Tilting at windmills.

• Author: Peters, Charles

"QUEER" IS NOW THE TERM favored by gay men and lesbians, according to Holland Cotter of The New York Times. The trend has been going that way for at least a decade. I hope it continues. I have no opinion about the word "queer," but I'd love to see "gay" restored to its previous meaning, as in the rifle of the 1940s book by Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough, Our Hearts Were Young and Gay. What a delightful word it was and how good it would be to have it back. Of course, my favorite gays are the blithe spirits for whom that word will always be perfect.

AS WE COMMEMORATE THE anniversary of 9/11 this month, you might be curious to know why the joint congressional committee charged with looking into the intelligence failures have made such modest progress. One reason may be the man who is in charge of investigating the FBI for the committee. He is Thomas A. Kelley, a former deputy general counsel of the FBI, whose skills seem more suitable to concealing the facts than to ferreting them out. As the bureau's contact for former Sen. John Danforth's investigation into Waco some years ago, he "continued to thwart and obstruct" the investigation. "This non-cooperative spirit was at the specific direction of Kelley," according to an internal FBI memo obtained by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), and reported by Richard Leiby and Dana Priest of The Washington Post. The memo concludes that Kelley had displayed "unprofessional conduct, poor judgment, conflict of interest, hostile work environment, and retaliation/reprisal" during the Waco investigation. Of course, it is possible that some brilliant congressmen--10 lashes for the first reader who says "oxymoron!"--were acting on the enduring truth that it takes one to know one.

LAST SUMMER, THE FBI DECIDED it needed someone to reform its record-keeping. After all, the bureau had been embarrassed by having to confess that it had misplaced thousands of documents in the Timothy McVeigh case. Guess who was hired to straighten out the mess? Arthur Andersen.

UNDER THE FARM BILL CONGRESS passed in May, some interesting "farmers" will continue to receive subsidies. David Rockefeller is now getting $352,187; Ted Turner, $176,077; and NBA star Scottie Pippen, $131,575, according to George Archibald of The Washington Times, who adds that the top 10 percent of farm owners receive two-thirds of the subsidy money, while the bottom 80 percent get just one-sixth of the total.

IT WAS HEARTENING TO SEE THE tough Sarbanes bill emerge largely unscathed from the House-Senate conference, as frightened Republicans, including W. himself, hopped aboard the corporate-reform train before it left the station. Unfortunately, we have to report that lobbyists got a couple of last-minute changes made that weakened two provisions. One was the requirement that board chairmen, as well as CEOs and CFOs, certify personally their company's financial statements. Now the board chairmen are off the hook. Why? Their reputation is part of the corporate image the public relies on when it invests. If they let their reputation be misused, why shouldn't they pay the price?

The other change involved a provision that held corporate officials liable not just for knowingly and willfully misstating company financial results, but for recklessly doing so. The second change left out "recklessly". As a former lawyer, this strikes me as the more serious omission. Corporate fraud is notoriously hard to prove. These guys are usually very smart and very skilled at not leaving smoking guns behind. The "reckless" standard means a prosecutor can get them even if he doesn't have the smoking gun but still has facts that so stink up the courtroom that any reasonable jury will know that the corporate official is guilty.

DEMOCRATS WERE THE MAIN opponents of the administration's attempt to give the Homeland Security Agency more power to tire poor performers than civil service rules now allow. The party's automatic genuflection to the public employees' unions is one of its great embarrassments. It puts Democrats in the position Republicans usually...