We thought that it would be close to impossible to dethrone Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) as the District's King of Hearts, for having said the scummiest thing related to D.C.'s non-voting status in Congress that we had ever heard. But ladies and gentlemen, we were wrong. Meet the new King: Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska). Young gave the following reaction to Anchorage Daily News reporter Lisa Demer upon hearing about his colleague Sen. Ted Stevens' conviction......

It's a Capitol catastrophe, folks. The Hill is reporting that the entire U.S. House, both members and staffers, don't have access to their email right now. Apparently a circuit breaker overloaded a House data center Thursday afternoon, making the whole system go kablooey. Engineers are working to resolve the problem, and they hope to have the House back up and emailing away at some point today. Guess it's a good thing this happened while Congress......

Photo by afagen Remember Monday, when the U.S. House refused to pass a $700 billion bailout package and everyone kinda freaked out? Well a little less than an hour ago they came together for another vote, this time on the Senate's version of the deal, and voted for it. We can't help but feel like the strangest part about the affirmative vote is not actually that it happened, but that even though it probably......

The long-delayed bill which includes a potential $1.5 billion in funding for Metrorail will finally be voted on in the Senate tomorrow, and it is expected to pass. Debate on the floor was officially closed by a 69-17 vote yesterday, and it would appear that the legislation has more than enough votes to make it's way to President Bush's desk. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) is probably finding the bill more difficult to roadblock these days,......

The U.S. House has voted down the bailout package, 205-228. By and large, Republicans voted against the bill, while Democrats voted for it, though the Democrats voted for it by a rather small margin. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has already dropped more than 500 points, just shy of five percent, since the news broke. Presumably, the House leadership will start working on a new bill, but given that the Republicans wouldn't vote for......

Metro brings word that yesterday, the House of Representatives approved an amended version of the Rail Safety Improvement Act of 2008 and the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008, H.R. 2095. While the bill's main financial purpose is to allocate $13.06 billion in federal funds over the next five years to Amtrak, it also includes $1.5 billion in appropriations for Metro to make capital improvements in the next ten years - vital funds......

Legislation revising the District's gun regulations passed the House today in a 266-152 vote. From the AP:The bill, sponsored by Mississippi freshman Democrat Travis Childers, repeals the District's semiautomatic handgun ban and overturns D.C. law requiring that firearms kept in the home be locked up and inoperable. It allows D.C. residents to purchase guns from federally licensed dealers in Maryland and Virginia and repeals what critics claimed were burdensome registration requirements.Given that the D.C. Council......

Well that was quick. We just got word that the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform apparently has scheduled a markup tomorrow on legislation that would gut the District's current gun regulations. As you can read earlier, D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton and Council member Phil Mendelson (D-At Large) have tried to preempt Congress, but the committee doesn't seem too impressed. We don't yet have a time for the markup, but the folks at......

As we mentioned this morning, today the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is holding a hearing to discuss legislation that would do away with the District's newly-issued regulations on gun ownership. According to the pro-gun crowd, the city's regulations are still restrictive enough to violate the Supreme Court's June decision holding the District's handgun ban to be unconstitutional. Of course, Congress stepping up to re-write local gun laws isn't anything new; the twist......

The Politico has a story this morning on D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton's ties to real estate developers. A long list of powerful developers have recently made contributions to her re-election campaign, many of whom have projects underway that have benefited from Norton's political support. The list of Norton’s donors reads like a “Who’s Who” of well-connected real estate developers: the Ratner family, which controls Forest City; Victor MacFarlane, a San Francisco developer who owns......