Bye, Partisanship?

RFK Jr., an environmentalist who founded and chairs the Waterkeeper Alliance and works as a lawyer at the Natural Resources Defense Council, is talked about as head of the EPA -- a prospect that has some career staffers giddy.

"The rank and file are extremely excited about having the prospects of a real environmentalist in charge of EPA," Kevin Garragan, an engineer who has worked at the agency since the Carter administration, wrote in an e-mail. "Plus the fact that he's a Kennedy."

Pick, Before He Does

Don't forget to enter the Loop Pick Four contest, to guess who Obama will select for the original quartet of Cabinet posts: secretary of state, secretary of defense, secretary of the Treasury and attorney general. Bonus question: Guess which members of the opposing party will be in the Cabinet -- in those posts or others.

The top 10 winners -- and you don't need to guess all four correctly -- will win one of those coveted In the Loop T-shirts, plus bragging rights. Send entries via e-mail to LoopPickFour@washpost.com or mail to In the Loop, The Washington Post, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071. You must include a phone number -- home, work or cell -- to be eligible. The deadline for entries is Nov. 17 -- or the moment that Obama fills one of the positions. So don't delay!

Travel Log

Some folks like to kick back with a cold one after a tough election season. Others like to hit the road. So next week will find a slew of House members in flight.

Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y), chairman of the House International Relations subcommittee on Latin America, took off yesterday for Peru, Chile and Paraguay, with ranking minority member Dan Burton (R-Ind.) along for the weeklong jaunt. That'll give those embassy folks, obviously grown soft during election time, some extra work to do.

The far better trip, a Loop Four Star if ever there was one, is taking off Monday to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. NATO's headquartered in Brussels, but it has the good sense to meet this year in lovely Valencia, Spain. An early list showed that the group is headed by Rep. John S. Tanner (D-Tenn.) and includes Reps. John M. Shimkus (R-Ill.) , Brad Miller (D-N.C.), Charlie Melancon (D-La.), Kendrick Meek (D-Fla.) and spouses. All seats business class. There are several other members going, but maybe there are still some seats.

Oh, wait. Did we mention that before Valencia, kind of as a warm-up, our hardy band stops in beautiful Rome, for a series of extremely important bilateral meetings on Monday and Tuesday? Wednesday finds them meeting and toiling in Florence. Exhausted but determined, only then do our lawmakers head to Valencia for four days.

Unfortunately, we can't invite you to perhaps the absolute best trip ever. Thomas Farrell, deputy assistant secretary of state for academic programs, a political appointee who'll be gone in January, is determined to work to the bitter end. So he's off today on a week-long trip across the Pacific.

Farrell will stop first in Japan for meetings with government officials and then head to an important educational conference in Bali, Indonesia, where, a spokesperson tells us, he will "convey our public diplomacy goals" to "hundreds of Asia-Pacific leaders," before returning next Friday night.

Lets hope those goals don't change.

Dog Bites Man

Not everyone in the White House is taking the news of Obama's victory with aplomb.