Let's just agree up front that there's no augury or metaphor in it, but the fact remains that South Dakota Sen. Tom Daschle spoke at length for the first time about his new book, which is due out in November, at something called the Deadwood Pavilion. Addressing an audience at his state's first-ever book fair, Daschle said he wrote the tome, titled Like No Other Time, because he had "a compelling story to tell," adding, somewhat cosmically, that "history is not written at a constant pace. It is sometimes accelerated." "Accelerate," meanwhile, is undoubtedly what many Democratic senators -- perhaps Daschle included -- wish they could do with the number of days remaining in the term of their colleague from Georgia, Zell Miller. That's because Miller, too, has turned authorial; but where advance word on Daschle's book suggests that it will be a polite paean to his colleagues and their will to soldier on after 9-11, Miller's product (published in October) is of a different character. A...

It's not every investigation that lays its cards on the table at the outset, but the modus operandi of John Ashcroft, public eye, became apparent at the very moment the Justice Department got on the Joseph Wilson retaliatory leak case. As all signs pointed to a White House leaker, Justice announced that it would widen its net to look for suspects at the Defense and State departments. Now, in theory, it's conceivable that some neocon at Defense decided to out Wilson's wife. But State? Why stop there? Why not Agriculture? How about the Bureau of Labor Statistics? Not that Ashcroft's approach to the case is without precedent. We think, particularly, of the climactic moment in Casablanca, when Humphrey Bogart's Rick, the smoking weapon still in his hand, stands over the fresh corpse of Conrad Veidt's Maj. Strasser, while Claude Rains' Louis, the prefect of police, utters the immortal words, "Round up the usual suspects." A few moments later, in the film's final shot, Bogart and Rains walk...