Notebook: Jan. 18, 1999

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INVISIBLE MAN Dennis Hastert? Wasn't he the guy on that show? Or is he the one who invented that thing? You know the one I mean.

Number of press mentions the week they were nominated for Speaker of the House

Newt Gingrich 2,111 Bob Livingston 1,093 Dennis Hastert 659

Source: Nexis

THE RULES

I LOVE NY The buzz in New York is that Hillary Clinton is mulling a run for the Senate in 2000. But why New York--a state in which she has many admirers but no apparent roots to speak of (unless you count attendance at numerous fund raisers)? First, of course, there's an open seat--unlike, say, in her native Illinois. Second, New York has astonishingly loose residency requirements: all she has to do is live there on Election Day--maybe in a nice hotel suite. Other states are less accommodating. Illinois demands you live there at least 30 days and be a registered Illinois voter, while Arkansas exacts from its Senators a harsh two years of residency. All of which may put Hillary in a New York state of mind.

FOLLOW-UP

REPRIEVE Four years ago this month, New Orleans teenager Shareef Cousin briefly became America's youngest condemned man. Charged at 16 with killing Michael Gerardi, 25, in a French Quarter street robbery, the clean-cut Cousin never quite fit the part. After his conviction, appeals lawyer Clive Stafford-Smith unearthed a host of prosecutorial misdeeds, including false police statements and suppressed evidence that placed Cousin squarely in the middle of a recreation-league basketball game at the time of the murder.

Three months after a January 1998 article in TIME by Christopher John Farley and James Willwerth that drew national attention to the case, the Louisiana state supreme court ordered a new trial. Cousin angrily refused a deal prosecutors offered last week: time served in exchange for a no-contest plea to manslaughter. With the new trial set to begin this week, New Orleans district attorney Harry Connick Sr. blinked and dropped the charges.

But Cousin, now 20, still faces time: shortly before his original trial, he admitted--under pressure, he says, from the judge and his trial lawyer--to committing four robberies. Cousin claims those charges were false or overstated. "It's a big victory getting off death row," he admits. "But it hasn't sunk in yet because I'm still in jail." The robbery charges are currently on appeal.

NUMBERS

615 million Number of passengers who flew with U.S. airlines in 1998

0 Number of people who died in crashes of any U.S. airliners in 1998--a new record

1 Rank of Tennessee in the final USA Today/ESPN and AP Top 25 college-football polls

24 Rank of Tennessee among Top 25 teams in terms of graduation rates

27 Percent of Tennessee football players who actually graduate

83 Rank of Monica on the list of most popular names for newborn girls in 1997

97 Rank of Monica on the list of most popular names for newborn girls in 1998

$114 million Grosses for A Bug's Life, the top holiday film, during the last six weeks of 1998

$150 million Revenues during the same period for Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda--the first time a top-grossing video game has outearned a top-grossing film