Forget about the stories focusing on alleged uranium sales in Africa and the Democratic presidential race. The real gossip whipping through Capitol Hill involves a failed romance between two interns in Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s (R-Texas) office.

Creating his own weapon of mass destruction, the male intern in question fired off an e-mail last month, titled “you suck,” to the female intern, his former gal pal.

The missive has since been forwarded to thousands of people on the Hill, spreading like wildfire during a gossip-starved summer and getting the male intern forced out of Hutchison’s office.

The line that everyone seems to be focusing on comes when the male tells the female:

“Everyone knows you are a pathetic social climber who will go to any discusting [sic] means to move up the ladder. But guess what [name withheld], you will never move up the ladder because I am at the top and people like me hate people like you.”

The note, which was obviously written without the benefit of a spell checker by this fellow, reveals just how nasty things can get when preppy love fails.

“Well, as of this afternoon, I was planning on ruining your career by making phone calls to all of my parents [sic] friends and have you blackballed from the workplace as well as every prestigious law school in the country, but then (lucky for you) I decided not to do that because you are a sad sad person and I will just let your life self-destruct right before my eyes,” he begins the note.

He adds helpfully that regardless of what kind of “sadistic” crush she has on him, “people like me simple [sic] don’t date people like you. You are too competitive with me and you just simply will never be better than me.”

And then, proving that he is perhaps ready for the nation’s most prestigious law schools, he adds: “I will always have more friends than you just because I don’t care about beating people and lying to get to the top. (You are an absolute hipocrit [sic] in everything that you do, I am not going to go into details why you are because that would be a waste of my time and yours but I can assure you if you were to ever meet yourself you would hate your twin).”

And for good measure, he adds: “You suck! And good luck being miserable for the rest of your life. I do not even know why I wasted my time typing this for suck slime.”

Proving the high opinion he has for himself, the chap signed the note, “Once again from your intellectual, moral, social and emotional superior.”

Hutchison spokesman Kevin Schweers confirmed the authenticity of the e-mail to HOH. He added that while the male intern sent the note from a non-Senate e-mail account, the guy was canned nonetheless.

“As soon as it was brought to the attention of our internship coordinator, they had a very frank discussion, and he was dismissed,” said Schweers, who added that the female intern’s time in the office naturally expired so she has moved on.

The buzz on the Hill is that the two interns had been pictured together in a photo on Hutchison’s official Web site from an event with the Senator. Schweers said the photo was taken down after its existence was pointed out to Hutchison’s staff.

Staffers in both chambers, meanwhile, are still happily forwarding the e-mail around at this writing.

“This young intern ought to know that one must learn how to use spell-check before one is even allowed on the ladder,” one veteran Congressional aide cracked about the climbing-the-ladder aspect of the correspondence. “Now he should really go fetch me a latte and fill the copier with some paper.”