Hillary Clinton has cleared the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on her way to becoming secretary of state.

And so Gov. David Paterson is that much closer to appointing her replacement.

Clinton and Attorney General Andrew Cuomo have gotten the headlines, but others also want her seat in the U.S. Senate.

Here are some of the names that have been mentioned:

U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York City

U.S. Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand of the Hudson Valley-Albany area

U.S. Rep. Steve Israel of Long Island

Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi

Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown

U.S. Rep. Brian Higgins of South Buffalo

U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York City

Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers

A Quinnipiac University poll on Wednesday found Cuomo leading the pack with 31 percent of voters. Kennedy got 24 percent.

Gov. David Paterson’s secrecy surrounding the Senate hopefuls seems to run afoul do the law, according to Robert Freeman, executive director of the state Committee on Open Government.

This from the Associated Press:

Keeping the questions posed to Senate hopefuls secret appears to violate the state’s post-Watergate freedom of information laws, according to Robert Freeman, executive director of the state Committee on Open Government, the state agency that regulates enforcement of the good-government laws.

“How could it not be public? It’s a blank form,” said Freeman, a lawyer who since 1976 has been the top state employee advising government and the public on interpretation of the public officers’ law.

The names of those under consideration also should be disclosed, Freeman said.

“In my mind, the identities of those seeking one of the highest offices in the land would not rise to the level of unwarranted invasion of personal privacy,” Freeman told The Associated Press in an interview.

Freeman, who issues opinions and make recommendations but does not have the authority to sue for the release of public records, said at least some of the answers by candidates in their background checks probably should be public as well.

Winter is here, the economy is sunk and what comes along but “The Best Job in the World.”

How else to describe getting paid about $100,000 for exploring the islands of the Great Barrier Reef for six months.

This is supposedly a real job: Tourism Queensland is looking for a live-in caretaker for the islands. (I saw this on Andrew Sullivan’s blog on The Atlantic last night but couldn’t get on to the Web site.)

Your responsibilities? Report on your adventures with a blog, photo diary, videos and interviews with the media.

Interested? Upload a video describing why your the best person for the job. More information “here.”:http://www.islandreefjob.com

UPDATE: According to Reuters, interest in the job crashed the Web site. Queensland Tourism reports more than 1 million.

Just after Christmas I suggested people make sure they recycle their electronics.
Where? asked a reader from Yonkers, and she was right. I had not included that information.
So here it is for Westchester County.

Eighteen municipalities offer a place where you can drop off TVs or computers or provide curbside pickup. Here is a “list.”:http://www.westchestergov.com/envfacil/TVPCMonitorsList.htm

Plus special e-waste collection day are held periodically throughout the county. Here’s a “schedule.”:http://www.westchestergov.com/environment_householdrecyclingschedule.htm

New York City Michael Bloomberg has led efforts to go after dealers who sell guns illegally, guns that end up in New York and other cities. Today one of those dealers pleaded guilty to charges of failing to keep proper records. Here’s Bloomberg’s comment:

“Today’s guilty plea by Larry Mickalis, one of the gun dealers sued by New York City for selling guns illegally, confirms what we have long contended: it’s a small group of dealers who are providing the guns used in crimes. It is important to hold those dealers accountable for the harm they cause New Yorkers and others. Justice has been furthered today, and we will continue our efforts to keep New Yorkers safe.”

According to the Associated Press:

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP)—A South Carolina pawn shop owner accused by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg of recklessly selling a rifle to an ex-convict has pleaded guilty to a federal weapons charge.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin McDonald says Larry Mickalis pleaded guilty in federal court Friday to failing to keep appropriate firearms sales records. Mickalis was sentenced to two years of probation.
Mickalis was charged last year with illegally selling a rifle to an ex-convict at his pawn shop three years ago.
In 2006, Bloomberg sued Mickalis and dozens of other gun dealers, accusing them of illegally selling weapons that had been traced to crimes in New York City.
Mickalis has since sued the mayor for slander. Both lawsuits are pending.

PHOTO: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter are interviewed by television crews after President-elect Barack Obama spoke about the economy, Thursday at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Last month I wrote about the Bowdlers, a brother and sister who in the early 19th century cleaned up Shakespeare.
The column brought back memories for Lynn Temple of Nyack.
While at the University of California at Berkeley in the early 1940s, she played the nurse in a production of Romeo and Juliet and wondered about the line: “for the bawdy hand of the dial is now upon the prick of noon.”
What did it mean? she asked the director.

“He was so flustered and embarrassed he didn’t want to tell me, so he said after stumbling around for awhile, ‘I think you had better ask Wilson about that,’” she remembered.
“Now Wilson was a premed student who played a character in the production so of course I had to go see a premed student to get an explanation of this terribly embarrassing Shakespearean metaphor and of course it didn’t bother Wilson at all to tell me what it was.”

PHOTO: Tiler Peck and Sean Suozzi perform a scene during rehearsals for the New York City Ballet’s performance of “Romeo and Juliet” at the State Theater at Lincoln Center in Manhattan April 10, 2007. ( Tom Nycz / The Journal News )

The Daily News’ “Liz Benjamin”:http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/2009/01/another-day-another-kennedy-po.html notes another poll on Caroline Kennedy.

This one, a USA Today/Gallup Poll, finds 45 percent of Americans want Gov. David Paterson to appoint her to the Senate seat. Thirty-six percent would pick someone else.

Caroline Kennedy is markedly less popular since she began her campaign for Hillary Clinton’s Senate, according to one new poll.

Forty-four percent of the state’s voters reported having a lesser opinion of Kennedy than before, “Public Policy Polling”:http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pppmain.asp?@spdT=B6B42829136845A69B19 says.

Thirty-three said it made no difference; 23 percent have a better opinion of her.

Fifty-eight percent favor Andrew Cuomo to 27 percent for Kennedy.

“Her reputation has taken a pretty clear hit over the last month, and if Gov. Paterson does end up appointing her she’s going to have some work to do to overcome this bad first impression she’s made on New York voters,” said Dean Debnam, president of the polling company.

Photographer Pete Souza, the author of the book “The Rise of Barack Obama,” has been named the official White House photographer.
Souza has been chronicling Obama’s political life from the moment the newly elected senator from Illinois arrived in Washington, D. C.
According to an article posted on the “National Press Photographers Association’s”:http://nppa.org/news_and_events/news/2009/01/souza.html Web site, Souza told News Photographer magazine last night that he had accepted the job.
His primary function will be to document Obama’s presidency for history.
Souza has worked in the White House before—as an official photographer for President Ronald Reagan.

Here’s what he wrote in the introduction to “The Rise of Barack Obama”:
“Early into that first year, I began to believe that I was photographing a future president of the United States, and that my pictures might become an historic look at the rise of Sen. Obama’s political career. That may sound like an easy statement to make now, but that’s really how I felt at the time.”
You can see Souza’s photographs “here.”:http://www.petesouza.com

PHOTO: Actress Bo Derek visits the casket of Ronald Regan at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., on June 8, 2004. (AP Photo/Pete Souza)