Just what in the name of decency is going on in the office of Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison? A recent e-mail from one former Hutchison intern to another (a particularly brutal breakup letter after an apparently brief romance) has exploded all over the Internet, provoking arched eyebrows and wagging tongues on Capitol Hill and beyond.

Yesterday, the Texas Republican's communications director -- who no doubt took the job to make a difference in national affairs -- was forced to weigh in on the tawdry little affair of Paul Kelly Tripplehorn Jr., the author of the e-mail.

"As soon as it was brought to the attention of our internship coordinator, they had a very frank discussion, and he was dismissed," Kevin Schweers told us yesterday about the late-June incident involving Tripplehorn, a 20-year-old Amherst College sophomore, and his ex-girlfriend, an unnamed 20-year-old University of Texas student.

Tripplehorn's e-mail, titled "you suck," featured such literary gems as: "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 prestigous [sic] 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. . . . I am sorry, I don't care how big of [a] sadistic [expletive] crush you have on me but people like me simple [sic] don't date people like you."

Yesterday, Tripplehorn disputed that he was fired and said he's now interning in the office of a Republican House member he refused to identify. "What I did was wrong," he told us. "I wrote that letter in under 15 minutes in an absolute rage, and the only purpose of it was to make this girl irritated and push her buttons."

Judging from the thousands of folks who have been pushing the "send" button, he succeeded.