JIM LEHRER: The president’s personal attorney, David Schippers, is the majority counsel. They will each question Kenneth Starr when we come back at 8:25. We want to have some comments here now of again from Stuart Taylor and Elizabeth Drew, who along with NewsHour Chief Washington Correspondent Margaret Warner has been watching Kenneth Starr’s testimony.

I’ve been making some rough calculations here. Maybe the three of you have a different calculation than I do, but it seemed to me – we’ve just finished the 37 members of the committee – 21 Republicans, 16 Democrats – if my calculations are correct, all 21 of the Republicans asked friendly questions of Mr. Starr, all 16 of the Democrats asked hostile questions. Is that a surprise, and is that indicative of anything significant?

ELIZABETH DREW: It’s indicative of what’s happened to our politics, Jim. In the Nixon impeachment there were on that Judiciary Committee five members – two Democrats, three Republicans, who formed a swing group, who were genuinely undecided. The Democrats were conservative Southern Democrats. In the end in voting on the articles of impeachment six Republicans broke with the president and supported some of the articles. But our politics since then have become so polarized and as we were talking this morning, this committee has now become the receptacle of the extreme wings of both parties. They’re there by design to fight out the social issues and protect their parties on the social issues. So the whole idea that there would be –

JIM LEHRER: Because the Judiciary Committee traditionally handles those kinds of things.

ELIZABETH DREW: It does flag burning – abortion –

JIM LEHRER: Sure.