WASHINGTON INSIGHT

CIVILITY UP: Maybe House members should retreat more often. A year ago, amid a widespread breakdown of manners, about 200 of them attended a bipartisan retreat in Hershey, Pa., in search of civility. A new report concludes that civility seems to be returning to the House. The study by Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, used an index that tracks such uncivil things as name-calling, vulgarity and accusations of falsehoods.

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SPRATT DOWN: It’s no secret the Senate can be a treacherous place. But Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. (D-S.C.) found out for himself last week. Walking down the marbled steps near the Senate restaurant, Spratt slipped on some spilled bean soup, ending up with “two little fractures” on his right arm.

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BOXER SITTING: Also taking a recent tumble--and we don’t mean in the polls--was Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), proving that grandmotherhood can be even more perilous than politics. Boxer’s left knee buckled while she was carrying 3-year-old grandson Zachary down some stairs Monday morning at her Marin home. She flew back to Washington in considerable pain with apparently torn ligaments and had to be wheeled around the Senate most of the day.

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LEFT COASTERS: Last week, Boxer was at the top of National Journal’s list of most liberal senators. Her press secretary, David Sandretti, spun it this way: “Barbara Boxer is a pro-choice, pro-environment senator who favors rebuilding our schools and saving Social Security and Medicare. This rating reflects her stands on these kinds of issues, which are so important to California.” Also remaining true to the fabled Left Coast were Democrats Xavier Becerra and Henry A. Waxman, both from Los Angeles, and Lynn Woolsey of Petaluma, who were named the three most liberal members of the House.

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HEAR HER ROAR: Moving through Europe on her latest international foray, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright took time in Kiev on Friday to score one for feminism. Visiting the Kiev-Mohyla Academy, one of Eastern Europe’s most prestigious universities, she was introduced to an assembly of about 200 students with the words that, somewhere in her audience, sat a future president of Ukraine. Surveying the faces, Albright quickly replied, “Yes, I’m sure she’s out there somewhere.”

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FELLOWS NO MORE: When the ACLU joined Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in (successfully) opposing campaign finance reform, it struck many as a classic case of strange bedfellows. But the alliance did not last long. Last week, when McConnell promoted (unsuccessfully) a measure to end a Department of Transportation affirmative action program, the ACLU blasted his effort and called on the Senate to reject it.

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SCIENCE 101: Hillary Rodham Clinton presided last week over a White House briefing on the administration’s science budget featuring Francis S. Collins, director of the Human Genome Research Institute, and Vera C. Rubin, an astronomer. Collins offered this definition of his work: “To a physicist, everything is relative; to a geneticist, everyone is a relative.”