And now the most intriguing two minutes in television, the latest from Special Report's "Political Grapevine."
FBI agents worried about blackmail
FBI agents, whose job it is to protect government security, are complaining to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees that Congressman Gary Condit continues to have access to classified information.
The agents, in letters to the committees forwarded by the FBI Agents Association, are worried that Condit may be subject to blackmail as a result of his relationship to the missing intern Chandra Levy. The agents' association, which did not publicly release the names of the agents, has been critical of efforts to force FBI personnel to undergo rigorous polygraph testing in the aftermath of the Robert Hanssen spy case.
The association notes that FBI staff, unlike members of Congress, undergo security background checks and have only limited exposure to classified information.
No "holds" barred?
Senate Democrats have quietly moved to block another Bush administration nominee. This time, it's Donald Shregardus, who's been nominated for the job of chief enforcement officer at the Environmental Protection Agency.
He has spent eight years as the head of the State of Ohio's Environmental Protection Agency and worked in the federal EPA under the first President Bush. He was approved by the Senate Environment Committee this month, but Democratic Senators Schumer of New York and Boxer of California have put a so-called hold on him indefinitely blocking full Senate approval.
They apparently want assurances that the administration will not back off lawsuits filed against alleged acid rain polluters in the Northeast, and they suspect Shregardus does not support such lawsuits.
Lambasted daily for secret spending
Remember the old adage that says you should never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel? It seems that Pennsylvania state legislature William DeWeese of Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, has done just that and is paying the price.
He is the State House Democratic leader and has control of a state fund used to pay staff salaries and other personnel expenses. The law doesn't require those expenses be publicly detailed or disclosed, but The Uniontown Herald Standard thinks DeWeese should release the information anyway. He won't.
And the newspaper has run an editorial attacking him every day for 80 days, blasting him for failing to keep what the paper says was a clear campaign promise made to the newspaper to publicly account for the money.
The Republican House leader, by the way, doesn't make public how he spends a similar fund.
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