"For some of these people, you can never be an ally," Frank told me. And the proper response is to "call their bluff."

"Who are they going to run against me?" he asks. "Larry Craig?"

At issue is Frank's decision to remove language on "gender identity" from a bill that protects gay men and lesbians in the workplace. This is a reference to the "transgender" community — people who do not identify with the gender assigned them at birth. Cross-dressers are one example.

Frank insists that the bill can't pass if it includes the transgendered. America is not yet ready to take that step. In response, gay advocates (though not all of them) have bitterly accused him of stripping the rights of this besieged group.

Frank marvels at their poor grasp of political reality.

"They think that getting a bill protecting sexual orientation is easy," he says. "We started on the gay and lesbian thing decades ago."

Frustration over his party's militants is not a new theme for Frank. In his 1992 book, "Speaking Frankly: What's Wrong With the Democrats and How to Fix It," Frank notes that the far left often spoiled the Democrats' ability to win the presidency. By making the party seem soft on national security, crime and the work ethic, it scared away the swing voters needed to win.

WASHINGTON — Rolf Mowatt-Larssen is paid to think about the unthinkable. As the Energy Department's director of intelligence, he's responsible for gathering information about the threat that a terrorist group will attack America with a nuclear weapon.

With his shock of white hair and piercing eyes, Mowatt-Larssen looks like a man who has seen a ghost. And when you listen to a version of the briefing he has been giving recently to President Bush and other top officials, you begin to understand why. He is convinced that al-Qaeda is trying to acquire a nuclear bomb that will leave the ultimate terrorist signature — a mushroom cloud.

We've all had enough fear-mongering to last a lifetime. Indeed, we have become so frightened of terrorism since Sept. 11, 2001, that we have begun doing the terrorists' job for them by undermining the legal framework of our democracy. And truly, I wish I could dismiss Mowatt-Larssen's analysis as the work of an overwrought former CIA officer with too many years in the trenches.

But it's worth listening to his warnings — not because they induce more numbing paralysis, but because they might stir sensible people to take actions that could detect and stop an attack. That's why his boss, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, is encouraging him to speak out. They don't want to anguish later that they didn't sound the alarm in time.

But House Republicans came out punching this week after a slow start to the election cycle, filing a respectable quarterly financial report and vowing to make Democrats’ lives as miserable as possible. 

A crucial aspect of their new offensive: Make Democrats the public face of Capitol Hill at a time when polls show the public is disgusted with Washington in general and Congress in particular. 

The new spirit of resistance was on display Tuesday night when the National Republican Congressional Committee, the GOP’s House campaign arm, seized on a weaker-than-expected showing by Niki Tsongas (D), who won a special election for the Fifth District of Massachusetts, garnering 51 percent to her opponent’s 45 percent. 

The heavily Democratic House seat was once held by her late husband. She will succeed former Rep. Marty Meehan, who resigned to become chancellor of the University of Massachusetts-Lowell. 

In an overstatement that Democrats regarded as laughable, the NRCC blared in a Tuesday night e-mail to supporters: “THE DEMOCRATIC WAVE BREAKS.” 

The e-mail went on to argue that “Democrats Won’t Get Two ‘2006’s in a Row,” and contended: “In what is clearly shaping up to be a change election, Democrats have reason to worry, as they are no longer seen as the solution to the problem in Washington — Democrats have become part of the problem in Washington.” 

Brian Kennedy, communications director for House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), said the GOP plans to portray its opponents as “the same old tax-and-spend Democratic Party people remember from the 1970s.” 

At the same time, Kennedy said, his party is working to “re-establish the Republican brand” by using parliamentary maneuvers that require Democrats to take tough votes on problematic provisions that have been added to popular legislation.