Details of the accord are still sketchy, but Republicans are trumpeting increased defense spending when the Administration sought cuts; a ban on government-funded needle-exchange programs for drug addicts when the Administration wanted a pilot program in Washington, D.C.; and a GOP victory on census sampling that allows only a six-month appropriation for the Commerce Department and its Census Bureau when the Administration wanted a full year's funding. The deal apparently includes a one-year ban on national testing and keeps out any new hate crimes provisions, which suddenly became a cause of liberals (and Orrin Hatch) in the wake of Matthew Shepard's murder in Wyoming.

Republican negotiators appear to have lost several key issues: funding will still go to organizations that commit or promote abortion overseas; contraceptives will be made available to federal employees under their health plans; and more than $1 billion will go toward hiring teachers.

It's too early to make a full assessment of the budget deal, but conservatives on the Hill don't appear to be happy with it. Many of them will vote for it anyway because they don't want to depress the GOP base less than three weeks before the election.

Clinton is expected to sign the budget over the weekend.

Hating Hate
Homosexuality does strange things to the mind. Not the orientation itself; we're quite prepared to believe that it has no independent bearing on mental health. It is the topic that leads otherwise sane men astray. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott's clumsy attempt to medicalize the traditional hate-the-sin-love-the-sinner message comes to mind. But so does the reaction to his remarks. Take Richard Cohen's column today linking the grisly murder of Matthew Shepard to the "homophobic" rhetoric of conservatives. Now Mr. Cohen is one of the Left's more winning columnists; his self-consciousness, his willingness to lay out the fluctuation of his thoughts, his admissions of error are refreshing in a genre that encourages authors to pretend their views come down from Mt. Olympus.

But logic has never been his strong suit. "Lott's remark comparing homosexuals to kleptomaniacs," he says, "dehumanizes" the former. So does this mean kleptomaniacs aren't human? Is Cohen saying it's uncontroversial to kill them? "To call [homosexuals] sinners, the equivalent of neo-Nazis, people with an agenda that surpasses their loyalty to the country, is to separate them from you and me-to put them beyond the pale." We'll concede the second and third points; but "to call them sinners. . . is to separate them from you and me"? Let he who is without sin write the first column.