Jack Quinn served as Vice President Gore's chief of staff and later as counsel to President Clinton. In January 2000, he left what was still a Democratic White House and formed Quinn Gillespie with Ed Gillespie, a Republican and close friend of Tom DeLay. This firm was among the pioneers of the one-stop-shopping approach that has since swept Washington. Want to influence the legislative process? Now you can get right to the top of both parties by hiring a single firm.

Quinn Gillespie has represented clients who want to drill in fragile areas of Alaska, put the screws to already beleaguered American creditors, and prevent the introduction of more healthy dairy substitutes in school lunches. Quinn helped secure a controversial pardon for the fugitive financier Marc Rich as Clinton was leaving office.

Firm clients have included: Enron; the American Petroleum Institute (supported lifting federal ban on offshore drilling on the outer continental shelf, including Alaska; opposed raising taxes on oil companies); the Alliance for Quality Nursing Home Care (which of course is actually the notorious nursing home industry -- the Alliance was indicted in late 2004 for a $100,000 illegal contribution to DeLay's PAC); the Partnership to Protect Consumer Credit (which wants to preempt tougher state and local laws designed to protect consumers); the International Dairy Foods Association (which opposes the introduction of more healthful dairy substitutes in school lunches); "Ax the Double Tax" coalition (which in truth prefers no taxes at all, but if they must exist, would like corporations to be able to repatriate foreign subsidiary profits at a lower tax rate); Bank of America (fighting stricter consumer data-protection legislation proposed after big data breach at BOA).

Perhaps the coziness is most poetically illustrated by the fact that there is another Jack Quinn in the same business, but, in a perfect reversal of Jack Quinn #1, he is a Republican paired with a Democrat. The increased Dem-Republican cooperation (perhaps 'cooptation' is a better term) is reflected in remarks by yet a third Quinn, Thomas Quinn (no relation to either Jack Quinn). Here's what he says about the work of his firm, Venable LLC, applies to the whole politically neutral K Street scene today: "Here we work very collegially, and I've gotten more collegial as there are more Republicans. We work closely with Republicans. All of us are in this together."