D.C. trying to remember what end of ass is up

Just my luck for my job to make this one of my busiest work weeks in recent memory. The very same week that Washington, D.C. seems to be falling apart at the seams, and I don't have any freaking time to blog about it. Well, screw deadlines. I'm blogging.

On the sports front, the Redskins have completely and totally folded up the tent for this season. Brunell is benched for the young kid (and, reportedly, cries on the bus after the post-game interviews) and Portis is shut down for the season. I smell a fun home stretch this year, don't you? Remember the scene in the second Austin Powers movie, where Will Ferrell's character gets in a horrible flaming car wreck and is lying at the bottom of the cliff shouting up things like "Please help me! I am very, badly, burned!! For God's sake, I am in excrutiating pain!" and "These wounds are beginning to smell like almonds! Oh my God, that's a sign of gangrene!" But no matter how they shoot him and what not, he just will not or cannot die? Well, that's the rest of this season for the Redskins. They are very badly burned, and reeking of almonds, but they can't die just yet. Move over, Oakland and Arizona. Hope there's room at the bottom of the shit heap.

Perhaps even more interesting than the Redskins, however, is the astonishing 15 seconds House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went before causing a rift in her own party. After pledging to lead The Cleanest Congress Ever and gamely mending fences with the president, she goes and nominates anti-war loudmouth and ethics violator (it was minor and it was early in his career, but still) John Murtha as her second-in-command in the House. She endorses him over Maryland's own Steny Hoyer, who was in line for that position, but has had pissing contests with Pelosi in the past. So rather than squash it, Pelosi kept pissing. Boy, that Era of Good Feelings didn't last.

And today, House Dems gave her the big middle finger when they voted for Hoyer despite Pelosi's endorsement to the contrary. But in a weird way, this could actually help Pelosi down the line. Hoyer is a moderate who is well-liked in both parties, and could do a great job of building bridges and bringing more moderate Democrats (the kind of Democrats who, you know, won control of Congress for their party) into the fold. As always, only time....will tell. But it's intersting stuff going down. At least, so I'm told by people who have time to surf the Internet.

Hyperlinks:
- Democrats Elect Hoyer as New Majority Leader [Washington Post]
- Novak: Pelosi's First Mistake [Washington Post]
- Steny Hoyer vs. Nancy Pelosi [The New Republic]
- Bush, Dems promise cooperation [CNN.com]
- Dems Pledge to Sever Ties with Lobbyists [Washington Post]
- Murtha and the FBI: The Director's Cut [American Spectator]

Hyperlinks: Washington, D.C., Washington, Redskins, Politics, Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer