Eleanor Clift

Southerners have a saying, "Bit dog always hollers." That's how Jody Powell, President Carter's former press secretary, responded when asked about criticism, coming mainly from Republicans, that Carter had overstepped the bounds of good taste in his eulogy of Coretta Scott King by mentioning that she and her husband had been illegally wiretapped.

Get ready for the divider, not the uniter, when President Bush delivers his State of the Union address Tuesday to a packed House chamber. It will be a ceremonial evening, with Chief Justice John Roberts likely to be joined by newly confirmed Associate Justice Samuel Alito in the front row to look up admiringly at the man who made their careers.After half the Senate Democrats voted to confirm Roberts, Bush figured he could lose a couple dozen votes and still get a conservative justice confirmed.

The governmental-affairs unit of the Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS) operates out of a tidy building by a park, not far from the Capitol. Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO, says HSUS is "not a Red Cross for animals," but he got a lot of face time on television after Hurricane Katrina hit, pleading with government agencies to help rescue the tens of thousands of animals left behind in the evacuation efforts.Pacelle explains that HSUS focuses on the policy issues that Katrina exposed.

The Alito hearing couldn't have come out better for the Republicans if the Supreme Court nominee himself had chaired the committee. Even though it was a Republican senator, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who brought Alito's wife to tears by asking her husband if he was "a closet bigot," the Democrats got blamed for hectoring the nominee with questions he wasn't going to answer.The shock of the rhetorical ploy briefly drove Martha-Ann Alito from the hearing room and gave Graham the stage to...

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is doing what he does best, tossing out oversized ideas that grab media attention. There's too much money influencing legislation, so Newt suggests banning all fundraising in the Washington metropolitan area.

No fewer than three esteemed political reporters from The Washington Post were in the audience taking notes on a steamy Thursday afternoon at a forum called "Reflections of a Blogger," sponsored by the New Politics Institute, a progressive think tank.

Hillary Clinton wants to be the darling of the left and the candidate of the center, and why not? More than any other Democrat, save one--her husband--she knows what it takes to win, and she fully and completely comprehends the opposition.Liberals went ballistic this week when Clinton called for a ceasefire among Democrats at a much ballyhooed appearance before the DLC, the centrist Democratic Leadership Council that helped elect her husband president.

Former White House political director Ed Rollins says if he were sitting in Karl Rove's job today, he would not be encouraged by the latest round of polls.

The wheels of justice are not turning smoothly for Gokal Kapoor, a Hindu who entered the United States illegally in 1997 after fleeing Afghanistan to escape religious persecution by the Taliban.

There aren't many sons and daughters of elected officials dying in Iraq. Army helicopter pilot Matthew Lourey might be the first. His mother, Becky Lourey, is a state senator in Minnesota and an outspoken opponent of the war.

Conservatives will have to decide who they hate more in 2008, Hillary Clinton or John McCain. That's how a veteran of the Reagan White House sizes up the current field.

At a Memorial Day picnic in Washington, the talk inevitably turned to Hillary Clinton and her likely run for president. "What motivates her?" one man wanted to know.

A Jewish friend after making her first trip to Israel said, "This would be a great place if they could figure out how to separate government and religion." I was reminded of her sentiments this week as the U.S. Senate began debate on two of President Bush's judicial nominees, Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown, hostages in the ongoing culture war between born-again religionists and the more-or-less secular society the Founding Fathers envisioned.When Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist...

With Iraq exploding in fresh violence every day, the Bush administration likes to cite Afghanistan as a model of what is possible. Laura Bush made a secret visit to the country on March 30 to meet with 800 women in a dormitory built with U.S. aid at Kabul University, where they are living while they train to be teachers.

His second term is in a sinkhole. The American people give him low marks on everything but the war on terrorism, and that's because there hasn't been a second attack on U.S. soil.

Tom DeLay is reaching Gingrichian proportions as a symbol of Republican Party excess, but DeLay is no Newt Gingrich. By almost any measure, DeLay falls short when he's compared to the Georgia Republican who led his party in 1994 to capture control of the House from the Democrats for the first time in 40 years.Gingrich was an intellectual, a college professor who thought in big and grand ideas, some of them offensive to the voters, like his plan to bring back orphanages.

Observing from afar, I had the feeling that California's Mr. Wonderful had lost his way politically. From a differently-abled politician who could bridge the partisan divide, Arnold Schwarzenegger had become Bush Lite, sinking in the polls and squandering the bipartisan goodwill he once had.My impression was confirmed on a trip to California this week, where I got a crash course in why bad things happen to good politicians.

There's not much for liberals to like about Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist when it comes to his judicial views, but you'd never know it listening to the left these days.

While the country watched Terri Schiavo, I watched my husband. He was in a hospital bed in our living room battling the ravages of kidney cancer that had spread to his bones and his brain.

The Republicans might want to rethink that memo of talking points they circulated last weekend about how intervening in the Terri Schiavo case is a "great political issue." The instant polls were devastating.

Condeleezza Rice says she is "mildly pro-choice," a position that dooms her candidacy for president in the Republican Party. No matter how high her spike heels, it's too big a reach for her to get the Republican nomination without being strongly pro-life anymore than somebody who is not pro-choice getting the Democratic nod.It's a litmus test for both parties.

After demonizing Tom Daschle, the Republicans defeated him, the first time in memory a Senate leader has been taken out. But whatever hard feelings he may harbor, Daschle set them aside when Bob Dole came calling.

Hillary Clinton is keeping unusual company these days. She was in Iraq with John McCain. She cosponsors legislation with South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who was one of the House managers pressing for her husband's impeachment.

There is a picture of Tillie Fowler at age six standing on the desk of the legendary Georgia governor Herman Talmadge as her father, another Georgia legend known as "Silver Fox," proudly looks on.

Politicians are so tax-phobic that Norquist is often called upon to rule on whether an effort to bring in more government revenue is a violation of the anti-tax pledge that Norquist created.

An aide apologizes that the memorial is not up to date. It only goes through November, and there's "a bunch more" to process onto posters with the help of the House printing office. "When you see their faces, it hits home," the aide says, noting that at age 32, she's a dozen years older than the 20-year-olds who gave their lives.

Conrad wouldn't reveal for security reasons where he watched the speech, but the next morning he was a guest of President Bush aboard Air Force One headed for Fargo, N.D., where the senator is one of two Blue Senate Democrats representing this very Red State.

Fast forward to 2005 and the most controversial first lady of modern times is a sedate senator from New York talking about finding "common ground" with abortion foes.

Maybe Rove put it out as disinformation, but what progressives are hearing is that he wants President George W. Bush to nominate Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, a consistent opponent of affirmative action, to replace the ailing and soon to retire Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist and to make it a right-wing twofer by elevating Justice Antonin Scalia, by far the most forceful voice of conservatism on the high court, to chief justice.

"We're not talking about 1994," he said. Back then, Democrats were so disheartened at losing the House and Senate that party donors pulled back. Kennedy recalled spending six hours at a fund-raiser in Miami and raising only $1,600.