A Tree in AG Contender's Past Could Needle Democrats

Usually, senators and their staffs pore over the past legal writings and scholarly pronouncements of nominees for attorney general to glean clues as to the person's abilities and inclinations. But one possible nominee might give the lawmakers a whole new body of work to explore.

Seems that back in 1999, a columnist for the right-wing magazine American Spectator ran the Clinton Legacy contest, "designed to identify the words or phrases" that "will best recall and sum up the . . . Clinton presidency."

The entries included the usual suspects -- "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky," and "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is."

But "there was one alert reader," our columnist wrote, " Jerome Hanson, who near his home in Winston, Oregon, discovered the rare Clinton fir tree, Abies clintonus erecti, a botanical depiction of the president's perennially alert condition. It's reproduced above for your delectation." There's a picture of a large tree with a huge branch protruding out from one side.

The columnist? Former solicitor general Theodore B. Olson, a leading contender for the AG job.

He certainly gets the Loop vote, but it's most unclear how the junior senator from New York will see it.

Ups and Downs in Crocker's Iraq

A lot of people -- including some on the Hill -- ended up in a collective daze after the endless hearings on Iraq this week.

But for some who had been confused about the administration's policy in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker synthesized it so clearly that the logic became impeccable, and open-minded people certainly were relieved to find that these guys really have a coherent plan for victory.

The epiphany came Tuesday afternoon when Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) questioned Crocker.

"The bottom line in all this," Bayh said, "is that the American people, particularly our servicemen and -women, but also our taxpayers, will be required to continue to sacrifice in Iraq for an indefinite period of time to allow Iraqi politicians to get their act together . . . to hopefully begin the process of reconciliation.

"What's your reaction to that?"

Crocker was ready: "There is a process underway that we've talked about in the course of the afternoon. It's bottom-up, to some degree. It's top-down, to some degree. And it's linkages between them."