What a difference a year makes.

In 2006, Angela F. Braly was not on the list of the Wall Street Journal’s 50 Women to Watch. This year, she’s number one.

The president and CEO of health insurance giant WellPoint Inc., Braly finished higher than better-known business leaders.

When it comes to Rudy Giuliani’s effort to win the Nascar vote, the national press corps just can’t resist stereotypes.

The latest sample comes from today’s Washington Post: “On Sunday, the Giuliani campaign came to the Homestead-Miami Speedway, past a handful of Confederate flags flying in the parking lot and beyond the Jack Daniel’s tent, to attend NASCAR’s Ford 400.”

There’s so much more to this picture than fast cars, bourbon and the Southern Cross.

Beyond fame and fortune, one of the perks of being a celebuspawn is rubbing elbows with the TV and movie elite at the annual Golden Globe Awards. Miss or Mr. Golden Globe, who hands the golden statues to the winners, is traditionally the son or daughter of a celebrity.

While talent often runs deep in showbiz families, there has been only one Miss Golden Globe who has passed the title on to her daughter. Tippi Hedren’s daughter Melanie Griffith was Miss Golden Globe in 1975. Griffin’s daughter, Dakota Johnson, distributed the awards in 2006.

The Blackwater web is more tangled than even its main investigator realized.

Howard “Cookie” Krongard, State Department inspector general, recused himself this week from the ongoing probe of Blackwater Worldwide after learning that his brother sits on the company’s advisory board.

When questioned Wednesday by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Krongard at first said his brother did not hold the position.

Talk about a firm for all seasons.

We’ve already shown that investment bank Goldman Sachs is a power in politics and in finance, sending its executives off to presidential cabinets and elective offices and to lead other companies.

And now there’s proof that Goldman can hit home runs in baseball as well.

Word is out that two of Goldman’s managing directors, John Mallory and Gerald J. Cardinale, helped bring the New York Yankees and superstar Alex “A Rod” Rodriguez back into contract talks.

It would seem they did what Scott Boras, Rodriguez’s agent and one of the most powerful and vilified men in sports, couldn’t do. Though, rest assured, Boras will make money on this deal.

The appointment of John Thain to head troubled Merrill Lynch proves, yet again, the long reach of Goldman Sachs.

Thain, currently CEO of the New York Stock Exchange, began his career as an investment banker at Goldman. He went on to become co-president and co-chief operating officer.

As the New York Times reports, Thain was chosen not only for his success at the exchange, but also for his background at Goldman.

There’s no question that the $100 million defamation lawsuit filed Tuesday by former books publisher Judith Regan has news value.

But the 70-page complaint also has literary value, as well.

Though it’s bogged down in places with legal terms, it’s still a Judith Regan style page-turner, complete with scenes of betrayal, confrontation and deception.

It was a story of connections. But were they real?

“Hillary’s Mystery Money Men,” first appeared on the website the Real News Project on Oct. 18.

The story was then reprinted in the Nov. 5 issue of The Nation and it has circulated widely on the Internet.

It either opens a window on to a significant shift of a controversial Republican money man to the Democratic camp, or it overstates the actions of a hedge-fund savvy financier who may have been hedging his bets by contributing to several candidates.

The piece by Russ Baker and Adam Federman argues that “notorious financier Alan Quasha” was a secret force behind the presidential campaign of New York’s Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Add another line to what has to be one of the greatest resumes of all time.

Al Gore is now a partner at Kleiner Perkins, the storied Silicon Valley venture capital company that has backed such web and technology giants as Google, Sun Microsystems and Amazon.

It’s a billion-dollar family feud straight out of central casting.

The first great-grandchild of legendary Dallas oil tycoon H.L. Hunt is suing his father and other family members for alleged mismanagement of two trust funds with up to $4 billion in assets.