That's the current media image of Michaele and Tareq Salahi, who could be the world's most celebrated gate crashers since the British comedian who attended Prince William's 21st birthday party at Windsor Castle in 2003 while dressed as Osama bin Laden in drag.
    
But is there more to the story?
    
The Salahis' lawyer, Paul Gardner, suggests there is. "My clients were cleared, by the White House, to be there. More information is forthcoming," he says in a statement published by the Washington Post.
    
The now-famous couple also plans to appear Monday on CNN's Larry King Live.
    
Paul Wharton, a friend of the Salahis, tells ABC's Good Morning America that the couple has had lots of contact lately with Indian officials and has spent a fair amount of time in India. Could that explain why they were at a dinner honoring the Indian PM? 
         
News accounts cast the Salahis as determined publicity seekers who posted their wedding on YouTube and boast an online photo gallery of themselves with loads of celebrities including Britain's Prince Charles.
    
Michaele, a former Washington Redskins cheerleader, is being considered for cable TV channel Bravo's upcoming reality series, The Real Housewives of Washington. In fact, the Post reports that she spent seven hours at a posh salon, TV production crew in tow, getting ready for the big night.
    
The camera crew followed Michaele and Tareq to the White House but couldn't get in. The Salahis did and wound up being snapped for photos with Biden and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.
    
The Secret Service, which is charged with protecting President Barack Obama and other high-level officials, says the Salahis were not invited to the dinner. The agency is conducting a comprehensive review to get to the bottom of one of the most embarrassing security breaches in the history of White House dinners.
    
It's not clear what could happen to the Salahis if they really did crash the party. But another friend of the couple, Casey Margenau, doesn't sound too worried. "Whatever they do, they'll land on their feet," he tells ABC. "Promotion and parties are part of their life."

Photo credits: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Michaele and Tareq Salahi); Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Biden)

That could be important for Obama's agenda in Congress as the 2010 election approaches and Democratic incumbents in tight races consider how they might fare with Democratic voters.

The USA Today/Gallup findings are based on telephone interviews with 1,017 adults. The margin of error is 4 percentage points.

Photo credits: Reuters/Jason Reed (Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates); Reuters/Mathieu Belanger (U.S. soldier departs for Afghanistan); Reuters/Lucas Jackson (NYC crowd watches Obama)

Photo Credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (U.S. Capitol)

Or could reform lead in that other direction?    

Here's Kay: "We are in a jobless situation in our country, an economic crisis. You are going to put taxes and mandates on business that are going to make that situation even worse. One in 10 people in America today do not have a job. Now you're putting mandates and taxes on every individual who doesn't have healthcare and every business that we want to ask to hire people. And yet you're putting taxes and mandates on them that makes this unaffordable. This is a terrible idea at this time."
    
Of course, partisan differences will mean little if Democrats can retain the same 60-vote, Republican-filibuster-proof sense of community that got the bill to the floor in the first place.
    
Chuck seems confident: "We will come together for this reason. The healthcare system is broken in this sense: Medicare will be broke in seven years, private insurance doubles every six years (and) tens of millions will lose it. If we don't do anything, that is the worst situation. And we have a good bill that cuts costs, reduces the deficit and covers more people."
    
Either way, it's bound to be one dickens of a debate. 

Photo credits: Reuters/Chip East (Schumer); Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Hutchison)

The Daily News cites poll numbers showing Giuliani losing to Cuomo 53 percent to 43 percent in a race for governor,  but beating Gillibrand 54 percent to 40 percent for the Senate.

But the Senate speculation may not last long.

The New York Post quotes people close to Giuliani as saying a run for the Senate is unlikely.

And even the Daily News  seems to be hedging its bets with a story saying Giuliani doesn't need to run for the Senate because he already has plenty of money and influence and a private life that's working out just fine.
    
Giuliani ran for the Senate in a 2000 campaign that pitted him against Clinton. But events and declining poll numbers were against him and he withdrew after a quick succession of revelations: he had prostate cancer, he had a girlfriend, and he was separating from his second wife.
    
Giuliani has since beaten cancer, divorced his second wife, Donna Hanover, and married his former girlfriend, Judith Nathan.

Photo Credit: Reuters/Brian Snyder (Giuliani)

The only clear answer about Sarah Palin's intentions is that the questions are drawing lots and lots of U.S. media attention. 
  
This week, the former Republican vice presidential candidate and Alaska governor is on the cover of Newsweek magazine. She's also going on-air for separate interviews with TV's Oprah Winfrey and Barbara Walters of ABC News.
    
It's all about promoting her new memoir, "Going Rogue: An American Life," which goes on sale Tuesday. But the notion that she also might be testing the waters for a 2012 presidential run is what's drawing the serious attention.
    
Supporters liken her to a populist 21st century Ronald Reagan or Barry Goldwater. But not all the coverage is as she'd like it.
    
Newsweek, which pictures her on its cover as an attractive young woman in running shorts, scoffs at the idea of a Palin 2012 presidential campaign.
    
"Her brand of take-no-prisoners partisanship is not good for the Republicans in the long run and not good for the country," Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham told MSNBC.
    
"When you have a kind of 'death panel' ideology, where you make pronouncements that are factually untenable and tend to inflame the conversation ... that's not good for governance."
 
She got a warmer reception from another woman of the campaign trail, former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, whom Palin thinks she might like to meet over coffee.
 
"I absolutely would look forward to having coffee. I've never met her. And I think it would be, you know, very interesting to sit down and talk with her," Clinton, now U.S. secretary of state, said over the weekend.
    
But the last word is likely to be Palin's. Her book promotion is expected to draw huge crowds across the country. And while a Washington Post/ABC News poll shows that 60 percent of Americans don't think she's qualified to be president, a similar percentage of Republicans say she is.
  

Photo Credits: Reuters/Nathaniel Wilder (Palin); Reuters/Jason Reed (White House); Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Clinton)

Oh, yeah, and the news comes on Friday the 13th.

The lead defendant, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, initially confessed to masterminding the 2001 attacks that set the United States on the road to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But he later told a Pentagon war crimes court that the interrogators "were putting many words in my mouth." He also said he wants to be put to death and become a martyr.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder will formally announce later today that KSM and four other defendants will be sent to New York City to stand trial for the attacks.

It's part of President Barack Obama's plan to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which has long been a target of human rights allegations against the United States.

The proceedings in New York will be an important test of how a U.S. civilian court might handle cases involving detainees who were subjected to U.S. interrogation techniques that some describe as torture.

"I am absolutely convinced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be subject to the most exacting demands of justice. The American people will insist on it. My administration will insist on it," Obama said in Tokyo where he was on a weeklong trip through Asia.

Survivors of those who died aboard the USS Cole in 2000 have waited longer for their day in court. But they also learned on Friday the 13th that the accused mastermind in that attack will be tried in military tribunals along with other suspects in the case.

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Photo Credits: Reuters/Brad Rickerby (Twin Towers); Reuters/Janet Hamlin (KSM and Waleed bin Attash); Reuters/Aladin Abdel Naby (USS Cole)

The Republican lead is well within the poll's 4 percentage point margin of error. But the results indicate that Republicans might have some momentum after gaining steadily on Democrats since July.

People who participated in the survey were asked only about their local House districts, so the results mean little for that other congressional chamber, the U.S. Senate.

It's way too early to gauge the outcome of a congressional election that won't be held until November 2010. The primaries that choose the parties' respective candidates don't even begin until early next year. And as Gallup points out, the poll measures only voter preference, not likely voter turnout. 

But a revival of Republican popularity could spell trouble for Obama, given that the GOP appeared to gain ground as the president's main domestic priorities -- healthcare and climate change reforms -- gained public attention.  Meanwhile, Democrats slipped 6 percentage points overall and plunged 12 points among independent voters. 

Republicans would be in a very strong position to shut down much of Obama's agenda if they won control of the House for 2011 and 2012. A Republican House would also pose a greater challenge for a 2012 Obama reelection campaign.

Tangible risks for Obama's agenda could also lie closer at hand, if the whiff of electoral defeat encouraged enough Democrats today to avoid White House initiatives that might have political consequences tomorrow.

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Photo Credits: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (U.S. Capitol); Reuters/Jason Reed (House Republican leader John Boehner); Reuters/Jim Young (Obama)

Dodd, a Democrat fighting for his political life at home, proposed sweeping regulatory legislation this week that would curb the Federal Reserve's bank oversight powers, strengthen consumer protection and keep a sharp eye out for systemic problems like housing or stock market bubbles.

The 1,136-page measure reflects Obama's policies in some ways -- for example, it supports the White House call for a Consumer Financial Protection Agency -- but it also charts new regulatory waters.

"What we have (now) is a hodgepodge that has grown over the last 80 years, some of it dating to the 19th century and early 20th century regulatory structures," Dodd told MSNBC.

"These agencies basically have provided a forum for financial institutions that look for a weak charter, in a sense. They shop around and get it. So we need to eliminate or change that fundamentally."

"I think you're really on the right track," Sachs told Dodd in the same broadcast.

But Sachs, who became famous for his economic work in the developing world, thinks Obama should adopt much broader structural change and says current White House policy is akin to using a morning-after drink as a hangover remedy.

"The Obama administration's stimulus policies are not well targeted. The Republican alternatives are even worse. Both sides are missing the key fact: the U.S. economy needs structural change," Sachs writes in an op-ed column in today's Financial Times.

Sachs, who now focuses on sustainable development as director of Columbia's Earth Institute, says the president is bent on restoring American consumer spending.

Instead, he says, the United States needs dollar depreciation, greater support for exports, a massive expansion in education spending and a robust conversion to a low-carbon economy.

"Move now, Mr. President," Sachs says in the FT, "or we will spend our time digging out of the next consumer bust and buying our technology from China."

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Photo Credits: Reuters/Jim Young (Dodd); Reuters/Reuters Photographer (Sachs)

The meeting's important because Democrats have yet to find the 60 votes they need to stop Senate Republicans from blocking President Barack Obama's signature domestic issue. House Democrats got their end of the job done over the weekend by passing landmark legislation.

Clinton's presidency was overshadowed by his own failed bid to reform the healthcare system in the 1990s. But NBC said he could help sway Democrats wavering in the current debate, including Sen. Blanche Lincoln of his home state, Arkansas. 

A big obstacle that Clinton, Obama and Senate Democrats face seems as old as human nature: people who will cooperate -- if they get their own way.

This time, a small clutch of moderates want their own way on the so-called public option, a proposal to offer government supported low-cost health coverage that is anathema to Republicans and the insurance industry.

Some senators are categorical about what they want.

For independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut -- a state long associated with insurance interests -- opposition to the public option is a moral issue. "If the public option plan is in there, as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote," he said at the weekend on Fox News.

But his independent neighbor to the north, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, sounds like Lieberman's polar opposite: "It would be outrageous to me, that when you have an overwhelming majority of Americans wanting a strong public option, that we do not deliver that."

Others are not so categorical -- until you get to the nitty gritty.

Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska told NBC he could back a public option, but not if states have to make the effort to opt out. Why? Because he doesn't want them in the system unless they want to be there.

"I don't think there is anything to be gained by opting out," Nelson said. "I would look at the ability of the states to opt in, so that the states could make the decisions themselves."

It seems a small distinction but may prove important. Reform advocates fear their adversaries could easily defeat healthcare reform at the state level, where small numbers of health insurers can sometimes hold a near monopoly.

Obama hopes to sign a healthcare reform bill by the end of the year.

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Photo Credits: Reuters/Chip East (Clinton); Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Lincoln); Reuters/Mike Segar (Lieberman); Reuters/Chris Helgren (Sanders); Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Nelson)