WASHINGTON (Map, News) - Jeff DuFour and Patrick Gavin cover people, power and politics in the beltway each weekday. Email them at yan@dcexaminer.com .

Secretary’s wife puts paint to canvas for holiday card

Although many government holiday cards are simply tired, staid affairs (Formula: smiling politician + doting family + optional dog + ugly holiday sweater = Voila!), the Department of Veteran Affairs took a much more creative — and personal — approach this year.

The VA’s official card, pictured here, features a watercolor of The Soldiers Home Chapel in Dayton, Ohio, the first permanent chapel ever constructed by the U.S. government. And the card was painted by none other than Suzanne Nicholson, wife of Veteran Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson. Cards were sent to President Bush, cabinet members, congressmen, senators, and veterans groups and hospitals across the county.

This has become something of an annual affair for Mrs. Nicholson. She made similar efforts when her husband was chairman of the Republican National Committee from 1997-2000, as well as when he was the U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican from 2001-2005. Mayor Anthony Williams has even turned one of her oil paintings of a strip of buildings on Martin Luther King Boulevard into his own Christmas card.

“When Jim was asked to do this job at the VA,” she said, she found there were lots of interesting buildings within the VA system “with not only architectural, but historical significance. It seemed like a great idea.”

Nicholson shows her paintings at Foxhall Gallery in Upper Northwest and has exhibited at the American Academy in Rome.

Emanuel spares no one in his Anglo-Saxonisms

Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., the architect of the Democrats’ House takeover and the party’s new golden boy, doesn’t censor his language for anyone, according to a profile of the famously foul-mouthed pol in the current issue of GQ.

“Everybody is a [bleeping] idiot to Rahm,” James Carville tells writer Ryan Lizza.

Emanuel often leaves phone messages along the lines of “Hey, [cheese]head, call me back.”

British Prime Minister Tony Blair wasn’t spared. In 1998, before his first White House meeting with President Clinton, Emanuel, then a Clinton adviser, told Blair, “This is important. Don’t [mess] it up.”

Even Clinton tells Lizza the “bluntest” thing Emanuel ever said to him is “unprintable.”

In the closing days of the campaign, he screamed “Your mother!” to New York Times reporter Adam Nagourney over the phone.

But in the end, it was all worth it. When Democrats had won enough seats to take back the House on election night, Emanuel stood on a chair and yelled that Republicans could, well, perform the same act that Vice President Dick Cheney once suggested to Sen. Patrick Leahy.

Smoke ’em if you got ’em

Last week, Yeas & Nays told you about how cigar-chomping and cigarette-smoking Washingtonians will be savoring their last puffs at their favorite watering holes on New Year’s Eve, before the city goes smoke-free.

Well, it turns out the Jefferson Hotel may have all the other bars beat with its “smoke-out” celebration. The $200-per-person bash features an eight-course menu in the hotel’s stately old restaurant that will be interrupted three times by “intermissions” for butt breaks in the lounge (smoking in the dining room is already verboten). The nico-freaks will also get champagne, a cognac tasting, a commemorative cigar cutter and “cigar, hookah and cigarette” sessions all night long.

Couples can add on a deluxe room for $649 a night. We assume they can smoke in bed as well.

Take a look at your New Year’s plans

Everyone stresses out about New Year’s Eve: What to do, where to go and whom to smooch when the ball drops. Here to help is D.C. Compass (www.dccompass.com), a new Web site that uses video clips to “be your guide to the best of what’s going on in and around the Nation’s Capital City.” The site was founded by C-SPAN’s Garrette Moore and features ExecutiveBiz’s Pamela Sorensen as the host.

Conveniently enough, they’ve posted clips filmed at seven New Year’s Eve hot spots in the District: Blue Duck, Fly, Matchbox, IndeBleu, the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Hank’s Oyster Bar and Nage.

In the clips, hosts and chefs tell you their specific plans for the evening.

None, however, were kind enough to offer hangover cures for the next day.

Fleischer no fan of the Burgundy and Gold

Rumors had been swirling in New York recently that former Bush press flack Ari Fleischer would challenge newly elected Rep. John Hall, D-N.Y., for Congress next year.

But Fleischer put those rumors to rest in a “Shermanesque” e-mail to the New York Observer that took a gratuitous shot at the Redskins.

“I do want you to know that I am NOT running,” wrote Fleischer to the paper’s Josh Benson. “Now that I have children, I would never do anything that could risk making them into Redskin fans.”

Think tank

“What will the headline be after the Democrats’ first 100 hours?”

“Dems Pass Continuing Resolution Extending 100 Hours till June.” – Patrick Cleary, National Association of Manufacturers

“Democrats Pass First Six Priorities; Now Comes the Hard Part.” – Norm Ornstein, American Enterprise Institute

“Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.” (The more that changes, the more it’s the same thing) – Bill Press, The Bill Press Show, AM 1260