in '64, when the first major news of tobacco's poisonous qualities was rightfully splashed across the front pages of newspapers. Yet although millions of smokers at that young age quit, Frankson, exercising free will, kept up his cigarette habit for more than 40 years, meaning that he just said no to ending his addiction. Obviously, his wife of 35 years was devastated, but the fact is that Frankson was his own victim.

More ominous was this paragraph in the Times, also on Jan. 10: "It will force the [tobacco] industry to stop saying these large punitive damage awards from juries are just some aberration from the West Coast,' said Mary Aronson, an analyst who studies the suits for institutional investors. 'Now, it's moving east.'"

Once the tobacco companies are bled dry, trial lawyers will undoubtedly turn to the alcohol industry. You can predict with almost near certainty that in a few years' time, the parents of a youngster who, without coercion, downed a sixer or a dozen shots of tequila and then perished in a car accident, will win a $100 million judgment against, say Anheuser-Busch or Seagram's.

Until tobacco and alcohol are made illegal?which won't happen because of the tax revenue?it's a crime to hold manufacturers of these products culpable for people who abuse them.

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