Heard on the Hill: Loretta and Linda Lit

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Looking for in-flight reading material that falls somewhere on the intellectual-engagement scale between that dense briefing book and Us Weekly? HOH humbly suggests the Sánchez sisters’ new book, “Dream in Color: How the Sánchez Sisters Are Making History in Congress.”

In addition to perky truisms — “you can’t accomplish your goals if you don’t try” and “the first step toward making anything happen is to believe it’s possible” — the book actually offers some good behind-the-scenes maneuvering over legislation and a few juicy tidbits.

Among HOH’s favorites:

• Rep. Linda Sánchez (D-Calif.) on the House’s letches: “I’ve had members proposition me, and there are even ones twice my age who have this sort of rock-star mentality that everybody wants to be their groupie. When they are turned down politely but firmly, some of them still won’t take no for an answer. Soon, the word gets around: they are the ones to avoid, the ones who are always a little too friendly or a little too touchy-feely.” Aw, c’mon Congresswoman, no names?

• Linda on some colleagues’ use of feminine wiles: “Among the women in Congress there are probably one or two who try to use their femininity or their good looks to finagle things out of people, and the other members really resent that.” Again, HOH is wishing Sánchez had dropped a dime on her pretty (and pretty manipulative) fellow House-ers.

• Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) describes getting into a verbal fight with Rep. Vernon Ehlers (R-Mich.) on the House floor, while Ehlers was chairing the task force investigating allegations that she had won her election by voter fraud. Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) had to break up the fight. Since then, Sanchez and Ehlers have never had a “working kinship.”

• There’s some dish over the much-covered flap when the Sánchez sisters quit the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in protest of Rep. Joe Baca (D-Calif.) allegedly calling Loretta “a whore.” In writing about the incident, Linda essentially calls Baca an aging sexist. “Male superiority is very deeply ingrained in some Latino men of a certain generation — the old ‘women should be seen and not heard’ mentality — and Baca belongs to that camp, although he would certainly deny that.”

A Craig-in-Court Coincidence. Sen. Larry Craig likely won’t attend the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul next week — he’s retiring from office at the end of the 110th Congress, after all. But the Idaho Republican is expected in the Twin Cities on Sept. 10 to appeal his conviction on that whole lewd-conduct-in-an-airport-bathroom thing, which, of course, prompted said retirement.

The number of journalists covering oral arguments in the appeal no doubt won’t match those at the convention, but Craig’s court date still is expected to be a media circus. Thirty seats for reporters have been reserved in the courtroom, with overflow seating in another room at the courthouse. There’s a special room reserved for reporters to conduct interviews, and St. Paul city officials are even allowing media satellite trucks to pay a flat fee to park near the courthouse — and avoid the need to keep feeding the meter.

Housing Crisis. Plenty of enterprising Denver-ites have taken advantage of the convention’s housing crunch to offer their pads out for rent to visiting politicos, but just such a transaction left one would-be renter feeling burned. A poster on the online classified Web site Craigslist complained that Heather Ryan, the long-shot Democrat vying for incumbent Kentucky GOP Rep. Ed Whitfield’s seat, agreed to rent her house but later backed out of the deal.

The unidentified — and irate — Denver resident even went so far as to post the entire e-mail exchange between herself and the candidate in which Ryan claims she, her husband, two kids and a “Kentucky Blogger” will rent the house. Ryan assures the house’s owner that they’re “not big party animals” and even offers to provide the owner an alias for the blogger to use (in case the blogger mentioned the homeowner in a blog post). According to the e-mails, she says she will call and drop a campaign check to cover the deposit, but when the check doesn’t arrive, the homeowner panics about being stood up. “If I do not here [sic] from you my noon MST tomorrow, I will begin contacting news outlets ... so that the public and other politicians know you made a deal and broke it.”