Currently the No.2 Democrat on the committee, Hastings had been lobbying for the top post, supported by members of the Congressional Black Caucus. But critics said 20-year-old ethics questions would make him a lightning rod for controversy.

A former federal judge, Hastings was acquitted of bribery charges in 1983, but some judicial colleagues alleged he had fabricated his defense. The House impeached him in 1988, and the Senate removed him from the bench the next year.

A Pelosi aide said she offered Hastings nothing as consolation when the party assumes the majority next year, adding that Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Tex.), frequently mentioned as a compromise choice, isn't a slam dunk to lead the panel.

"You can say he's among the names being considered," the aide said.

Other Democratic aides pointed to Reps. Norm Dicks of Washington or Sanford Bishop of Georgia as likely choices. Both serve on the House Appropriations Committee.

Pelosi may also follow the 9/11 commission's advice by expanding the intelligence panel's authority to give it appropriations spending power, another Democratic source said.

In Washington, words are a moving target that conceal at least as much as they reveal. Doublespeak runs through the discourse on Iraq, terrorism and domestic matters to a point where it's hard to tell what is going on.

The libertarian Cato Institute recently took on the rising tide of fuzzy words in the fight against terrorism, arguing that whatever people think of what the government is doing, it would help to understand what the government is doing.

That is no easy task when the administration offers tortured definitions of torture, describes suicide by captives as "self-injurious behavior incidents" and labeled at least one suspect an "imperative security internee" when it became constitutionally questionable to hold him as an "enemy combatant."

Interrogations are debriefings.

Propaganda is a struggle "for hearts and minds."

The estate tax is the death tax.

The right to an abortion is the right to "choose."

And can anyone oppose the Patriot Act and still be a patriot?

"By corrupting the language, the people who wield power are able to fool the others about their activities and evade responsibility and accountability," Cato's Timothy Lynch argues in his polemic against doublespeak - an outgrowth of the doublethink and newspeak of George Orwell's "1984."

But nefarious "War is Peace" Orwellianisms are not the only impulse at work, by a long shot.

Some of Washington's bland euphemisms are calculated mainly not to offend. Just as Dead End signs have been replaced in some communities by No Outlet ones, congressional oversight investigators tend these days to find "challenges" in the behavior of agencies, as they politely put it, and not quite so many "problems" - how rude.

Marketing sensibilities long ago infiltrated, if not took over, the debate in Washington, a progression most vividly seen in catchy titles given to legislation. These are the same sensibilities that, in the marketplace, prompted rapeseed oil to be sold as canola oil and a delicate fish named slimehead to come to the dinner table as orange roughy.

Republicans came to power in the 1990s offering the American Dream Restoration Act and the Common Sense Legal Reforms Act. President Clinton pitched his Middle Class Bill of Rights. President Bush this decade defied anyone to stand against something named No Child Left Behind.

Republicans pitch elimination of the "death tax" because it sounds more populist than giving rich people a break by getting rid of the "estate tax" - the same thing.

Democrats will go to the wall in defense of abortion rights without uttering that unpleasant word, abortion. Instead, they are champions of "choice" or, in a less guarded moment, "reproductive choice." (The cause is advocated by progressives, formerly liberals.)

The wish to be technically accurate was behind the decision of the Agriculture Department this year to squeeze "hunger" out of the equation when considering how many people go hungry.

Hunger, in the words of advisers whose recommendations were accepted by the department, is "an individual-level physiological condition that may result from food insecurity."

The word "should refer to a potential consequence of food insecurity that, because of prolonged, involuntary lack of food, results in discomfort, illness, weakness, or pain that goes beyond the usual uneasy sensation."

In other words, it's not just the munchies.

The department reasoned it cannot truly measure hunger because it surveys households, and households do not get hungry - people do.

The terms "low food security" and "very low food security" replaced the old descriptions of "food insecurity without hunger" and "food insecurity with hunger."

The fight against terrorism brings its own evolving vocabulary and semantic arguments, starting with the question of whether the war in Iraq is part of it, as Bush says, or a distraction from it, as his critics contend.

The notion of "homeland security" was foreign to American ears until the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks and formation of a department with that name. Now it is an accepted distinction from the foreign-based military and intelligence matters that come under the mantle of national security.

The White House was less successful branding suicide bombers as "homicide bombers," an Israeli euphemism meant to emphasize the murderous nature of the act and deny the "martyrdom" claimed by those who blow themselves up. The term hasn't stuck.

And there is no more "stay the course" on Iraq. Bush found himself on the defensive when a phrase meant to convey a resolute stance came to be seen as inflexibility in the face of chaos. The rhetoric, at least, changed course.

During the 1999-2006 price boom, the industry drilled an average of 7 percent fewer new wells monthly than in the seven preceding years of low, stable prices.

The gasoline supply expanded by only 10 percent from 1999 to 2006, down from 15 percent in the earlier period.

Even in Bakersfield, which lives off oil, many suspect that the industry goes easy on supply for its own reasons. "They ain't trying: that's more money for them," snorted JaRayle Madden, a construction worker filling up his little sedan recently at a local Shell station.

This fast-growing city of 300,000 shuddered in November 2003, when Shell confirmed it would soon close its local refinery. Plant workers, consumer activists and public officials rose up in resistance, firing off letters and demanding meetings.

In these circumstances, surely the plant was worth something to someone, if not to Shell. After losing $57 million mostly in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the refinery was making money again, Shell acknowledged.

The industry , , ), D-Calif.

Shell's blunt tone beg, , ), D-Ore., got more vocal. They began to suspect that Shell wanted to shut the refinery to sell pricier gas from its bigger refineries elsewhere in the region. By taking a hit at Bakersfield, maybe Shell could come out ahead.

"They were trying to squeeze the market in every possible way," Wyden insists.

Shell spokesman Stan Mays denies that. He says it's "impossible to speculate" on whether Shell would have profited from closing the plant.

But he indirectly acknowledges that Shell didn't intend to make the refinery attractive for a competitor: "Who's going to want to buy it? We're not going to give crude supply with it."

___

It turns out that the industry exerts quite a bit of control over supply.

For one thing, it decides to invest in new wells and refining equipment - or not to. Though reserves have kept pretty steady, the oil industry taps those resources to varying degrees from year to year. The long price run-up first took off as the number of new wells abruptly dropped by a total of 59 percent in 1998-99, federal records show.

One consumer advocate, Mark Cooper, refers to industry-induced supply bottlenecks as "strategic underinvestment." He views references to "discipline" in annual corporate reports as a code word for going easy on supplies.

"Anytime someone talks about

discipline,' this suggests to me that they have market power. They're choosing what investments to make," says Cooper, research director for Consumer Federation of America.

There's evidence he may be right. A 2001 study by the Federal Trade Commission reported that some firms were deciding to "maximize their profits" by crimping supply during a Midwestern gasoline price spike. One executive told regulators "he would rather sell less gasoline and earn a higher margin on each gallon sold."

This year, the FTC reported that some oil companies were storing oil, instead of selling it right away, to await higher prices anticipated in the future.

The industry has shelved an average of 21 percent more unrefined oil from the start of 2004 through last June, the AP analysis indicates. Last spring, stocks of shelved crude reached their highest level in eight years, despite the fabulous riches at hand in high prices then.

Such a strategy could conceivably extend to drilling too. "If you think prices 10 years from now are going to be $100 a barrel, you might not be that enthused about producing as much as you can now," suggests energy economist Allan Pulsipher at Louisiana State University.

However upsetting to drivers, such tactics are usually viewed as legal. "A decision to limit supply does not violate the antitrust laws, absent some agreement among firms," regulators wrote in one FTC report.

Also, individual companies are freer to bottle up supplies without fear of losing business to competition, because fewer companies now control a production choke point: refining. Thanks to mergers, the top 10 companies now control three-quarters of national refining capacity, up from half in the early 1990s.

"A handful of very large companies realize it's in their mutual interest to keep prices as high as possible," says Tyson Slocum, an energy expert at the consumer group Public Citizen, founded by Ralph Nader . "I don't think they're sitting around a table smoking cigars and price fixing, but I think there are sophisticated ways to manipulate the market."

In Bakersfield, government regulators eventually began to nose around, wondering if Shell hoped to game the market. But the company finally hired an investment banker to scout buyers. In January 2005, it announced a sale to truck-stop operator Flying J, of Ogden, Utah, which also runs a small refining business. The price was kept secret. Shell did nothing wrong, federal regulators later decided.

Since the sale, drillers and refiners have been making profits as never before.

The back-to-back hurricanes along the Gulf Coast in 2005 crippled about a third of the country's oil-output capacity and a fifth of its refining - but only temporarily. For all its talk of supply challenges, the industry quickly arranged for more imports and avoided outright national shortages. But prices jerked upward.

In Bakersfield, Flying J's 350 refinery workers now process 2.7 million gallons of oil a day - as much as Shell did - in the churning nest of boilers, piping and stacks venting six stories above the scrubland.

"It's still a good refinery, good people, a lot of money to be made in the long term," says Andy Wheeler, the engineering manager transplanted from Louisiana. "There's still plenty of oil locally to produce."

The new owner won't discuss current profits but acknowledges making money. With limited oil from Shell, Flying J has kept its boilers busy with crude from other wells, also right here in the valley.

In fact, the refinery is so full of promise that Flying J has decided to spend several hundred million dollars to nearly double its gasoline output. It hopes to make about $85 million more a year in profit.

"Shell, in the last few years of operation, didn't invest any money into the place," says Wheeler, tooling past its giant storage tanks in his shiny SUV.

But the refinery's new bosses, says manager Gene Cotten, are "comfortable enough with the long-term crude supply to make that investment."

President Bush has pledged to work with the new Democratic majorities in Congress, but he has already gotten off on the wrong foot with Jim Webb, whose surprise victory over Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) tipped the Senate to the Democrats.

Webb, a decorated former Marine officer, hammered Allen and Bush over the unpopular war in Iraq while wearing his son's old combat boots on the campaign trail. It seems the president may have some lingering resentment.

At a private reception held at the White House with newly elected lawmakers shortly after the election, Bush asked Webb how his son, a Marine lance corporal serving in Iraq, was doing.

Webb responded that he really wanted to see his son brought back home, said a person who heard about the exchange from Webb.

"I didn't ask you that, I asked how he's doing," Bush retorted, according to the source.

Webb confessed that he was so angered by this that he was tempted to slug the commander-in-chief, reported the source, but of course didn't. It's safe to say, however, that Bush and Webb won't be taking any overseas trips together anytime soon.

"Jim did have a conversation with Bush at that dinner," said Webb's spokeswoman Kristian Denny Todd. "Basically, he asked about Jim's son, Jim expressed the fact that he wanted to have him home." Todd did not want to escalate matters by commenting on Bush's response, saying, "It was a private conversation."

A White House spokeswoman declined to give Bush's version of the conversation.

Lisa Jensen said she wasn't thinking of the war when she hung the wreath. She said, "Peace is way bigger than not being at war. This is a spiritual thing."

Jensen, a past association president, calculates the fines will cost her about $1,000, and doubts they will be able to make her pay. But she said she's not going to take it down until after Christmas.

"Now that it has come to this I feel I can't get bullied," she said. "What if they don't like my Santa Claus."

The association in this 200-home subdivision 270 miles southwest of Denver has sent a letter to her saying that residents were offended by the sign and the board "will not allow signs, flags etc. that can be considered divisive."

The subdivision's rules say no signs, billboards or advertising are permitted without the consent of the architectural control committee.

Kearns ordered the committee to require Jensen to remove the wreath, but members refused after concluding that it was merely a seasonal symbol that didn't say anything. Kearns fired all five committee members.

Carney took part in briefings at the White House and the Pentagon that disparaged the CIA for underestimating the relationship between Baghdad and the terrorist network. Vice President Dick Cheney and other administration officials frequently touted the findings to bolster the case for war.

Despite his background, Carney campaigned as an anti-war Democrat and said he got a "very warm reception" when he arrived at Capitol Hill this week to take part in orientation activities for incoming members. Carney is a lifelong Democrat, according to his press secretary.

"They are intrigued," Carney said of his fellow freshmen. "But I'm not sure all of them know about this."

Not apologetic
Carney's election underscores the conservative leanings of some of the newly arriving Democrats who have given their party control of both chambers of Congress for the first time in more than a decade.

Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., said she was disturbed by the work that came out of Feith's office but doubted that members would hold that against Carney. Eshoo said she met Carney this week, and "he seems really lovely."

"I think that in retrospect that what happened there is deeply troubling, and we're paying a price for it," Eshoo said. "But I don't want to cast judgment on him."

Carney, 47, is not apologetic about his work for Feith's unit at the Pentagon.

"I certainly stand by the fact that I believe there was some sort of relationship," he said in an interview. "On a scale from zero to 10, with zero being no relationship and 10 perfect operational coordination," Carney said, the Iraq-al-Qaida link was "somewhere in the 2.5 range."

That appears to be a more qualified assessment than the so-called Counterterrorism Evaluation Group presented to policymakers during a series of briefings in 2002. In one briefing slide, the group asserted that there was "more than a decade of numerous contacts" between Iraq and al-Qaida, and that there were "multiple areas of cooperation," possibly including the Sept. 11 attacks.

Didn't expect to win race
Carney, a reserve officer in the U.S. Navy and political science professor at Pennsylvania State University, wasn't expected to win his conservative-leaning district in eastern Pennsylvania. But his chances improved when the Republican incumbent, Don Sherwood, admitted he had a five-year extramarital affair and later denied accusations that he had choked his mistress.

Carney said he was initially a supporter of the invasion of Iraq but has been dismayed by the handling of the postwar insurgency. His stance hardened, he said, when one of his college students returned from Iraq and complained of how ill-equipped U.S. fighting units were.

"They had to scrounge Iraqi scrap yards for junk metal to weld onto their trucks," Carney said. "You cannot be supportive of that sort of thing."

Carney defends his work for Feith's unit by saying that many postwar conclusions are based on information not available to analysts in 2002.

Polls show a significant minority of Americans still think Iraq was somehow involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, but Carney disputes that his work contributed to that misperception or pushed the United States into war.

"I was one voice among hundreds talking about this," Carney said. "Ultimately, the decision to go to war rests with the president, and I am certain that the president had lots of information other than what I had."

Carney said much of his focus as a member of Congress will be on domestic issues, including health care and job security.

Still, he said he thinks U.S. intelligence agencies suffer from a lack of creative thinking, and that he has ideas about how to fix some of the problems.

"There are a number of things I'm looking at as committee assignments, and the Intelligence Committee is certainly one of them," he said. If selected, he added, "I think I would apply the same kind of rigor to those issues that we did in the Pentagon."