Bush White

Washington -- President Bush named his trusted White House counsel Harriet E. Miers, a Texas native with no experience as a judge, to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, sparking an outcry among conservative activists who had hoped for a hard-line jurist with clear ideological positions. Bush called Miers, a prominent commercial litigator in Dallas before she followed him to Washington, a legal "pioneer" who has worked to topple gender barriers. He said she would be an "outstanding addition" to the court.

WHEN THE State Department the other day declined to grant a visa to former Iranian president Abolhassan Bani-Sadr in time for him to start a scheduled American book tour, it only added fuel to the allegations, repeated in his book, that the Reagan-Bush campaign of 1980 made a secret arms deal with Iran to prevent release of 52 American hostages before that year's presidential election.State was quick to say that the decision had nothing to do with the book. Rather, it was said, the visa was initially withheld because Bani-Sadr was part of the Iranian government in November, 1979 when the hostages were taken in the American embassy in Tehran.

WASHINGTON -- Officially, the Bush White House considers David Duke a non-person, beneath contempt and beyond redemption.But behind the scenes, the Ku Klux Klansman-turned-Republican could be wielding major influence on presidential decisions for the next year. Mr. Bush may be forced to scramble to protect his conservative political base from Mr. Duke's seductive appeal to the economically squeezed and soured middle class.The glare of the intense Louisiana campaign gave the former grand wizard and Nazi sympathizer a very public base from which he is expected to launch a bid for the presidency -- #F probably against Mr. Bush next year.

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration, which has developed an array of communications strategies that bypass the traditional White House press corps, has a new Internet feature that allows anyone with a computer and a modem to put a question directly to an administration official. Inaugurated last week, "Ask the White House" enables the administration to deliver its message directly to the people, free of media filtering or analysis. Still, based on the first two online sessions, e-mail questioners are likely to get the same prepackaged answers as any reporter asking a question at a White House briefing.

WASHINGTON -- For the second time in a week, President Bush had to dramatically reverse course yesterday on a policy position advocated by members of his administration.His hasty rejection under pressure of a federal personnel directive that critics say would have subverted the purpose of the civil rights bill he was about to sign raised new questions about who is in charge of domestic policy at the White House.Presidential spokesman Marlin Fitzwater put the blame on White House Counsel C. Boyden Gray, who other aides said was promoting his own agenda at the president's expense by trying to achieve through regulation what he could not win legislatively.

Washington THE RESIGNATION of White House chief of staff John Sununu, beyond satisfying his critics on Capitol Hill, clears the way for the long-delayed surfacing of President Bush's 1992 campaign team. As long as Sununu remained as the dominating Oval Office gatekeeper with a critical role in the re-election effort, internal hostolity toward him kept progress frozen.Now it is expected that the key players already widely mentioned -- headed by Detroit-based pollster-strategist Bob Teeter, Secretary of Commerce Robert Mosbacher and former Nixon White House aide Fred Malek -- will assume open direction of the campaign.

Boston. -- My friend and I meet on the corner and fall amiably into our usual, laced-up, speed-walking pace. This morning, however, I notice that my fellow traveler is wearing a pinched look.We haven't gone a mile when she begins to complain, arms pumping and words flying. These are the phrases that I inhale in great aerobic gulps: ''President-bashing . . . media bias . . . making mountains out of molehills . . . give the guy a break.''At a red light, my companion finally stops and says into the city air, ''I cannot believe that I am becoming one of those people who complain about the media.

WASHINGTON -- The last Bush official to leave the White House today figures he'll walk down the driveway to the Pennsylvania Avenue gate and turn in his pass about 11.45 a.m. -- in plenty of time to catch a great view of Bill Clinton leading his inaugural parade."

Former White House chef Walter Scheib has spilled a state secret: The leader of the free world eats organic. Not willingly, mind you. But at first lady Laura Bush's direction, the larder at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. is stocked with the sort of pesticide-free, non-genetically modified fare you'd expect to find in a lefty grocery, not a righty White House. "Mrs. Bush told me early in the first term she was adamant about organics," Scheib, a holdover from the Clinton years who was replaced early in Bush's second term, told a crowd at Goucher College yesterday.

WASHINGTON -- While the world continues to parse President Bush's 16 little words in his State of the Union message on Iraq's alleged try to buy nuclear fuel in Africa, it seems to have ignored his latest contribution to, as he likes to say, "revisionist history." In an exchange with reporters the other day after the White House visit of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the president offered this to explain why he invaded Iraq: "The fundamental question is, did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program?