"I'm not at liberty to discuss that subject, " said one aide who sees Gates every day.

CNN: McIntyre: Buzz building around Gates

One aide said, 'Look, we worked our hearts out for the campaign.

CNN: Eileen O'Connor

"We don't have the stage like we used to, " one aide said.

CNN: White House steers reporters back to Bush message

Yet the strongest candidate on the right to replace him is Mr Sarkozy, a pragmatic 49-year-old who, says one aide, considers the primacy of the Franco-German relationship to be outdated.

ECONOMIST: Franco-German relations

"She was very upfront about it, " one aide insisted.

CNN: Palin's teen daughter is pregnant

"This is all about getting attention, " said one aide.

CNN: Democratic senator to speak at GOP convention

"It is good for him to read them and know how people feel, " says one Zhu aide.

CNN: ASIANOW - TIME Asia

One Edwards aide said he is not dropping out of the race because of his wife's health.

CNN: Edwards' voters up for grabs

This year there are 11 students, from kindergarten through fourth grade, one full-time teacher and one teaching aide.

NPR: Students Blossom in the Desert

One congressional aide working in new media attributed the relatively hack-free stretch to a combination of preparedness and luck.

FORBES: U.S. Government Twitter Accounts: Just As Vulnerable To Hacking As Burger King's

"It's a tsunami, " said one GOP aide of the lobbying effort.

CNN: AARP endorses Medicare Rx drug bill

One Republican aide said senators are deeply troubled by the situation.

CNN: GOP lawmakers: Arms sales to Taiwan more likely

One of the employees was a lower-level worker while the other was higher-ranked, said one congressional aide, but the committee did not release their names or titles.

NPR: House Panel: Report Finds $50M For IRS Conferences

"The staff could help him get the mail together, but when it came time to voting, he took care of himself, " said one longtime aide, Jack Robinson Sr.

CNN: Excerpt: 'The Prince of Tennessee: The Rise of Al Gore'

Earlier today, Justice Department officials were described by one senior aide to Reno as "astonished" by Hatch's notion, after he disclosed Sunday his intention to send the letter to Freeh.

CNN: Hatch Asks Freeh For Independent Investigation

And as one Republican aide points out, in the Senate--which would also need to pass Frank's bill--only a handful of Democrats have expressed drawing on this money to help Detroit.

FORBES: Automakers

One leadership aide said Obey, D-Wisconsin, got ahead of himself when he told CNN on Tuesday evening that his committee was considering another stimulus package, though he had cautioned there was no timeline for moving it.

CNN: Second stimulus not 'in the cards' right now, Pelosi says

One leadership aide said House Appropriations Chairman David Obey of Wisconsin got ahead of himself when he told CNN Tuesday evening that his committee was considering another stimulus package, though he had cautioned there was no timeline for moving it.

CNN: House Dems say no new stimulus in the works

"It's hard to imagine if they didn't know, why they didn't, " said one top American aide.

WSJ: U.S. to Probe Pakistan Support for bin Laden

Monday, one Democratic leadership aide had criticized the idea of Jackson meeting with lawmakers.

CNN: Michael Jackson visits Capitol Hill

Mr. Karzai, one former close aide retorts, often wonders the same about his Western counterparts.

WSJ: Hamid Karzai: Our Man in Kabul?

"They cut us off at the knees, " said one Senate Democratic aide.

CNN: SHARE THIS

One top Senate aide involved in inauguration activities, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said she's going to hunker down in her office and sleep on an air mattress.

CNN: Inauguration may be traffic, security nightmare

What the White House is trying to do is find the right balance between informing the public and being "forthright" according to one White House aide, and not trying to be alarmist.

CNN: Kelly Wallace is a CNN White House correspondent.

But one former congressional aide, Cass Weiland, a deeply experienced investigator into such matters, suspects that the amount that securities crooks and con men currently rake in approaches what the underworld reaps from illicit drug dealings.

FORBES: The Smarter They Are, The Harder They Fall

"He's got something to say, " notes one White House aide, and "he's so manipulatively suggestive about his contacts with us" that he may just be turning the appearance of influence into some measure of the real thing.

CNN: Winners & Losers

After the town's paper mill failed in the 1960s, a group of local investors led by Sherman Adams, one-time aide to President Eisenhower, developed a ski resort on Loon Mountain and turned Lincoln into a year-round recreation center.

FORBES: Local heroes

One Republican congressional aide who received the e-mails this week expressed surprise that a lobbying firm with such close ties to the White House would attack al-Maliki at such a pivotal time on the debate over the war, just weeks before Bush provides a progress report to the nation.

CNN: Powerhouse GOP firm working to undermine Iraqi PM

An aide to one member of the Democratic leadership responded, on his behalf, by pointing to the limitations of the Gang of Eight process.

NEWYORKER: Preparing the Battlefield