Remember when Republicans ran Congress and everybody was so corrupt and then the midterms happened and the Democrats swept in with a bold plan to have ethics and all that? Well, they were just kidding. MORE »

Looking forward to hearing about how that House resolution on the Iraq surge will go? Too damn bad, because it’s gonna be the ultimate Friday newsdump: MORE »

To sum up: The House is upset that the Senate could get their shit together and pass a bill politely mentioning that many of them don’t much care for this troop surge. MORE »

So it’s sort of over, right? Will Steny ever take the clock off his website? Will they just start up the 100 Hours at some point in the future, once they come up with a new agenda? And who knew Steny Hoyer was also deeply paranoid?

“We have passed an agenda that we promised the American people we would pass in the first 100 hours. And no matter how much fun they make, and no matter how many different ways they want to count it, we made it to the end of our 100 hours.”

Hoyer Lauds Completion of 100 Hours Agenda [Majority Leader]

Steny Hoyer has released the voting schedule for the 300-hour-long “first 100 hours” of the new Congressional regime. It somehow manages to look even more ridiculous than the half-made up one we posted earlier. Especially their prediction that Republicans will literally run away after two weeks of Democratic rule. MORE »

No half-assed Christmas puns today, just straight Wonk’d, with Steny Hoyer showing off his pimping skills, Ed Rendell proving he’s a sports fan, Fred Barnes shopping like he could afford not to, and Robert Duvall, who you see here as the same tragic hero you remember. All this, plus the most metrosexual Redskins player, on a team full of them.

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An anonymous Wonkette Operative (Covert Free Booze Division) attended one of the ten zillion holiday parties going on this week, and was kind enough to send us this report.

Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher and the New Democratic Coalition held their Holiday Party last night at Ellen’s swanky pad (which I’m assuming was paid for with her Wall Street bucks and not her Congressional salary). In an unsurprising development, the place was packed with corporate lobbyists and their hired guns there to pay homage to some of the Democrats who might listen (and to the ones that taken their money).

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* Steny Hoyer elected House Majority Leader after a divisive inter-party campaign. Democrats now need to move on and show unity. Nancy Pelosi says, “Let the healing begin.” [WP, NYT, LAT]
* Steny Hoyer’s not a man, he’s a Congressman. [WP, NYT]
* Bush administration’s pick to head family-planning programs at the Department of Health and Human Services is a strong opponent of the sexing. [WP]
* “It was a preliminary inquiry before, but we found the basis to open up a criminal investigation,” report Florida authorities investigating Mark Foley. [WP]
* Latest war funding request by Bush administration would make Iraq the most expensive conflict since WWII. [USAT]
* John McCain files paperwork to open his presidential exploratory committee, blathers on about Iraq. [WP]
* Beloved Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman has gone to that big free market in the sky. [WP, NYT, WSJ]

Arianna Huffington was really pushing Murtha this week — not just as House leader, but as “Person of the Year.” MORE »

Nancy Pelosi was unanimously voted Speaker of the House (congrats, crazy hippie!), and Steny “Slightly Less Corrupt” Hoyer was elected Majority Leader, beating out John “Bribe Me Later” Murtha. The vote in the Majority Leader race: 149-86. The crazy race which made Trent Lott the House Whipper of Minorities was a helluva lot closer, but expect to see “Dems Divided: Speaker Pelosi’s Leadership Ability Questioned” pieces in your major papers by sundown. MORE »

* Campaigning for House majority leader as fierce as it is because Nancy Pelosi has hated that rat bastard Steny Hoyer since 1960 and she’s not stopping now. [WP, NYT, LAT]
* A thin layer of Iraq hearing was placed on top of a hearty serving of 2008 posturing in the Senate yesterday. [NYT]
* Mitch McConnell and Trent Lott elected as Senate Minority Leader and Whip respectively. After which Lott gets verklempt, cries, and makes the Capitol press corps visibly uncomfortable. [WP, WP]
* In Georgia, two more House races have been called for Democrats, seven still counting. [NYT, WP]
* Government diction experts assert that 35 million Americans are not going hungry, they just have “very low food security.” [WP]
* A record five House committees could be chaired by African-Americans. [WP]