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REPUBLICANS EAGERLY DECLARED that they weren’t surprised by Attorney General Janet Reno’s decision last week not to seek an independent counsel in the Democratic fund-raising scandal. It’s hard to find anyone in the GOP who doesn’t think the fix is in — that the Justice Department and Reno are twisting themselves and the law into pretzels to avoid siccing an independent counsel on Bill Clinton or Al Gore.

Republicans are fond of citing Reno’s own 1993 congressional testimony on the independent-counsel statute. At that time, the attorney general noted an “inherent conflict whenever senior executive branch officials are to be investigated” by the Justice Department. An independent-counsel investigation ensures the appearance of fairness, she said then. And exoneration by an independent prosecutor, should that be the result of the investigation, is more credible than exoneration by an official of the same administration.

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GEE, IN ALL THE EXCITEMENT of demanding that Attorney General Janet Reno seek the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate Al Gore’s fund-raising activities — including saber-rattling about possible impeachment proceedings against Reno if she didn’t — Republicans clean forgot to demand that she seek the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate Bill Clinton’s fund-raising activities. Oops. Imagine the embarrassment when Reno, having announced she was starting the 30-day clock on a preliminary inquiry that could eventually lead to a special prosecutor for Gore, also announced she was doing the same for Clinton.

In fact, however, the embarrassment was Reno’s. For months now, Reno has been probing the limits of her authority not to seek an independent counsel in the fund- raising scandal. Now she merely looks like she has blundered into it.

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SHORTLY AFTER THE 1996 ELECTION, a triumphant President Clinton met behind closed doors with congressional Democrats, who were, if not surprised, at least disappointed by their failure to retake the House of Representatives. According to news reports, the president told his fellow Democrats that unless they got serious about balancing the budget, they would never recapture the House. American voters would continue to see them as fiscally irresponsible.

Nine months later, with a surging economy serving as midwife, White House and congressional negotiators gave birth to an agreement that would balance the budget by 2002 — much sooner if the economy doesn’t sour in the interim. To each of the parents, the child is not wholly lovely, possessing too many features from the other side of the family: a cigarette tax, a new entitlement for children’s health care, locked-in levels of domestic spending — all things Republicans hate and Democrats love. From the right side come a lower capital-gains tax rate, expanded IRAs, reduced inheritance taxes, and more choices for Medicare. Everyone is beaming about the child tax credit — although Republicans had to get over their initial view of the credit at the low end of the income spectrum as a welfare payment, and Democrats had to give up on ludicrous calculations of income that mystically transformed millions of middle-class American families into “the rich” overnight. So it is that under the tutelage of Bill Clinton, a majority of Democrats in both the House and Senate voted to balance the budget at last.

Okay, so, the budget will balance, Wall Street is skyrocketing, families will have more money in their pockets: Now what?

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The Curious Case of Richard Ben-Veniste

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The Washington lawyer is the quintessential Washington type. He has the huge house in Wesley Heights or Potomac; the million-dollar partnership bonuses; the Rolodex with everyone’s private number; the squad of young associates who do the grunt work and call him Godfather; the easy intercourse with pols and corporate chieftains seeking free advice or high-priced counsel — and, of course, the ego to go with all of the above. He slips and slides in and out and around government, usually making his reputation through political work he can then sell on the open market.

The Washington lawyer comes in a number of shapes and sizes, from the avuncular Bob Bennett, now representing Bill Clinton in the Paula Jones matter, to the cerebral Ted Olson, everybody’s favorite Republican litigator. Perhaps the most interesting iteration is the attack dog — an in-your-face, take-no-prisoners type best represented these days by Richard Ben-Veniste.

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How the FBI Is Ignoring and Mishandling a Major Child-Pornography Investigation

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For three years now, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been running an undercover operation called “Innocent Images” that targets people who use computers to traffic in child pornography — and the results have been oddly reassuring. Innocent Images has nabbed over 70 people so far, from time to time generating headlines about the arrest of a truly vile perpetrator. But given the explosive growth in online services and Internet use — some put the number of users at 20 to 30 million — the number seems very small. And that, in turn, seems to vindicate those who argue that the problem of online smut has been overstated.

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FOR A COUPLE OF YEARS NOW, the investigation of Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth Starr has occupied a huge place in the Washington imagination. The investigation itself has been largely impenetrable, conducted in secrecy before grand juries in Little Rock and Washington by prosecutors who have kept their lips buttoned. Those not privy to the probe’s inner workings felt free to speculate at will, ascribing to it whatever directions, goals, or motives they wished in a kind of political Rorschach test.

For many Republicans, the independent counsel’s inquiry had become the repository of all the dark secrets of Clinton corruption. To be sure, it did not yield those secrets up in time for the 1996 election, when an angry electorate might have arisen to throw the lot of the Clinton crowd down the ethics sewer. But the day of reckoning was surely coming. Kenneth Starr, independent counsel, was the deus ex machina who one day would ring down the curtain on a fundamentally illegitimate and corrupt political machine.

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LAST YEAR, D.C. CONGRESSIONAL delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton liked to tell the story of her meetings with residents of the nation’s capital, lately a site of high and rising crime rates, failing schools, collapsing infrastructure, and impending municipal bankruptcy. The burning question on residents’ minds was, Should I stay or should I go? “If you’ve stuck with us this long,” she said, “don’t give up now.” Help is on the way, Norton was telling her discouraged constituents. And last week, the cavalry finally made plans to move in, with the announcement of a plan for a federal takeover of many city services.

But the help comes with a surprising twist. For when you combine the new federal initiative with the recent takeover of the city’s school system and budget by a congressionally appointed “control board,” you have a new reality: the end of “home rule” in the District of Columbia.

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A wake-up call for the GOP.

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Republicans are in a pretty good mood these days in spite of Bob Dole’s loss. Their party successfully preserved its majority in Congress despite an expensive and wildly deceptive Democratic onslaught against Newt Gingrich, Republican freshmen, and GOP efforts on Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the environment.

Conservative Republicans are especially pleased with the way the election has led to what the Christian Coalition’s political director has called ” philosophical upgrades” in Congress. Take the Senate. Retiring GOP moderates Mark Hatfield and Alan Simpson were replaced by the more conservative Gordon Smith and Mike Enzi. And “conservative” is the word to describe the three Republicans who picked up Senate seats formerly held by Democrats. Moreover, the one Democrat who unseated a Republican — prochoice Republican Larry Pressler in South Dakota, to be exact — is pro-life. In the House, the Republican membership has taken on a slightly more conservative cast. While moderate Republicans lost seats, rightwing Republicans increased in number.

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