A pressing issue of dinner-party etiquette is vexing Washington, according
to a story now making the D.C. rounds:

How should you react when your guest, in this case national-security adviser
Condoleezza Rice, makes a poignant faux pas?

At a recent dinner party hosted by New York Times D.C. bureau chief Philip
Taubman and his wife, Times reporter Felicity Barringer, and attended by
Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Maureen Dowd, Steven Weisman, and Elisabeth Bumiller,
Rice was reportedly overheard saying, "As I was telling my husb-" and then
stopping herself abruptly, before saying, "As I was telling President Bush."

Jaws dropped, but a guest says the slip by the unmarried politician, who
spends weekends with the president and his wife, seemed more psychologically
telling than incriminating.

Nobody thinks Bush and Rice are actually an item.(yeah, right!)

A National Security Council spokesman laughed and said, "No comment."