House Aides

WASHINGTON -- White House aides have narrowed their search for a new Supreme Court justice to two federal appellate judges from New England, administration officials said yesterday.The two are Judge Stephen G. Breyer of Boston, who sits on the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and Judge Jon O. Newman of Hartford, Conn., of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.White House advisers say they expect President Clinton to decide by next week on a replacement for Justice Byron R. White, who will retire at the end of this term.

Wanted: Flexible schedules and telecommuting options for congressional staffers who frequently work more than 40 hours per week and seek a better balance between their work and personal lives. After interviewing more than 1,400 U.S. House and Senate employees for "Life in Congress: Aligning Work and Life in the U.S. House and Senate," researchers concluded that congressional staff members are less likely than private-sector workers to be satisfied with the flexibility in their jobs.

WASHINGTON -- A panel of appellate court judges yesterday authorized Whitewater independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr to investigate possible criminal wrongdoing by White House aides who obtained sensitive FBI files on more than 400 past employees of Republican administrations.Acting at the request of Attorney General Janet Reno a day earlier, the judges said Starr should expand his jurisdiction to look into the conduct of Anthony Marceca, an Army detailee and one-time political operative, and any others who may have participated in obtaining the records.

St. Ambrose Housing Aid Center, a nonprofit housing provider in Baltimore, said Friday it appointed a nonprofit housing executive from New Jersey as its new executive director. Gerard J. Joab, who previously ran the Newark and Jersey City Local Initiatives Support Corp. for the past 17 years, will start at St. Ambrose on Dec. 5. He also previously served as executive director for a group in Newark that developed units of affordable housing for low-income families. Joab, a Baltimore native, replaces Vincent P. Quayle, who founded St. Ambrose in 1968 and grew the nonprofit into a major proponent of fair housing practices in the Baltimore region.

WASHINGTON - The energy plan that President Bush is to unveil this week was written in secret, which might have helped his aides assemble a complex policy puzzle but also could lead him into a political debacle. Like many presidents before him, Bush prefers to develop policies in private, where he or his staff can solicit unvarnished opinions and make policy proposals before the political debate begins. And aides say publicizing his proposal Thursday will be just the start of a debate that will likely grow to include the public, interest groups and Congress.

WASHINGTON -- In a potentially damaging loss for President Clinton's legal defense in the White House sex scandal, a federal judge has rejected the argument that two Clinton aides do not have to answer some questions put to them before a grand jury.U.S. District Judge Norma Holloway Johnson, in a ruling mostly shrouded in secrecy, decided yesterday that the doctrine of "executive privilege" does not shield two White House advisers' discussions about how to deal with the Monica Lewinsky investigation scandal, a legal source reported.

WASHINGTON -- With Democratic members staging a walkout, a Republican-controlled House committee yesterday formally accused President Clinton of directing a widespread cover-up of the 1993 White House travel office firings, including his wife's role in it.At a stormy session at which members of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee tried to out-shout one another, Democrats accused the panel's chairman, Rep. William F. Clinger Jr., of abusing...

WASHINGTON -- The Whitewater special prosecutor, in a report greeted with relief by the Clinton administration, determined yesterday that no laws were violated when White House aides discussed a Whitewater-related savings-and-loan case with Treasury Department officials.In doing so, the special prosecutor, Robert B. Fiske Jr., cleared the White House in the one area of the Whitewater-related investigation that several Clinton administration officials said they had feared most.Some outside legal experts had predicted that if any indictment was handed down against White House officials, it would be over those discussions.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton is set to pick a member of his Cabinet, Interior Secretary Bruce E. Babbitt, for a seat on the Supreme Court soon, barring a last-minute change of mind, people familiar with the nomination process said yesterday.After one of the longest searches in history for a justice, the president reportedly has settled on Mr. Babbitt, a longtime political associate and friend, to take the seat to be vacated later this month by retiring Justice Byron R. White.From Capitol Hill to the White House, and in lobbyists' offices in between, it was a nearly unanimous view that Mr. Clinton has decided to pass over all of the judges on his list, preferring instead to have a more prominent, politically experienced figure whom he knows personally -- and that is why Mr. Babbitt has suddenly reached the top."

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton is the author of a new book outlining where he thinks the country ought to be heading.The president's contract calls for him to receive neither an advance nor royalties for "Between Hope and History: Meeting America's Challenges for the 21st Century."The book is coming out at the same time in the presidential election cycle as a book he and Vice President Al Gore wrote four years ago.That book, a paperback called "Putting People First," was a compendium of 1992 campaign promises.

Vincent Quayle knows the corrosive effect of foreclosures well, sitting as he does at the helm of a nonprofit group that helps homeowners in trouble. But he says the current foreclosure crisis is nothing compared to the damage wrought by the "blockbusting" that reshaped Baltimore and its suburbs in the 1950s and '60s. As African-American families began moving into historically white city neighborhoods, real estate investors capitalized on racial fears to persuade white homeowners to sell cheap, then rented or resold the properties for big profits to African-Americans.

Vinnie Quayle, who founded St. Ambrose Housing Aid Center in Baltimore 43 years ago, said Monday that he plans to retire from the nonprofit in January. St. Ambrose provides housing services ranging from counseling new buyers to renovating foreclosures to help stabilize neighborhoods. The group says it has helped more than 100,000 families since its 1968 founding. Quayle, president and executive director of St. Ambrose, said the nonprofit has hired a consultant to help find his replacement.

WASHINGTON - The Bush White House, long accused by outside critics of misrepresenting the facts to make the case for the war in Iraq and other matters, has launched a personal counter- attack against harsh accusations of "deception" from a longtime insider who worked closely with the president. White House aides past and present are strongly dismissing the words of Scott McClellan, who served as President Bush's press secretary and has written a book accusing Bush of misleading the public about the war and more.

With local emergency housing aid running out, the county will provide $50,000 more to help prevent evictions this spring and later will reopen the county's Section 8 rental waiting list, which has been closed since 2003. In an address to human services workers, Howard County Executive Ken Ulman said that although his budget for next fiscal year is not complete, he wants to preserve the 45 percent increase in county funding to nonprofits provided this budget year. "My goal is to maintain that increased level of funding.

NEW ORLEANS -- The federal government will extend housing assistance payments to victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita for an additional 18 months, officials announced yesterday, but residents will be required to pay a portion of their rent for part of that period. More than 100,000 households in the Gulf Coast region are dependent on government housing aid they have been relying on since Katrina and Rita struck in the summer of 2005, according to figures from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA.

WASHINGTON -- White House political adviser Karl Rove more than two years ago began seeking input from the Department of Justice into how many U.S. attorneys should be fired in the second Bush administration, according to new e-mails released yesterday that show a deeper White House involvement in the firings of federal prosecutors last year. The e-mails also show that the Justice Department was willing to defer to Rove on the matter. According to new e-mails released yesterday, Rove in January 2005 asked the White House counsel's office about its plans for the nation's federal prosecutors and whether it would fire some or all of them.

WASHINGTON -- White House officials met yesterday with U.S. Appeals Court Judge Stephen G. Breyer in a Boston hospital room where he is recuperating, signaling that the nearly three-month search for a Supreme Court justice may be winding down at last.Judge Breyer, injured in a bicycling accident, is expected to be released today from Mount Auburn Hospital and may fly to Washington for a meeting with President Clinton, aides said.The judge is believed to have recently edged ahead of Interior Secretary Bruce E. Babbitt as the president's choice to replace retiring Justice Byron R. White, and the meeting could seal the decision.

WASHINGTON -- Decrying the Clinton administration's "culture of secrecy," the House committee investigating the White House travel office firings voted yesterday to bring criminal contempt of Congress charges against current and former White House aides for refusing to turn over requested documents.The 27-19 party-line vote came after the committee was informed that President Clinton would invoke executive privilege to protect the bulk of travel office documents not previously turned over to the panel.

Former White House counterterrorism chief Richard A. Clarke called one liquefied natural gas plant in Boston a "ticking time bomb" and wrote that if a tanker on the way there had blown up, it would have "wiped out" that city's downtown. But he has also testified that a gas terminal proposed off the Massachusetts coast presented no undue risks. And Clarke - consultant to the firm proposing an LNG plant in eastern Baltimore County - said in an interview yesterday that an operation in Sparrows Point would be "safe."

NEW ORLEANS -- As billions in housing aid begin to flow here in the next few weeks, most of it will go to homeowners, who have been appointed by city officials as the true architects of this city's recovery. The renters of New Orleans, it seems, are on their own. Rents are skyrocketing across the city, up an average of 39 percent since Hurricane Katrina. The city has announced that it plans to refurbish only a small fraction of its traditional public housing units. Some neighborhoods are campaigning to tear down sturdy apartment buildings and build parks in their place.