How Much Am I Bid for Paul Tsongas?

Many schools around the country hold fund-raising auctions. In most cities the prizes tend to be things like dinner at a nice restaurant or box seats at a ball game. In our nation's capital the offerings are both more extravagant and -- inevitably -- more wonky. Recent auction items from a number of Washington public and private schools:

-- A tour of the Treasury Department building, left.

-- Lunch with CIA Director R. James Woolsey. Bonus: a Tom Clancy novel autographed by Woolsey.

-- A health-care seminar in your home or office featuring experts from the Brookings Institution, the Urban Institute and the Heritage Foundation.

-- Your name used for a character in an Art Buchwald column; you get a signed copy.

-- Dinner with former presidential candidate Paul Tsongas, left, at an expensive restaurant. Limo included.

-- Lunch with Michigan Democratic Congressman Bob Carr, chairman of the Appropriations Transportation Subcommittee, in the members' dining room at the Capitol.

-- Lunch with Connecticut Democratic Congressman Sam Gejdenson, a noted champion of the Coast Guard budget, also in the members' dining room.

-- Lunch in the White House mess with Ricki Seidman, the President's scheduler.

-- A copy of the Constitution autographed by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, right.

-- A health-care seminar in your home or office featuring Bill Gradison, president of the Health Insurance Association of America, and Ira Magaziner, White House health-care expert. Moderator: Carole Simpson of ABC News.

-- A debate in your home or office featuring Democratic pollster Peter Hart and his partner Geoffrey Garin battling it out with Norman Ornstein, analyst for the American Enterprise Institute, and Ben Wattenberg, author and host of the new PBS talk show Think Tank.