Congress might have left Washington for the Independence Day recess but HOH stayed the course to keep an eye on things over the hot, humid and patriotic week. Here’s a roundup of some of our favorites bits of gossip and observations while you were away.

Grassley Makes History

Sen. Charles E. Grassley, who over the past couple of years has taken shots at the History Channel for what he says is an inadequate amount of historical programming, declared recent efforts to his satisfaction. On his Twitter account, the Iowa Republican praised programming on Attila the Hun and Cleopatra.

An ‘Insane’ Workout

The man behind the Insanity workout, Shaun Thompson, punished lawmakers before they headed home for the recess, stopping by the Capitol to lead Republican lawmakers, including P90X acolyte Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis., and Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Mich. Twitter hashtags that followed the getaway day sweat-fest included “#gradeAbuttkicking” and “#can’tmove.”

Republicans Snap Pix

Some House Republicans decided to chronicle their day-to-day activities this month via the #CongressionalPhotoADay project, a social-media experiment that yielded results that ranged from still-life shots in district flower gardens to inflammatory, damn-the-torpedoes political rhetoric.

Early adopters included Reps. Stephen Fincher, R-Tenn., Sean P. Duffy, R-Wis., and Austin Scott, R-Ga.

Elizabeth Lauten, spokeswoman for Fincher, told HOH, “I’m hoping this encourages members to stay consistently engaged on Instagram and to continue to push themselves to find creative ways to reach their constituents on platforms we know that they’re using.”

How People Find HOH

And finally, every once in a while we look backstage in our Internets to see just what search terms people are using to find their way to HOH’s little slice of blog heaven. As usual, we were delighted and confused. Here were some of the top, fully formed questions people plugged into their search engines to find us on the Web:

• Who says government doesnt listen to what its citizens have to say
• What religion is nancy pelosi?
• Why barney frank is an idiot
• Who picked the gang of eight
• Is that a tarp over the supreme court building
• What is a roll call in the air force