I really like the occassional behind the scenes look at Washington life. Sometimes at these big dinners people get up there and suddenly they're joking about this stuff. They become far more bipartisan, willing to self-deprecate and play up the other side if it means laughs. I wish they could be like this in public.

From The Washington Note: "He [Tom DeLay] noted that James Dobson was already preparing to picket the White House for that slobbery kiss that Bush planted on Joe Lieberman at the State of the Union address. He said that Frist had nothing on him. Frist might be a surgeon but offered that he (DeLay) was the 'only living heart donor.' He thanked the media for giving him the kind of reputation that made him so effective with freshmen Congressmen. He said 'Honestly, I can't tell you how much easier it is to squeeze votes out of these freshmen (Congressmen) or money out of big donors when they think if they say 'no,' I'm going to put a horse head in their bed or something.'

He said that he believed that these kind of dinners were technically torture -- but Al Gonzales had assured him they weren't."

Read the whole thing. It's pretty amusing. And makes DeLay into a likeable guy.