Do you enjoy winning things? Specifically things you can wear? Then head over to Al Kamen’s “In the Loop” column ASAP: he’s giving away t-shirts! MORE »

No one ever won a war with a bad attitude, guys.

The U.S. Embassy in Iraq, demonstrating an admirable unwillingness to aide in the President’s PR blitz, sent a memo to Condoleezza Rice last week on the day of Bush’s surprise Baghdad trip detailing just how much fun everyone’s having in the Green Zone these days. It raises the question: Why doesn’t the U.S. Embassy ever tell the State Department the good news from Iraq? (Will we ever get tired of that line?)

Our exclusive hungover and cranky analysis, after the jump.

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Just like us, senators are always trying to sneak out of work early, so they can hit the road and get out of here. Per Al Kamen: MORE »

Circulation plummeting! Costs rising! What to do? The Washington Post has decided to politely ask all its writers to please stop writing. At the moment, the list of people who’ve been offered a buy-out is 70-odd long, and includes some of the best reporters and writers at the paper (cough Kamen cough cough) (and not Rich Cohen cough cough). In the midst of this bad news, Fishbowl DC finds the worst: MORE »

Please, Al, you’re scaring the kids: MORE »

When Bradley Belt stepped down as the head of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, we were on the scene. When Bruce James resigned from the Government Printing Office, we were all over the story.

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Considering that yesterday we posted an old resume of his and analyzed the Google results for his name, you might think that we’re a bit obsessed with Joel D. Kaplan, who’s replacing Karl Rove as deputy White House chief of staff for policy.

But we’re not the only ones these days scrutinizing Joel Kaplan — who, given the high-profile shoes he’s filling, can expect to be placed under the microscope. Last night Jon Stewart had a riff about Kaplan on the Daily Show, discussing Kaplan’s participation in the “Brooks Brothers riot” that contributed to halting the Miami recount in 2000. In today’s Post, Al Kamen chimes in, noting that Sen. Frank Lautenberg is not a Kaplan fan (but that’s not a problem for Kaplan’s promotion, since his new gig doesn’t require Senate confirmation).

The most interesting info about Kaplan is that he used to be a Democrat, in his college days. Back in 1990, he was elected as an alternate delegate to the Massachusetts State Democratic Convention. Who’d have thunk that a Brooks Brothers rioter and successor to Karl Rove was a Democrat in his youth? A college classmate of Kaplan has this to say:

I vaguely remember that he was an active Democrat, albeit a somewhat conservative one. He was a total politico: he represented Eliot House in the Undergraduate Council, and IIRC, he agitated for bringing ROTC back onto campus. I’ll bet my last dollar he voted against Bush 41 in ‘88.

And there’s much more to say about the White House’s new policy guru. After the jump, an extremely detailed, “Single White Male”-style email from a law school classmate of Kaplan’s, who has some highly specific recollections.

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We like Al Kamen. But the Post website seems to screw him over — big Milbank pictures on the homepage every other damn day but we have to squint to find Kamen’s byline? The day Dana Milbank proves that a Senator is into fisting is the day that’ll be fair. MORE »

Here’s a brief addendum to an item we shared with you last week. In a recent column, Al Kamen scrutinized an invitation for an event sponsored by Volpac, Sen. Bill Frist’s leadership committee, and essentially asked: Considering that this invite is for an event honoring Bill Frist, why is it, um, so gay? MORE »

While Condoleezza Rice is busy doing bicep curls, her State Department underlings are doing heavy lifting in the gossip department. For some reason, lately we’ve received a fair amount of State-related scuttlebutt. Here are some highlights.

A tipster tells us: “The U.S embassy in Sudan held a private dinner at their residence. [U.S. Charge d'Affaires] Cameron Hume was dropping the usual comments about the Sudanese goverment. A couple of Sudanese businessmen — incidentally, they don’t support the GOS whatsoever — felt he was being over the top. One told the ambassador that his comments were inflammatory and did nothing to foster better relations between the two countries. This is where it gets good. Apparently the man has a temper. So he said that they were like the businessmen in Nazi Germany and they indirectly supported the regime. They told him that his tone wasn’t acceptable. This is where it gets better. He told them to ‘Run tell your goverment and your Prophet too.’”

OH NO HE DIN’T!!! And did he draw a cartoon of the Prophet too? (If you think we’re making this up, the broad outlines of the story are confirmed by this news account.)

Additional gossip — concerning Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick and the infamous Pamela Willeford, Ambassador to Switzerland and Dick Cheney hunting partner — appears after the jump.

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