The out-of-state trip is by no means the first for the Minnesota congresswoman whose star has been rising since she won re-election last year despite calling Barack Obama “anti-American” on national cable TV.

In August, Bachmann spoke to two conservative groups in Colorado, most notably calling for opponents of health-care reform to “slit our wrists” to stop the legislation.

A recent poll showed her constituents believe Bachmann puts the interests of the conservative movement nationally before their own.

[Via Associated Press]

But before the president-elect could get to his swearing-in, out bursts Blago, swearing up and down in wiretap transcripts with the best expletive strings since Nixon. Once Blago’s cussed, illegal schemes got taken down by the FBI and disseminated by the Justice Department, the nation took notice of a new literary lion rumbling from its midsection. Even Blagojevich’s wife, Patti, draws comparison to Shakespeare as readily as she draws blunt verbal daggers of her own. And if their oratorical eclipsing of Obama is regrettable, the Blagos’ lingo also blew away all traces of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s faux folksy rap with a harsh Chicago gust that dropped F-bombs where the mavericka merely dropped Gs.

Although I saw somewhere that reprints of his speeches are depleting the nation’s asterix supply, Blagojevich’s words have also inspired Americans to take up their pens to compose a new musical (or fragment thereof) and a flattering Daily Beast quiz that compares lines from “The Sopranos,” a show that won six Emmys for the best writing on television, to lines from the FBI affadavit. Excerpts after the jump. 

Ben Greenman at The New Yorker online composed “Fragments from ‘Blagojevich: The Musical.‘” Here’s an excerpt from those “Fragments”:

JOHN HARRIS:
Let’s make certain we get
The most for our pick

ROD BLAGOJEVICH:
I’ve dreamed of this since I was a boy
A Senate seat in Illinois
Do you know the value of what I’m holding?

I’ve got this thing and it’s fucking golden …

ROD BLAGOJEVICH:
You have reached
The Blagojeviches

DEPUTY GOVERNOR A.:
Those Tribune scumbags
Should sleep with the fishes.

ROD BLAGOJEVICH:
What do you propose?
Harming the writers who compose
The paper’s editorials?
That’s far too dictatorial.

JACK:
See
I exhaled
Cooler heads
Have prevailed

[PATRICIA BLAGOJEVICH grabs the phone from her husband’s hands.]

PATRICIA BLAGOJEVICH:
Fuck them all
I’m so mad I could spit
Fire the writers
And hold up that Cubs shit
Whoever dares to interfere
With us will simply disappear
Their faces I’ll slap
Their necks I will break
I’ll cut them to the bone
Like the wind off the lake

[The federal agents all stare at one another.]

And here’s a sample from the Daily Beast quiz:

7. “That motherfucker’s full of shit. He’s shaking me down.”

8. “Our recommendation is fire all those fucking people, get ‘em the fuck out of there…”

9. “I could have made a larger announcement but wanted to see how they perform by the end of the year. If they don’t perform, fuck ‘em.”

10. “Jesus Christ! The money I’ve been dropping in here, I could’ve bought a fuckin’ Ferrari.”

The U.S. Secretary of the Treasury made that demonstrably true statement during a radio interview last February in which he dissed the one-cent coin, calling it costly to produce and saying he’d do away with the lowly penny if its demise were “politically doable.”

Paulson may yet have his way with Congress when it comes to trillion-dollar checks, but on Monday Congress scored a symbolic victory over penny-haters like Paulson when Paulson’s own U.S. Mint announced four congressionally authorized new designs for the back side of next year’s new pennies.

Designers have readied images representing four stages of Lincoln’s life — but not, inexplicably, for a planned fifth in the series showing Lincoln’s role in preserving the United States of America “as a single and united country.” The delay does not, it can be hoped, reflect a cautious approach on Paulson’s part to stamping into good copper what could, in a near, post-financial meltdown future, be an obsolete theme.

Four years ago, when Congress passed the bill to put five stages of President Abraham Lincoln’s life on the back of the penny, the director of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission gushed that it would “delight Americans as they go about their daily transactions.”

Now that Paulson’s pronouncements have them pinching pennies with daily-increasing desperation, Americans may indeed take delight wherever they can — with even Honest Abe’s humble log cabin looking pretty cush to the growing legions of the laid-off and the foreclosed-upon. But given Paulson’s anti-penny proclivities, any such delight would probably strike him as irrational exuberance.

Also included in the 2005 new-penny legislation is a series of $1 coins commemorating U.S. presidents that’s already underway, along with a companion series of $10 gold coins commemorating their wives (or Lady Liberty for presidents who lacked wives), with designs on the flipside highlighting something from the First Ladies’ lives.

The “First Spouse” series (as it’s called in apparent deference to future First Dudes) makes converting one’s life savings into gold much handier for those of modest means. It also looks back to an ancient Roman tradition going back to Cleopatra and Livia, the (second) wife of the emperor Augustus. Oddly, looking forward, the Mint’s schedule has the ”First Spouse” series ending with Pat Nixon, while the presidents will run through Gerald Ford — in avoidance of a Betty Ford Clinic design, perhaps?

It’s a shame, because at least two potential future First Spouses seem to be all ready for their star turns in gold.