The Washington Post reported the contents of President Clinton's deposition in the Paula Jones case. Highlights: 1) Clinton said he talked with Vernon Jordan about Jordan's efforts to find Lewinsky a job. 2) Clinton indicated that his secretary, Betty Currie, instigated the giving of gifts to Lewinsky and the enlistment of Jordan to get Lewinsky a job. This renews suspicions that in Clinton's conversation with Currie the day after his deposition, he was feeling out or coaching her recollection of his relationship with Lewinsky. The Clinton camp's spin: Clinton's enemies leaked the deposition to put him back on the defensive after Ken Starr's bad week. The Starr/Jones camp's spin: Clinton's henchmen leaked the deposition to show grand-jury witnesses Clinton's version of events so that these witnesses can adjust their testimony to avoid contradicting Clinton. (3/6)

An arbitrator reduced the penalties issued to basketball star Latrell Sprewell for choking his coach. The National Basketball Association must shorten its one-year suspension of Sprewell by five months. The Golden State Warriors, who had fired Sprewell, must reinstate his contract and pay him the remaining $17 million he was scheduled to earn. The arbitrator ruled, among other things, that the attack was more impulsive than premeditated. The conventional spins: 1) The ruling sends the outrageous message that "you cannot choke your boss and hold your job unless you play in the NBA." 2) It undermines the Warriors' "principled decision" to fire Sprewell. The backspins: 1) It didn't really change the suspension much, and it affirmed the NBA's authority to punish violence harshly. But the media's interpretation (that it sends a message that basketball-star violence is OK) is self-fulfilling. 2) It bails out the Warriors: Having garnered praise for cutting loose their star player on moral grounds, they now get him back and can trade him for commensurate talent. (3/6)

New tests confirm the presence of millions of tons of water on the moon. Scientists think there is enough to support a small colony of humans (who need water for survival and its components for oxygen and fuel) for at least a century. Catch 1: The water isn't concentrated; it's spread throughout the moon's dirt in the form of ice particles, which would have to be separated and collected. Catch 2: It's trapped in dark craters where the temperature is 280°F below 0, so we'd have to figure out how to make mining equipment that could withstand such temperatures. Cynics argue that it would be simpler and cheaper to transport water from Earth. (3/6)

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Microsoft's competitors and committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, labeled Microsoft a monopoly and called for an antitrust crackdown. Gates replied that the high-tech industry is a free market and a fountain of prosperity and that the government shouldn't mess with it. The spins on Gates: 1) He looked polite and earnest. 2) He acted polite and earnest to disguise his substantive intransigence. 3) He's an arrogant robber baron. 4) He's a philanthropist and family man. 5) He's using his robber-baron wealth to mount a PR campaign concealing his arrogance and intransigence and portraying him as a philanthropist and family man. 6) He's too arrogant and intransigent to be successfully trained not to appear arrogant and intransigent. 7) He outclasses senators in "star power." 8) Senators hate him for outclassing them in star power, so they are trying to take him down a notch. 9) He's cloaking his self-interest in free-market rhetoric. 10) So are Sens. Hatch (Novell), Feinstein (D-Silicon Valley), and Lott (R-Netscape). (Read Bill Gates' "Diary" in Slate. Also in Slate, here's a "Frame Game" on the Microsoft monopoly issue.) (3/4)

The leads in the Lewinsky scandal are drying up. 1) Lewinsky lawyer Bill Ginsburg told the Wall Street Journal that "there was no sexual relationship [between his client and] the president" and that although she and Clinton were alone "once or twice" in the Oval Office, they never had sufficient time or privacy for sex. 2) Vernon Jordan testified before the grand jury. He told reporters he and Clinton are friends and continue to trust each other. The pre-spin: Will Jordan stand by (cynics' translation: cover up for) Clinton? The post-spin: Yes, he will. Clinton's aides are said to be breathing easier. (3/4)

A new book dishes inside dirt on the Supreme Court. The book, by ex-court clerk Edward Lazarus, reportedly says: 1) Some of Justice Kennedy's colleagues viewed him as a "priss" and a lackey of Chief Justice Rehnquist's. 2) A clerk who moved from Justice Scalia's staff to Kennedy's "spoon-fed Kennedy" an interpretation of civil-rights law and "brought around" Kennedy to Scalia's view. 3) Kennedy initially intended to provide the fifth vote against Roe vs. Wade in 1989 and, before voting to uphold Roe in 1992, took elaborate measures to conceal his thinking from his colleagues. 4) Justice O'Connor refused to join any of Justice Brennan's majority opinions because Brennan had supposedly "hoodwinked her" in a previous case. 5) Conservative clerks relished denying death-penalty appeals--in one clerk's case, as revenge for the defeat of Robert Bork's nomination to the court--and celebrated Ted Bundy's execution "with a champagne party." Other clerks anonymously confirmed some of the stories in the book but said it exaggerates the clerks' influence. (3/4)

Over there: 1) Hindu nationalists won a plurality but not quite a majority in the Indian Parliament. Analysts predict further ethnic strife and government instability. The New York Times deplored the nationalist party's "noxious brew of Hindu chauvinism." 2) Germany's Social Democrats picked Gerhard Schröder to run against Chancellor Helmut Kohl in this year's elections. (See "International Papers" for more.) Pundits agree that Schröder is young and telegenic but doubt that he can put together the new, centrist image that brought victory for Bill Clinton in the United States and Tony Blair in Britain. (3/4)

The backlash against the backlash against the Iraq-U.N. settlement is underway. While agreeing that Clinton has fumbled his way through the crisis and that his strategy of containing Saddam Hussein is unpromising, pundits are acknowledging that the alternatives are worse. Arguments against invading Iraq: 1) heavy U.S. casualties; 2) a multibillion-dollar tab; 3) geopolitical isolation; and 4) a protracted nation-building nightmare. Arguments against rebuilding clandestine operations to oust Saddam: 1) We've tried that before. 2) It would take at least three years and $1 billion, with no guarantee of success. 3) We would need assistance from Saddam's neighbors, who are unwilling to provide it. (3/2)

Probe-leakage turnabout: Former Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour and his friends are denouncing the Justice Department for allegedly leaking its deliberations about whether to indict Barbour. The indictment would concern whether he committed perjury or violated campaign-finance disclosure laws in arranging a transaction among the RNC, a Republican think tank, and a Hong Kong businessman. Current RNC Chairman Jim Nicholson said that a DOJ indictment of the RNC would reflect "the Clinton-Gore pattern of deny and attack, stonewall and smear." Republican consultant Ralph Reed accused the Clinton administration of "the most blatant abuse of federal powers since Watergate to attack the RNC." Coverage of these complaints was irony-free. (3/2)

A tale of 14 septuplets: The last two McCaughey septuplets, Natalie and Alexis, have come home from the hospital, where approximately 60 volunteers, aided by equipment supplied by publicity-seeking companies, are helping the happy couple tend their babies. Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia, Hasna Mohammed Humair is refusing to pick up her septuplets from the hospital "unless I get some help" to take care of them. She already has seven other children, and her husband reportedly has two other legal wives. She says that her pregnancy was unplanned and that she was taking a fertility drug to control her menstrual cycle. The hospital has rejected Humair's request to send her an assistant and has threatened to call the cops if she doesn't pick up her kids soon, since its nursery is overcrowded. (3/2)