By Al Kamen
Monday, July 17, 2006; A13

Who says that the Democrats aren't politically nimble, that they can't turn on a dime? Consider the pirouettes Wednesday by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.).

The duo were having a magnificent time berating Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) for wasting days of the Senate's time on "political" issues such as estate tax repeal, flag burning and same-sex marriage, rather than working on college tuition, gas prices and especially stem cell research.

Had the stem cell research bill, "passed by the House in a bipartisan way, . . . been sitting on the Senate calendar for more than one year as we meet today?" Durbin asked his partner.

"Thirteen and a half months," Reid said.

"Have the Democrats . . . asked" that it be acted on? Durbin asked.

"We have begged," Reid said. "I have been begging [Frist] to move this matter forward because people at home are crying for hope."

The tag team blasted "do-nothing" Republicans for 24 minutes on the Senate floor. Then an aide handed Reid an e-mail that Frist's office had sent 25 minutes before the Democratic assault.

"The Senate will take up the three stem cell bills on Monday, July 17," Reid read aloud.

"There's tremendous promise in stem cell research," Frist said in the e-mail, "and I've worked long and hard with my colleagues to bring this serious ethical issue to the floor in a way that encourages thoughtful discussion and deliberation."

"That is really good news," Reid said, "and I compliment and applaud the majority leader for allowing us this next week to go to stem cell research."

"Despite the fact that we've been pushing for a year," Durbin said, "I want to . . . congratulate Senator Frist. This is a bipartisan bill."

As Emily Litella would say: "Never mind."

Our man in Baghdad, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad , is one stand-up guy. Last month, The Washington Post published a June 12 cable from him 7to the State Department that recounted the increasing dangers and harassment faced by Iraqi staff working in the embassy's public affairs office.

All embassy cables carry an ambassador's name, whether written by the ambassador or not. This one, contradicting President Bush 's rosy assessments on his trip to Baghdad that same week, caused a bit of a fuss.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing last week, gave Khalilzad an open door to disavow it. "Now, we've seen your cable," she said, "which I'm sure you didn't write, but had your name on it --"

"No, no, I stand behind that cable," he interjected.

"That's fine," she said. "The cable in which [staff said] they're very worried."

"I salute the courage of the Iraqis who work with us," he said. "In the difficult circumstances, they come every day to the embassy and work. And that cable was a factual cable that I stand behind."

Remember the $60,000-plus fence to be put on the east side of the Capitol so tourists can enjoy a fine view while construction continues on the delayed Capitol Visitor Center? It came up again at the weekly bipartisan House-Senate leadership staff meeting last week on the center. There was much concern because of spiraling costs.

We've got to live within the budget, said Ted Van Der Meid , a top aide to House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), prime mover of the fence.

"Excuse me," Secretary of the Senate Emily Reynolds said, "I hope you won't take this as a cheap shot, but this is coming from the guy building the fence to nowhere?"

He took it as a cheap shot.

Funny thing happened last week at the Bureau of Land Management when someone in the communications shop tried to call up the National Public Radio Web site to review a report on BLM activities. The staffer got this instead:

"webwasher Notification

"Request Blocked by DynaBLocator

"Your request to URL 'http://www.npr.org/' has been blocked by the WebWasher DynaBLocator module. The URL is listed in categories (Music) which are not allowed by your administrator at this time."

Some employees suspected politically motivated chicanery against NPR. (The site apparently was not blocked in other parts of the Interior Department.)

The BLM communications office notified the information technology people that it needed access to any site that provides news, even if it belongs to a radio station that plays music at times.

We're told the IT folks said a non-political computer program was to blame for what the netminders called "blacklisting." The site was promptly unblocked, or "whitelisted."