Condit might have turned instead to Jane (not her real name), an entrepreneurial professional escort working in Washington. Jane's doing plenty of business, earning a six-figure income by providing "engaging conversation and inspiring social companionship" to area gentlemen for $250 per hour.

Though hers is a risky business, Jane says she's never been busted, thanks in part to helpful hints supplied to her by clients in law enforcement: never discuss sex and money, never take cash from a client's hand, always make the client undress before you do. Ever on the lookout for a new opportunity, Jane sells this advice as part of her side business as a consultant to other area escorts.

It's part of Jane's appeal that she doesn't look like the near-naked, silicone-enhanced young women whose pictures appear in a handful of Washington adult Web sites. Politicians and businessmen feel that they can be seen with Jane without raising suspicion, precisely because she doesn't look anything like a escort, high-priced or otherwise.

Continue Reading...

Shays was surprisingly calm, considering the slow-motion mugging that his bill received at the hands of Republican leaders. He said that he wasn't surprised by the glee displayed by Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, at the bill's defeat, crediting DeLay with always stabbing from the front instead of the back. Shays also took the harsh words of Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, in stride, claiming that he still regarded Armey as a friend, despite the tirade he directed against Shays from the House floor on Thursday.

As for Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., the man behind the sinking of Shays-Meehan on a procedural vote on Thursday, Shays had the kindest words of all for him. Shays said, "There's no one I respect more than Denny Hastert."

Continue Reading...

As campaign finance reform's godfather, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., smiled wryly in the background, Shays paused for a long time before responding. "I had a distinguished senator say we were going to get screwed," he deadpanned.

And the distinguished senator turned out to be right. By day's end, House Republican leaders had succeeded in killing -- or at least rendering comatose -- the campaign finance bill offered by Shays and Massachusetts Democrat Marty Meehan. There's almost zero chance the bill will be reconsidered before the fall, and it could be as late as next year.

The Shays-Meehan bill would virtually ban soft money, the unlimited donations that unions, corporations and individuals make to political parties. It would also ban certain types of political advertising in the final 60 days of a campaign. Its Senate version, McCain-Feingold, passed in early April, but the House has been a much tougher sell, even though roughly the same bill passed the House in 1998 and 1999.

Continue Reading...

But according to some healthcare watchdogs, the procedure Cheney had could be denied by many HMOs. And in a strange coincidence, the major piece of legislation moving through the Capitol's corridors right now -- a patients' bill of rights -- would make it easier for patients to demand such coverage should their insurance carriers try to block it. It passed the Senate the day before Cheney entered the hospital, but President Bush has vowed to veto it.

Continue Reading...

If the test revealed that -- and Cheney said that it likely would -- he would be admitted to George Washington University hospital to have an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) inserted in his chest.

But Cheney is famous for understatement. His two previous episodes were marked by White House spin and subterfuge. So is Cheney being upfront about his treatment and prospects for recovery?

For the most part, yes. But he may have underplayed the seriousness of the surgery by saying, "It is basically an outpatient procedure."

Continue Reading...

In a hearing Tuesday, it was the job of Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to run the proceedings with the high-minded title "Should Ideology Matter? Judicial Nominations 2001." Schumer had already given a preview of his own answer to the question in an Op-Ed piece in Tuesday's New York Times, in which he wrote, "Pretending that ideology doesn't matter -- or, even worse, doesn't exist -- is exactly the opposite of what the Senate should do."

He reiterated that point during the hearing, saying that ignoring ideology has led to more "gotcha politics" in the confirmation process, with senators and interest groups digging for dirt in nominees' writings, financial records and personal lives to camouflage differences over issues like abortion and gun control. He argued that such practices increase public cynicism about the nomination process. "Let's make our confirmation process more honest, more clear and hopefully more legitimate in the eye of the American people," he said.

Continue Reading...

The numbers are especially bleak for black men who engage in gay sex, or, in the parlance of the CDC, "men who have sex with men." Though critics charge that the sample examined in the study was too small at 400 to yield accurate results, the numbers are still startling. Fourteen percent of all black men surveyed were HIV positive, with particularly high infection rates among the young. Thirty percent of those ages 23 to 29 were HIV positive, which is more than twice the rate for Hispanic men and more than four times the rate for white men of the same age.

According to activists and black leaders in Congress, the CDC deserves blame for failing to adequately fund grass-roots minority organizations that could more effectively warn about the dangers of unprotected sex than traditional organizations.

Continue Reading...

Like all things related to the presidential election in Florida, the meeting quickly divided into an acrimonious debate between Democrats and Republicans , and those who believe in a Florida conspiracy and those who don't. While stopping short of saying there was a racist conspiracy to keep out black votes, Commission Chairwoman Mary Frances Berry, a registered independent, said the report shows the general sloppiness of the Florida election system had a "disparate impact" on African-American voters, and called on the Department of Justice to investigate further.

Contradicting Berry, and the report, at every opportunity was Abigail Thernstrom, the sole registered Republican on the commission and the first commissioner appointed by President George W. Bush. Thernstrom slammed the document for being full of politically charged rhetoric and broad assumptions of injustice with little statistical backup.

Continue Reading...

Barbara, Jenna's twin sister, ordered and was served a drink during the incident. She was charged with alcohol possession by a minor, and would be sentenced as a first-time offender if convicted.

But this wasn't Jenna's first time. She pleaded no contest to a charge of alcohol possession by a minor on May 16, making the Chuy's charge her second in less than a month. Now one Texas newspaper is reporting that this is the third time Jenna has run afoul of the law over alcohol, and could potentially put her in line for the slammer, thanks to the tough-on-booze policies her dad signed as governor.

Continue Reading...

While it might have looked like the Democrats were firmly opposed to Olson's nomination, the party, according a senior Democratic staffer close to the proceedings, could not recruit the requisite number of 41 to support a filibuster to hold up the Olson nomination. So when the roll call finally came, only two Democrats (Sen. Zell Miller, D-Ga., and Sen. Ben Nelson, D- Neb.) voted for Olson, but the other 47 who voted against him already knew he was a sure thing.

Olson's success was a remarkable reversal of fortune. When word spread earlier in the week that Sen. Jim Jeffords, R-Vt., would be abandoning the GOP to become an independent, it slowly became clear that the Democrats would win control of the Senate, and Olson's chances began to look grim. Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., predicted Wednesday that, under Democratic Senate rule, "Ted Olson will be practicing law, making a lot of money" in the private sector.

Continue Reading...

"Incoming staffers of the Bush White House," Grove wrote, were "apparently victims of a practical joke." Bush aides in the Old Executive Office Building (EOB), adjacent to the White House, discovered that "many computer keyboards in their work spaces are missing the W key -- as in President Bush's middle initial."

Some W keys were discovered "taped on top of the doorways," while others were broken.

The report was more cute than cutting, with Grove quoting former Al Gore spokesman Chris Lehane, who quipped: "I think the missing W's can be explained by the vast left-wing conspiracy now at work."

But within two days, Grove's playful item had morphed into one more full-blown Clinton scandal. Suddenly newspapers and TV news shows were featuring extensive reports of Clinton administration "vandalism," stretching from the EOB offices of former Vice President Gore to the West Wing. Reports alleged expletive-ridden graffiti, sliced computer and telephone wires, file cabinets glued shut, presidential seals steamed off doors, stolen pictures and so-called porn bombs, which were never exactly described.

Continue Reading...

Apparently, Democrats do. Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the committee, cited Olson's contradictory testimony about his involvement in the Arkansas Project, a mid-1990s anti-Clinton scandal hunt effort run by the American Spectator magazine that was also the subject of a federal investigation, as a reason he could not vote for the nomination.

But Leahy didn't try to block the vote, and the resulting tie would've killed Olson's bid in a normal year. But with the power-sharing agreement that party leaders worked out in the evenly split Senate, Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., can break committee deadlocks, and Hatch assured everyone that Lott would cooperate. That means -- unless the Democrats pursue the unlikely, but dramatic task of a filibuster -- the nomination will most assuredly go to the floor for a full vote.

Continue Reading...

Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, in a blistering letter to the ranking Democrat, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, didn't outright accuse Democrats of seeking revenge. Instead, he raised the possibility of a "growing public perception that the delay and partisan rancor on the Judiciary Committee ... is an effort to seek retribution for the results of the Supreme Court's decision in Bush vs. Gore, which Mr. Olson skillfully and successfully argued."

The letter from Hatch was in response to a letter sent to him Saturday by Leahy, requesting that the committee proceed "on a bipartisan basis" to investigate Olson's statements regarding the "Arkansas Project," an effort funded in the mid-1990s by billionaire Clinton-hater Richard Mellon Scaife, and housed at conservative journal American Spectator, aimed at digging up dirt on the Clintons.

Continue Reading...

The scheduled execution of McVeigh, who was convicted of killing 168 in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, has now been postponed to June 11, when he will be executed by lethal injection at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind. But McVeigh's lawyer, Rob Nigh, said that his client was frustrated by the events and might reconsider his earlier decision not to challenge the execution order. Meanwhile, families of those killed in the bombing expressed anguish at the delay.

Continue Reading...

Well, is Leo taking action? In a Yahoo Internet chat conducted in November 1999, DiCaprio promised he would do his part to improve the environment, "not only for the future of mankind, but for all living things," by buying a hybrid car, one that runs on both gasoline and electricity, within the year.

Feeling cynical and petty, we decided to find out whether he kept his promise, expecting to catch another full-time celebrity, part-time activist whose commitment had the weight of a faxed press release. We expected to mock him.

Continue Reading...

That nonanswer was good enough to get Bush into the White House, but it wouldn't be good enough to get him a student loan under his administration's higher education policy. On Tuesday, the Department of Education announced that it would enforce a law that would deny financial aid to students who answer "yes" -- or refuse to answer at all -- to one simple question: "Have you ever been convicted of selling or possessing drugs?"

Education Department spokeswoman Lindsey Kozberg said the Bush Education Department was just doing its job. "The department is bound to enforce the legislation," she said. "Our interest is in appropriately carrying out the intent of the law."

Continue Reading...

U.S. Ambassador to China Joseph Prueher sent a letter Tuesday night to Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan expressing "sincere regret" over the loss of a Chinese pilot and stating that the U.S. is "very sorry" for entering Chinese airspace and making an emergency landing on Hainan Island "without verbal clearance." The missive also asked Beijing to "please convey to the Chinese people and to the family of pilot Wang Wei that we are very sorry for their loss." Beijing leaders responded positively to the letter, which provided it with a way out of an increasingly messy diplomatic crisis with the country that holds the linchpin to China's plans for economic growth.

Continue Reading...

Congress and critics had waited a long time to sink their teeth into the specifics of the budget. Ever since Bush took office, Democrats had complained that, while he stubbornly clung to the idea of a $1.6 trillion tax cut, his plan to pay for it consisted of little more than some fuzzy math.

But since the $1.96 trillion budget plan was delivered to a vacationing Congress on Monday, critics and even administration allies have been underwhelmed. Rather than a bold statement of the new president's vision, or even a bold statement of his conservative values, the Bush budget made a meek entrance, characterized most by all-around ambivalence.

His budget is stuck in the middle. And while that might also be where most Americans consider themselves to be politically, it's not the ideal position for the new president's first budget, bereft of any strong advocates coming from any direction.

Continue Reading...

The confirmation hearing for Solicitor General-designate and noted Clinton hater Theodore Olson was a tedious affair, with Democratic senators repeatedly sniping with Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Orrin Hatch but barely landing a glove on Olson. As solicitor general, Olson would have considerable discretion in choosing which cases the administration pursues in the Supreme Court, and would be likely to argue many of the most highly charged cases himself. Consequently, Democrats have deep concerns about putting a stalwart Republican partisan in that job. And there's plenty of partisan raw meat in Olson's past.

Most recently, Olson was the lawyer for then candidate George W. Bush in Bush vs. Gore, the Supreme Court case that stopped the Florida recount. He has also sat on the board of the conservative journal the American Spectator, and has written several articles for that publication, shredding former President Clinton, the former first lady and their associates for everything from gross incompetence to serious crimes.

Continue Reading...

"Bush won't conduct formal news conferences," declared the Associated Press following Fleischer's remarks. Is this an unwelcome return to the days of candidate Bush, who tried to keep a tight control on questions and answers with his friends in the press? Not really, says legendary reporter Helen Thomas, who is building on her more than 50 years in journalism as the current White House correspondent for Hearst newspapers. She's covered every president from John Kennedy to Bill Clinton, and she tells Salon that she believes Bush is going to do just fine.

President Bush's administration yesterday announced that he would cut back on regular press conferences ...

But he had one today.

What do you believe was behind the announcement, and what do you think the effects of this change will be?

Continue Reading...