Following in the grand tradition of political investigative reporting, we ask the following: Is Cindy McCain being honest about her jeans size?

In the June issue of Vogue, currently on newsstands, Julia Reed writes of the Arizona senator's wife "she is a picture of calm vitality in her favorite size 0 Lucky jeans." A good friend thinks not.

McCain appears to be around 5-foot-5, a couple inches shorter than her husband, who is 5-foot-7. Featured in the same issue of Vogue is the pocket-sized Sarah Jessica Parker, also a size 0, and 5-foot-4. SJP looks to be a third smaller than McCain, and a quarter the size of everyone else.

Cindy McCain is the same woman who passed off Rachael Ray's recipes as her own. (Our feeling on that matter is, if you're going to filch recipes, copy from the best not a hack.) So is Cindy McCain telling the truth?

Thursday evening, at 7:30, a splendid rainbow appeared over Center City, arching over the Comcast Center. It was a gift, a rare appearance of a rainbow in an urban environment. Indeed, if you live in cities, you can go fyears never seeing one.

The sky was magnificent, a cover of steel with the sun blasting from the West. People stood on West River Drive and the Ben Franklin Parkway transfixed, as if in a movie, pointing at the sky. The only rub that it was a beast to drive because commuters were leaning forward over their steering wheels trying to get an optimum view. Did you see it? What a treat.

What is it with you guys?

Why is someone like Owen Wilson paying to see naked women?

Isn't the reasoning that he doesn't have to pay given that women are willing to see him naked as he was in You, Me and Dupree, which grossed $130 million globally?

Wilson, dubbed the Butterscotch Stallion by the New York tabs, spent 4.5 hours and quite a few bucks at Rick's Cabaret in South Philadelphia after last week's Flyers game, according to today's New York Post. (Also, why are Philadelphia strippers talking to New  York papers instead of us?)

"He watched the Flyers game, drank beer, and when a parade of 75 half-naked girls caught his eye, he asked for dances from several and definitely had a preference for blondes. He tipped at least one with a $100 bill," a "spy" told the Post.

Why does Owen Wilson, dater of Kate Hudson, myriad starlets and models, pay for a lap dance?

Then again, as with Brad Pitt and the guy who plays Smith in Sex and the City, we've never thought much of men whose highlights are superior to ours.

But perhaps you gentleman can explain why a famous man walks into a strip club and thinks it isn't going to make the tabloids.

Ted Kennedy has been senator forever, since 1962, the second longest-serving politician in that Congressional chamber. He's always been there.

So it seems especially sad to learn today that the sole suriving Kennedy brother, the only one to live past the age of 46, has been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor after suffering a seizure over the weekend.

A preliminary biopsy identified a malignant glioma, the Associated Press reports. Average survival can range from less than a year for very advanced and aggressive types -- such as glioblastomas -- to about five years for different types that are slower growing.

Kennedy, age 76, "remains in good spirits and full of energy," his Boston doctors report. He's always been the Kennedy son who beat the odds.

His great friend, Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, was in tears at a press conference today and couldn't speak.

"I'm having a hard time remembering a day in my 34 years here I've felt this badly," said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont

"Laura and I are concerned to learn of our friend Senator Kennedy's diagnosis," President Bush said. "Ted Kennedy is a man of tremendous courage, remarkable strength, and powerful spirit. Our thoughts are with Senator Kennedy and his family during this difficult period. We join our fellow Americans in praying for his full recovery."

Welcome to Joey Vento's Highway to Hell.

The Spanish firm Abertis Infraestructuras, based in Barcelona, offered $12.8 billion Monday to lease the Pennsylvania Turnpike for 75 years, pending approval by the state legislature.

Wouldn't it be great if the signs started reading "Bienvenidos a l'Autopista de Peaje de Pensilvania!"

Pennsylvania could become the Costa del Sol of the Mid-Atlantic.

They could serve tapas at rest stops, manchego cheese and olives and sangria.

And Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz could do public-service announcements en Espanol por our estado de llavepiedra. (That's a literal translation of state of key-stone.)

"What are you, like 80?"

This is what Shia LaBeouf, as Mutt Williams. says to old Indiana Jones in the rollicking fourth installment of the series opening Thursday.

Not 80, but close.

Harrison Ford turns 66 this summer. If he's been using Botox, it didn't take. He looks every bit his age. The movie does spare the age jokes

Which could be good for John McCain.

A mere six years Jones' senior, McCain is also making hay of geezer jokes, which have become a staple of the late-night laugh circuit.

On Saturday Night Live's finale, the Arizona senator cracked: "I ask you, what should we be looking for in our next president? Certainly, someone who is very, very, very old."

At least Steven Spielberg is being an equal-opportunity employer. Though the divine (and relative spring chicken) Cate Blanchett plays a Soviet scientist, Indy's love interest is Karen Allen, the only female character in the previous three installments with a backbone and a decent right hook. Allen is now 56, prehistoric in Hollywood.  

The movie, by the way, sports references to Citizen Kane, The Wild One, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and, we kid not, Caddyshack.

On the other side of gay marriage, we have the divorce of Gay American, former N.J. Luv Guv Jim McGreevey and his long-suffering someday-to-be-ex wife  Dinos Matos McGreevey in state Superior Court in Elizabeth. You can read all about her suffering in the memoir, Silent Partner.

Not-so-silent Dina wants alimony because she lived so well, though not happily, as the Garden State's first lady with access to the governor's manse in Princeton, a helicopter and two -- count 'em, two -- summer houses. (One on the northern and another on the southern Jersey Shore?) 

Apparently, despite dueling Oprah appearances and memoirs, neither McG has reaped wealth, except by attachment.

In court, McGreevey admitted to being deep in debt from nearly $200,000 in legal bills. His domestic partner, Austrailian financial advisor Mark O'Donnell, pays his bills.

In other words, he's a kept man. First, by the state. Now, by a guy.

So you can imagine that it's hard for a kept man to keep his ex-wife in the way she was accustomed when he was governor.

McGreevey claims to make $48,000 annually, quite a comedown from the $175,000 salary earned by the NJ governor, the fourth highest gubernatorial income in the nation, not to mention those two vacation homes.

The trial is scheduled to continue at the Union County Courthouse Monday. Up next: Forensic accountant Sharyn Maggio testifies as to whether McGreevey's "celebrity goodwill" translates financially into $1 million annually based on his unique status as a former disgraced governor who put his alleged poet boyfriend on the payroll. 

It was four years ago this August that McG made his speech and stepped down as governor.

Wars have been won in less time.

Can't the McGreeveys just put an end to this and go their separate, silent ways? Oh, but that might mean we would stop paying attention to these two supremely needy people.

The day after the California Supreme Court overturns two state laws banning gay marriage, Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi plan to wed. The betrothal will be announced on Ellen's talk fest today.

Well, that's grand. It's good for the gays. It's good for the wedding industry. It's good for the economy. Think of all those Hers and Hers towels. And it's great for the country's happiness index.

And I love a good gay wedding. One of the best ceremonies I ever attended was the commitment ceremony of possibly Philadelphia's tallest gay couple.

Still, I fear this is going to be bad for politics.

Just as gender, race and elitism have been injected into the endless democratic primary season -- as Jon Stewart puts it, The Long Flat Seemingly Endless Bataan Death March to the White House -- gay marriage may reappear as an issue in the general.

Please, no.

Let's not have an acid flashback to bad political tactics of elections past. Ellen and Portia can be married in California without threatening the personal liberties of voters elsewhere.  

The couple should be able to have their wedding cake, eat it, and store it in their Sub-Zero for as long as they both shall live.

How long should someone nurse a slight or rejection?

In Barbara Walter's best-selling memoir Audition, which is reviewed today, the anchorwoman regurgitates wounds that are half a century old.

She's 78. She received an excellent education at Sarah Lawrence, a terrific college. She appears to have loved the place.

She lists bad treatment by colleagues that occurred in the 1960s.

The woman is a huge success. She has, as she lists in the book, thousands of friends.

Revenge fiction can be devilishly fun. Complaint memoirs are another matter.

Everyone has faced rejection. Well, maybe not Tom Brady or Angelina Jolie. But everyone, as REM notes, hurts.

At a certain point, a grownup ought to get over the stuff.

You can read the review here: http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/20080515_Walters__career_a_continuing_audition.html