NYT reports:

WASHINGTON, Jan. 19 - While some Democrats are still struggling to find their voices after November's election losses, Senator Barbara Boxer of California is not among them.

Her full-throated and combative questioning of Condoleezza Rice during two days of hearings on her nomination to be secretary of state was a vivid illustration of the aggressive posture that Ms. Boxer, a 64-year-old liberal from Marin County, near San Francisco, brought back to Washington after rolling up a big margin of victory in her re-election to a third term.

Before casting one of two Democratic votes against Ms. Rice on the Foreign Relations Committee - the other was John Kerry's - Ms. Boxer explained bluntly why she had been so persistent in pressing the national security adviser on what Ms. Boxer portrayed as the administration's misleading and misguided rationale for the war in Iraq.

"The fact is we've lost so many lives over it," she said. "So if we do get a little testy on the point, and I admit to be so, it's because it continues day in and day out, and 25 percent of the dead are from California. We cannot forget. We cannot forget that."

Her jousting with Ms. Rice made her the most outspoken foe in the hearings. And it came after Ms. Boxer earlier this month joined a handful of House Democrats in forcing a debate on the legitimacy of the presidential electoral votes from Ohio; she was the only senator to vote to challenge Ohio's votes.

It is clear that she is interpreting her easy win in November, when she accumulated the third-largest number of votes in the nation, behind only the presidential contenders, as a mandate of her own. (...)