Parallels

The House of Representatives voted yesterday to overhaul the nation's intelligence agencies along the lines recommended by the Sept. 11 commission, but the House bill also includes law-enforcement measures opposed by the White House. The House vote, 282-134, capped two days of bitter debate that contrasted sharply with the collegial approach by the Senate, which voted 96-2 this week to enact the 9/11 commission's recommendations for revamping the structure of U.S. intelligence.

For decades, their lives have run on uncannily parallel tracks: They all took up the harp at Philadelphia High School for Girls in the 1960s. They all went on to study with the same legendary harp teacher. And they all became principal harpists with major American orchestras. Yet one thing Ann Hobson Pilot, Paula Page and Susan Dederich-Pejovich have never done in all these years is play together. That will come tonight. Thanks to the American Harp Society convention here this week, the three former Philadelphians will finally get the chance to join forces.

Four decades separate the war in the jungle from the war in the desert, yet the current president from Texas sounds eerily similar to another president from Texas. George W. Bush says, "Now is the time, and Iraq is the place. " Lyndon B. Johnson said, "The time is now, and the place is Vietnam. " Bush says, "Bring 'em on. " Johnson said, "Nail the coonskin to the wall. " Bush says, "We are fighting that enemy in Iraq . . . so that we do not meet him again on our own streets, in our own cities.

It's the eve of a presidential campaign. A conservative Republican is in the White House. Putting his faith in big tax cuts, he has weathered a recession, and the economy is looking bullish. A slew of Democratic candidates insist that too many people are still jobless, and that the tax cuts are sops to the rich. But the Democrats spend much of their time sniping at one another, and seem poised to nominate a liberal Northerner who could lose the South. Meanwhile, the President's party is united, and the public sees him as a strong and likable leader.

One woman was killed, two people were critically injured, and three others were hurt yesterday when an SUV lurched into a line of people waiting outside a Wildwood Crest bakery. The accident occurred about 9:07 a.m. when Dorothy Burke, 60, of Bensalem, tried to parallel park in front of Britton's Gourmet Bakery at Pacific Avenue and Buttercup Road, police said. As Burke backed into a space, police said, her 2002 Ford Explorer suddenly jumped the curb and went into the line of people.

Peter Hobart, a Chester County assistant district attorney, has black belts in five martial arts, but flexing muscle in the courtroom is not his style. Combat is about conduct and is the measure of a man, he believes. Like Kenjutsu, or Japanese swordsmanship, which is Hobart's favorite of the martial arts, skill lies in knowing when to wield power and when to hold back. Which leads him to his just-published book, Kishido: The Way of the Western Warrior. Quoting a chapter, Hobart says it is "not about winning, but that justice shall be done.

Everyone is talking about the rain, which I'm as tired of as everyone else, but I believe the unusual weather provided me with two special blessings - because humans aren't the only ones who seek shelter. One soggy afternoon in late May, I noticed that our pyracantha had bloomed. Instead of the bright orange berries of fall, delicate white florets punctuated the dense emerald-green shrub. I decided that they would make a nice nosegay. I went to the kitchen drawer for my clippers and walked back into the living room, to the bank of windows where the pyracantha was putting on its show inches from the glass.

The feed is live, from deep inside enemy territory. The reporter, in full combat gear, is embedded with mobile infantry "roughnecks. " All around, there are men and women toting weapons, preparing for attack. The invasion has begun. If the 24/7 coverage of the war in Iraq has you in need of escapist fare, Starship Troopers (. 1/2 out of four) may or may not be such a great idea. Paul Verhoeven's $100 million sci-fi epic, adapted from Robert Heinlein's 1959 book and released to mixed reviews in 1997 (though this critic put Troopers on his year-end top 10 list)

In Belfast, a group of Irish Catholic teens on a joyride talk about a friend who got caught helping to steal "an Orangie's car" and setting it on fire. They joke about the harsh repercussions. The sectarian tension that's such a part of their life is a recurring theme in their youthful banter. In Philadelphia's Grays Ferry section, where racial tension has run high, the conversation among teens out for the night flits from dating to buying some stereo speakers on the street from someone who's from the neighborhood.

Now that Al Gore says he has "come to closure" over 2004, the truth can be told: He is the Democrats' Richard Nixon. OK, the parallel isn't perfect. Gore doesn't wiretap his friends, or walk as if his limbs are being yanked by a puppeteer. But there are many reasons why so many Democrats, in the words of one analyst, "would have rather seen Gore deported than renominated. " Think about it: Both wrote their political obituaries. Nixon said in 1962, "This is my last press conference.