We know, John McCain. It can be heard to keep tabs on pesky everyday facts, like how many cars you have. But undisclosed Iranian nuclear sites? From someone who’s supposedly hot on foreign policy? Phew.

This week in Congress, Newt Gingrich continues his bromances with Republican members of the house, notably Roy Blunt and Darrell Issa. David Vitter is still obsessed with czars. Michael Burgess is endearing colloquial, Gresham Barrett is strutting (while not shamelessly sucking up to Joe Wilson), Chuck Grassley doesn’t care what you think about his tweet abbreviations, and Keith Ellison just about sums up how we feel about ACORN right now.

What: Celebrity Pet Night on Capitol Hill.

Where: Cannon House Office Building Caucus Room.

When: Wednesday, September 30, 5 to 7.

Attire: Dark suits and businesswear dominated the straight-from-the-office crowd.

Who: The Animal Health Institute invited members of Congress and their staff to socialize and celebrate the positive impact of pets at its annual reception. Headlining the event’s 12th year were four-legged “celebrities” Rocky—the rottweiler that plays Ahnold on HBO’s Entourage—and Raleigh, the Persian feline better known as Sprinkles on NBC’s The Office. Guests mingled and took pictures with the guests of honor, while a few brought their own purse-size dogs along. Congressional members such as Representative Shelley Berkley, who was eager to pose for a picture with Rocky, and Ralph Hall, who gave Raleigh a scratch behind the ears, made the rounds.

Congrats to last month's winner, Elise Benjamin! Look for her photo in the November issue of The Washingtonian.

It’s the first of the month—October already!—and that means it’s time for another Washingtonian.com photo contest. For this month’s theme, show us how you interpret the idea of contrast. We want you to play on opposites and juxatposition: Dark and light? Big and small? Hot and cold? You decide—just get creative.

Veterans to this contest are probably familiar with how it works, but for all the newbies, here are the details: Send your submissions by noon on Friday, October 16, and our judges will pick the best shots to advance to the reader-voting round. Then we’ll open it up to you, the reader, to select a favorite. The winner will be published in the December issue of the magazine.

Photos—one per e-mail—should be sent to photocontest@washingtonian.com. Be sure to include the photographer’s name, phone number, e-mail address, and place of residence, along with a sentence or two describing the photo and explaining why it fits the theme. Photos should be 300 dpi and at least four by six inches. And remember, both the photographer and the photo’s subject need to be from the Washington area, which includes the Maryland and Virginia suburbs.

Good luck!

Investigative reporter James Grimaldi’s fall series on the Skins hit the team for its ticket practices. Photograph by Matthew Worden

Washington Post editors often say the paper’s two most important beats are the Redskins and the White House. They devote lots of reporters and space to covering the teams at 1600 Pennsylvania and FedEx Field. Matched head to head, which is better—White House or Redskins coverage?

The Redskins

The Post has three full-time reporters on the Skins beat: Jason Reid is in his third year as chief writer. He usually writes the game-day story and most items in the Redskins Insider blog; Rick Maese, the beat’s newest reporter, came from the Baltimore Sun to replace Jason LaCanfora, who went to TV; Barry Svrluga switched from covering the Washington Nationals to writing features about the football team.

On game days, the Post floods the Redskins zone. The press box hosts seven Posties: the three beat writers plus two columnists as well as utility writers Dan Steinberg and Paul Tenorio.

The Post has had a rocky relationship with Redskins owner Dan Snyder. A few years ago, the Skins accused the Post of meddling in the locker room and writing too many negative articles. Team executives tried to undermine Nunyo Demasio, then the beat reporter. The Redskins yanked 267 of the Post’s season tickets as part of a 2004 dispute over coverage and alleged resale of the tickets.

We Love DC was born in 2008 after ten bloggers from Metroblogging DC decided to start a new site. They wanted independence from the city-blog network—declaring it on July 4, naturally—and have since nearly doubled their volunteer writing team and, in the past six months, tripled their monthly readers.

Don Whiteside and Jenn Larsen were two of We Love DC’s founders; Shannon, who likes to keep her last name under wraps, joined the blog in April. It runs the gamut on coverage—everything from urban culture to food to breaking news—and includes short, digestible items as well as long-form features. Don covers technology news—and uses his background as a software engineer to keep the site running—while Jenn covers nightlife and the arts, and Shannon writes on urban development, transit, and neighborhood news.

We caught up with the three Washingtonophiles to find out exactly what they love about our city. And because we couldn’t resist, we got the scoop on a few things they could do without, too.

After years as an advice columnist, Emily Yoffe has grown careful about what she asks other people. Photograph by Chris Leaman

As author of the Dear Prudence advice column, Slate correspondent Emily Yoffe has a job that allows her to explore and learn about some odd corners of human existence.

In addition to sifting through hundreds of plaintive and sometimes humorous letters sent to her advice column each month, she has signed herself up for experiments ranging from a vow of silence to becoming a “drag king” for Slate’s Human Guinea Pig column.

In her own words:

‘‘I owe my career to Mike Kinsley. He plucked me out of the intern-application pile at the New Republic years ago.

I’m the third Prudence. Herb Stein, an economic adviser to President Nixon, started Dear Prudence. He was a friend of Mike’s and thought Slate needed an advice column.

Then it was taken over by Margo Howard, the daughter of Ann Landers. When I heard she was leaving, I thought I had to go for this.