The Senator sticks out his tongue and says "ah," which is one of my personal least favorite parts of physicals, since I hate the feeling of wood in my mouth (no, not like that). Foreman asks the Senator about the scar on his tongue, which will be so IMPORTANT LATER that we got a close-up of it, which wasn't the most attractive thing I've ever seen on this show, although it's certainly not the most unattractive, either. The Senator -- who does have a real name but since I've gone this far without it I'm just going to keep referring to him as his title -- claims he got it falling off a swing and biting his tongue. He had a speech impediment during the healing process and all the other kids made fun of him, but that just inspired him to become the amazing person and public speaker he is today. House scoffs at the story, saying that tongues heal too fast to create speech impediments, but he's sure that the disenfranchised lispers of America will vote for the Senator in droves on election day thanks to that fine LIE. I'm sure that if anyone knows anything about lispers, it's House, who has a little bit of one himself. I'm not sure if Hugh Laurie naturally has a lisp or if his interpretation of an American accent does, but as long as it doesn't reach Cindy Brady levels of forced cuteness, I'm cool with it. As House and the Senator butt heads over the tongue lie, Foreman taps the Senator's knees with a rubber hammer. The left leg jumps. The right does not. House and Foreman exchange looks, and then House jumps up to give the knee a few knocks as well. He gets the same non-result as Foreman, and informs the Senator that his food poisoning is actually a brain problem. He orders an MRI and a lumbar puncture. Well, that won't be pleasant. Neither will the lumbar puncture.
In the lab, the Cottages report that both tests showed nothing out of the ordinary except for a small spot on the Senator's brain that Chase is sure is just a mechanical thing. House asks Chase if he'd bet his job on that, earning him an irritated eye-roll that House finds fascinating. He points out that Chase was terrified of getting fired last week, but now he seems sufficiently secure in his position to merely be annoyed. Chase apparently knows what the rest of the Cottages are about to find out, which is that Vogler is no longer forcing House to fire anyone. The non-Chase Cottages act surprised, but don't get any clarification as House orders a brain biopsy for the Senator and then leaves for the Clinic.
House finishes an ultrasound and tells the patient that she is not pregnant. The patient says she already knew that, and apparently House has, now for the second episode in a row, insisted that one of his clinic patients was pregnant despite her insistence that she wasn't and would probably know better than he. The patient wants to know why, if she's not pregnant, she's spotting. House says it's because she had a miscarriage, unsurprisingly delivering the news in a less-than-sympathetic manner. The patient claims that's impossible, since she hasn't had sex since her divorce a year ago. So either her miscarriage is taking its sweet time carrying itself outta there, or, as House suggests, the patient should think about starting her own religion. Although I have to imagine that if the Conception were that Immaculate, it wouldn't have, you know, ended like that.