The Political Grapevine: Swimming against the tide?

And now the most revealing two minutes in television, the latest from Special Report's "Political Grapevine."

Prying into more than mud and mold

Washington, D.C., residents whose homes were damaged by flooding during a recent torrential downpour have been taken aback by the questions asked by Federal Emergency Management Agency representatives who visited their homes to assess the damage.

One woman whose basement was flooded was asked to provide a tour of her whole house and to provide a complete inventory of her household belongings.  The woman told us the FEMA representative also wanted to know if she and her husband slept in the same room.

Swimming against the tide?

In arguing that the Bush tax cut is too big and will endanger important national priorities, Democratic leaders appear, for the moment at least, to be arguing against public opinion.

The Gallup organization reports that most Americans are "generally satisfied" with the Bush tax cut.  Gallup points to a new poll in which 47 percent said the tax cut was about the right size, 29 percent thought it should be bigger, and only 17 percent thought it should be  smaller.

Forty-four percent of those responding said the tax cut would not make much difference for the country, 36 percent said it would be a good thing, and only 17 percent thought it would be a bad thing.

I coulda been a contendeh

Tony Rodham, Hillary Rodham Clinton's brother, is nursing a broken nose, which he says looks like a watermelon, but he says he got the best of the guy who barged into the Rodham vacation home in Pennsylvania on Sunday and assaulted him.

Daniel Coyne, who's been charged with burglary and assault, says he attacked Rodham because he found him having sex with his girlfriend. Rodham told The New York Times that, well, he and Kellie Quick were sleeping on a couch, but he insists he did not have sexual relations with that woman.

FBI agent's letter -- revised

Last time, we reported that the FBI agents association had forwarded to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees a complaint that Gary Condit still had access to classified information.  It turns out that, while the letter came from an elected representative of the  association from Florida, the association itself did not send it, and the letter, while it could be construed as referring to the Condit case, did not, in fact, mention Condit by name.  We stand corrected.

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