I had to call Attorney General John Ashcroft recently to ask if he had instructed his advance team to remove
naked lady statues and calico cats from his vicinity because they were wicked.

I know it sounds loopy. But with these guys, you never know.

Andrew Tobias, the financial writer and Democratic Party treasurer, had written in his Web column in
November that an Ashcroft advance team "had shown up at the American Embassy in The Hague to check out
the digs, saw cats in residence, and got nervous. They were worried there might be a calico cat. No, they were
told, no calicos. Visible relief. Their boss, they explained, believes calico cats are signs of the devil. (The
advance team also spotted a naked woman in the courtyard and discussed its being covered for the visit, though
that request was not ultimately made.)"

Mindy Tucker, then Mr. Ashcroft's press secretary, told me he had laughed and said it was silly.

I laughed it off, too. Everybody knows that black cats, not calico, are the sign of the devil.

But then a few days later, a friend who had worked with Bobby Kennedy at Justice and had attended the
ceremony naming the building for R.F.K., told me that the Art Deco statue of Justice, 12 feet high, buxom and
partly nude under a toga, which had been in the Great Hall since the department was built as a W.P.A. project,
had been hidden behind a "blue-nosed blue curtain."

Again I called Ms. Tucker. She said the curtains concealing the aluminum Spirit of Justice and her male
counterpart, the Majesty of Law, were just up for that one event.

Now it turns out the prudish curtains are a permanent fixture of the Ashcroft era _ at $8,650, $1,375 more than
the two statues cost.

On ABC.com, Beverley Lumpkin, ABC's Justice Department reporter, revealed that Mr. Ashcroft had decided
to throw the equivalent of a blue burka over the exultant "Minnie Lou," as the statue is fondly nicknamed, after
seeing pictures of her breast hovering over his head as he announced plans to fight terrorism. His new
spokeswoman, Barbara Comstock, said the drapes, a shade she calls "TV blue," are more photogenic than the
statues and the "yellow marbly color of the background." She said Lani Miller, an advance woman, had decided
to expurgate art for aesthetic reasons, and that Mr. Ashcroft was not involved.

"He doesn't look at his press coverage a lot, himself," Ms. Comstock said. "He spends his time dealing with
threat assessments and more important business."

But if he pays no mind to his press, why would he hide historic art behind "TV blue" curtains? Couldn't he just
move his podium over a little?

Everyone here knows that cover-ups are what get you in trouble, but they just keep doing it.

Dick Cheney has pulled a TV blue curtain over Enron and the rest of the energy industry's blueprint for
fashioning America's energy policy.

His highfalutin rationale is that the White House must "preserve the principle" of getting "unvarnished advice from
any source." Translated, "unvarnished advice" means a corporate wish list and "any source" is the wealthy white
guys who gave us big campaign contributions.

Who'd have guessed privacy would be the watchword of this administration? Justice Louis Brandeis, in a
dissenting opinion for a 1928 wiretapping decision, defined privacy as "the right to be left alone," to be secure in
your private life. Bush judges don't believe in that.

Mr. Cheney loftily argues that "privacy" means you can do things while hiding behind the cloak of anonymity.
But no one has ever said there was a right to remain private in the course of trying to influence federal policy.
That's one reason lobbyists have to register and why there are strict ex parte rules requiring disclosure of
contacts with lobbyists at many federal agencies.

The vice president and president are really concerned about the privacy of power. They want to do what they
want to do, and be accountable to no one. The stonewalling on the energy task force and the unilateralism on
Camp X-ray are two sides of the same coin.

The theme of Bush I is now the theme of Bush II: Trust us, even if we won't let you verify. We know we're
right. We answer to no one.

I, for one, want some answers. Let's start with those calico cats and Enron rats.