Yesterday Seth Rogen testified before a Senate subcommittee to raise awareness for Alzheimer's. Today, he's trying to expose the theatrics of the whole endeavor: although elected officials filled the room to network and get a photo with the actor, only two senators stuck around to actually hear what he had to say.

Congress got its semi-regular dose of celebrity today with VIP testimony from Ben Affleck (violence in the Congo) and Seth Rogen (Alzheimer's disease). And Secretary of State John Kerry got to mitigate this attempt at a handshake.

A tea party primary challenger to Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) is "truly sorry" he habitually posted x-rays of cadavers from his work as a doctor with sarcastic comments. "What kind of gun blows someone's head completely off?" he'd joked of one body. "I gotta get me one of those."

If Joe Newman doesn't win this election, maybe at least he'll let you put him in your pocket and carry him around.

Montana's governor today appointed Democrat John Walsh to take the seat left open by Sen. Max Baucus, who's becoming an ambassador. The move again gives Montana, population 1 million, the same number of senators as California, population 38 million.

American Idol maven and auburn-haired Broadway crooner Clay Aiken thinks "Washington is dysfunctional." So he'd like to be a congressman and fix all that now, please, thank you very much.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), an outspoken liberal voice in the House whose district included Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, and parts of Malibu, announced he will retire from Congress after this year. Waxman, 74, called the job "frustrating" of late: "Nothing seems to be happening."

Using Sunlight Labs' collection of congressional portraits, Matthew Skomarovsky created an average of the faces of all members of Congress. (The collection actually consists of 813 photos, though Skomarovsky hasn't sorted through missing or duplicate portraits yet. Still, we think it's a pretty good likeness.)

A one-star Army general who serves in the Pentagon's inner circle of decision-makers was lightly reprimanded for joking in emails to colleagues that he had masturbated "3 times over the past 2 hours" after meeting with "smoking hot" tea party Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-N.C.).

A virtually unregulated class of companies that sells consumers' personal information to marketers is using new technology to dive deeper than ever—peddling quasi-legal lists of alcoholics, addicts, depressives, rape victims, and even "Hispanic payday loan seekers."

In a surprise bipartisan move Thursday, the Republican-led House passed a plan that could make it easier to transfer most of the remaining 160 U.S. terror detainees from their prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to other locations overseas.

Looking back, we now see it was inevitable. The internet has finally produced what we've apparently all been waiting for: an erotic gay slash-fic about conservative congressmen Paul Ryan and Aaron Schock.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) and his artificially obsidian widow's peak are running for president in 2016. Yesterday's events proved this, as surely as Ryan's continued political survival proves bros are the indestructible cockroaches, the reinventing Madonnas, the injured-but-always-starting Derek Jeters of humanity.

Its existence is fairly well known in Washington — there's even an Amazon show about it — but this week Senator Chuck Schumer, Senator Dick Durbin and Rep. George Miller opened up their D.C. frat house to CNN, and things got weird.

How do the bison feel about the government shutdown? Pretty itchy, it seems. (Via @radleybalko.)

Clarification: The government shutdown did not make Nickelback more popular than Congress. (That poll is from January 8, 2013.) It did, however, help make Congress less liked than dog doo-doo. Very important distinction.

Finally: A website that takes the guess work out of drunk-dialing members of Congress — by drunk-dialing a member of Congress for you.

When it comes to confronting its own historically low approval ratings, Congress is less of head-on type than a head-up-its-own-ass type.

This morning, during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing, Congressmen Gerald Connolly posed an unusual question to IRS official Sarah Hall Ingram: Have you been consorting with the devil?