The Feb. 27 issue of The New Yorker carries an article by Jane Mayer about a loyal conservative Republican and U.S. Navy lawyer, Albert Mora, and his resistance to the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. From within the Pentagon bureaucracy, he did battle against Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and John Yoo, who then was at the Justice Department, and shadowy figures taking orders from Vice President Dick "Gunner" Cheney, arguing America had ratified the Geneva Convention that forbids cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of prisoners, and so it has the force of law. They seemed to be arguing that President Bush has the right to order prisoners to be tortured.

One such prisoner, Mohamed al-Qahtani, was held naked in isolation under bright lights for months, threatened by dogs, subjected to unbearable noise volumes and otherwise abused, so that he begged to be allowed to kill himself. When the Senate approved the Torture Convention in 1994, it defined torture as an act "specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering."

Is the law a law or is it a piece of toast?

Wiretap surveillance of Americans without a warrant? Great. Go for it. How about turning over American ports to a country more closely tied to Sept. 11, 2001, than Saddam Hussein was? Fine by me. No problem. And what about the war in Iraq? Hey, you're doing a heck of a job. No need to tweak a thing. And your blue button-down shirt--it's you.

But torture is something else. Most people agree with this, and in a democracy that puts the torturers in a delicate position. They must make sure to destroy their e-mails and have subordinates who will take the fall. Because it is impossible to keep torture secret. It goes against the American grain and it eats at the conscience of even the most disciplined, and in the end the truth will come out. It is coming out now.

Our adventure in Iraq, at a cost of billions, has brought that country to the verge of civil war while earning us more enemies than ever before. And tax money earmarked for security is being dumped into pork-barrel projects anywhere somebody wants their own SWAT team. Detonation of a nuclear bomb within our borders--pick any big city--is a real possibility, as much so now as five years ago. Meanwhile, many Democrats have conceded the very subject of security and positioned themselves as Guardians of Our Forests and Benefactors of Waifs and Owls, neglecting the most basic job of government, which is to defend this country. The peaceful lagoon that is the White House is designed for the comfort of a vulnerable man. Perfectly understandable, but not what is needed now. The U.S. Constitution provides a simple, ultimate way to hold him to account for war crimes and the failure to attend to the country's defense. Impeach him and let the Senate hear the evidence.

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Garrison Keillor is an author and the radio host of "A Prairie Home Companion."

To understand American policy in historical context we must divorce ourselves from the old paradigm that has been ingrained in us-America as a classless democratic republic. This is simply a popular myth used by the ruling class to deceive and subvert the working class into servitude. U.S. policy makes sense only when we examine its formulation as stemming from plutocratic interests, rather than democratic principles

America as we know it was founded upon the eradication of its indigenous people-the American Indians. When the declaration of independence was written, slavery was the institution that drove the economic engines of the country. The merchant class emerged as the ruling class-the farmers and the artisans fell into the working class. From its very inception, America was never a true democracy because it did not allow the citizenship a great proportion of the population-including non-white males, women and slaves. The founding fathers never intended to create a true democratic republic. This was the basis for what was to become a nation divided by class and gender.

Ironically, there was a viable democracy in operation during this period of colonial history-the Iroquois nation. Thomas Jefferson recognized this fact and sought to base the Constitution in part on these behaviors. But like all democracies encountered by plutocracy, the Iroquois nation was brutally eradicated. Democracy and plutocracy cannot peacefully coexist. Plutocracy is a doctrine of conquest and subjugation that cannot be reconciled with democracy. It was the elitism fostered by plutocracy that morphed into the doctrine of Manifest Destiny that drives U.S. policy to this day.

We are witnessing the continued attempted overthrow of democratic governments throughout the world by the U.S. led plutocrats-most notably in Latin America. But even as the pentagon sends our troops to conquer and subdue the people of Iraq (a feat it will never accomplish), Democratic Socialism is taking root in several South American Countries, including Venezuela, Bolivia, and Chile-and it is spreading.

The U.S. has a long history of covert actions against democratic republics. For example, a few years ago covert C.I.A. operatives succeeded in ousting Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez from office; but only for two days. The immense popularity enjoyed by Chavez is something that a puppet like George Bush and his minions can only envy. That kind of respect cannot be given-it is earned through service to the people.

Indeed, Hugo Chavez and other Lain American leaders pose a viable threat to the United States, but not for the reasons we are told. The threat is not against the people of the U.S.; it is against plutocratic rule. Removing control from a privileged few and placing power in the hands of the people, would eliminate the class divisions that have always characterized America. Colossal wealth would no longer be concentrated among the top one or two percent of society-it would be equitably distributed among the people for the good of the Commonwealth.

America's ruling elite cannot abide even the least vestige of a true democratic republic. They rail against democracy wherever they find it, as evidenced by countless U.S. sponsored acts of terror around the world. These often covert actions virtually always occur against left leaning governments that are not amendable to exploitation of their natural resources and human labor by U.S. business interests. This is what is meant when the president and cabal speak of 'protecting American interests.' They are referring to their own hold on power and wealth, not the welfare of the republic, as is so widely assumed.

The U.S. plutocracy has a long and bloody history of fomenting upheaval and violence against Democratic Socialism. For example, on September 11, 1973 a U.S. backed coup d' etat was carried out against Chilean president Salvador Allende, in which the Popular Unity (socialist) government was overthrown, and Allende was assassinated. President Allende was replaced by Augusto Pinochet, a brutal dictator who with C.I.A. backing tortured and murdered thousands of people. Pinochet is the kind of man the U.S. always backs. His kind makes the host country safe for plunder by U.S. corporations. Look at the litany of brutal dictators the U.S. has supported all over the world. The list reads like a who's who of world class terrorists. How can this be reconciled with democracy?

The assassination of Allende is part of a familiar pattern of intervention that can only be described as terrorism. The C.I.A. is involved in creating instability and insurrections in democratic governments all over the world-your tax dollars at work.

It is the plutocrats who foment political instability in democratic societies, and conduct campaigns of terror in order to exploit and to conquer. Their purpose is to extend hegemony for the creation of private wealth. Let us call it what it is-empire building. This is Manifest Destiny in action-a supremacist ideology that provides the moral underpinning for conquest and exploitation. As we have already seen, it was this doctrine that resulted in the extirpation of the American Indians and sanctioned the institution of chattel slavery. The same misguided ideology is driving U.S. Middle Eastern policy.

As critical thinkers, we must ask ourselves whom these policies benefit and whom they harm. Is the conquest of Iraq beneficial to the average American? Is it beneficial to those who live in the Middle East; or does it profit corporations such as Halliburton and individuals like Dick Cheney? When the evidence is presented in this way the truth becomes obvious.

The ideological divide between plutocracy and democracy are philosophically and ethically irreconcilable. Plutocratic government serves those possessed of wealth and power by exploiting the middle class and the under class. Democratic government places the welfare of the people above profiteering. Seen in these terms, which kind of government do we have? Once again, the truth is made clear.

The divergence comes into clear focus when we contrast George Bush with Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez. During the height of Hurricane Katrina last year, George Bush went on vacation. Dick Cheney was fly fishing in Arizona. Condi Rice was buying thousand dollar shoes in New York. The clear lack of concern for the welfare of the Gulf Region's poor speaks volumes about the Bush cabal's priorities. Hugo Chavez offered aide to the people of the Gulf Coast Region that our own government blithely abandoned. Bush flatly refused Chavez's generous offer. What does this say about who George Bush serves?

This question can be answered by investigating another Bush policy. Last year Exxon-Mobil enjoyed a $36 billion profit, primarily through the outright theft of Iraqi oil, as the result of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. This is the largest single year corporate profit in history. Exxon-Mobil paid its CEOs handsomely, and its shareholders. But it did share the wealth. Bush responded by giving U.S. oil companies an additional $7 billion of corporate welfare by giving away oil from our public lands. Can there be any doubt about whom Bush serves?

Conversely, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is providing Citgo oil to America's poor at deep discounts ranging from forty to fifty percent. By now it should be clear that the president of Venezuela is doing more for our nation's poor than our own government. The corporate media has responded to Hugo Chavez's humanitarian aide with predictable cynicism. It is often reported that Chavez is only seeking to embarrass the president. However, this assertion does not square with the facts in the case. Chavez has a history of service to the people that Bush does not. Bush caters to the elite, his self proclaimed political base. Chavez is a servant of the people, especially the poor.

Nothing more clearly delineates the contrast between Bush and Chavez than their divergent social policies. Bush consistently chooses profits over people; Chavez places people above profits. Thus, in my view, George Bush is not worthy to carry Hugo Chavez's shoes.

Socialist Venezuela does not ransack its treasury or human capital on invading and occupying foreign nations in the service of empire. Conversely, plutocratic America sends its youth to serve as canon fodder for empire. Venezuela is not involved in the invasion of sovereign nations in order to pilfer their resources. As a result of a more humane social policy, Venezuela has the financial resources to provide health care to every citizen, and higher education to all who seek it. What does this say about our own national priorities? Whose interest do they serve?

Even the most florid language cannot conceal the obvious contempt the Bush cabal has for the poor, or the world's working class people. All rhetoric aside, their actions, as well as their inactions, speak loud and clear about whose interest they are protecting.

America has a lot to answer for. Despite the willful perversion of language used to conceal unpopular truth, the soul of a nation is revealed not by what it says, but by what it does. We are not the people we purport to be. Our actions, our policies, do not portray a democratic republic concerned with human welfare, the common good. They depict the will of self-interested plutocrats who will gleefully kill every one of us in order to expand their power and increase their personal wealth. They do not care about us. To them, we are expendable servants who exist to do their evil bidding.

Occasionally events occur that reveal transitory glimpses of painful truths that are ordinarily kept hidden from public view, as when lightning strikes in darkness and reveals the contours of a landscape. Hurricane Katrina was such an event. As that powerful storm wrecked havoc upon the Gulf Coast, the world saw with absolute clarity who this government serves. Unvarnished truth of this kind is rarely a pretty sight. Yet we must see it and recognize it for all that it is.

Because we have eyes does not guarantee that we can see the truth that lies before us. Vision requires substantially more than eyes-it requires heart and soul and conscience. Our eyes may be open, yet we do not see or comprehend the travesty that unfolds before us, the hoax that is being perpetrated against us by those in power. Let us open our hearts and our minds and admit the light of truth that much of the world already knows. Let us see, for the first time, perhaps, who we really are. We must then reconcile that vision with our own conscience.

Charles Sullivan is a photographer and free-lance writer living in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia. He welcomes your comments at earthdog@highstream.net.

When Jon Stewart hosts the Academy Awards on Sunday, he'll be center stage in front of TV's most mainstream audience.

No more hiding in the wasteland of late-night cable. No more playing the underdog. After this, he'll be firmly entrenched as a mainstream name in comedy.

Which is great, of course, for his career as a comedian. But how will it affect his role as a newsman?

Don't laugh. American culture, it seems, can't decide whether to classify Stewart as a comedian or a journalist.

Stewart's late-night newscast parody, The Daily Show, airs four nights a week in a time slot that makes it an alternative to local newscasts. Big-name media figures like Ted Koppel and Bill Moyers have indicated they respect his opinions and take him seriously.

And surveys show that an astonishing number of young people claim they get most of their news from watching The Daily Show.

As the anchor of a show that mocks the mainstream news media, Stewart has, in many ways, become part of the mainstream news media.

The Daily Show's Comedy Central Web site describes the show this way: "One anchor, five correspondents, zero credibility."

But there's a strange duality to Stewart's fame - just like there's a duality to his show. One minute, he's trading sex jokes with the show's correspondents. The next, he's exposing the day's political hypocrisy. One day he's a guest on The Tonight Show, telling jokes to push his book, a fake account of American history. The next, he's a guest on Crossfire, giving its hosts a scathing verbal beatdown for not tackling the issues responsibly.

Should we laugh at him? Or should we take him seriously?

Both. Because Jon Stewart's approach to the day's headlines - too funny to be serious, too serious to be ignored - just might be where real TV news is headed.

To tell the truth

First, let's get something straight. In case you think college kids are the only people who pay attention to Stewart, consider the guests who've appeared in the past few months: Tom Brokaw. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi. Sens. Barack Obama, John McCain and Barbara Boxer. Historians David McCullough and Michael Beschloss. Former White House counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke and former presidential envoy to Iraq L. Paul Bremer. John Edwards announced his candidacy for president on The Daily Show. And Time magazine named Stewart one of its most influential people of 2005.

In 2003, when Bill Moyers interviewed Stewart for the PBS program NOW, he introduced his guest this way: "When future historians come to write the political story of our times, they will first have to review hundreds of hours of a cable television program called The Daily Show. You simply can't understand American politics in the new millennium without The Daily Show."

Moyers later told Stewart: "I do not know whether you are practicing an old form of parody and satire or a new form of journalism. ... When I report the news on this broadcast, people say I'm making it up. When you make it up, they say you're telling the truth."

Did you hear that? Something strange has happened. The Daily Show, which doesn't try to be anything but fake, has gained loyal fans because of its truthfulness.

In a Washington Post online chat last month, media critic Howard Kurtz got a question from a reader who thought The Daily Show and its spinoff, Stephen Colbert's The Colbert Report, are better than real news shows about "holding guests to actual facts," more consistent about calling people on their lies and misstatements.

Kurtz agreed. Of course, the comedy shows have "the freedom to make stuff up," he said, and that fact shouldn't be ignored.

"But they certainly do a great job of nailing hypocrisy," Kurtz said, "in ways that much of the [mainstream media] doesn't even attempt."

(Example: When former FEMA director Michael Brown complained in a Senate hearing last month that he felt "somewhat abandoned" by those who have made him a scapegoat after Hurricane Katrina, Stewart remarked: "Somewhat abandoned. Not 'stranded on a rooftop waiting for someone in a rowboat to come and rescue you' abandoned, but abandoned.")

Stewart and his cohorts have done this so well, in fact, that they're sometimes mentioned in the same breath as major media figures.

Last month in London, The Independent critiqued a dozen of "the major American news presenters." Without apology, the story mentioned Stewart and Colbert amid names such as NBC anchor Brian Williams, CNN's Anderson Cooper and Elizabeth Vargas, the new co-anchor of ABC's World News Tonight.

Look who's watching

Stewart, who took over The Daily Show in 1999, doesn't claim any sort of news cred. He has repeatedly denied he's anything but a comedian. ("I am," he told Bill Moyers, "a tiny, neurotic man, standing in the back of the room, throwing tomatoes at the chalkboard. And that's really it.")

That doesn't mean news people aren't envious of his influence. At the Democratic National Convention in 2004, Ted Koppel - who was then still host of Nightline - talked about The Daily Show's impact on the culture.

"A lot of television viewers - more, quite frankly, than I'm comfortable with - get their news from the Comedy Channel on a program called The Daily Show," Koppel said.

And Bill O'Reilly, host of The O'Reilly Factor on Fox News, was miffed when the campaigning John Kerry skipped his show and headed straight for The Daily Show couch. O'Reilly admitted, only partly tongue-in-cheek, that he "took it personally."

"I mean, you've got stoned slackers watching your dopey show every night . . . ." he told Stewart, apparently a little irritated by the slight. "Eighty-seven percent are intoxicated when they watch it."

(It was later pointed out that, according to Nielsen Media Research, Daily Show viewers are better educated than O'Reilly's audience - more likely to have completed four years of college.)

'Changing media landscape'

So what does it matter if Stewart's got all this influence? After all, he's still on Comedy Central, right?

Well, the news business, in case you haven't noticed, is tumbling through some massive changes. Thanks to advancing technology and the declining economy, we have what people in suits like to call a "changing media landscape." The old institutions - newspapers, the evening network news - are faltering. New formats (blogs, TV on demand) are emerging. And while things are shaking out, there's room for a lot of changes. Which means that this Daily Show duality just might be the beginning of something bigger.

The Lilliputian Stewart doesn't look like he has the strength to turn the news industry on its ear. But that's just what is happening, says Darrell West, a political science professor at Brown University who studies politics and the media.

West doesn't even blink at the suggestion that Stewart, the king of fake news, might emerge as the new face of real news.

"It's already happening," he says. "Comedy has already crossed the great divide - they are in the news."

The confusion over Stewart - is he a comedian? is he a journalist? - is a symptom of this sea change in the news business, West says. "The line between news and entertainment has blurred over the last decade," he says. "You have a lot of people getting public affairs information from those late-night shows and Jon Stewart. And this is especially the case for young people - for some of those people, it's their only news."

No lie. A couple of years ago, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press surveyed Americans about how they get their political news. And get this: Twenty-one percent of young people (ages 18-29) said they regularly get their news from comedy shows such as Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show. ( And 23 percent said they regularly read a newspaper.)

The Annenberg Public Policy Center conducted a national survey just before the 2004 election; about 19,000 adults were asked six questions about the presidential campaign. Frankly, no one did very well: Overall, people got about 45 percent of the answers right. But those who said they're Jon Stewart fans did much better than average, getting 60 percent of the answers correct. In fact, Daily Show viewers got higher scores on average than people who said they regularly watch national news and those who said they read newspapers.

The next Dan Rather?

It's not too farfetched. In recent weeks, The Daily Show has touched on the cost of the war in Iraq; energy alternatives to reduce our dependence on oil; the Muslim riots over Danish cartoons; and the controversy over allowing a United Arab Emirates company to manage American ports. And, of course, Vice President Dick Cheney's quail-hunting incident. These headlines, combined with regular segments about the Middle East ("Mess O'Potamia") and world religions ("This Week in God"), give viewers at least a passing awareness of most major world events.

To survive, the traditional news media may have to embrace The Daily Show instead of trying to outdo it.

Already we're seeing changes in journalism stalwarts like the nightly network newscast. The traditional formula - a man at the anchor's desk, intoning the headlines with loads of gravitas and a serious expression - is starting to fade away. There's room for changes in format, and it's possible that comedy programs such as The Daily Show will begin to merge with more traditional news outlets, combining comedy and hard news.

If you look, you can see it happening now.

During the 2004 election, CBS Evening News regularly aired clips from late-night talk shows and The Daily Show, giving viewers a sampling of the latest political quips.

And last year, while CBS searched for an evening news anchor to replace Dan Rather, there was speculation - seriously - that Stewart might be given a role on the nightly newscast. When The Associated Press asked CBS chief Les Moonves about Stewart, he wouldn't rule out the possibility, pointing out that the network was trying to reinvent the news, "making it younger and more relevant, something that younger people can relate to. . . ."

It's not a crazy idea, West says: "Some young people trust Jon Stewart more than they do their nightly anchors."

And with the changes that are coming in the news business, Jon Stewart might someday be their nightly news anchor.


Show me the funny

Jon Stewart isn't full of one-liners. In fact, he often plays the disbelieving straight man, showing news clips and allowing his targets - primarily politicians and cable-news personalities - to make themselves look ridiculous. But here's a glimpse of the multilayered humor that delights Daily Show fans:

On Vice President Dick Cheney's quail-hunting mishap:"Near tragedy over the weekend in South Texas. Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot a man during a quail hunt at a political supporter's ranch, making 78-year-old Harry Whittington the first person shot by a sitting veep since Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton, of course, was shot in a duel with Aaron Burr over issues of honor, integrity and political maneuvering. Whittington . . . was mistaken for a bird."

Jon Stewart and Daily Show correspondent Rob Corddry, discussing Cheney's hunting accident (with allusions to the war in Iraq):

Stewart: I'm joined now by our own vice presidential firearms-mishap analyst, Rob Corddry. Rob, obviously a very unfortunate situation. How is the vice president handling it?

Corddry: Jon, tonight the vice president is standing by his decision to shoot Harry Whittington. According to the best intelligence available, there were quail hidden in the brush. Everyone believed at the time there were quail in the brush. And while the quail turned out to be a 78-year-old man, even knowing that today, Mr. Cheney insists he still would have shot Mr. Whittington in the face. He believes the world is a better place for his spreading buckshot throughout the entire region of Mr. Whittington's face.

Stewart: But why, Rob? If he had known Mr. Whittington was not a bird, why would he still have shot him?

Corddry: Jon, in a post-9-11 world, the American people expect their leaders to be decisive. To not have shot his friend in the face would have sent a message to the quail that America is weak.

On the Enron trial:

"The trial of Enron chiefs Jeffrey Skilling and Ken Lay began 4½ years after perpetrating, allegedly, the fraud that led to the second largest bankruptcy in American history. Why 4½ years? Because apparently it's harder to bring Ken Lay to trial than it is to invade two countries."

On the investigation into the White House leak that exposed the identity of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame:

"Last week, the investigation finally appeared to be making progress. Two reporters thought to know the name of the leaker - Matt Cooper of Time magazine and Judy Miller of The New York Times - wound up in federal court, subpoenaed by the special investigator. ... The tension mounted. Would the pair stand their ground as courageous defenders of the free press? Or perhaps arrogantly flout the law in the face of a federal investigation? Or would the story be too complicated and we'd all just focus on Tom Cruise? I mean, he's crazy. Did you see him on Oprah with his girlfriend?"

The vote was described by government watchdog groups and several lawmakers as the latest example of Congress's waning interest in stringent lobbying reform. After starting the year with bold talk about banning privately paid meals and travel, lawmakers are moving toward producing a bill that would ban few of their activities and would rely mostly on stepped-up disclosure and reporting requirements as their lobbying changes.

"Lobbying reform is going more the enforcement route," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "What's that going to do? Nothing much."

Yesterday, the governmental affairs panel spent most of its three-hour drafting session debating the Collins-Lieberman proposal. Collins argued that by hiring professionals to oversee lobbying reports and the investigation of ethics complaints, Congress would improve its credibility by ending the appearance of conflict-of-interest created by the self-policing of its ethics committees.

"The current system of reviewing lobbyists' public reports is a joke," she added.

But Sen. George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio), chairman of the Senate's Select Committee on Ethics and a member of Collins's panel, said the ethics panel does not need any help because it is already doing a thorough job of enforcing the chamber's rules. Speaking of the audits and investigations that the office of public integrity would undertake, Voinovich said: "The ethics committee is already doing those things."

With the backing of current and past ethics panel members in attendance, Voinovich proposed, and the governmental affairs committee adopted, an amendment that would strike the new office from the committee's bill while requiring more openness in the now secretive ethics panel. An annual report would list the number of alleged rule violations that are reported or otherwise dealt with by the House and Senate ethics committees.

Watchdog groups reacted angrily. "The cutting out of the office of public integrity really undermines this whole effort," said Joan Claybrook, president of the liberal group Public Citizen. Lieberman said he will try to get the integrity office approved next week when lobbying legislation is scheduled for action on the Senate floor. He said that he will be joined by other senators in a variety of efforts to get the lobbying bill back in the direction it was headed at the beginning of the year.

In January, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) was joined by leaders of both parties in calling for bans or severe restrictions on gifts, meals and travel provided by private groups. The proposed stiff limitations were the initial reaction to the political scandals involving Abramoff and members of Congress and their staffs.

But as the legislation has evolved and Abramoff has faded from the headlines, calls for bans have grown scarce, and expanded disclosure has become the centerpiece of the efforts underway. Two Senate committees this week have largely left undiminished lawmakers' ability to accept meals and travel, and the House appears headed in the same direction.

"Disclosure, transparency and oversight systems are the tenets we're interested in implementing," said Kevin Madden, spokesman for House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). Boehner succeeded Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), who was forced to step down as leader last year after he was indicted in Texas on campaign-money laundering charges.

"We're focusing on more disclosure, transparency," agreed Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), chairman of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, which approved its own disclosure bill Tuesday. The measure will be considered by the full Senate next week.

Some of the disclosure proposals are significant. The governmental affairs committee agreed for the first time to require professional grass-roots lobbying firms to report publicly how much they spend to influence government actions. Currently, only people who are paid to directly lobby lawmakers and their staffs must disclose their activities. Grass-roots lobbying is indirect lobbying to try to galvanize voters back home.

The bill would also require lobbyists to file quarterly reports, rather than the current biannual ones, on their activities, as well as a new, annual disclosure that would detail their donations to federal candidates, officeholders and political parties. In addition, lobbyists would have to disclose all the travel they arrange for lawmakers and all the gifts worth more than $20 that they give to them.

Lobbying reports would be filed electronically and would be accessible via the Internet, something that is not always true today.

On Tuesday, the rules committee approved its own set of extra disclosures. Its bill would require that meals accepted by senators and their aides be reported online within 15 days. That bill would also require that senators get approval in advance from the Senate Select Committee on Ethics for any privately financed travel that they accept. The trips and their main details would have to be disclosed rapidly, including the names of the people who come along on private aircraft.

So far, only one outright ban has been approved. The rules committee decided to prohibit lawmakers from accepting gifts other than meals from registered lobbyists and foreign agents. That would include such benefits as tickets to sporting events and the theater. House Republican leaders have not endorsed a similar ban.

Another serious restriction, approved by the governmental affairs committee, would slow what has been called the revolving door between government and the K Street lobbying industry. The provision would double to two years the time during which former lawmakers and former top executive branch officials would be barred from lobbying their ex-colleagues. It would also ban -- for a year after leaving their Capitol Hill jobs -- former senior congressional staffers from lobbying anyone in the chamber in which they had worked. Currently, staff members are prohibited from lobbying only their former offices during their one-year "cooling-off period."

But Lieberman said he wants to do more. He said he will try to curtail corporate-plane travel by forcing lawmakers to pay charter fares for their private airplane trips rather than the first-class rates that are allowed under current law.

This restriction was proposed during a debate in the rules committee earlier in the week but was defeated.

Actually, dozens of House seats are anything but safe if recent election trends are an accurate guide. Sixty of the 435 House districts were politically divided in 2004, voting for candidates of different parties in the races for president and U.S. representative. Twenty-one House incumbents were elected by less than a 5 percent margin two years ago.

Democrats need to capture 15 seats from the GOP to retake the House.

"Yeah, that could happen. But I'd still say the chances are less than 50 percent for the Democrats," said Texas A&M University political science professor Harvey Tucker. "It's a long way until the election. And it's still true that people hate Congress, but love their own congressman."

Yet Democrats find hope in the dramatic declines in popularity of President Bush and the Republican-led Congress. Bush's approval rating has dropped as low as 34 percent in recent polls, while approval of Congress has slunk to 27 percent.

Every national poll conducted in the last six months has shown Democrats running well ahead of Republicans _ sometimes by as much as 16 percentage points _ in the so-called "generic ballot" for the House.

The Gallup Organization last month reported Democrats are 7 points ahead, although survey editor David W. Moore said "experience suggests Democrats need at least an 11-point margin among registered voters to have a chance of gaining majority control of the House."

The University of Virginia's Center for Politics last month issued it's "dirty thirty" list of House districts that are "extremely likely to experience strong inter-party competition in November." Republicans currently hold 21 of these. But to hedge their bets, the scholars at the center recently issued a watch list of 20 other races that could quickly become competitive, 17 of which are currently in GOP hands.

"The watchword for parties holding borderline-competitive seats? Be on the lookout," warned the center's political scholars, David Wasserman and Larry Sabato. "Take a good, hard look at all kinds of House districts right now."

Charles Cook of the Washington-based "Cook Political Report" newsletter also has been adding names to his congressional watch list. He now estimates that 21 House seats currently held by Republicans are either toss-ups or are only leaning in the GOP's favor, while Democrats have 11 districts under similar threat.

Republican incumbents certainly go into the final months of the 2006 campaign with some important advantages _ fat campaign coffers and political districts that were carefully designed using the computer models to protect them.

"The people who drew these districts had access to all kinds of data _ records of the dominant vote down to the precinct level _ and the computers to manipulate and exploit that information," said Tucker. "The goal was to protect incumbents and the major political parties actually worked together to accomplish this."

And yet these advantages easily could be swamped if the winds of public opinion blow hard enough against incumbency.

"These structural advantages are probably sufficiently strong enough to withstand a political hurricane on the level of a category 1, 2 or 3," said Cook. "But, if the political environment looks like a category 4, those structures may not be enough to hold back the tide. If it's a category 5, those structures would almost certainly fail."

Cook said he believes the winds of anti-incumbency are currently at category 1 or 2. "Still, the elements are there to see the potential for a category 3, 4 or even 5. But it's not there yet," he said.

The last really big shake up of Congress was 1994, when 34 Democratic incumbents were kicked out in an angry backlash to some of President Clinton's policies and general irritation at Democratic domination of both White House and Congress.

"The very earliest signs of a wave in 1994 did not manifest themselves until late spring or early summer," Cook said.