The Heart Of Labour

As heart procedures go, a "catheter ablation" is good news: using local anesthetic, a tiny probe is threaded through the arteries to the interior of the heart, where it zaps a few cells that have occasionally been making the heart beat too fast. British Prime Minister Tony Blair had one last Friday and was back at Downing Street by dinnertime, still planning to fly to Africa for a conference this week, and facing a better than 90% chance that his irregular rhythm won't recur.

But Blair's encounter with the doctors is like the other good news he's been...