Aloha, Namaste, and welcome to Impolitik with John Heilman, a puck and

Odyssey joint.

On Wednesday morning, I sat down to watch Pete Hexeth testify before the House Armed Services

Committee, Hegis's first time appearing on Capitol Hill since the start of the war in Iran.

I was watching that for any number of reasons.

First, you know, to see whether Hegseth would arrive at the hearing with any news to

break about the state of the war.

Second, you know, you wanted to see how he was going to hold up under the scrutiny of a wide

swath of committee members who had been stewing over the conduct of the war for the past

60 days since it began, who had been making and revising long lists of unanswered questions

about the war's past, present, and future conduct,

who were never big fans of Hegsa to begin with, and who were now chomping at the bit

to start chomping on the man, who some Defense Department career staff mockingly call

dumb McNamara, and those outside the Pentagon refer to as a DUI hire as Pete Kegseth, as Pete Keg's

breath, as whiskey Pete, or as whiskey leaks, the triple sec of defense, which I like a lot.

Or Pete Hague Seth, the Secretary of War Crimes.

Never has a Department of Defense been run by someone with so many awesome derogatory

nicknames.

Oh, there was also one of the reason why I was watching Hags to testify because our guest

today, Pennsylvania Congresswoman Chrissy Hulahan, would be among those doing the

questioning, and we were scheduled to tape our interview later that same day.

When it comes to Hegson's performance on Wednesday, no one I know said it better or more

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