Since we've been doing a bunch of postings about our super-exciting congressional race, we'd love to come up with some clever title along the lines of "Everybody Hates Chris" but we are coming up with nothing. Sorry-- we're a little jet-lagged these days. Needless to say, we do have some Pelosi & Pals news today as the Washington Post has a big feature on some anti-lobbying bill she's been working on for awhile that could see the light of day if she does become Madame Speaker. Lots of bans on travel and gifts are involved and we'll see what happens the moment she does become Madame Speaker. Our guess is that it'll pass with loopholes a' plenty....

Otherwise known as stories we missed while we were on vacation... -The last time we heard from Krissy Keefer, the Green candidate for Congress, she and some of her gal-pals were banging the Taiko drum and handing out cookies to celebrate her official entrance into the race. We maybe a little fuzzy on our American history, but we think Lincoln started that way too. Anyways, we hadn't heard from her since then but last week, she and her Merry Band of Dancers took part in a celebration of Fidel Castro's 80th birthday, which the San Francisco Sentinel described as a "spectacular evening ensemble of music, song, dance and poetry." Keefer's dance troupe performed and Keefer performed the monologue during the performance. You know, nothing says "striving for mainstream political acceptance" like staging dance performances to celebrate Fidel Castro. While it's not official, word has it that Keefer is in talks to take part in a new VH-1 reality show "Dancing With Dictators." It's not know yet who'll she be dancing with, but we here the Stacey Keibler/Mahmoud Ahmadinejad team will be pretty hard to beat. ...

Even as the stores sport back to school sales (which depress us, even now), summer lingers on your friends the -ists. This week's collection of links provides some of the best, worst, and oddest bits of summer fun. So, bring your laptop up onto the roof, make yourself an umbrella drink or ten, and enjoy this week's choice posts from across the Gothamist network. Torontoist (where it's 75 degrees F as of this writing)......

One of the ways bloggers can leverage their collective influence is through a good, old-fashioned pile on. We don't have to necessarily break the story, but if a critical mass of bloggers start addressing it simultaneously, the s**tstorm will finally hit the mainstream. Just ask Dan Rather. The worldwide blogosphere was shocked -- shocked -- at the implications of a recent Chicago Sun-Times article. Turns out that armed with someone's phone number and a......

It’s the kind of thing that's supposed to be bang-bang: local congressperson gets congress to vote on the naming of local post office after local hero and congress votes yes because nobody really cares what a post office is named. It happens so frequently and so easily that nobody can remember when anybody last raised a stink. So congresswoman Barbara Lee tried to get the Berkeley Post office named after long-time councilwoman, activist, and Berkeley......