From between the heavy draperies of House majority whip Tom DeLay's first-floor Capitol office, a bizarre scene could be glimpsed outside. In the normally quiet, heavily guarded parking lot, 13 elephants from the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus were parading trunk-in-tail across the East Plaza, leading an entourage of dancing dogs and clowns on stilts. At the center of the mini-circus, a beaming Speaker Newt Gingrich shared a ring with a 14,762-lb. elephant named King Tusk. Touching off what would become a daylong stampede of inevitable jokes, the Speaker announced that the Capitol now had "the outer circus and...
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