Last year, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) won the crowd over at the Congressional Correspondents Dinner with his hilarious and raunchy address. Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) had given it his all and scored some good one-liners, but Specter emerged the clear victor.

Tuesday’s dinner pitted Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) against House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio). (OK, it’s not really a formal contest of who is funnier, but that’s how everyone talks about it afterward).

Boehner went first, mocking some Capitol Hill reporters and sarcastically labeling Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) as both “Senator Happy” and “Senator Grumpy.” He also had some decent self-deprecating humor about his perpetual tan and smoking habit.

But Kennedy stole the show, cracking jokes about his good friend Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and the presidential aspirations of many of his colleagues. The senator’s best dig, however, was aimed directly at Boehner.

Kennedy said he recently visited Boehner when he was on the House side and noticed that the Ohio legislator was working on a jigsaw puzzle. Six months later, Kennedy stopped by Boehner’s office again — and Boehner was still working on putting the puzzle together.

“John, that’s a long time to be working on a puzzle,” Kennedy said.

“No, it’s not,” Boehner supposedly replied. “Right here on the side of the box it says three to five years.”

Boehner took another dagger yesterday when he ran into The Wall Street Journal’s David Rogers in the Speaker’s lobby just off the House floor.

Boehner, who ridiculed Rogers’s wardrobe in his speech Tuesday, told Rogers, “You don’t look any better a day later.”

Rogers shot back, “You’re not any funnier.”

Burton living a charmed life

Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) has had a great year. The outspoken congressman last month missed 19 votes so he could play in a golf tournament in Palm Springs, Calif., according to an article in The Indianapolis Star.

And then, Burton somehow got his hands on a ticket to the Super Bowl and watched his Indianapolis Colts topple the Chicago Bears. During a very important floor speech on Tuesday, Burton noted how he sat in the rain (poor guy!) and witnessed “one of the greatest football games” that he has ever seen. (Uh, Mr. Congressman, there were four turnovers in the first quarter — how many games have you seen?)

Burton’s office didn’t return a call seeking details on how the congressman got his seat to the big game. But it seems Burton got the ticket from Colts President Bill Polian, whom he called a friend during his address.

Hodes gets the Axe

Democratic staffers surprised Rep. Paul Hodes (D-N.H.) and his wife, Peggo, last Friday night at the Democratic issues retreat in Williamsburg, Va., when they presented him with his 1948 Gibson SJ acoustic guitar, which Hodes thought was back in his Capitol office.

The Hodeses met when Paul responded to a help-wanted ad to join a folk rock band that Peggo started.

A House Democratic Caucus staffer secretly lugged Hodes’s guitar, which he nicknamed “Axe,” to the retreat. Axe came in handy Friday when Hodes and New York Democratic Reps. John Hall and Joseph Crowley sang Hall’s signature song, “Still the One.”

Hodes and his wife sang “Call Me the Breeze” by J.J. Kale and “Roseville Fair” by Bill Staines, which was popularized by Nancy Griffith.

Harman a no-show at retreat

Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) was spotted getting on a plane to LAX last Thursday just as most House Democrats were heading off to Williamsburg, Va., for their annual retreat.

The sighting had some House sources wondering whether Harman’s decision to skip the retreat was motivated by lingering tensions over Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) high-profile snubbing when she selected Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) over the more senior Harman for the coveted Intelligence panel chairmanship earlier this year.

But Harman Chief of Staff John Hess said that she had a previous engagement — a district event with National Endowment of the Arts Chairman Dana Gioia that had been planned months ago.

“She had a longstanding commitment on her calendar to be part of an all-day session on the arts in her district,” Hess said. “This is something they had agreed to do long before the retreat deadlines.”

But Harman couldn’t change the date once the retreat had been scheduled?

No, Hess explained. She needed to get this done because “members’ schedules book up months in advance.”

And for Harman, that’s especially true when it comes to attending a two-day Pelosi lovefest.

— Susan Crabtree and Jonathan E. Kaplan contributed to this page.