Seeing Mike Sodrel cruising through the Capitol hallways on Tuesday seemed perfectly normal. After all, wasn’t he reelected last year as a Republican congressman from Indiana?

Oh wait, no, he wasn’t.

Take a closer look at that proudly displayed pin on Sodrel’s lapel, and you will see he is in fact wearing the official congressional pin from the 109th Congress. It is Rep. Baron Hill (D-Ind.) who got the pin for the 110th Congress, after he defeated Sodrel in 2006.

Sodrel announced in early October that he would seek yet another rematch with Hill, whom he successfully unseated in the 2004 election.

So was Sodrel on Capitol Hill, complete with pin, just to psych out his past and future rival?

Unclear. The brand-new campaign has yet to get a press secretary, and a request for comment went unrequited.

Protesters at a hearing at the Federal Communication Commission seemed to achieve the goal of attracting attention by showing up wearing Halloween costumes, but their message may have been lost somewhere in the mix.

One protester, who sat in the audience in a particularly sexy outfit, had all the folks who attended the hearing wearing suits fairly confused.

“Who knew slutty French maids hated media consolidation?” one such interested party asked.
It was an excellent question.

Retired Gen. Wesley Clark was the object of some unwelcome attention in the spin room at Drexel University following Tuesday night’s Democratic debate.

Clark, a surrogate in the room for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), was negotiating the throngs of journalists and rival surrogates when he found himself being followed by a man brandishing a camcorder and shouting at him about Sept. 11 conspiracies.

“Why are you walking away from me?” the man shouted repeatedly, adding questions about World Trade Center Building 7.
Clark, with a gritted-teeth grin, tried to ignore the man before finally turning around and shouting, “Because your questions aren’t worth answering!”

It was at that point an event coordinator was overheard suggesting that security might want to take a look at the man’s credentials to see if he was a legitimate journalist.

Former White House Chief of Staff Andy Card may not have endorsed anyone for the GOP presidential nomination, but he did throw his support behind candidate Rudy Giuliani in a controversy that has brought the former mayor a surge of heat in his hometown.

Card volunteered that he could understand why Giuliani, a noted Yankee fan, would root for the Red Sox in the World Series.
“I think Rudy was right to root for the American League,” said Card, a huge Red Sox fan who was in Boston Tuesday for the Red Sox victory celebration.

Card told The Hill he actually cheered for George Steinbrenner’s “Evil Empire” when they were in the World Series.

“There are even some Yankees I actually like,” said Card, who was too nice to mention the fact that the Red Sox have now won two World Series since 2004 while the Yankees haven’t even been to a World Series since 2003. Red Sox hero Josh Beckett, then with the Florida Marlins, shut down the Yanks that year.

Giuliani has earned scorn from the New York press for saying he would root for Boston against the National League’s Colorado Rockies out of allegiance to the American League, home to the Yankees and Red Sox. The New York Daily News called Giuliani a “traitor,” while the New York Post labeled him a “Redcoat.”

Card, who left the White House last year, has joined Fleishman-Hillard’s international advisory board as a senior counselor.

Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) told House staff that he would not be stepping off of the House floor to talk to reporters Tuesday — but don’t think it’s because the war veteran is afraid of a few scribes.

We wondered that ourselves, particularly since The Wall Street Journal that morning ran a front-page story about Murtha’s prolific track record of sending pork home to his district. The story began: “If John Murtha were a businessman, he’d be the biggest employer in this town.”

Sometimes, though, we at Under the Dome are wrong about these things. Spokesman Matthew Mazonkey set us straight Wednesday on Murtha’s sudden lack of chattiness.

“The congressman is always happy to help Hill reporters fill column inches. However, right now he’s very focused on conferencing a $460 billion defense appropriations bill,” Mazonkey explained. 

It’s funny how much context matters when it comes to Halloween costumes.

If Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), for example, dressed up as Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for Halloween, that would probably not be heralded as an awesome trademark of bipartisanship.

But when Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) showed up at a Senate Foreign Relations hearing on Halloween wearing a homemade mask made from a picture of Chairman Joseph Biden (D-Del.), the audience was clearly touched by the two senators’ mischievous relationship.

Biden, who said in a debate over the summer that he would choose Hagel as a running mate if he had to select a Republican, appeared to be delighted by his longtime friend’s clever getup — complete with a 2008 campaign shirt.

Ian Swanson, Sam Youngman and Jackie Kucinich contributed to this page.