WASHINGTON -- I am on the phone with Melanie, a customer affairs specialist for Levi Strauss & Co.

Me: I would like to discuss your product and its magical, mystical slimming powers for the restorative rejuvenation of the male physique.

...

WASHINGTON -- A few feet from the barber chair in which I sat, a young mother was comforting the 2-year-old on her lap. They were next in line. The tyke was all squirm and fidget, mighty suspicious of this procedure.

In a syrupy singsong, Mom was...

WASHINGTON -- This just in:

Dear journalist: As a media relations trade publication servicing public relations professionals, my job is to help ensure that my readers have accurate info about you so they can send you the best quality PR ...

WASHINGTON -- Our Supreme Court may be the most politically polarized in history. If you ask me, partisan politics have no place on the court -- unless my side has the swing vote, in which case Im fine with it. But as things stand, this is ...

WASHINGTON -- It is said that everyone has a price, a sum of money large enough to corrupt his moral integrity. I always suspected that I might have a price, too, but was a little alarmed recently to discover it is $125.

That was the price of the...

WASHINGTON -- Another installment in my ongoing effort to lose more readers by retelling old jokes as bad poems.

The Delicacy, in the style of Shakespeare's Sonnet 18

In Mexico, an Aussie went to dine

And spied a meal upon another's ...