Tom DeLay isn’t alone. While the former House majority leader had a quick fall from grace on Dancing With the Stars—stress fractures in both feet caused him to drop out early—a lot of fancy footwork is going on in political circles (and not just in the health-care-bill negotiations).

President Obama, who danced onstage with Ellen DeGeneres to Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love,” has a classically trained ballet dancer heading the White House staff: Rahm Emanuel studied dance throughout his Chicago childhood and was offered a scholarship with the Joffrey Ballet. We even hear that Emanuel worked with a private ballet instructor at a downtown DC studio in recent years.

In his years on Saturday Night Live, Minnesota senator Al Franken danced up a storm, including in a memorable sketch where he played Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger.

When Utah congressman Jason Chaffetz complained this fall after being singled out for additional screening at the Salt Lake City airport, he became the latest in a long line of politicians who’ve run into trouble at airports. Here’s a roundup of some of the most memorable confrontations.

Security

In 2000, cameras caught Congressman Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island trying to shove a woman who was monitoring a metal detector when he was told his carryon bag was too large to fit through the x-ray machine.

In March, when gloved officials asked to search the bag of Oregon congressman Peter DeFazio, who had helped create the Transportation Security Administration, he allegedly mumbled a swear word.

Boarding Gate

Louisiana Senator David Vitter, of “DC madam” notoriety, threw a tantrum in March after he set off an alarm by opening a security door to a restricted area while rushing to catch a flight. When confronted by an employee, Vitter went into a “do you know who I am?” tirade before fleeing the scene.

Indiana congressman David McIntosh was charged with two counts of assault and battery in 1996 after trying to push his way past two USAir employees and onto a full plane. Both workers said McIntosh smelled of alcohol.

It’s becoming clear that the only thing more tedious than the 2000+ page healthcare bill is the sheer volume of our representatives’ tweets about it. To their merit however, the GOP congressmen on Twitter are livening things up by becoming increasingly inventive with their metaphors. This week alone we have the healthcare bill depicted as a giant monolithic structure; as “abominable works” passed under cover of darkness; and as a deliberate homage to Cold War-era communism. Gresham Barrett even states that our forefathers are weeping tears of sorrow somewhere over this scandalous piece of legislation. Sources tell us that despite the frosty weather, the air conditioning is still blasting away in the Longworth building this week- possibly to blow away all the rampant melodrama.

In other news, (and there isn’t much- nobody except Rick Perry seemed to even notice the tragedy at Fort Hood) Michele Bachmann is wearing a lei, John McCain is still still STILL obsessed with earmarks, Earl Blumenauer is taking nods from the Darrell Issa school of tweet humor (jokes your dad makes in front of all your friends), Virginia Foxx and John Shimkus are praying for a way out from all this rampant socialism and John Barrow is eating tacos. Jason Chaffetz is going to need his generous federal insurance plan if he keeps having Pop-Tarts for dinner. And there’s surely nothing more unnerving in the Twittersphere than Zach Wamp talking about “mojo.”

Big week in Congress: Pelosi releases a healthcare bill for all to read, resulting in the usual grumbles about how long it is. To which we reply, would you rather have a bill one could scrawl on the back of a Big Mac wrapper? Luckily our representatives, brilliant, biting humorists that they are, are able to see the funny side.

In other news, Pete Hoekstra is on Huckabee, Joe Wilson is making friends in Europe (don’t tell him they’re all socialists over there), Cynthia Lummis is hanging out with someone named “Hoppy” and Bob Latta is abusing the caps lock key. And happily, many representatives gathered outside the Capitol Building at the end of the week to protest the healthcare bill, resulting in yet more bad jokes for the weekend.

It might have been Halloween, but there were few costumes and not much candy up on the Hill. Apart from John Shimkus, who’s been inexplicably playing the part of a preacher all week.

Joy Zinoman After 35 years, the head of Studio Theatre is stepping down. How has Washington theater changed? What’s next?

John Lannan The only one of the Nationals’ 30 pitchers to last the entire season, he might have suggestions for a better season next year.

Stacie Turner According to insiders, the Georgetown real-estate agent is one of Bravo’s Real Housewives of DC cast members, so watch out for film crews.

David Ferriero The newly appointed US archivist, who headed the New York Public Library, comes here with a mission of transparency and openness.

Cate Blanchett The Australian actress will be here for a month of performances in A Streetcar Named Desire at the Kennedy Center.

Brian Nutting The longtime Congressional Quarterly editor was fired for asking impertinent questions about mass layoffs at the newly merged Roll Call–CQ.

This article first appeared in the November 2009 issue of The Washingtonian. For more articles from that issue, click here.

In this disheartening Redskins season, a revolt against team owner Dan Snyder has spread through Redskin fandom. In response, Fedex Field security has been ordered to shred, stomp, or seize any protest signs directed at Snyder or the team’s top executive, Vinny Cerrato. (See accounts by the Post’s Dan Steinberg of fans at Monday night’s loss who were allegedly harassed by security and ejected for screaming “Danny sucks” near the ESPN booth.)

Fans in turn have taken their protest to a place beyond management’s control: the Web. From bitter blogs to fiery Facebook tirades, what some describe as Fascist Landover is under attack.

The story that comes to mind when reading Haleh Esfandiari’s memoir of wrongful arrest, surprise raids, puzzling interrogations, and solitary confinement in Ahmadinejad’s Iran is Franz Kafka’s dystopian novel The Trial. Yet unlike the fictional bank clerk Joseph K., Esfandiari—who runs the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Middle East Program in DC—survived her ordeal, including four months in Iran’s Evin Prison on trumped-up charges, to deliver a taut, jolting narrative that describes how life in the Islamic republic is stranger—and darker—than fiction.

Esfandiari, who fled Iran in the winter of 1978, had been visiting her mother in 2006 when Iranian police forced her cab off the highway outside Tehran, swiped her passports and plane tickets, and disappeared into the night.

Interrogations follow. Esfandiari pleads her innocence. An investigator with Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence twists her testimony. The story, a snapshot of Iranian paranoia in response to the Bush administration’s rhetoric, is also a luminous panorama of Iranian life. In prison, Esfandiari befriends the female guards, whose dark chadors disguise worldly concerns about body weight, love, and the future. In the juxtaposition of these women with Esfandiari and the generation that came of age before the revolution, the book channels another Kafka story, The Metamorphosis. As Esfandiari’s tale proves, Gregor Samsa’s transformation from man to insect is no more frightening than Iran’s from homeland to prison.