His name may be Barney, but Representative Frank (D-Mass.) prefers playing Ernie -- to Henry Hyde's Bert. "He's at his best when poking holes in what his opponents are saying," says TIME congressional correspondent John Dickerson. "He's book-smart, street-smart and is unmatched in that committee for humor and literary style." Case in point: Frank's withering rejoinder to Chairman Hyde's claim that the committee acted in bipartisan fashion in the vote to release the first batch of Starr documents. "If this was bipartisanship," Frank said, "the Taliban wins a medal for religious tolerance." That may be hyperbole, but it is precisely the sort of comment that earns the feisty Democrat the media attention he'll need in the spin battles to come.

Once the subject of a sex scandal himself, after gay prostitute Steve Gobie was found to have entertained clients at Frank's apartment without the congressman's knowledge, Frank may sound like the President's most eloquent defender. But the 48-year-old Harvard law graduate is no White House loyalist -- even though his sister, Anne Lewis, is one of Clinton's longest-serving aides. Frank fought Clinton from the left on everything from NAFTA and IMF funding to welfare reform and same-sex marriage. "Frank isn't standing up to the Republicans out of loyalty to the White House," says Dickerson. "It is the congressman's own liberal agenda that drives him to fight tooth and nail over the Starr investigation. He's shown before that he feels free to cut Clinton loose when his politics demand it." But as long as the President is under fire from conservative Republicans, that's not likely.