Some people never grow up.

"Some people never grow up," Bridge muttered to himself, shaking his pruning shears at the ghost pre-schoolers running through the First Lady's vegetable garden.  "NOT NOW!" he shouted at Regina and Ferguson.  "I told you about the African leader summit and the state dinner this week!  This place has to be in tip-top shape!  Reggie!  Fergie!"  He caught himself, remembering that people might be watching from inside the White House, and started moving closer to be in whispering range, but they stuck their little ghost tongues out at him and ran off to see if Sasha and Malia were home.

A mile away, a few members of the Heurich Society were thinking about sticking out their tongues at the arrival of their president, Henrietta Samuelson, to the upper meeting room of the Brewmaster's Castle, but they held their tongues.

"Alright," she said, tossing down her bag and getting straight down to business.  "I've carefully considered the surveyed responses--"

"I was led to believe there would be ice cream," said the international currency trader.

"What?" said Samuelson.  "Oh."  She looked at the crystal platter covered in Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

"It's too late in the day for doughnuts," added the disgraced former Congressman from Alabama.

"Well, I guess Han Li forgot about the ice cream," said Samuelson.  "Now getting back to--"

"Maybe you forgot to ask him!" said the member from the FBI.

"Maybe if you wanted ice cream so damned much, you should have stopped at Ben and Jerry's before you came here!" exclaimed Samuelson.

"Here, here!" echoed Condoleezza Rice from the speakerphone.  (She was rarely in town to get the snacks.)

"Our new mission statement is 'maximize wealth, power, and freedom,'" Samuelson blurted out rapidly, before she could be interrupted.

"Well, that's a bit vague," said the international arms dealer.

"We don't do anything which does not advance at least one of those goals," continued Samuelson.  "That means no more meddling in the Academy Awards, or the Super Bowl--"

"Now, wait just a minute," said the member from the CIA.  "Who's going to decide whether something advances the goals?  Just you?  Because it's not a dictatorship!"

"No, it's not," said Samuelson.  "It's a secret society with a ridiculous amount of money and a mind-boggling array of agents around the world.  If we're going to get involved in projects like the Black Sea, we can't be wasting energies on trivial matters."

"I thought you had dropped that project," said the retired army colonel.

"It was not advancing our goals," said Samuelson.

"Says you!" he retorted.

"Gentlemen!" interrupted Condoleezza Rice.  "We have leaders from the entire continent of Africa coming to town!  Please tell me we are prepared for this!"

Samuelson shook her head at Rice's use of the word "gentlemen".

"Yeah, yeah," said the African affairs committee leader.  (He didn't like being on that committee, and pouted for months after he was passed over for Asian Affairs.)  "Maximizing power and all that jazz.  It fits our goals!"

"Does this involve more than embarrassing Obama by sneaking cockroaches into the State Dinner?" asked Samuelson.

"Of course!" he retorted.  "There's more than just that!"

Back in the White House neighborhood, cockroaches had, in fact, been reported in Prince and Prowling's state-of-the-art, totally secure, underground document review center.

"How is this possible!?" declared the Managing Partner, who had just spent half a million dollars (some of that to bribe city building inspectors to overlook the lack of permits) in emergency renovations to re-stabilize the foundation after the entire building had shifted.  "Do we need to fumigate the contract attorneys?"

Laura Moreno pretended she hadn't heard that last remark.  "They've been working very long hours, so they have to eat."

"But they're not allowed to bring anything into SOTA-BUNK!" he declared.  "They even take their clothes off and put on our jumpsuits!"

"Chloe Cleavage was bringing them some snacks," Moreno said, referring to the other staff attorney involved.

"SNACKS?!"  The managing attorney started typing furiously on his computer to pull up access to the security tapes.  "What kind of snacks?!"

"Costco boxes of snacks with pre-packaged chips, cookies, that sort of thing."

"That sort of thing makes crumbs!"

"Well, she wanted them working more hours, so--"

"Good Heavens!" the Managing Partner exclaimed, finding a snack time in the video replay.  "They're stampeding like Somali refugees spotting bowls of rice!"

"Yes," said Moreno softly.  "People like to be first in line to get first pick of what's available."

"This is totally unacceptable!  They can only eat when they exit SOTA-BUNK!"

"Then they'll have to get more breaks," said Moreno.

"In my day--" began the Managing Partner, but then he thought better of it.

"What are we going to do about the roaches?" asked Moreno.

"Won't that self-correct now?" he asked.  (A small sigh escaped Moreno.)

Up on the top floor of Prince and Prowling, former Senator Evermore Breadman had his own snack problem--Congressman John Boehner's compulsively plowing through the last of his Little Debbie Cupcakes.  "You want more whiskey with that?"

"Absolutely!" said the Speaker of the House.

"Look, John," said Breadman, "I know they voted you the authority to sue the President, but to be honest with you--"

"Be honest with me!" declared Boehner, raising his shot glass encouragingly.

"There are three branches of government--"

"Not that again!"

"John!  The Constitution says the remedy is impeachment.  There's only so much wool you can pull over the American people's eyes."

"This is not about wool!"

"Congress is the weakest branch of government right now.  Why on Earth do you want to toss off your impeachment power and ask the judicial branch to handle it?  The judicial branch, for crying out loud!  Sissies who wear robes to work!  Instead of having handsome Congressmen in dark suits entering testimony on the House floor, you'll have sissies in robes telling you exactly what kind of evidence you can or cannot submit--"

"Evermore!" cried Boehner.  "Those Congressmen in dark suits are useless to me without a Republican Senate!"

"You can still impeach!"

"Evermore!" cried Boehner.  "A judge could say Obamacare is unconstitutional!"

"But it IS constitutional, John!" exclaimed Breadman.  "The Supreme Court said so!  The SUPREMES!  The best you could get is some narrow little ruling about maybe one or two pieces of regulation in Health and Human Services, and the court will just tell HHS to rewrite them!"

"But I can do that," whispered Boehner conspiratorially, "with just the lawyers I hire!  No more wheeling and dealing with all these prima donna a-holes in the House!  Do you know how many hours of my life I've wasted inserting mark-ups that will never get through the Senate, let alone across Obama's desk, just so those a-holes can put in their next campaign ad, 'I fought for blah, blah, blah!'"

"That's what people think you're doing!" exclaimed Breadman!

"What?!  Me?!"

Back at the White House, Regina and Ferguson were now in the Oval Office, rearranging books on the shelves and hiding framed photos.

"Reggie!  Fergie!"  The ghost twins looked up in annoyance at Ghost Dennis.  "When are ya gonna grow up?"

"When are you?!" exclaimed Ferguson.

"Yeah!" echoed Regina.  "Silly old summits!  Men just sit around in their fancy clothes, and then they go back to killing each other the next week!"

"And nothing you whisper in Obama's ear can change that!" said Ferguson, before he whispered something in their secret twin language to Regina, and the two ran off in a burst of giggles.

Ghost Dennis sighed and set to work putting things back in the order they should be, as best he could.  There has got to be a way, he moaned softly.

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COMING UP:  The Washington lifestyle!