Cheney's Impeachment Literally Fell 'Off the Table'

Kucinich declined to say whether Conyers had given him an outright commitment, but he said: "I think Chairman Conyers has strong interest in holding hearings, and I'm hopeful that we will."

He said no one was more surprised by Tuesday's drama than he. "I was expecting that I would introduce the bill, and that it would be immediately tabled. I think that was a modest expectation."

GOP Has Hillary Clinton on Its Mind

It's not just President Bush who has already declared Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) the winner of the Democratic presidential nomination. GOP leaders in the Senate chimed in yesterday, saying that the Democratic nod is an all-but-done deal.

During a news conference commemorating the first anniversary of the Democratic takeover of Congress, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said, "I think the '08 election is going to be about Senator Clinton and where she wants to take America. . . . So the landscape, next year, in my view, is going to be about this new Congress and its presidential nominee -- in all likelihood, a member of this Congress -- and where [Democrats] want to take America."

McConnell, who watched his home-state Republican governor tossed out by voters Tuesday, said the 2008 elections will not be like 2006, "when they had a referendum on the Iraq war."

Separately, Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott (R-Miss.) told On the Hill that he's convinced Clinton will win the nomination. "I assume she's gonna," he said, adding that he and his Republican colleagues are already thinking of how they'll craft next year's political strategy around an anti-Clinton theme. "Sure, we're beginning to think in those terms."

But Lott acknowledged his own party's image problem: President Bush. Asked who would be the bigger drag -- Democratic nominee Clinton on her party's congressional candidates or Bush on his -- Lott demurred. After pausing for several seconds, he smiled and managed to say: "I don't know. It'd just be pure speculation."

Scandal Watch

Memo to Sen. David Vitter (R-La.): Stay away from phones; they keep getting you in trouble.

Vitter, whose personal phone number famously turned up on the client list of the alleged D.C. Madam earlier this year, admitted a "sin" after the revelations but suffered no other sanction from the Senate ethics committee or law enforcement authorities. This week, Vitter admitted committing a different form of hanky-panky with phones, and he was hit with a $25,000 fine by the Federal Election Commission.

Vitter's 2004 campaign, according to the deal he worked out with the FEC, paid for 490,000 phone calls to Louisiana voters on the eve of his victory. However, the Vitter callers did not properly identify themselves to voters and did not clearly explain that the calls were paid for by the Vitter campaign.

A Veterans Day Employment Plan?

Wounded veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan may soon have jobs waiting for them on Capitol Hill.

To mark this weekend's Veterans Day holiday, Pelosi has directed the House's chief administrative officer, Daniel Beard, to create an employment program for wounded war vets. Pelosi says she hopes the program will make the House a "model for other federal, state and municipal agencies to employ these talented, patriotic Americans to whom we are all greatly indebted."

The program was Beard's idea. He is modeling it on the Wounded Warrior Regiment established by the Marine Corps.

"As I met with the Marine Corps, it struck me that we have vacancies and they have trained, skilled people who are more than qualified to fill many of these positions," Beard said. "Helping them build a new career at the House of Representatives honors this institution, and it honors them."