The past week in Washington has been dominated by on story: Baseball. The fate of the Washington Nationals, now endangered by D.C. Council Chairman Linda Cropp, is now in doubt as the intersection of corporate money, an angry electorate, and politicians looking after their legacies became a perfect train wreck of ambition. What can we say that hasn’t already been said about baseball in D.C.? So, we’ll sum up by simply saying “Baseball, yadda, blah blah, Linda-cakes.” And we’ll move on to something more important.

If you’re a fan of political pile-ons, or were simply wondering early this week if the Presidential Medal of Freedom was something you could find, say, in a gumball machine, to award to just anybody you wanted for Christmas, consider who didn’t get a little bit of the president’s love this week: Donald Rumsfeld (seen this this Pentagon photo from earlier this month “promoting esprit de corps” in advance of the Army-Navy football game). Rummy, freshly returned from a meeting with our troops in Iraq that went over about as well a strychnine milkshake (“As you know, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want.”), was pilloried by a number of fellow Republicans, including Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel, who criticized Rumsfeld’s “flippant comment[s]” and went on to offer a more lengthy critique on CNN’s Late Edition.

A chorus of disapproval followed hard upon Hagel’s statements. Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) offered up a harsher assessment, saying he has “no confidence” in Rumsfeld. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Trent Lott (R-Miss.) added to the not-so-glowing reviews, and by midweek, even his brother in neoconservatism Bill Kristol had found some faint praise with which to damn him.