Long before he danced with the stars, then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay two-stepped all over fellow Texas Rep. Ron Paul's hopes of overseeing the Federal Reserve, according to an account provided by House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank .

In a broader interview with my colleagues Phil Mattingly and Benton Ives, Frank offered this assessment of how DeLay and other GOP leaders tiptoed around giving Paul -- who wants to abolish the Fed -- the gavel of the subcommittee with jurisdiction over it:

"In 2003, Ron Paul was in line to be chairman of the Domestic Monetary Policy Subcommittee of this committee. Specifically and solely to frustrate Ron from being the chairman, they merged the Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy with the Subcommittee on International Monetary Policy. Ron Paul then complained to Tom DeLay, and Tom DeLay told [then-Chairman Mike] Oxley [R-Ohio] 'Don't change it' ... [T]wo years later, even though they merged the two subcommittees in the progression, Ron was then again ready to be chairman, this time of the combined one. [Then-Rep. Deborah] Pryce [R-Ohio] was dragooned to come back and assert a subcommittee chairmanship ... Ron at that point said to me, 'I guess I have to wait for you to be chairman for me to have any authority around here.' The Republican Party was a staunch defender of the Fed against Ron Paul."

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour's political action committee reported giving $5,000 to Sen. David Vitter, R-La., the same week it accepted an identical amount from former Rep. Chip Pickering of Mississippi.

Pickering, like Vitter, is a conservative Christian Republican accused of having an extramarital affair linked to the "C Street" townhouse in Southeast Washington that is at the center of a spate of GOP sex scandals.

Pickering's otherwise dormant CHIP PAC made its first donation of the year to Haley's PAC on Aug. 15 -- four days after the governor gave to Vitter's 2010 re-election campaign -- according to a Sept. 20 filing with the Federal Election Commission. The two checks comprise all of the month's activities for Haley's PAC, which has just $13,281.37 in the bank and has made only one other contribution this year.

Is it just a coincidence?

Former Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., is making his way back into public life less than three years after a congressional page scandal forced him from Congress, and he isn't entirely ruling out a future bid for office.

"I doubt I will re-enter the political arena as an office-seeker, but I will use my experience and my voice to help others, to rally for economic sanity, to bring about real reforms on a local, state and even national level," Foley told Javier Manjarres according to the transcript of an interview published on the subscription-only part of the Web site of the Conservative Republican Alliance in Florida.

Manjarres interviewed Foley at the West Palm Beach restaurant Pistache last week after a fundraiser for Marco Rubio (Rush Limbaugh was there, too). He told Notepad his impression is that Foley is leaving his options open.

So, what's a senator to do with clothes that are old or have gone out of style?

For Sen. Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, the answer is bag 'em up, walk them to a receptacle on Capitol Hill and make a quiet, anonymous donation to unknown recipients.

A spy tells us Collins dropped off her clothing on Sept. 13 in a bin managed by The Clothing Recycling Company, which collects and sorts clothes to distribute to other charities that deliver them to needy folks.

Call it social justice, Senate style.

For years, the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington hounded House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, over a variety of questions about his political conduct.

It's clear now, more than three years after he resigned his seat, that CREW can't keep its eyes off of him.

The group is holding a watch party for DeLay's debut on FOX's Dancing with the Stars on Monday, Sept. 21.

The watch party is really just an excuse to share this clip with you, from tomdelay.com.

Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., denounced as partisan Democratic plans to offer a House resolution disapproving of his outburst during last week's presidential address to a joint session of Congress.

Here's Wilson's statement, which was released late Sunday morning:

"The American people are fed up with the political games in Washington, and I refuse to participate in an effort to divert our attention away from the task at hand of reforming health insurance and creating new jobs. Having apologized on Wednesday to the White House, we agreed that we must move forward in a civil manner to do the work the American people have sent us here to do. Health insurance reform is too important to take a back seat to political partisanship."

By refusing to participate, he means that he won't apologize, according to spokesman Ryan Murphy. He will attend.

A resolution disapproving of his action would be less severe than a "reprimand," which is, in turn, lighter than a "censure."

You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone with even a modicum of respect for Congress who thinks Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., has a leg to stand on in breaking the standard decorum of a presidential address to a joint session by yelling "Lie. You lie" during the speech.

Even Wilson was for apologizing before he was against it. But the episode raises an interesting set of questions: Is his sin one of tone? Is it one of content? Is it one of venue? Is it one of timing?

The answer: All of the above.

It's not the first time a president has heard a catcall during a joint session. It's not that public officials are innocent of using even more personal terms to denounce a president.

Decorum has been breached in the House chamber many times before. And presidents routinely are accused of lying -- or at least intentionally misleading -- even by members of their own party sometimes. Put them all together, though, and Wilson is the outlier as a contestant in the lying game.

For a more socially and politically graceful way to say the president lied during a joint session of Congress, recall the words of a certain junior senator from Illinois in his response to President Bush's 2008 State of the Union address.

Here's what then-Sen. Barack Obama said: "And finally, tonight we heard President Bush say that the surge in Iraq is working, when we know that's just not true."

And, as Warner Wolf used to say, let's go to the videotape.

A conservative Democratic House member was proud to show off the T-shirt above on Tuesday evening. But ... he asked not to be identified by name.

It's not exactly a star on the Walk of Fame, but the House is set to honor the longtime "mayor" of Hollywood, Johnny Grant, today by passing a bill that would name a post office after him.

The tireless Tinsel Town promoter was once a White House correspondent for Gene Autry's KMPC radio.

The post office, which is less than half a mile from the intersection of Hollywood and Vine, is in the district of Rep. Diane Watson, who sponsored the bill. Grant, who died in 2008 and already has a star on the Walk of Fame at 6915 Hollywood Boulevard, will still need Senate action to have the post office named for him.

Shortly before they left town for the August recess, President Obama offered an open September invitation to his house for any lawmaker who wanted to discuss his health care overhaul plans in detail.

"They will have all of August to review the various legislative proposals. When we come back in September, I will be available to answer any question that members of Congress have. If they want to come over to the White House and go over line by line what's going on, I will be happy to do that," Obama said at a Raleigh, N.C., high school on July 29.

Now some of his harshest critics are calling him on that promise and asking for an invitation.