Busy news day, so we're just going to reel off the casualties.

1. US Rep. Rick Larsen's (D-WA, 2) staff thinks he's an "idiot," drank Jack Daniels in the office, and tweeted all about it in a bawdy tweeting spree that started back in August. A conservative politics blog in Bothell, the NW Marker, discovered the Larsen staff tweets today and Larsen fired the three staffers (one third of his staff) an hour later, the Everett Herald reports.

2. It seems like great news: Moody's upgraded Seattle's bond rating, taking Seattle off the negative watch list. Thanks to the news, we're making State Rep. Ross Hunter (D-48-Medina) a loser. Hunter has been arguing for weeks that the state had to bail out Wenatchee's convention center bond debt lest every city in the state get bad ratings on Wall Street. Hunter convinced a bipartisan majority of 56 reps to pass the $42 million emergency measure on Monday.

The bill has stalled in the senate ever since and whaddya know, Moody's Investor Service went ahead and upgraded Seattle anyway.

"So much for Wenatchee Armageddon," one legislator quipped.

3. US Sen. Patty Murray has been fighting for an extension and expansion of the payroll tax cut for the middle class—and posting charts about how much money it means for families across Washington State.

But Today, Republicans (um, we thought they were the pro-tax-cut crowd) filibustered and killed the measure because it included a temporary 3.25 percent surtax on those making more than a million dollars a year. Murray, a sponsor of the middle-class tax cut, decried the filibuster, saying sarcastically, "I continue hoping that my Republican colleagues will be as focused on tax cuts for the middle class as they are on those for the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations."

Add to the losers list: The Democrats, President Obama (who's been stumping on the issue too), and the middle class.

4. Fifteen-and 16-year-old girls were among those who will be hardest hit by yesterday's news that the Obama Administration will not allow sales of emergency contraception to teenagers without a prescription, a move Obama heartily endorsed today.

Although health and human services secretary Kathleen Sebelius cited concern for 11-year-old girls, about 10 percent of whom are fertile, as her reason for overturning the FDA's recommendation to make the pill more widely available, studies show that fewer than 1 percent of 11-year-olds are sexually active. In contrast, nearly half of all girls have had sex by the time they're 17.