Poor, poor Melissa Hart. When the former representative of Pennsylvania's 4th district lost her seat to Rep. Jason Altmire in the '06 midterms, the terms of her Faustian bargain with Mephistopheles, Chairman of Lobbyists were complete, and thus she was snatched bodily from Capitol Hill and dragged screaming and thrashing into the deepest, darkest realms of K Street before she was even able to reclaim her Volkswagen Jetta from the congressional parking garage…

There it sits, a sad and harrowing reminder of what awaits all congresspeople who trifle lightly with dark powers beyond their control, the etchings of her former colleagues on its dust-caked veneer — "F-ing wash me!," "I wish my wife was this dirty," "Drill here" — belying the unsettling pang it roils in the pit of their stomachs.

And Hart? What has become of her? She is merely a shade, a transient lobbyist spirit drifting from one congressional desk to the next, always offering money for votes at the behest of her unholy Lord of Kickbacks.

Like a horde of insatiably voracious crown-of-thorns starfish extruding their stomachs onto a patch of coral reef and leaving in their wake only brittle dessication, Washington lobbyists are pulling their digestive organs up off the dry and empty husk of the once lush and vibrant promise of health care reform and moving on to Barack Obama's plan to overhaul student loans*…

President Obama called the idea a "no-brainer" last fall, predicting it would take billions of dollars from the profits of private lenders and give it directly to students, and many colleges were already moving to get loans directly from the federal government in anticipation of the next move by Congress.

But an aggressive lobbying campaign by the nation's biggest student lenders has now put one of the White House's signature plans in peril, with lenders using sit-downs with lawmakers, town-hall-style meetings and petition drives to plead their case and stay in business.

I saw a documentary on the Discovery Channel about this. What Obama needs to do is get a whole shit ton of hungry harlequin shrimp and predatory snails and drop them onto K Street.

But he needs to do it fast, because those lobbyists will breed.

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^{* Did you like that? Please have liked it. I spent, like, twenty minutes writing just that one paragraph.}

In this interview with the Reddit community, the congressperson from Ohio discusses why health care is fucked, how congressional term limits would empower the lobbyists, and why he's going buy a foot stool if he ever decides to run an unsuccessful campaign for president again…

On last night's Colbert Report, Stephen better know'd the Ploughshares Fund, a lobbying group that opposes nuclear proliferation. I suppose, reducing nukes is all well and good in theory, but it's not very pragmatic. After all, without atomic weapons, how are we supposed to create all the good superheroes?

The Colbert Report airs Monday through Thursday at 11:30pm / 10:30c.

First Rep. Alan Grayson, Democrat of Florida, offended Republicans by becoming that "die quickly" guy. Then, in the midst of his apology for this remark, Rep. Grayson offended Jewish groups by referring to the health care crisis as a "holocaust in America." Rep. Grayson was last seen offending just about everyone else with this website.

Which brings us to yesterday, when somebody reached deep into the bowels of the internet and discovered Rep. Grayson's appearance on a radio program last month. Somehow the conversation shifted to Linda Robertson, a senior adviser at the Federal Reserve, and that's when things got out of control…

"This lobbyist, this K Street whore, is trying to teach me about economics," Mr. Grayson fumed in a segment for a radio program hosted by Alex Jones on the Genesis Communications Network.

"This K Street whore is trying to teach me about economics," Mr. Jones repeated back to the congressman. "Who was that particular K Street whore?"

"I don't remember her name," Mr. Grayson, who once worked as an economist and conveyed he did not feel Ms. Robertson was qualified to lecture Congress on financial matters, said.

Ms. Robertson has yet to respond, but she's probably quite offended. As far as I know she's the only K Street whore working for the Fed, so you'd think Rep. Grayson could remember her name on air.

Coal is important. Without the coal industry, the parents of our country singers would be out of work, and naughty children would wake up Christmas morning to find their stockings filled with the much messier petroleum. So if Big Coal needs to forge a few letters to Congress, isn't it for the greater good?

The Colbert Report airs Monday through Thursday at 11:30pm / 10:30c