Hillary

BOSTON -- Am I the only one in my homeroom class who thinks that Hillary Clinton would have to be nuts to run for the Senate?My fellow media majors are all salivating at the prospect of what they have collectively dubbed "The Battle of Titans." They actually want to see the first lady wrestle New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani for the same seat.Doesn't anyone else remember what happened to the original titans? The giant children of Uranus and Gaea set out to rule heaven and ended up overthrown by Zeus and his family in a disaster of, well, "Titanic" proportions.

WEST DAVENPORT, N.Y. -- Hillary Rodham Clinton began her Senate campaign yesterday on Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan's vast farmland, trying to take her own place on New York's political landscape with the blessing of the state's most influential Democrat.Introduced by Moynihan in the tiny upstate hamlet of Pindars Corners, Clinton kicked off the exploratory phase of her all-but-declared Senate run -- a highly anticipated campaign that would make her the only American first lady to run for public office.

WELL, SHE finally listened to us. It is only about time.After all the cheating and all the lies, Hillary took our advice.She is moving out on Bill.Of course, the first lady has had to pretend to be running for the U.S. Senate from another state (Who does she think she is kidding?) in order to save face in front of the nation, but Hillary is quitting Bill.We never thought she'd do it.I mean, she stuck it out for 25 years of marriage or two terms in the White House, depending on when you started the clock on the president's weakness of flesh.

PIERCE and Demi and Liam were there. And Quentin and Salman and Spike and Amber. I never actually saw any of them. I had to content myself with glimpses of Kevin Bacon's pouffy hair and Madonna's pouffy biceps.Descend with me to the seventh circle of buzz, the ground zero of zing, the hub of hip, the Sodom of synergy. Beneath the Statue of Liberty the masses, the tired and unhumble, yearning to be chic, huddled at Tina Brown's Talk party. In the glow of Chinese lanterns, here was the perfect Gotham froth -- the maitre d' of the Four Seasons and the window dresser for Barneys and the publicist for Kevin Costner.

SILVER SPRING -- Amid waving pompons and the roar of a school fight song, President Clinton found refuge yesterday in a gymnasium full of Maryland students, who greeted him more like a returning football hero than a president engulfed in controversy.With tiny British and American flags in hand, about 2,000 students at Montgomery Blair High School cheered Clinton and visiting British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who added extra star power to the event."If you get an education, you can live out your dreams," Clinton said as cheerleaders in red, white and silver provided backup.

WASHINGTON -- After dark on St. Patrick's Day, Bill and Hillary Clinton entered the East Room of the White House for Irish song, Irish readings and Irish oratory. The guests, who give the president much credit for the progress of peace talks in Northern Ireland, let out a hearty roar of approval."This is so good for the president," one top White House aide said as he surveyed the room full of Clinton admirers. "Just what the doctor ordered."It is now Week Eight since Washington was rocked by news that the Whitewater independent counsel was investigating whether a former White House intern had sex with the president and was asked to lie about it. Scarcely a day has passed since without a new accusation, damaging news leak or counterpunch from the Clinton side.

Christina Macy, a longtime assistant speech writer for Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, has assumed the mantle of senior speech writer to first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.It is quite a jump, from the part-time, No. 2 word-spinner in a mayoral office to the top speech-writing slot in the first lady's wing of the White House. Macy had been with Schmoke since 1988."I don't think it will be all that difficult for her as for the subject matter," said Harriet Scarupa, the mayor's chief speech writer and Macy's former boss.

WASHINGTON -- When Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived at a children's Christmas reading at the White House last week, it was not so much her chitchat with school kids that caught the attention of those watching, or her multicolored, embroidered Santa sweater and sparkly red-and-green earrings. Instead, it was a statement far more subtle.Ever so briefly, she held her husband's hand.Somewhere in that gesture -- a quick grasp of the president's hand as they left the East Room -- was a hint of defiance to those who would question a marriage under scrutiny and a presidency in crisis.

WASHINGTON -- The increasingly Gothic tale that is Bill Clinton's current crisis was missing a savory ingredient until his wife, breathing fresh life into the paranoid style in U.S. politics, blamed his problems on a "vast right-wing conspiracy," a phrase with an interesting pedigree.Joseph McCarthy, echoing J. Edgar Hoover's 1919 warning about a communist conspiracy "so vast, so daring," warned in 1951 about "a conspiracy on a scale so immense" that it was everywhere.Anticipating the Oliver Stone movie version of all this, Hillary Rodham Clinton supplied the "man on the grassy knoll" culprit.

BOSTON -- So it comes down to Bill and Hillary, man and wife, president and first lady, father and mother.Since January, when the name Monica Lewinsky came out of nowhere, Americans have repeatedly said, "If it's just sex, it's their problem." Now it is their problem. Her problem.All through this tawdry affair, there was one jury to whom the president couldn't bear to tell the truth. Not the 23-member grand jury, but the two-member mini-jury of wife and child. Now the president, husband and father says, "I intend to reclaim my family life."

There are plenty of reasons to be upset about what's going on in the Congo. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's angry response to a student who asked her what her husband thought about a matter of local importance is not one of them. The United Nations reports that there have been 200,000 acts of sexual violence in the Congo since 1998, 65 percent against children. Since January, more than half of the thousands of rapes reported were perpetrated by the Congolese army, according to Human Rights Watch.

LUANDA, Angola - -Hillary Clinton made the first visit to Angola by a U.S. secretary of state in seven years, trying Sunday to strengthen relations with a growing oil producer that is being aggressively courted by China. Clinton sought to emphasize the positive in her two-day visit, praising Angola's efforts to rebuild after a 27-year civil war that ended in 2002. But during a meeting in Parliament, opposition politicians urged her to press for more democratic behavior from President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who has been in power for three decades.

Quaid and Moore set to play the Clintons Dennis Quaid is lined up to play former President Bill Clinton with Julianne Moore as Hillary Clinton for a movie, The Special Relationship, that HBO is working on. The special relationship is between President Clinton and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who will be played by Michael Sheen. Spokeswoman Tobe Becker says HBO hasn't fully given the green light to the film. Facing eviction Isaiah Washington's landlord has started an eviction procedure against the former Grey's Anatomy star, claiming he owes $100,000 in rent.

BEIJING -Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said yesterday that she would not emphasize contentious issues such as human rights in talks this weekend with the Chinese and focus instead on topics on which progress might be more likely: the economy, climate change and security issues. Clinton's weeklong tour of Asia culminates with meetings in China, where she is remembered for a tough 1994 speech on human rights. But she said that after years of pressing Beijing, the dialogue on human rights, freedom for Tibet and accommodation with Taiwan had grown predictable.

JAKARTA, Indonesia - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Indonesians yesterday that she wants to open a "robust partnership" with their fast-growing country, President Barack Obama's boyhood home. Arriving here on the second stop of her first trip as the top American diplomat, Clinton also announced that the Obama administration intends to sign a treaty moving the U.S. closer to a key regional group, the Association of South East Asian Nations. The Bush administration declined to sign the treaty, a move that critics took as a sign of its lack of interest in the region and preoccupation with the Middle East.

TOKYO -In her first trip abroad as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton issued a sharp warning yesterday to North Korea over its threatened missile test, signed a military agreement with Japan and conferred with senior Japanese officials on topics that included the enveloping world financial crisis. But a 45-minute "town hall" meeting at the University of Tokyo also gave the country's chief diplomat a chance to project a softer American image. She avoided the phrase war on terror, which was standard terminology during the George W. Bush years.

WASHINGTON - Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton promised yesterday a new diplomacy that would give America "more partners and fewer adversaries," and signaled her intention to reach out to Iran and continue the uphill struggle for Middle East peace. At a five-hour Senate confirmation hearing, Clinton said she and President-elect Barack Obama would overhaul the approach of the Bush administration with a rejuvenated emphasis on diplomatic engagement, alliance-building and development.

But of course Caroline Kennedy will become the next senator from New York. Does she deserve it? Not really. Does that matter? Probably not. Ms. Kennedy's likely appointment to fill the seat being vacated should Hillary Clinton be confirmed as secretary of state is the sort of fait accompli Americans claim to hate, yet seem to find irresistible. We don't do birthright in this country - except when we do. John Quincy Adams and George W. Bush come to mind. We don't elect people on the basis of a recognizable name - except when we do. Who, after all, was Hillary Clinton other than the wife of a governor and president before being elected to the U.S. Senate from a state where she established a token residency?

WASHINGTON - It always seems like fun at the time. Then the photo surfaces. Two guys, some beer and a cardboard cutout of Sen. Hillary Clinton have created fresh grief for the young and uninitiated to Washington Rules. In the latest blog scandal-ette, Jon Favreau, 27-year-old wunderkind speechwriter for Barack Obama, was captured clutching the prospective secretary of state's, um, pectoral area, while a fellow reveler, wearing an "Obama Staff" T-shirt, nuzzles Mrs. Clinton's ear and holds a beer bottle to her smiling lips.

It's stunning how fast Bill Clinton's stock plummeted - faster, it seemed, than the Dow Jones industrial average after the fall of Lehman Brothers. When Hillary Clinton launched her bid for the presidency, the question was: How would she deploy "the greatest politician in our generation"? Unfortunately, a few ill-timed comments caught on tape during the campaign transformed Bill almost overnight into the crazy uncle in the attic, an embarrassment to be kept largely out of public sight. Early in her campaign, Hillary called Bill "the most popular person in the world" and vowed to use him as a "roving ambassador."