In 1884, Republicans looking for a clean man to put up for the presidency against President Chester Alan Arthur and former Senator James G. Blaine, hoped to build a groundswell for the Vermont senator.

After hearing about the satiric portrayal of the Vermont senator, Mr. Radcliffe responded that his company is "happy to be playful with our celluloid image," and that people who wear Birkenstocks appreciate the stereotypes associated with the brand.

Why would the Vermont senator wait until now to leave the party and cause a major power shift in Washington (front page, May 25)?

Vermont senators fought the Bush administration over a warrantless eavesdropping program and whether to grant legal immunity to telephone companies that provided phone and email records.

Mr. Jeffords explicitly drew on the state's maverick tradition today in his announcement, noting that Vermont had been the first state to ban slavery in its Constitution; that it had elected to Congress a man who had been jailed for sedition; that a Vermont senator had spoken out against the McCarthy hearings.

For those reasons, he said, he supported James M. Jeffords, the Vermont senator who left the Republican Party last week after opposing President Bush's full tax proposal and demanding more federal spending on special education programs.

The two narrow ends were covered with Vermont marble梐 concession, Janson recalled, to the former Vermont senator who had chaired the Headquarters Advisory Committee and served as America's permanent representative to the U.N.

Officially, the word from the Republican leadership is that there will be no retribution against Mr. Jeffords, the Vermont senator whose defection from the party last year cost Republicans control of the Senate.

A Vermont senator cornered Chase.

"It was a pretty tense scene but I didn't wear tights," the Vermont senator joked.