Who's Who.

• Author: THREADGILL, SUSAN
• Position: President George W. Bush's appointed cabinet officials and staff

What will life outside the White House be like for Bill Clinton's former staffers, the John Podestas, the Gene Sperlings, and the Bruce Reeds? A hint is supplied by Tony Snow, who remembers that during his last year as a speech writer for George Bush the elder, he received more than 400 Christmas cards. The following year, he received 25.

If there is, as some internal observers suspect, already a bureaucratic struggle over control of national security policies between Secretary of State Colin Powell on one side, and Vice President Dick Cheney on the other, the first two rounds go to Cheney. Powell wanted Tom Ridge for Secretary of Defense, Cheney preferred Donald Rumsfeld. Powell favored Richard Armitage for Deputy Secretary of Defense. Cheney wanted Paul Wolfowitz. President George W. Bush, of course, picked Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz.

In March 1979, Norman Mineta, the new Secretary of Transportation, was a member of Congress, the first Japanese-American ever elected from the continental United States, so he seemed like a natural for the guest list when Jimmy Carter's White House held a state dinner for the Japanese prime minister. But he wasn't invited. Why? The White House staff thought he was Italian.

Liberals already worried about conservative domination of the federal judiciary had their anxieties exacerbated by two recent reports. One, by Paul Bedard of U.S. News and World Report, says that the Bush team considers John Ashcroft to be the top choice to replace U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist. The other, by USA Today's loan Biskupic, says Lee Liberman Otis, a protege of Antonin Scalia and a founder of the right-wing Federalist Society, perhaps best known for its dedicated effort to destroy Bill Clinton, "is taking a leading role in the judicial selection process" for the new administration.

It has long been rumored that the big shots at our major dailies treasure their weekends and thus tend to leave the second team in charge of putting the final touches on the Sunday paper. The result has been that sometimes the Sunday news sections, in particular, don't reflect the best editorial decisions. This may be why, even though their staff had most of Saturday to contemplate Bill Clinton's pardon list, neither The New York Times nor The Washington Post deemed Marc Rich significant enough to include in the half-dozen photographs each ran with its account of the president's indulgences. This omission prompted a Sunday phone call...