From the folks who brought you Michael Richards ranting, Britney Spears flashing, and Princess Di crashing fatally in a Paris tunnel, get ready to dish the Washington dirt. TMZ.com is opening a branch in DC.

I can hardly wait. No longer will the elite politicos be able to hide behind the grey walls of Congress. No more will they run from unpleasant truths that they thought they could conceal. Now they will run from SUVs filled with smarmy photogs with ultra-zoom lenses and camcorders.

So many stories with profound relevance to the country have gone unreported for years. Stories like military hospitals that mistreated wounded soldiers; intelligence services spying on American citizens; federal agencies lying to congressional oversight committees; White House operatives outing CIA agents; and the fixing of evidence of WMDs to justify pre-emptive war. While we all had to wait years for many of these stories to come to light, we will no longer have to wait to find out which senator’s aide is having an affair with what deputy chief of staff who slammed their car into a convenience store while under the influence of NyQuil. It’s good to see that the media’s priorities are in order.

Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-CA) weighs in on TMZ’s prospects for success:

“Washington is where the term ‘celebrity’ includes former surgeons general, defense lawyers and Pat Buchanan. TMZ is going to be bored out of its mind.”

That’s true. But Arianna Huffington sees it differently:

“Let’s see, Mark Foley, ‘Duke’ Cunningham, Ted Haggard, Claude Allen at Target, William Jefferson’s frozen 90 Gs, the Bush twins, ‘Scooter’ Libby, Ann Coulter, Deborah Jeane Palfrey and her 10,000-name trick book. Too boring? I don’t think so.”

Hmm. That’s true too. I guess the ultimate truth is that there will be a lot of ugly, boring people, doing a lot of stupid, titillating things, and TMZ will be there to record it all for the American people and the world.

I can hardly contain my pride.