Inside the Beltway

Uncivil politics

Regarding likely Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts calling President Bush and his crew “a crooked bunch of liars,” Rep. Jack Kingston, Georgia Republican, reasons: “Politics in general, in a republic like ours, is a substitute for civil war. It is a very important process.”

Pillow fights

“I do not want to take up my whole hour, so I am not going to go over the whole list,” began Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., New Jersey Democrat.

That’s a relief. Given the current boy scout in the White House, it would have been a boring hour.

Still, Mr. Pallone was the token Democrat tasked with taking to the House floor to decry President Bush’s “revolving door” of overnight guests at the White House — the same election-year prop our current president rightfully used against the king of slumber parties, Bill Clinton.

We’ve all read reports in recent days that Mr. Bush opened the White House and Camp David to dozens of overnight guests during the past year, including nine of his biggest campaign fund-raisers. But that’s about as exciting as it gets.

Unlike Mr. Clinton, for example, Mr. Bush hasn’t tucked Barbra Streisand between the sheets of the Lincoln Bedroom. Nor was there a pillow fight with Jane Fonda, another overnight guest of the previous president.

Mr. Bush’s guest list includes Mercer Reynolds, an Ohio financier leading the president’s campaign fund-raising effort, and Brad Freeman, a venture capitalist who heads California fund-raising. How exciting those bedside conversations must have been.

Hill inventor

A physicist and congressman, Rep. Rush D. Holt, New Jersey Democrat, couldn’t support House passage of the United States Patent and Trademark Fee Modernization Act.

Among other points, he says, the act will increase fees for inventors to obtain a patent or trademark, lead to decreased efficiency and accountability, and shift patents out of the hands of Uncle Sam to private commercial entities, perhaps sending U.S. jobs overseas.

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