Any Washington reporter will tell you that most senior government leaders go out of their way to avoid cracking a joke or saying anything remotely controversial. But not Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry, who (I assume) ad-libbed hilariously at IRMCO this morning while discussing some lingering resistance to the government’s new central hiring register program: I’ve been going around, talking to managers, [saying] “What’s going on?” Sometimes people have long memories in this town, in Washington, and evidently I found out OPM had done registers a long time ago, and they did them kind of half-assed. And the…
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One of the Obama administration’s more … um … unusual appointments is rumored to be leaving the White House this summer. Kalpen Modi, AKA Kal Penn, AKA the perpetually high Kumar from the Harold and Kumar movies, will reportedly quit his job soon to start shooting the third in his series of stoner comedies: A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas. The White House and Penn are not confirming these rumors, but his co-star John Cho said the movie is pretty much a done deal. Kumar is currently the associate director of the White House’s Office of Public Engagement. He’s kept a low profile since…
The White House was on to something last year when it asked federal employees for their ideas on improving the government, but sometimes opening the floor to suggestions can backfire. Stars and Stripes has a fun story today about some of the wackier ideas the public has submitted online to the Defense Department. The most awesome proposal is to airdrop a platoon of GPS-equipped bears — which have a better sense of smell than even bloodhounds — into Afghanistan to hunt down Osama bin Laden. This helpful person (possibly Stephen Colbert) really thought through the logistics involved in such an operation, and…
Former Democratic Rep. Eric Massa’s bizarre explanations for his departure from Congress have been an endless source of entertainment this week. Any conspiracy involving health care reform, nude Rahm Emanuel, tickle fights, and Navy rituals likened to Caligula is just too good to be true. But what I love most is that because Massa first claimed the extent of his inappropriate behavior was grabbing a male staffer and saying “What I really ought to be doing is frakking you,” the sci-fi show Battlestar Galactica’s fictional profanity is now being used on the nightly news.* For those of you who are confused, here’s BSG…
In another outstanding piece of investigative journalism, the Daily Show’s Jason Jones uncovers the vast conspiracy linking the U.S. Postal Service, the Catholic Church, and Reservoir Dogs star Harvey Keitel. Read between the lines, people. [HTML1]
I was listening to Sirius XM’s alt-country station last night and heard what is surely the only banjo-driven love song ever written about a Transportation Security Administration screener: “TSA” by Texas musician Danny Barnes. In the live clip below, Barnes says that his banjo brings him a lot of scrutiny from TSA because, apparently, its body is about the right size to hide a Claymore mine. And all the quality time he spent with airport screeners inspired lyrics like “her hair in a bun/her hand on her gun/we made love with the radio on.” Being both a federal government reporter…
If you’re looking for something to do Wednesday evening after our next expected round of snow, you might want to check out www.whitehouse.gov beginning at 5:15 p.m. Bob Dylan will be one of at least a dozen musical acts performing that night in the East Room to honor the Civil Rights Movement, and the White House will stream the whole thing live on their Web site. Oscar-winner Jennifer Hudson, Joan Baez, the Blind Boys of Alabama, Smokey Robinson and John Mellencamp are among the other musicians to be featured at “In Performance at the White House: A Celebration of Music…
The Great Tonight Show War of 2010 is over, and Jay Leno has once again come out on top. But while a lot of digital ink has been spilled over the last month debating whether Leno or Conan O’Brien is funnier, the real story is that this was an astounding failure of NBC’s management. Their executives couldn’t keep a bad situation from becoming worse, and ended up losing one of their top talents. But federal managers can learn a lot from NBC’s failure. Here are five management lessons you can learn from the Leno/Conan dustup: 1. Career progression is crucial to…
Nobody can say that the Government Printing Office lacks a sense of humor. After FedLine blogged White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’ joke yesterday about sending the federal budget to Kinko’s — now called FedEx Office — GPO today said it will send Gibbs his own Kinko’s card. Technically, it’s a GPOExpress card. Those cards allow federal employees to place a small-scale printing order at any FedEx Office branch and net the government up to 70 percent off of the cost. Public Printer Bob Tapella, who runs the agency, said GPOExpress has helped feds place more than 40,000 printing orders since…
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs appeared to announce a new outsourcing initiative at today’s press conference: MR. GIBBS: I’m not going to get into details and specifics on a budget that will be released at a later day. Q: It’s at the printers? MR. GIBBS: And when it comes back from Kinko’s, we’ll be able to talk about it. It’s not really at Kinko’s, though, I was just — go ahead. That sound you just heard was the Government Printing Office having a collective heart attack. Who knows what would happen to them if the White House actually started sending an intern down…