Who's who.

• Author: Threadgill, Susan
• Position: Brief Article

They may talk tough, but when it comes to a fight, it appears that Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) would rather turn tail and run. When CNN's "Crossfire," newly fortified with liberals Paul Begala and James Carville, re-launched in April, conservatives caused a stir by trying to encourage a GOP boycott of the show--prompted, insiders say, by DeLay and Lott.

Bruce Reed, the former Clinton adviser who's now president of the Democratic Leadership Council, drew the ire of Major League Baseball by penning a recent op-ed in USA Today, which questioned the league's purported financial difficulty and included this line: "If George W. Bush wants to become Teddy Roosevelt, baseball is the trust to start busting." That probably didn't sit well with baseball commissioner Bud Selig, whose ouster Reed proposed in a version of the piece which ran in the DLC's magazine, Blueprint. It certainly provoked Baltimore Orioles owner and heavyweight Democratic contributor Peter Angelos, who sent the newspaper an intemperate response, pointing out that the commissioner's Blue Ribbon Panel members--former Sen. George Mitchell (R-Maine), former Fed chair Paul Volcker, Richard Levin, and columnist George Will--studied and supported baseball's economics. Angelos did not appear to support any of Reed's reforms, several of them quite provocative, including Reed's generous offer to fill the commissioner's job, in the event that Selig steps down, until 2004 when baseball's next commissioner can assume the seat: George W. Bush.

It appears that confessed spy Robert Hanssen was not only feeding the Russian war-machine abroad, but the conservative war-machine at home. A 13-month probe of security vulnerabilities and violations at the FBI and CIA, ordered by FBI Director Louis Freeh and headed by former CIA and FBI Director William H. Webster, revealed that on more than 20 occasions, Hanssen performed computer database searches for confidential information regarding Hillary Clinton and Chelsea Clinton.

It is unclear exactly where the fruits of Hanssen's labor landed, but a good guess might be the syndicated columns of Robert Novak. Last July, Novak admitted to using Hanssen as his primary source in a 1997 column accusing Attorney General Janet Reno and the Justice Department of covering up campaign scandals. Might the two have discussed more than just the former attorney general? Novak's columns on "Filegate" and other Clinton scandals--an...