Editor Graydon Carter, in a tux, presided over the party, which was arguably the most rarified ticket at the capital over the weekend, second to the Correspondents Dinner itself. (“If you’re skeptical of social Darwinism, try getting into the Bloomberg party,” Bloomberg reporter Joshua Green wrote on Twitter.)

Even Ivanka Trump and Mr. Carter himself briefly waited on line outside the mansion’s gates—in the rain, no less—before entering the party, held on the ground floor of the regal building.

Eventually, those who made the cut walked past a sprawling lawn, multiple publicists, security guards, and, at the door, “Hunger Games” star Josh Hutcherson, 19 years old.

In the sense that it was as glamorous as a Fellini film and as strange as a Buñuel film, the party lived up to its reputation. Twenty-something bloggers, downing vodka-tonics, smiled at Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who, before ducking out, chatted with actress Reese Witherspoon; party reporters kept their tape-recorders hidden, as per the demands of publicists, while murmuring questions to Aziz Ansari; a pool out back begged for a night swim.

It might be easier to list which celebrities weren’t inside—Lindsay Lohan and Kim Kardashian, despite attending the Correspondents Dinner, were not at the Vanity Fair party. The ones we spotted included but were not limited to: Judd Apatow, looking uncharacteristically dapper, bow-tie and all; Harvey Weinstein, chatting up guests in the foyer; Rahm Emanuel, saying hello to Ms. Witherspoon; and Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Mr. Bloomberg had already been in the same room as Ms. Kardashian and Rick Santorum that day. Who was he more excited to meet?

The souped-up Boeing 747 that typically serves as Air Force One costs $179,750 an hour to operate, according to the latest Pentagon calculations, meaning that expenses for presidential travel mount quickly.

And, no matter what the reason for the president’s trip, there are all sorts of other necessary big expenses anytime he moves around the country: advance teams, cargo planes, armored cars, Secret Service protection, communications and medical staff and more.

Presidents always are quick to stress that they reimburse the government for the costs of their political travel.

That’s true, but they do so under rules that still leave taxpayers paying most of the tab.

For political trips benefiting his own campaign, Obama’s team repays the government for air travel under a formula that’s based on what it would cost to charter a Boeing 737 for a comparable trip, according to the White House. Obama’s campaign doesn’t have to pay the full cost for a chartered plane, though. It pays a reduced amount based on the number of people aboard Air Force One who were traveling for political reasons. That number excludes Secret Service agents and other support staff who always travel with the president.

Obama’s political team also pays for items on the ground like food and lodging that are related to political events. Similar reimbursement rules govern political travel by the vice president and first lady, who fly on smaller, less costly military aircraft.

Despite the high costs to taxpayers, “these White Houses aren’t doing anything wrong,” says Brendan Doherty, an assistant professor at the U.S. Naval Academy who’s written a forthcoming book on presidential campaigning.

If a president had to pay the true costs of his campaign travel, says Doherty, he’d never go anywhere for political purposes.

Obama is the first president to pay for re-election travel under updated rules adopted by the Federal Election Commission in 2009 to implement a lobbying and ethics reform law passed by Congress in 2007.

The babies, five from one nest and four from another, are being hand-fed until they are strong enough to eat on their own. The first four were brought to the university April 13 at roughly one week old. Just four days later, the second group arrived at only a few days old.

“We’ve had great horned babies before, but in 10 years, I’ve never had any this young,” said Nickol Finch, who oversees the school’s Raptor Rehabilitation Center. “Pretty much all they’re doing is eating and sleeping.”

The palm-sized birds are living at WSU’s Veterinary Teaching Hospital, where they are being fed cut-up mice soaked in water.

Four of the infant owls survived a fall to the ground near Colton after someone unknowingly cut down a tree where they were nesting, Finch said. The other five were brought to a veterinarian in Lewiston, Idaho, after their nest was destroyed inside a chimney during a home remodel.

“With no nest to be returned to, babies on the ground are vulnerable,” Finch said. “At this age, they would probably not survive if left on the ground. The parents will still try to protect them and feed them if they are on the ground, but keeping them warm is another story.”

The owls must be fed three times a day, and if they survive will stand 2 feet tall with a 4-foot wingspan.

Great horned owls are fierce-looking predators with yellow eyes and tufts resembling pointy ears. They hunt rodents, rabbits, snakes and skunks.

People working with the baby owls are instructed not to talk when feeding them.

“The Secret Service, these guys are incredible. They protect me. They protect Michelle. They protect the girls,” Obama said Tuesday on NBC’s “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.” ”A couple of knuckleheads shouldn’t detract from what they do.”

Members of Congress pressing for the juicy stories risk reviving — or having revealed — some of their own.

Yet all parties claim to want the truth about the extent of sworn officers working for one of the nation’s premier law enforcement agencies hiring Colombian sex workers ahead of President Barack Obama’s visit there and whether national security may have been compromised.

Spinning the facts as they emerge poses more risk: The Secret Service and the military are supposed to be above politics, dedicated to protecting presidents, their families and the nation.

“Sure, it creates a problem for President Obama. It adds to the sense that Washington is broken. But if the Republicans try to make this a point in their arguments, they are making a big mistake,” GOP strategist Karl Rove said on “Fox News Sunday.”

A dozen Secret Service personnel and another 12 military enlistees preparing for Obama’s visit to Cartagena are being investigated for cavorting with prostitutes. Six Secret Service agents have been let go over the incident, and on Monday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters his department has suspended the security clearances of the military personnel being investigated. As many as 20 prostitutes were involved with the group, officials say. None are believed to be underage.

The incident came to light after one of the prostitutes argued with a Secret Service agent over her payment in a hallway of the Caribe hotel. Local law enforcement intervened on the prostitute’s behalf. Paid sex is legal in Cartagena, but violates codes of conduct for U.S. personnel who were working there.

Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan launched an investigation and requested an independent probe by the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general. Sullivan ousted some of those implicated and, perhaps as importantly, he busily briefed key members of Congress who left no doubt they would hold public hearings should they find his investigation insufficient.

For now, there’s no complaint about the swift pace of the fallout or Sullivan’s thoroughness. But there’s been much discretion, strategic question-asking and even notable silence from some members of Congress, uncharacteristic restraint in a tense election year sizzling with gender politics.

Obama has coolly urged a rigorous investigation and said that if the allegations prove true, he would be angry.

For any president, a Secret Service scandal creates discomfort. Members of the agency’s elite protective service help the first family feel safe in the public glare.

It’s a fairly intimate relationship, First Lady Michelle Obama told members of the Secret Service last year. The president, their daughters and she playfully argued at the dinner table over their favorite agents, she said.

In an hourlong opening statement, Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Durham laid out the evidence he said would prove Clemens lied and made up “cover stories” to contradict evidence that he used steroids and human growth hormone in 1998, 2000 and 2001.

“Once you start saying something that is untrue you tell more lies, and you become trapped in a tangled web of your own making,” Durham said about Clemens, whom he described as an aging pitcher in his late 30s under pressure to improve his performance.

“The story that will unfold over the next few days and weeks is a story of deceit and dishonesty and betrayal,” Durham said. It will tell a “story of vanity and ego and pride.”

Defense attorney Rusty Hardin will deliver his opening statement Tuesday. He has indicated that he will try to discredit the government’s star witness, Clemens’ former trainer, Brian McNamee, as a liar.

Durham anticipated Hardin’s attacks on McNamee, saying the defense would save the “sharpest knives” for the trainer. And the prosecutor said of the 15 misleading statements the indictment charges Clemens with making, “We could prove seven if McNamee never walked into this courtroom at all.”

Dressed in a dark suit and light-colored tie, Clemens sat, leaning forward throughout Durham’s opening statement, alternating between resting his head on his left hand and jotting down notes.

This case, Durham said, is about “accountability” for Clemens, noting that the former pitcher had lied to a February 2008 congressional hearing after taking an oath to tell the truth when “he raised his right hand, his pitching hand, the same hand that won him 354 games.”

As he did last summer, Durham said the case will be proved by documents, witnesses including Yankees pitcher Andy Pettitte, and a needle and cotton swabs that McNamee kept from August 2001 that Durham said tested positive for both traces of anabolic steroids and Clemens’ DNA.

Clemens was indicted in 2010 of one count of obstruction of Congress, three counts of false statements and two of perjury on charges he lied to Congress when he denied to a House committee in 2008 that he used steroids and HGH. If convicted, Clemens faces 15 to 21 months in prison.

This is the second trial for Clemens. U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton declared a mistrial nine months ago on the second day of testimony because prosecutors introduced inadmissible evidence.

Earlier Monday, Walton delivered a blow to the prosecution when he decided to bar Pettitte’s testimony that it was McNamee who injected him with HGH in 2002 because of concerns the jury might reach a “guilt by association” verdict. McNamee said he also injected Clemens with steroids and HGH.

IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde announced the new figure at the conclusion of the discussions among finance officials of the Group of 20 major economic powers on Friday. She said that some countries including Russia, India, China and Brazil had made private pledges but did not want to issue public commitments until they had conferred with officials in their home capitals.

But she said when the public and private commitments were combined, the total raised would exceed $430 billion, nearly doubling the IMF’s available resources to make loans to nations in trouble.

Lagarde called the fundraising a “huge effort” that would increase the current $485 billion in funds available for loans to a figure above $1 trillion.

“We have the necessary tools in the tool box and we will use this wisely,” she told reporters at a news conference wrapping up discussions among finance ministers and central bank governors of the G-20 countries. The group includes traditional economic powers such as the United States and Germany and emerging powers such as China and Brazil.

The United States was represented in the talks by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

Lagarde said the extra resources would create to the stability of the global economy. Finance officials hope that the sizable increase in IMF resources will reassure financial markets that there will be a backstop should another, larger European country get into trouble in repaying its government debts.

Already three European nations — Greece, Ireland and Portugal — have been forced to accept IMF rescue packages along with sizable bailout support from other nations using the euro currency. But the concern is that Spain and Italy, much larger economies, are now facing economic difficulties. If either of those nations needed rescue packages, the costs would be far higher than what has been raised so far.

The fund raising effort exposed splits inside the 188-nation IMF. The United States and Canada refused to participate in boosting the IMF’s resources, seeking to keep pressure on Europe to do more.

And the four countries that did not publicly reveal their contributions — China, Russia, India and Brazil — all expressed reservations about pledging additional resources until the IMF implements a 2010 agreement to give emerging market nations more of a say in how the IMF operates. There are doubts whether the deal to boost the voting power of China and other emerging countries can be achieved by the deadline of the fall meetings of the IMF.

E-mails, repeated phone calls, cell-phone messages: I have spent much of the day attempting to contact top officials at the Times about Nugent’s remarks. “He’s not available,” comes the response from an assistant for Brett Decker, who runs the editorial page operation at the paper. Same non-response from the Times’ executive suite. Nothing.

Perhaps the newspaper’s leaders don’t want to address whether they’re okay with a contributor who is drawing Secret Service scrutiny or who fantasizes in front of gun fans about chopping off the heads of the political opposition.

Another possibility, though, is that The Washington Times doesn’t view this episode as news — that there’s nothing here to respond to in the first place. After all, it began publishing Ted Nugent’s column after he called Hillary Clinton a “two-bit whore for Fidel Castro.” The Times began publishing Ted Nugent’s column after he famously requested that Barack Obama suck on his machine gun. The Times began publishing Ted Nugent’s column after he expressed his fealty to the Confederate flag.

The week’s events divide along two axes. First, the early and middle part of the week is dominated by the pronouncements of full-time IMF officials, while during the later part and the weekend it is elected politicians and central bank governors who get to have most of the fun.

Second, the G20 goes on stage first, ahead of the IMF’s Saturday meeting and the Sunday get-together of the World Bank. For newcomers, the fund is, famously, a bank (acting as lender of last resort to troubled countries) while the bank is really a development fund.

Anyway, IMF economic counsellor Olivier Blanchard was holding forth on Tuesday about the prospects for the world economy. Here is some of what he had to say:

‘Our baseline forecast…is for low growth in advanced countries, especially in Europe, but with downside risks being extremely present.’

Isn’t it great? The forecast (growth) and the opposite of the forecast (no growth), all wrapped up together and delivered in tones suggestive of great wisdom. As an economics correspondent, I once worked for someone who prohibited me from using any phrases such as ‘things could go either way’, his view being that I was drawing a salary in return for taking some sort of a view, however imperfect.

Yes, quite.

Meanwhile, it seems we were all wrong about Argentina. It wasn’t the Falklands that was going to be invaded but the Spanish oil industry. If the Falklands anniversary triggered a bout of Eighties nostalgia, then the threatened oil expropriation was gloriously Seventies. For years this sort of thing has been called ‘resource nationalism’ and deplored.

Now, maybe the wheel is turning again.

Finally, on the subject of anniversaries, there has been much raking over John Major’s surprise April 1992 General Election victory, not least by my old friend Alwyn W. Turner, author of the very fine Things Can Only Get Bitter: The Lost Generation of 1992 (published by Aurum as an e-book).

On my flight over here, I finished off reading an excellent contemporary account of that particular poll by Edward Pearce (Election Rides; Faber and Faber; 1992). Pearce visited 19 constituencies, ending with Major’s Huntingdon seat on election night itself. He never re-writes his judgments in light of the actual outcome of the various constituency votes, thus the whole account has great freshness and authenticity.

It is also, of course, a reminder of a vanished world just 20 years in the past, one without much by way of mobile phones, decent trains to Greenwich or a real possibility of Scottish independence, not to mention a population of half-forgotten political figures: John Biffen, Nick Raynsford, Anthony Beaumont-Dark.

Riding atop a modified plane kept by NASA specifically for transporting space shuttles, Discovery lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, just after sunrise for its last journey in the skies.

Then the shuttle, which first flew in 1984, circled over the US capital for about an hour before landing at Dulles International Airport as crowds whistled and cheered, and some onlookers fought back tears.

Tourists wearing shorts on a sunny spring day gathered along the National Mall near the Washington Monument, staring skyward to catch a glimpse of the storied white and black shuttle, which appeared scuffed and grubby from its 39 journeys into space.

Office workers clustered at windows or climbed onto rooftops to see the aircraft and shuttle as they soared low over the US capital’s historic landmarks.

Outside the Pentagon, a throng of military officers and civilian employees watched the shuttle fly a final time, reveling and applauding as it made two low passes over the building, escorted by a T-38 fighter jet.

Traffic slowed on some of Washington’s major roadways as drivers pulled over to gape at the skies, according to some shuttle spotters who reported what they were seeing on the microblogging site Twitter.

“It’s like sending someone from your family to go live somewhere else,” said NASA astronaut Nicole Stott, a mission specialist on Discovery’s final flight, STS-133.

“Discovery’s leaving home and starting a new life.”

A ceremony to mark the official induction of the Discovery will be held on Thursday at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, outside the US capital in suburban Chantilly, Virginia.

Discovery flew its last mission to space in February and March of last year, on a 13-day trip to the International Space Station.

It is the oldest and most traveled craft in the US collection of three space-flying shuttles — also including Endeavour and Atlantis — and one prototype, the Enterprise, which never flew in space.

Two other shuttles were destroyed in flight. Challenger disintegrated shortly after liftoff in 1986 and Columbia broke apart on re-entry to Earth in 2003. Both disasters killed everyone on board.

Discovery spent a total of 365 days in space, and flew nearly 149 million miles (241 million kilometers), NASA’s mission control said.

Discovery was the first of the three shuttles to retire last year. Endeavour began its final trip to space in April and the 30-year US program ended after Atlantis returned to Earth for the last time in July 2011.

Russia is now the only nation capable of sending astronauts to space aboard its Soyuz capsules.

Private US companies are competing to be the first to fill the gap left by the shuttles’ retirement, with SpaceX set to attempt its first unmanned cargo mission to the ISS on April 30.

A flyover by the shuttle Enterprise is set for April 23 over New York City, NASA said.

The Enterprise, which had been a centerpiece attraction at the Udvar-Hazy Center, part of the Smithsonian museums, until Discovery was assigned to take its place, will pass by the Statue of Liberty and other landmarks, NASA said.

As Washington’s liquor sales transfer from public to private hands, some state employees are making the same transition or moving to other public agencies before the June 1 deadline.

That early exodus could force some state stores to close ahead of schedule, as the Washington State Liquor Control Board struggles to find enough temporary workers to keep all of its 166 locations open.

Voters chose to privatize liquor distribution and sales by passing Initiative 1183 last November, meaning the state distribution center and stores will close by June 1. The Liquor Control Board estimates that more than 900 of its employees will lose their jobs.

Some are already finding employment elsewhere. Between Jan. 1 and mid-March, about 75 employees left the agency. One of those was Steve Burnell, who gave up his marketing position with the liquor board to take a job with a private distributor in February.

“Rather than wait it out, I wanted to move over to a new position,” Burnell said.

About 10 workers are leaving each week, said Clarice Nnanabu, human-resources director for the Liquor Control Board. The agency has been hiring temporary workers to fill the gaps, but as the June deadline approaches, that’s becoming more difficult.

“They find out it’s six or seven weeks, and they’re not interested,” Nnanabu said. “We’re not getting people who are willing to work for that short of time without benefits.”

Some former employees have come out of retirement to help in the interim, she said.

Liquor-board spokesman Brian Smith said it’s not unexpected that employees would leave before June.

“It’s only natural that they try and find work,” he said.

Smith said the agency discussed consolidating stores at a meeting last week but that specific locations had not yet been identified. He said he wasn’t sure when that information would be made public but said that employees at consolidated stores would be transferred to others.

Some stores could potentially close by the end of the month. It’s not a new idea — Smith said consolidating stores has been the contingency plan all along, should staffing become a problem.

Former state liquor workers are finding new jobs in the private sector and at other state agencies. Costco, which contributed more than $22 million to the initiative to create private liquor sales, is one of the companies interviewing state liquor employees.

“I think it’s all over the map. There are certainly quite a few folks who are staying, and quite a few folks who are going,” said Tom Geiger, spokesman for the union that represents more than 700 state liquor-store employees. “The real challenge is going to be, as many more hundreds of people are looking to be losing their jobs … what’s going to happen to them? And that’s just a big unknown.”

Burnell, who now leads a program for Youngs Market Co. to create express stores for retail clients, said three other former board employees have joined his team. He said employees looking to transfer to the private sector will have to be salespeople with strong customer-service skills, at least to be hired by his company.

For employees looking for another state position, some say it’s outside training that counts.

Katherine Beatty worked as a clerk at the downtown Olympia store for more than two years, before she started an office-assistant position with the Department of Labor and Industries in February. She said her prior office experience with state agencies — the Washington State Traffic Safety Commission and Department of Social and Health Services — helped her get the new job, and she worries about clerks without such additional training.

“I think those were really the only things that got me the job that I’m at now,” Beatty said.