Starr's Beat Goes On

WASHINGTON: Bad news for the White House: Ken Starr thinks he's Joe Friday. "I've always been a big believer in that show... that Jack Webb was in, 'Just the facts ma'am,'" Starr said Thursday. He was happy to use the recent Paula furor to burrow deeper into the role he relishes: That of the tenacious policeman on the trail.

"Starr lives on," says TIME Washington correspondent Viveca Novak. "He was never going to charge Clinton -- that's not his job. His job is to send a report to the Hill." Whether or not Republicans can muster the political will to take on Clinton is not Starr's problem, and the shrinking legal target (without Paula Jones, perjury in a weak civil case is now perjury in a nonexistent one) isn't either.

The same goes for Starr's approval ratings, which were already abysmal -- and will surely sink further now that the White House has gleefully renewed calls for the independent counsel to close up shop. What does Starr care? He's not a politician -- he's just a cop.