Mother Knows Best: President Bush’s mother must...

Mother Knows Best: President Bush’s mother must have read his lips when he said “No new taxes”--she is challenging her latest property tax bill. Dorothy Walker Bush, 90, filed a petition this week in Florida, challenging the county property appraiser’s $682,320 assessment of her Jupiter Island winter home: She says the figure is $173,000 too high. The taxes on the two-bedroom, two-bath house with a swimming pool come to $11,840, including a hike of about $2,400 with the new assessment.

Another Emergency Call: A disabled woman who was run off a road in her van in Hebron, Conn., begged the trucker who caused the wreck to “have a heart and come forward.” Linda Myers, 40, summoned help by splicing her CB radio to her wheelchair battery. She said Wednesday she is “broke and desperate. . . . I have bladder and ear infections caused by exposure.” She hoped the other driver’s insurance “would help me replace my van and wheelchair.”

Bright Future: The 29-year-old lawyer was hired by two men to persuade a company to give them more time to repay a debt. The year was 1838, and no one then would have figured that those mundane papers would now be worth $30,000, but the young lawyer was Abe Lincoln, and the papers discovered recently stored at Western Illinois University in Macomb, Ill., are “really a significant find,” said one Lincoln scholar.

Penalty: A former pro-football player who used to date Carolyn Sapp, the new Miss America, refused to talk about allegations that he physically abused her, but admitted he had a problem and had undergone counseling. Nuu Faaola refused Tuesday in Honolulu to confirm or deny Sapp’s charges. “Only Carolyn and I and God know,” he said. “It was personal then and will remain personal.” But he added: “I am a football player and I get aggressive.”