Sad: DC only joint-second in national excessive drinking

District winos

Washington second for excessive drinking – behind Montana

Cockburn’s malign influence appears to be spreading its way across the capital: new data reveals that DC is now tied second in the nation for having the most excessive drinkers, alongside North Dakota and Iowa. Only Montana has the district beat, according to a 2025 update to the County Health Rankings and Roadmaps report from the University of Wisconsin’s Population Health Institute.

The report uses 2022 data from the Centers for Disease Control, and the CDC’s rather prudish definition of “excessive drinking,” which includes: “binge” drinking (four or more drinks on one occasion for women per week, five for men – Cockburn calls this “a palate cleanser”), “heavy” drinking (eight or more drinks for women in one week, 15 for men – or “lunch”), drinking while pregnant (which Mrs. Cockburn calls “coping”) and underage drinking (or “school”). Readers who think those amounts are tame should brace themselves: Reason’s Eric Boehm has a cover piece about how an anti-booze extremist has been handed an outsized role in drawing up new guidelines. Thanks, Biden!

Given that the CDC figures are three years old, your correspondent wonders whether DC’s denizens have managed to up their rather rookie numbers since. On the one hand, a large swathe of the city was still working from home in 2022, hitting the Sauvignon Blanc at 9:30 a.m. while letting our bars and restaurants dwindle. A survey from the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington last week revealed that “44 percent of DC’s full-service casual restaurants say they are likely to close in 2025 (11 percent very likely, 33 percent somewhat likely) as rising costs and tipped wage increases outpace revenue.”

The latest victim is Hill intern favorite Hill Country BBQ, which will host its last live-band karaoke tomorrow night and close its doors Friday… and is reportedly set to be replaced by cryptocurrency bar Pubkey. It’s easy to understand why: costs are high and tariffs on imported alcohol from Mexico and Europe could push them even higher, threatening the prospect of the much-vaunted “New American Golden Age.” Cockburn sees these circumstances as a challenge, not an omen: scrape your pennies out from the back of the couch, rally your ousted government worker friends and urge them to use their buyout money on bourbon. Your city needs you: we can’t let Montana get away with this!

On our radar

ANTISOCIAL The Social Security Administration website crashed four times in a ten-day period this month, with critics holding Elon Musk’s DoGE responsible for its repeated failure.

HABBA PROMOTION President Donald Trump named his personal lawyer Alina Habba as the interim US Attorney for her home state of New Jersey.

IVY LEAVE A Columbia student is suing the Trump administration to challenge her deportation to South Korea for participating in pro-Palestine protests on campus.

But her emails…

Pete Hegseth vigorously defended by former Fox co-worker

National Security Advisor Mike Waltz’s inadvertent inclusion of a journalist in a Signal groupchat for planning air strikes on Yemen is proving to be a partisan Rorschach test.

“👀 You have got to be kidding me,” tweeted former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, whose 2016 campaign was rocked by the explosive revelation that she used a private email server for official public communications while heading the State Department. Though it pains Cockburn to admit it… Hillary has a point. Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg lists a litany of infractions that Waltz and the other cabinet officials may have committed – not least potentially sharing classified or top-secret information on an app not approved for official business, “because their phones could have been hacked by a foreign intelligence service.”

Goldberg knew of the attacks two hours before they took place thanks to a message in the Signal chat from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth which, per Goldberg, “contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the US would be deploying, and attack sequencing.”

Yet leaping to Hegseth’s defense… his former Fox & Friends Weekend co-host Will Cain. “The biggest takeaway on the Signal story… is how thoughtful, collaborative and honest all of these people were in their deliberation,” he tweeted.

After drawing criticism for his not-all-that-objective commentary on the matter, Cain dug in. “Spare me the ‘if the other side did it’ bothsidesim [sic],” he wrote. “I see a VP thoughtfully pushing back while ultimately deferring to the President. A SecDef putting plans together awaiting orders… A team working toward a conclusion privately the same way they present publicly.” A truly measured response from a journalist unafraid to speak truth to power. Cockburn wonders if Cain is auditioning to be the 22nd Fox personality to join Hegseth et all in the Trump administration…

Bob cut?

Disgraced former senator Menendez skips wife’s bribery trial

Gold Bars Bob Menendez can be counted out of the running for husband of the year. The convicted former senator was noticeably absent at the start of his wife’s bribery trial, even though a judge had delayed his prison sentence so he could “assist” his beau.

It’s not immediately clear if his absence was her idea or his. The kickoff of Nadine Menendez’s trial is a stark reminder of just how far the power couple that represented New Jersey – and, arguably, Egypt – has fallen. Nadine sported an Amazon Prime tote bag at her trial: far cheaper than the Chanel purse she carried at an earlier court appearance when the couple’s legal travails exploded two years ago.

But not everything is doom and gloom for the Menendez family. In the next generation, Robert Jr. serves in Congress and Alicia Menendez is an MSNBC anchor.

For the parents, however, their best days may be behind them. Prosecutors said that the New Jersey couple were “partners in crime, partners in corruption and partners in greed.” If recent events are any indication, they may not be partners in public for much of anything.

Perhaps Bob was busy trying to get a pardon from President Trump – although he’s seemingly forgot that politicians’ wives are often the best messengers to reach the Donald. Remember how Rod Blagojevich’s wife’s tireless appearances on Tucker Carlson’s show helped convince Trump to bail the disgraced Illinois governor out (that combined with their familiarity from The Apprentice!).