All at Sea in D.C. and Alaska

At the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday, Karl Rove’s aide, J. Scott Jennings, used a maritime metaphor in declining to answer questions:

"I hope that you can appreciate the difficulty of my situation," he said. "It makes Odysseus' voyage between Scylla and Charybdis seem like a pleasure cruise."

Very literary, but Sen. Pat Leahy, the Committee Chairman, was not charmed. "Mr. Jennings, I am not here to play games," he warned.

Jennings’ reference to a “pleasure cruise” may have been the final straw for Leahy’s frustration over not getting answers from the White House about the firing of the U.S. Attorneys.

But, while he and others in the political mainstream are sweltering in Washington, denizens of the Far Left and Hard Right are on actual pleasure cruises, enjoying temperate weather off the coast of Alaska.

Devotees of the Nation and the National Review are out there this week on separate but equal Holland America luxury ships, attending seminars and demonizing one another in first-class style at a cost topping out at $9489 for NR and $8657 for the Nation’s plebians.

Their schedules have been cunningly arranged to avert a possible Monitor-Merrimac kind of naval engagement, missing each other by a day in ports of calls such as Sitka, Juneau and Ketchikan.

Stars for the left-leaning sailors are Ralph Nader, actor-activist Richard Dreyfuss and former CBS news producer Mary Mapes, who was terminated after a to-do over a segment about George Bush’s National Guard service in 2004. Regaling the right are such charmers as John Bolton, Robert Bork and Dick Morris.

As they bloviate in cool comfort, no wonder that those like Leahy who are laboring in steamy Washington are getting a little testy. Karl Rove, Alberto Gonzales and the whole Bush crew are still sailing along, untouched.

Blonde Loyalty to Bush

Is there something in the White House water that deprives young women of free will and at the same time lightens their hair color?

The question is raised by Senate testimony today of Sara Taylor, following on recent public performances by Monica Goodling and Deputy Press Secretary Dana Perino.

In answering some and evading other questions by the Judiciary Committee, Ms. Taylor showed a familiar undeviating loyalty to the Bush Administration and its master political chemist Karl Rove while navigating the narrows between perjury and contempt of Congress.

Pressuring the former White House political director, Democrats have a perception problem of their own, the risk of old pols appearing to bully a sincere young woman into betraying her former bosses.

"Having worked most of her adult life for President Bush,” her attorney wrote to the committee beforehand, “she is unquestionably loyal to the president. If there is to be a clash, we urge the Senate to direct its sanction against the White House, not against a former staffer."

It appears that Sen. Leahy et al will get very little help from Ms. Taylor. If they want the truth about the U.S. Attorney firing scandal, it will take a legal battle about executive privilege to get Rove’s testimony under oath.

Meanwhile, watching Ms. Taylor today evokes speculation about how different Paris Hilton’s life might be today if she had applied for a White House internship.