His Family Is Following the Ragin' Cajun Home

His Family Is Following the Ragin' Cajun Home

The quintessential Beltway power couple are escaping the Beltway: Mary Matalin and James Carville are moving to New Orleans.

"James told me when we got married we'd end up in Louisiana," GOP strategist Matalin told us yesterday. Her Democratic strategist husband, famously known as the Ragin' Cajun, has deep roots and a huge passel of family there, so "it's like the Jews going back to Jerusalem," she said. "It's the Holy Land. The old Jew is taking me home."

Why now, midway through the Most Exciting Election Year Ever? For the kids. Their two daughters are about to enter fifth and eighth grade, Matalin said, which in Louisiana mark the start of middle school and high school. It was just the right time.

Last week, Carville and Matalin put their five-bedroom Alexandria riverfront home on the market for just under $4.5 million (they bought it three years ago for $3.9 mil, according to public records). They've already bought a house in New Orleans, near Tulane University (where the twosome will be tag-team graduation speakers this spring), on the same block as one of Carville's cousins.

But they do plan to keep a base in Alexandria, she said. "We've got a lot of friends and history and current things we're going to continue doing here" -- their consulting work, her board seats, his CNN gig. "We'll just have dual visas."

Jon Stewart, Supporting the Troops

Tuesday's USO-Metro awards dinner was about as old-school patriotic as it gets: Miss America 2008 Kirsten Haglund singing the National Anthem, tenor Daniel Rodriguez performing "God Bless America," 34 Medal of Honor recipients in the audience, and a giant American flag hanging in Pentagon City's Ritz-Carlton ballroom.

And at the center of it all: Jon Stewart.

The Bush-bashing "Daily Show" host, equal-opportunity satirist, sultan of snark? That Jon Stewart?

Turns out the comedian has been quietly visiting soldiers at Walter Reed and Bethesda hospitals, trips he began in 2004 to better understand the Iraq war. "I felt that I was living in a world of theory," he told the audience, "but I hadn't touched the reality and the humanity of it." The first patient he met was "funnier than I was" -- and Stewart's been a regular ever since.

"I certainly get a lot more out of it than they do," a subdued Stewart said after dinner. His visits with the troops hasn't softened his position on what he calls a "dopey" war: "If anything, it's made me angrier. . . . You can be for the war, against the war, but you can't be uninformed about it. To see the human cost is part of the equation."

Stewart was presented the group's Merit Award by Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Tuesday's trip also included a stop at Arlington Cemetery to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns. The one thing he hasn't done? Go on a USO trip to Iraq. "I would go there but I'm chicken [poop]," he said.

THIS JUST IN . . .

• Richie Sambora (the Bon Jovi guitarist and Heather Locklear ex) was arrested in SoCal Tuesday night on suspicion of driving drunk. Oh, dear -- and after that trip to rehab last year, too! Police said he was weaving between lanes and smelled of booze. Three unidentified females were in the car, two of them youngsters, which means he could face child endangerment charges.
• Elizabeth Banks is in final negotiations to play Laura Bush in Oliver Stone's biopic of the president, starring Josh Brolin, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Banks, 34, starred in "Seabiscuit" and "The 40-Year-Old Virgin." Stone's title? "W." Starts filming next month.

LOVE, ETC.

• Splitting: Robin Williams and his wife of 19 years, Marsha Garces Williams, who filed for divorce in San Francisco late last week. They met when she was a nanny for his son by a previous marriage; they later had two children together. Her petition cites irreconcilable differences; their reps aren't commenting.