Mr. Tyrrell plans to distribute 400 Bean catalogs to guests, who will hear from Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., the evening's keynote speaker. The feisty editor will urge his fellow conservative guests to study the catalogs "assiduously. Learn the bird calls."

"Incidentally, after every stay in the wilderness we conservatives have come back stronger," Mr. Tyrrell will point out. "The reason we keep coming back is that we are not a party of prophets or messiahs but a party of principles."

If President-elect Barack Obama proves to be a "defender of liberty, we shall follow him," he will conclude in remarks we obtained. "America's strength is individual liberty; our aim is to be the rallying point for a revitalized conservative movement."

The magazine's annual Barbara Olson Award for Excellence in Journalism will be presented to longtime columnist Robert Novak, who is battling cancer.

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The "exorbitant" final price tag for the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center (CVC), which finally opened to the public this week, earns more than a mention from the nation's leading taxpayer watchdog, Citizens Against Government Waste.

"Initially conceived in the early 1990s and projected to cost $71 million, the CVC has become an example of out-of-control government contracting and mismanagement," says the nonpartisan group dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud and abuse in government.

The final price tag: $621 million (and three years behind schedule).

In March 2007, Rep. Jack Kingston, Georgia Republican, complained that the CVC had become "a monument to government inefficiency, ineptitude and excessiveness." Democratic Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz added: "I've never seen a bigger boondoggle in my life. It's like they're playing with Monopoly money."

Officials of the CVC declined to be interviewed by Inside the Beltway.