You'd think if you were president of the United States, you wouldn't need to ask permission to go to the bathroom.
Last Wednesday, during a meeting of the U.N. Security Council, George W may as well have been an eight-year-old stuck in class, raising his hand with a pressing need. The "teacher" in this case was Condie Rice, because it was she to whom the president handed the hastily scribbled note: "I think I may need a bathroom break. Is this possible?"
Reuters got a picture of the note and distributed it widely. Since then, reporters have been trying to determine whether this was a code #1 or #2. Thinking that bathroom breaks may provide a new angle to understanding the workings of the U.N., other reporters have been busy researching past bathroom "breaks" at U.N. headquarters. Perhaps they will discover that we misunderstood back in 1960 why Khrushchev was banging his shoe.