The story goes that in 1982, when Mr. Schumer was a state congressman, he and his wife, CUNY vice chancellor Iris Weinshall, spent about $157,000 on an apartment in a prewar doorman building on Prospect Park West. It was a stretch at the time. "Now it's the only major asset we own," Mr. Schumer says in the profile, "but it's worth much more, probably ten times that."

He's quite proud of the appreciation. Back when senior Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar was just a candidate, she went on a bike tour of Brooklyn with Mr. Schumer. His antics made her daughter uncomfortable. "Chuck has a bullhorn, and he stops in front of his building and announces that he and Iris bought their apartment for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars and now it's worth ten times that much," she says. "And my twelve-year-old daughter pulled on my jacket and said, 'Mom, if you said that in Minnesota, you'd be in so much trouble.'"

Minnesota children are more discreet than their New York counterparts.

By comparison, Mr. Schumer's Capitol Hill apartment is seedy. "Our rats," says Massachusetts Congressman Bill Delahunt, who shares the place with Mr. Schumer, "scare our cockroaches." Mr. Toobin calls the place "famously unhygienic," noting that Mr. Schumer's clothes "look like they've been stored in tense adjacency to Chinese-food containers." His father, by the way, was an exterminator.

The last time very big banks decided to do a very large amount of lobbying on a very important issue—Basel III!—they got what they wanted.

This time around, the numbers are very scary. The S.E.C. is in charge of 95 rules on credit rating agencies, bonuses and derivative trading; the Commodity Futures Trading Commission gets 61; and the Federal Reserve, 54. Those agencies will be swayed by former colleagues who, back from the dead, are stronger than ever. "Government officials and lobbyists agree that former agency officials have a much easier time getting phone calls or e-mail messages returned from their old colleagues," says Mr. Lichtbalu, "and that access often extends to greater credibility in arguing their clients' positions."

But the best quote in The Times article belongs to an anonymous regulator-turned-lobbyist. "The answer is yes, it does," he said, asked whether his insider edge makes a difference. "If it didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to justify getting out of bed in the morning and charging the outrageous fees that we charge our clients, which they willingly pay."

For more fun corporate lobbyist reading, try Steven Brill's recent Time cover story, or this item on former Senate majority leader Trent Lott, whose new lobbying supergroup likes to think of itself as a "'mandatory first stop' for discerning corporate CEOs."

It was a pretty, harmless morning. The first floor of the Dirksen Senate office building was quiet while rows of reporters set up. A handsome couple from the Financial Times kept an upside-down bottle of hand sanitizer between them. The Times’ Louise Story had a mini-bottle of Diet Coke by her laptop. “I’m sure some people have excitement, but not me. I do war,” an editor for the Army Times said in the press office.

Cameramen swarmed around the empty table where the Goldmen executives would sit, then just stood there. A very pretty Bulgarian-born BBC producer ran her hands through her hair. The little-known Goldman Sachs major-domo John Rogers stood quietly by himself. He is said to resemble John Le Carré’s George Smiley, trench coat and all, but looked like another slightly rumpled reporter. A Senate staff member stood a few feet away. “Frankly, I’m a little afraid of them,” the staffer said. “They’re going to try to school the U.S. Senate, and make them look silly.”

The hearing began slowly. Four senators, less than half of the committee, were in their seats. Senator John McCain looked sour and thick. He faced down. Lloyd Blankfein wouldn’t appear for hours, but, thrillingly, the first group of Goldman witnesses included 31-year-old Fabrice Tourre, a vice president the S.E.C. charged with fraud this month, along with the firm. They allegedly allowed the billionaire John Paulson, who wanted to bet against the housing market, to pick bad mortgage securities that were then bundled up and sold to unwarned Goldman clients. Until now, no one had been quite sure what he looked like: In person, he was handsome, wearing a nicely cut suit with a smart tie.

Maureen Dowd, a few seats away from the hand sanitizer, chewed gum while reading along with the opening remarks from Senator Carl Levin, the chairman. She checked her BlackBerry, but her other cell phone rang: do-doo-do, do-doo-do. She took it out of her handbag and powered it off, but that made a little noise, too. She checked her BlackBerry again.

“At this time I would ask all of you to please stand and raise your right hand,” Senator Levin said. Mr. Tourre, known to all of the financial world now as “Fab,” is short. The sound of the photographers’ clicks was gargantuan. The Goldman Sachs opening statements were proud. “I would not have stayed if the people I worked with did not have high ethical standards,” former mortgage department head Dan Sparks said.

“Am I pronouncing your name correctly?” Senator Levin said to Mr. Tourre, saying “tour.”

“Uh,” he answered. “Yes, you are, Mr. Chairman.” The French-born banker sounded like Steve Martin playing a villain. His “suit” had two syllables. His “echo” was “eco.” He put his back into his opening statement, which wasn’t rude, but was italicized.

SENATOR LEVIN'S OPENING round of questions was more astounding. He started with a synthetic CDO deal called Anderson. “Instead of disclosing that you had half of the other side of the deal, half the short side, you did not tell them that,” he said. “Instead, you told your salesmen, ‘Keep! Pushing! The deal!’ Now answer my question. How do you get comfortable with these securities?”

“Clients who didn’t want to participate in that deal did not,” Mr. Sparks answered. He was calm and succinct. Anderson was downgraded from AAA to junk in seven months, the senator said, and he moved on to another soured mortgage deal. “Look at what your sales team was saying about Timberwolf,” he said, reading from an email from former Goldman executive Tom Montag. “‘Boy, that Timberwolf was one shitty deal.’”

“Some context might be helpful,” Mr. Sparks said. He offered that the vulgarity had referred to his own performance.

“Come on, Mr. Sparks! Should Goldman Sachs be trying to sell a shitty deal? Can you answer that one? Can you answer that one, yes or no?” He couldn’t.

Shitty, shitty, shitty, Mr. Levin continued.

TIME BEGAN TO MOVE slowly in the Dirksen building. Senator Collins pressed the four to say whether Wall Street had a duty to act in the best interest of its clients. The answers were long and curvy. “I’m starting to share the chairman’s frustration,” she said.

Senator John Ensign came in and out, carrying what looked like iced tea. The morning became afternoon. A protestor in a prison suit yawned twice. Ms. Dowd went out. Senator Mark Pryor asked if any of the witnesses’ personal actions contributed to the financial downturn. “Regret, to me, means something you feel you did wrong. And I don’t have that,” said Mr. Sparks. He was the group’s de facto leader. His voice was monotone, crisp, unexcited and unemotional. His answers were long and dry. The room stayed still. Three hours became four.

Even when Mr. Tourre admitted that he should have disclosed that Mr. Paulson had a role in building the deal that the S.E.C. has sued over, the momentous admission sort of melted into the rest of the testimony.

The room exploded when the gavel came down. “How do you sleep at night, Fab?” a protestor said, pressing up to him. He led an ocean of photographers out of the room, half-smiling.

Chief risk officer Craig Broderick and chief financial officer David Viniar, who came next, were even more leveled. Weathering the mortgage meltdown was much more mundane than betting on or against anything, Mr. Viniar’s opening remarks said. It was about positions and risk management.

Then something spectacular happened. When Senator Levin reminded the executives that his firm thought its deals were “shitty” as they were peddling them to clients, he asked what Mr. Viniar felt when he read that word in the committee’s exhibit book. “I think,” he said, “that’s very unfortunate to have on email.”

The room gasped. Here, cutting through the tedium, was true villainy!

Gorgeous and theatrical! An executive who was sorry not for what was said, but that it was recorded! On cue, because a vote on the financial bill had been called, the committee disappeared for a recess. Mouths hung open. The committee returned. When Senator Levin sat down, Mr. Viniar corrected himself; he took out the email part.

Just after 5 p.m., seven hours after the hearing began, in the middle of a senator’s speech, Mr. Blankfein entered the room. The hugeness of the crowd of photographers who gathered around him—their clicks making a noise that nearly drowned out the senator—was dreamlike.

But it was late. The group of protestors dressed in prison outfits left before he finished.

When the chief executive, reading from his prepared remarks, said that the day the S.E.C. announced the suit was one of the worst days of his professional life, it just didn’t sound like he meant it. As the hearing, which had just two momentary breaks, ticked into its 10th hour, the pugilism was long gone. One out of the 10 committee members stayed for the end.

It was almost serene. In the wake of one of the worst financial catastrophes in the country’s history, the chief executive of one of the most powerful financial institutions in the world sat alone at a table. But the circus had left. It was boring.

mabelson@observer.com

Need a movie to keep you company until you literally can't keep your eyes open? Join us tonight when we pass out to Children of Men [starting @ 10:30 p.m. on HBO2]

Why we'll try to stay up and watch it: We recently caught an interview with Clive Owen where he explained—and we're paraphrasing—that even if a movie has a great director, cast, crew and script, making it all gel into something grand requires an indefinable spark; a certain je ne sais quoi. Presumably he was preparing everyone for this weekend's sure-to-be dud The International, a movie surprisingly overloaded with talent both in front of the camera (Mr. Owen and co-star Naomi Watts) and behind (Run Lola Run director Tom Tykwer). But, on the flip side, he could have just as easily been referring to Children of Men. Despite featuring exceptional people littered all over its IMDb page, there is something else entirely that makes the 2006 film excel. It's a feeling we can't really put into words, other than to say that when you watch Children of Men, you immediately realize you are witnessing one of the greatest motion pictures ever produced. Apologies for the hyperbole; you could say we just really love this movie.

The shame of it all is that Children of Men is one of those films that just fell through the cracks—despite mostly strong reviews, its box office was underwhelming and awards recognition was nonexistent. Perhaps, like Revolutionary Road, it was just too difficult and unsettling for the masses to put their weight behind. While the premise isn't much deeper than an episode of The Twilight Zone—at some point in the near future, women will become infertile for an unexplained reason, putting humanity on the local train to extinction—the execution is frighteningly believable and sadly realistic. Terrorist attacks have leveled most of the major cities; the world economy is destroyed; the separation between the rich and poor is as wide as the Grand Canyon; and immigrants are rounded up and put into ghettos. There are at least five times during Children of Men when you may burst into tears over something happening on screen. You may even tear up if you watch the trailer. Suffice it to say, Paul Blart: Mall Cop, this is not.

And, at the center of it all is Clive Owen. He's the antihero; the unwilling everyman who gets thrown into a situation that, at first, he isn't necessarily very interested in. If George Clooney is our version of Cary Grant, then consider Mr. Owen this decade's Humphrey Bogart, albeit way better-looking and English.

When we'll probably fall asleep: From a technical standpoint, the hallmarks of Children of Men are the minutes-long tracking shots that spread throughout the film. Director Alfonso Cuarón and his cinematographer, the brilliant Emmanuel Lubezki, pretty much rewrite the laws of film with what they do here. Of course everyone talks about the scene when Julianne Moore … well, we won't spoil it on the chance you haven't seen it. But we'll clearly stay awake to see that scene. Most likely, we'll make it all the way to 12:15 a.m., about 105 minutes into the film, when Mr. Owen must risk life and limb to save the last baby on earth. Roughly seven minutes in length, this scene is actually two different shots digitally spliced together to make it appear uncut. But, we'll let the sleight of hand trickery go just this once. After all, Mr. Cuarón created such an exceptional film that he's allowed to take a shortcut.

 "I have a job, I'm the attorney general of the State of New York, I have my hands full doing it, I enjoy doing it," he said after announcing proposals to reduce the size of local government. "I don't think it's appropriate for me to be commenting on the governor's process. I don't think it's helpful, I don't think it's productive, and I think the governor was right to say there's a media frenzy on it."

Cuomo added it would be "presumptuous" to say whether or not he was interested in the seat. His name was mentioned early on as a potential replacement for Clinton, because of his name recognition, experience, and the belief that his elevation to the post would behoove the governor politically.

A poll released earlier this week found Cuomo is now tied among New York voters with Caroline Kennedy - the daughter of the assassinated president - as top choice to replace Clinton. Kennedy reportedly spoke with the governor about the seat.

Cuomo was also asked whether he believed Kennedy was qualified, and said only "that's up to the governor." (See video below)

Earlier this week, Comptroller Tom DiNapoli was more direct.

"I'm not going to speculate on the speculation on that situation, but what is not under speculation is that I am the governor of the state of New York, and I want to run for re-election as governor in 2010, and we have a very difficult economic situation that was further complicated by a change in our executive branch earlier this year," he said on a conference call with reporters earlier today.

He said this year's budget was a particular challenge because of economic woes and because it was drawn up in the wake of Eliot Spitzer's resignation.

"While I'm very happy about that outcome, I wouldn't want to put the state through that again. I'm very happy being governor. I signed up for that possibility when I signed up to be lieutenant governor."

There are still plenty of potential candidates for Hillary's seat, with Paterson holding the right to make an appointment.

But it will be.

Read the whole thing here.

To the surprise of absolutely no one, President Bush is set to embrace his general’s long-awaited report, which calls for a gradual and conditional return to pre-surge troop levels—in essence, where things stood when voters registered their disapproval last November—by the middle of next year, with no adjustment of the overall U.S. mission in Iraq. Congressional Democrats will now try to cobble together enough votes to impose a different plan on the President—something they’ve already tried and failed to do twice this year.

There’s no reason to believe the third time will be a charm.

Start with the Senate, where the underwhelmed response of some Republicans to General Petraeus’ assessment suggests an opportunity for Democrats. Back in July, an effort to force a redeployment of most troops by April 2008 died when Democrats fell seven votes short of the 60 they needed to circumvent a G.O.P. filibuster threat and force a vote. Democrats have gained at least one vote since then, with South Dakota’s Tim Johnson at last returning after his December cerebral hemorrhage. But that still leaves them six votes shy of being able to force a vote—and all six of those votes will have to come from Republicans, since Democrats all voted together in July.

It is possible, in theory, that Democrats could win a handful of converts in the wake of General Petraeus’ testimony. Virginia’s John Warner, for instance, has expressed grave concerns about the war while staunchly maintaining that only the President—and not Congress—should make strategic decisions. But he seemed at his wit’s end Tuesday when he elicited an “I don’t know” from General Petraeus to the question of whether the mission in Iraq, even if successful, will make Americans any safer. Other Republicans who’ve previously stood with the White House may be similarly unnerved. Richard Lugar of Indiana has long afforded Mr. Bush the same deference Mr. Warner has, but said on Tuesday that “it is not enough for the administration to counsel patience until the next milestone or the next report.” Minnesota’s Norm Coleman and New Hampshire’s John Sununu are both facing re-elections in blue states next year. Mr. Coleman even told the general on Tuesday that he hoped for “a little something more” than the modest, unavoidable troop cuts he was advocating. Most notably, Elizabeth Dole, who hasn’t previously factored into the discussion of potential G.O.P. defectors, expressed an openness to “action-forcing measures.”

But whether those words will translate into support for legislation mandating a troop redeployment is questionable. This would hardly be the first time this year Republicans have mouthed skepticism only to side with Mr. Bush in the end. And even if lightning strikes and the next few days produce the magic 60 votes for Democrats, it still won’t matter a lick. The House, where filibusters don’t exist, would pass companion legislation and it would be promptly met with a presidential veto.

To overcome that, Democrats would need super-majorities in both chambers – 290 votes in the House and 67 in the Senate. And we’ve been down that road before, back in late April and early May, when the House, on a 218-208 vote, passed its first bill mandating a troop redeployment by April 2008.

Senate Republicans decided not to exercise their filibuster power, freeing the same bill to clear the Senate on a 51-46 vote. Mr. Bush then vetoed it, and it officially died when House Democrats mustered a mere 222 votes (only two of them from Republicans) for their failed override attempt. The math of the unwieldy House can be tougher to figure than that of the Senate, but it’s inconceivable that House Democrats have picked up 68 additional votes since then. In fact, there have been only two reported defections in the House since the spring—and they cancel each other out: Democrat Brian Baird of Washington now opposes the creation of a withdrawal timetable, while Republican Jim Walsh, who barely survived his 2006 re-election effort in upstate New York, endorsed the idea this week.

And imagining a scenario in which Senate Democrats secure 67 votes is even more absurd, requiring as it would the wildly implausible defections of safe-seat Republicans who long ago dug their heels in against any Democratic maneuvering on Iraq.

That leaves Democrats with some less-than-desirable options in the coming weeks. Some Republicans, like Ohio’s George Voinovich and Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander, seem willing to consider legislation that might redefine the U.S. mission in Iraq. But their support for any initiative will almost certainly be contingent on it not imposing any enforceable restrictions on the President’s decision-making authority.

There is also the “time-off” proposal, which would mandate that troops receive a month off for every month of active duty. It, too, died after a G.O.P. filibuster threat in July, but it might now represent a compromise that wavering Republicans could latch onto. But, again, Mr. Bush, who views it as a backdoor maneuver to force troop withdrawals, would use his veto pen—and, again, it’s unlikely Democrats could find those magic 290 House and 67 Senate votes.

These prospects will undoubtedly reignite calls from some Democratic quarters to end the war by cutting off funding. But advocates of this position make the mistake of assuming that Congressional Democrats share their missionary zeal for ending the war immediately and at any cost. They don’t, and if the party’s Congressional leadership ever advanced this proposal, they would suffer defections that would immediately render their tenuous House and Senate majorities meaningless.

All summer, many Democrats believed that September would bring a revolt from within the G.O.P., with the party’s Congressional rank-and-file jumping ship to save themselves in 2008. For the White House, General Petraeus’ job was to keep enough of them on board. It appears he succeeded.

So which will it be and what are his chances?

Ohio's governorship, currently held by Democrat Ted Strickland, will be up in 2010, as will the Senate seat now held by Republican George Voinovich. Voinovich is set to turn 74 in 2010, and on the surface, Portman's better bet is to hope the Senator retires, since capturing an open Senate seat may be easier than unseating a potentially popular incumbent Governor. And if - as the odds now suggest - a Democrat wins the White House next year, history strongly suggests that the 2010 mid-term elections will benefit the Republicans, thus boosting the Ohio GOP's chances in the Senate race. Also, given the trajectory of Portman's career- in addition to his post in the current Bush administration and stint in Congress, he also served in the first President Bush's White House - he'd probably be a better fit in Washington than in Columbus. (That said, one of his predecessors in the job of budget director, Mitch Daniels, is now Indiana's Governor.)

Still, Republicans might want to push Portman towards running for his old House seat, in Ohio's Second District. For Portman, that would probably be a dead end, but the Second District takes in some conservative turf and by all measures the seat should be a GOP stronghold, even in the current occupant, Republican Jean Schmidt, has proven herself to be a thorough embarrassment and an electoral liability. (In the 2005 special election after Portman left, she nearly lost to Democrat Paul Hackett, and last year she staved off Democrat Victoria Wulsin by just 2,500 votes, a two percent margin.) This is a district the GOP should never have to think twice about, but Schmidt's continuing presence on the ballot puts it in jeopardy and creates a drag on her fellow Republican candidates.

The problem for the GOP is that Schmidt seems to have just enough support to hang on to the nomination. Last year, former Congressman Bob McEwen challenged her in the GOP primary and lost by five points. But Portman is in a different class. He would almost certainly beat her in the primary and go on to take the seat in the fall, thereby relieving the moribund Ohio GOP of at least one of its many headaches. Portman could always make a run for statewide office from his House seat, but it's doubtful that he'd consider going back after a series of high-profile jobs.

So it looks like we'll all have "Mean Jean" to kick around for a while longer.

Neither the weak anti-war candidate whom she ignored in the Senate primary last year, nor the cloddish conservative Republican whom she trounced in the general election, could test her. While the national consensus against the war hardened, she hesitated. If her opposition had been more effective, she would be better off now.

Senator Clinton complains that when her opponents and enemies accuse her of vacillation, they are distorting her record. She says that her enthusiasm for invading Iraq has been exaggerated, but she still tries to show toughness by refusing to admit error. She says that the President should bring the troops home before he leaves office in January 2009, without acknowledging that she had previously opposed any date certain for withdrawal.

Today, she says that she wouldn’t have voted to authorize the use of force had she known in September 2002 what we all know now about the mythical arsenal of mass destruction. Two years ago, she said that she felt “no regrets” about casting that same vote. And yet she remains reluctant to confess—as former Senator John Edwards finally did—that she was wrong.

In fairness, it is true that as long ago as March 2003, Senator Clinton voiced concerns about the invasion that was then about to begin, and even expressed her preference for “coercive inspection” rather than pre-emptive war. When the moment of the invasion arrived, she made a generally supportive statement that included a forlorn yearning for “more international support” to disarm Saddam Hussein.

None of her murmured dissents and exceptions, however, approached the fervor of the speech she made this month on the Senate floor. “If I had been President in October of 2002, I would have never asked for authority to divert our attention from Afghanistan to Iraq,” she declared, “and I certainly would never have started this war.”

Like many Americans—indeed, like most Americans—Senator Clinton has changed her mind. Unfortunately for her, Senator Barack Obama didn’t have to change his mind. As her campaign rival, he is understandably emphasizing that fact. “Even at the time, it was possible to make judgments that this would not work out well,” he noted recently.

Then again, at the time, very few people cared what Mr. Obama said about the war, because he was only an Illinois State Senator and an aspiring contender for the U.S. Senate. He didn’t have to cast an actual vote to authorize the use of military force against Iraq.

Mr. Obama cannot say now that anyone who voted for that resolution is unfit to be President. In 2004, after all, he delivered a stirring speech seconding the Presidential nomination of Senator John Kerry, who voted to authorize the war—and who failed to explain that decision adequately during his stumbling campaign.

The most convincing explanation is simple and also happens to be true. When the President asked for the authorization to make war, he told the Senate that he would use that power to “keep the peace.” He said that the authorization was essential to force Saddam to permit the U.N. weapons inspectors to return to Iraq and fulfill the pertinent resolutions. He promised that he would invade only as “a last resort.”

Those false promises persuaded Senator Clinton and many of her colleagues to support the war resolution. There is no reason to believe that she was any more eager to inflict hell on Iraq than others who cast the same vote. She endorsed the potential use of force because she wanted the inspectors to return to Iraq, as she has said many times. She then watched President Bush terminate the inspections unilaterally, violating his pledge to seek a peaceful resolution. Trusting him was a mistake that she should no longer be unwilling to admit.

She would have fewer difficulties as a Presidential candidate—and her opponents would have fewer opportunities—if she had effectively addressed that error last year. Instead, she listened to the same circle of strategists and pollsters who stupidly warned her and other Democrats not to oppose the war too vocally, lest they appear “weak” and “defeatist.”

Is Senator Clinton strong enough to reject that kind of bad advice in the future?

She might begin to demonstrate that strength not only by opposing the escalation of the war effort in Iraq, but by speaking out against the provocation of a military conflict with Iran. She should lead the Democratic Party in demanding that the President reverse course and accept the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group: a negotiated reconciliation among the factions in that country; an eventual amnesty for the insurgents; diplomatic engagement with Iran, Syria and all the other neighboring states; and a plan for redeployment of American troops.

She can play an important role in preventing another foreign-policy disaster. She can prove that experience matters—by showing what she has learned from hers.z