In politics, enemies need to be watched. However, it’s friends who can really cause trouble.

Failed Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani learned this the hard way. His one-time pal, Bernard Kerik, kept making the wrong kind of headlines, and Giuliani suffered a kind of guilt by association.

Sen. Barack Obama, a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, now finds himself in the same boat.

Judith Regan may have published a book with no last chapter. It doesn’t make for good reading, but it would seem worth her while.

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.

“Don’t tase me, bro!” immediately entered the national lexicon when university police in Florida zapped a protesting student with a Taser gun. His bleating cries have “become the newest cultural touchstone of our pop-cultural lexicon,” Wired says.

But the incident also substantially raised the profile of Taser International, makers of the police zappers. Company stock is skyrocketing on new orders and it has fended off dozens of wrongful-death lawsuits.

This week, the sheriff’s department of Jacksonville, Fla., purchased 450 new Taser X26s and the Cleveland police ordered 175 more. That was enough to push the stock price up 4.1% on Monday and another 1.34% on Tuesday. The stock is trading at its highest level in two years.