Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) sent out his annual Christmas card this week, a Heinz-Kerry family photo from his daughter Vanessa's Oct. 10 wedding to Dr. Brian Nahed.

Family members are, from left, Andre Heinz, Alexandra and Christopher Heinz, Teresa and Sen. Kerry, Dr. Vanessa Kerry and her groom, Dr. Brian Nahed, Alexandra Kerry, and Kristann and H. John Heinz IV with their daughter, Astrid.

The bride's nuptial style is minimalist, a strapless white column dress with one stalk of what appear to be lilies. Sen. Kerry's wife, Teresa, went for a different look, in a floor-length bright red ensemble, with what looks like the end of a train in her right hand.

The text of the card is printed in Kerry's thin, sharp handwriting, and wishes recipients “a 2010 that brings troops safely home from war, a healthy economy and all that you hope and pray for.”

As the Boston Herald observed, the photographer, Dennis Reggie, is the brother of Victoria Reggie Kennedy, the widow of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.).

According to the back of the card, the mailing was paid for by Kerry's campaign, John Kerry for U.S. Senate. They may want to double check their records; the recipient who shared it with ITK is a GOP Senate staffer, so she's probably not planning to contribute to the Massachusetts Democrat's re-election campaign.

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) recerntly removed the public option and Medicare-buy in proposal, which the centrist Lieberman opposes, from the bill in order to attract centrist votes. Reid needs 60 votes in order to break a Republican filibuster of the bill.

Moore focused his anger on the Connecticut voters who reelected Lieberman in favor of liberal candidate Ned Lamont (D-Conn.) in the 2006 elections. He tweeted:

People of Connecticut: What have u done 2 this country? We hold u responsible. Start recall of Lieberman 2day or we'll boycott your state.

Lieberman has become the scourge of the left for withholding his vote on healthcare reform due to the inclusion of the public health insurance option and the Medicare buy-in proposals.

There is no provision in the state of Connecticut to recall public officials.

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There are plenty of very smart people on Capitol Hill, but Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) apparently doesn't think he's one of them.

Speaking on the House floor Wednesday, Akin described how, last August, he had predicted that the stimulus bill wouldn't work, adding that he had been proven right.

But it wasn't his intellect that allowed him to see into the future, he said

"Is it because I'm very smart or brilliant? No, it's not at all," he said.

Akin added, "It's simply because I know a little bit about history. I know what will and I know what will not work."

H/T: Bob Cusack

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Blackberry appears to be having some problems in the Washington D.C. region. This kind of an outage has the potential to cripple communications on Capitol Hill and cause a bit of panic for reporters who haven't received email in several hours.

Congressional staffers are also feeling the pinch, especially as many House members travel home today for the holiday recess and rely on their blackberries to communicate with staff from the road. Said one GOP House staffer, "My boss is on his way to the airport right now, and he called a few minutes ago wondering why no one was responding to his emails [sent via Blackberry], and none of us had gotten them."

She added, "We all planned to go out to lunch today, but now we're chained to our desks until [Blackberry] email is working again."

Hillicon Valley is trying to confirm the problem now. We'll keep you posted. From other blog reports, it appears to be affecting customers of T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T. The problems do not appear to be affecting other Blackberry functions like Web browsing.

Update: (11:01 a.m.)--We got this response from RIM:  "BlackBerry customers in North America may be currently experiencing delays receiving email. Our technical teams are working to resolve this issue for those impacted. Phone services, browsing and PIN-to-PIN messaging are not impacted. We apologize for any inconvenience."

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