Federal government demands disaster plans for a magician's rabbit (including surprise inspections of his home).

Congress is dominated by intellectual lightweights who are chiefly consumed by electioneering and largely irrelevant in a body where a handful of members and many more staff do the actual work of legislating. And the business of the institution barely gets done because of a pernicious convergence of big money and consuming partisanship.

Lastly (though even less a currents event story): for lack of a better summary it concerns the value of knowledge.