"It may have been Arnold Schwarzenegger's victory celebration, but the crowd around him at the Century Plaza Hotel on Tuesday night easily could have been the receiving line at an NBC stars' picnic," notes Greg Braxton. Prominent faces at the celebration included his wife, "Dateline NBC" correspondent Maria Shriver; actor Rob Lowe of NBC's "Lyon's Den"; Pat O'Brien of NBC's "Access Hollywood"; and "Tonight Show" Host Jay Leno.

One of America's leading newspaper executives took the Bush administration to task Wednesday for what he termed an "unsettling trend toward governmental secrecy." Tony Ridder is chairman of the Newspaper Association of America, the industry's largest and most important trade organization. Speaking at an October 8 luncheon at the National Press Club, Ridder said the current fear, frustration and anger felt by many veteran journalists in the nation's capital is "unprecedented, even going back to the dark days of Watergate."

The PBS program Frontline has produced an excellent documentary tracing the roots of the Iraqi war back to the days immediately following Sept. 11, when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered the creation of a special intelligence operation to quietly begin looking for evidence that would justify the war.