And of course, Las Vegas was only one hour away by cheap regularly scheduled airlines, free if you could qualify as a high-rolling junketeer.

Of course, it is not accurate to characterize Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary as a holiday junketeer.

They have portrayed Mr. Solarz as a junketeer who wrote 743 overdrafts on his House Bank account.

He is a "junketeer," an "inveigler of invites," an "open bar opportunist," a seeker of the "nurturing crimson light of the heat lamp over prime rib."

"What is known in the trade as 'the standard package' " includes a television set, a video recorder, a refrigerator and a washing machine for every junketeer, Ms. Browning writes.

The book takes its name from John Henry, epitome of black strength and heartbreak, but its central character, the disgusted junketeer J. Sutter, need not be black at all.

A more depressing and futile quest than J.'s pursuit of the junketeer record can hardly be imagined; and yet, the deeper I read into the novel, the more sense his quest made to me.

In one of Ms. Colon's radio ads, Mr. Solarz, who is best known for his foreign-policy work, is portrayed as a profligate junketeer who gambles in Monte Carlo and dines lavishly in Istanbul.

The Club for Growth, an antitax organization that has poured more than $2 million into defeating Mr. Specter, began broadcasting a new commercial on Thursday that accuses Mr. Specter of being a wasteful spender and a junketeer.

Mr. Hilliard's frequent overseas travel also got him branded the top junketer in Congress.