Category Archives: News

News, The Daily Feed, WTF?!
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Samurai Sword Killing Takes a Turn

Fox 5 is reporting a slight change in the Baltimore Samurai story, which includes the phrase “modern-day ninja vigilante”. They’re suggesting that the victim in this case was not killed in the garage, rather the victim was crouched in a corner in front of the house. The suspect lunged when he asked his roommates to call the police, and that’s when the fatal blow was delivered. Apparently, the group of roommates went searching for the robber when the police came up empty in their initial search of the house after the robbery.

Downtown, Life in the Capital, News, The Daily Feed, We Love Food, WMATA
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White House Farmers’ Market Opens

Photo courtesy of
”
courtesy of ‘Hoffmann’

Today, the White House Famers’ Market opened for business.  The Market features about 20 stalls staffed by area farmers and various, agriculture related government offices. It will occur on every Thursday until  October 29 on Vermont Ave., between H St. and I St.  It seems that market has some security issues to work through.  This afternoon, there were only two metal detectors to accommodate the several hundred individuals that gathered for the markets’ inauguration. As such, there were far more would-be patrons attempting to enter than there were individuals actually shopping the stalls. Even so, the market attracted notable DC personalities like Jose Andrés and several local media figures.  Until the famers’ market closes for the season, Metro will be diverting its southbound L2 route so that it swings by Vermont Ave. Get there.

News, The Daily Feed, WTF?!
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DC Schools Facing Layoffs Amid $40M Shortfall

Photo courtesy of
‘100 L Street, NW’
courtesy of ‘rockcreek’

$40M is what the DC Schools are going to have to cut from their 2009-2010 budget, which will likely include staff cuts. Where the cuts will come is yet to be determined, and it’s likely to include some cuts at each of the District’s 127 schools. The Teachers’ Union is decrying the cuts, suggesting that Chancellor Rhee should have known these were coming before hiring 900 new teachers this summer. That part makes sense. Until you know you have to cut, why not fully staff and hope that the Mayor would give you the support the school system deserves?

Where would you put the $40M in cuts?

News, The Daily Feed, WMATA, WTF?!
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Tea Bag Metro?

Photo courtesy of
‘they’ve had enough’
courtesy of ‘philliefan99’

Tax hating, tea-party protesters are angry at Metro. You’d think it would be for being a publicly funded transit system that wastes tax-payer dollars as it ferries the excessively large federal workforce in and out of the city.  It turns out, however, that the tea baggers are upset because WMATA’s service wasn’t up to snuff during their Saturday protest. Texas Representative Kevin Brady is calling for an investigation into whether or not Metro adequately prepared for the number of protesters that were in the city on 9/12. The irony, of course, is that these people were in DC to protest government spending on services, in general. 

See the WSJ article on the subject, here.

News, The Daily Feed, WMATA, WTF?!
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Metro to Rewrite Metrobus Handbook

Photo courtesy of
‘Hazardous Materials by Threaded Thoughts’
courtesy of ‘ThreadedThoughts’

Metro announced this evening that they’re going to rewrite their safety guide to include prohibitions against texting and use of cellphones. The last update to the guide was in 1989. That’s right, 20 years since Metro last updated their bus safety manual. Anti-lock brakes may not have even been on buses yet when the manual was last updated…

News, Sports Fix, The Daily Feed, WTF?!
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The Redskins may End up in the Supreme Court

Photo courtesy of
‘00205691’
courtesy of ‘Keith Allison’

The harried Redskins may have something new to contend with, on top of sucking at football.  Several American Indian activists are attempting to take their long running dispute over the Redskins’ logo to the Supreme Court.  The activists claim that Washington’s trademark is racially offensive and should be changed.  This case has been batted around the lower courts for some time, and rulings have gone back and forth through the appeals process.  Whether or not the case will actually be heard has yet to be seen.  The Supreme Court hears very few cases, despite that thousands are submitted each year.  For the time being, it seems that the Redskins are safe.

Crime & Punishment, News, The Daily Feed
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DC Sniper to be Executed Nov. 10

Photo courtesy of
‘Snayperskaya Vintovka Dragunova a.k.a Dragunov Sniper Rifle’
courtesy of ‘brian.ch’

MSNBC reports that a Virginia judge has scheduled John Allen Muhammad, the infamous DC sniper, for a November 10 execution date.  Muhammad was convicted of murdering Dean Meyers during a random killing spree in 2002 that left 10 people dead and several others severely injured. Over the course of three weeks, Muhammad and his accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, shot 14 innocent people in Virgina, Maryland and DC. The pair concealed themselves and a high powered rifle in the back of a specially modified sedan.  Both were captured in 2002 after a concerted effort by law enforcement and local communities and Muhammad was sentenced to death in Virginia in 2004.

News, The Daily Feed
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Children’s National Medical Center Gets $150M Donation

Photo courtesy of
‘Children’s National Medical Center’
courtesy of ‘Daquella manera’

Congratulations to Children’s National Medical Center who will receive $150 over five years from the government of Abu Dhabi. The gift will create the Sheik Zayed Institute for Pediatric Surgical Innovation, which will be designed toward pioneering new surgery techniques for childhood conditions. The Institute will have four major foci, including pain management, bioengineering, and immunology. The gift is the largest for pediatric surgery, and one of the largest for a children’s hospital.

News, The Daily Feed
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Coast Guard Exercise on the Potomac Scares the Shit out of Everyone Needlessly

Photo courtesy of
‘Potomac Policeboat’
courtesy of ‘diskychick’

According to CNN, a Coast Guard boat on the Potomac river was involved in a confrontation with another boat on the river and fired approximately 10 shots on the craft as it neared a security zone near the Pentagon where President Obama was speaking this morning. This one’s still breaking, not sure what’s happened yet.

Update, 10:37am: Yeah, the whole thing was an exercise. No shots were fired, and CNN’s reports seem to be inaccurate. Mark Knoller of CBS News was part of the Presidential Motorcade and confirms nothing happened during the trip back over the river. In addition, WUSA 9 spoke with DC Police Information and confirmed this was just an exercise. Nothing happened here.

Thanks again, CNN!

Crime & Punishment, News, People, The Daily Feed, The District, WTF?!
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Return of the Georgetown Cuddler!

Photo courtesy of
‘DSC_0065’
courtesy of ‘Jessa B.C.’

It seems that the Georgetown Cuddler has struck again. On Sunday, a young woman awoke to find a strange man sitting next to her. “She said she was laying on the couch and all of a sudden someone walked in and sat down next to her and she jumped up and told him to leave and he did right after but it’s been happening a little too often,” recounted a friend of the young woman, who apparently speaks in run-on sentences. The Cuddler, whose modus operandi is to enter unlocked houses and spoon with sleeping women, has been the bane of District police.  No one seems to know who he is, or what he looks like and he has been able to avoid law enforcement, thus far. Georgetown University, in an effort to protect its female students, has ramped up the search for the Cuddler and is keeping the campus informed of any developments.

News, The Daily Feed
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Small Explosion at HHS

Photo courtesy of
‘Hey!’
courtesy of ‘kimberlyfaye’

You might want to stay away from 200 Independence Ave SW if you can avoid it, as the building’s been evacuated due to a transformer explosion on their 8th floor. DC Fire & EMS has ordered the building evacuated due to a lack of AC, and the Assistant Secretary there sent the following email:

You may have felt the building shake in the last few minutes. We had a failure of a piece of electrical equipment on the 8th floor which resulted in a small explosion. No one was hurt and there was no fire. We still are trying to assess the impact on the building systems, but there is no need to evacuate. Appropriate people from the General Services Administration (our landlord) are on their way to assess the damage to the equipment. When we have more information, we will be back in touch with everyone in the building.

Scary morning, between this and the Window Washer who needed rescuing after his scaffold broke.

Essential DC, News, Talkin' Transit, The Features, WMATA
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Talkin’ Transit: Mish-Mash Morning

Photo courtesy of
‘IMG_0115’
courtesy of ‘bankbryan’

Mish-mash of transit for your morning perusal.

HOT Lanes Delayed: While the Beltway HOT Lane construction continues forward, Virigina has decided to delay building additional HOT lanes on I-395 and I-95. The economy is the answer that’s been trotted out; state leaders fear that they won’t be able to get money from the bond market and the state has no more money to spend. The Beltway project is expected to be completed by 2012, with the outer lanes opening as early as next year.

Officials were pretty specific in stating the project has been delayed, not abandoned, though there is still a lot of concern with local officials, who feel the proposed project will adversely affect their communities and neighborhood traffic patterns.

Construction was supposed to begin next summer.

ICC & I-95: This week began a traffic pattern shift along I-95 as construction continues on the Intercounty Connector in Prince George’s County. Several lanes are being closed or shifted in both northbound and southbound directions from Route 198 to Route 212. Closures begin as early as 8 p.m. and re-open before morning rush. The closures will be in effect until Sept. 29.

VRE Gets Stimulated: The federal government has awarded $9.8 million to the Virginia Railway Express, money needed to purchase 12 more locomotives. The funds fall under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and will be administered by the Federal Transit Administration.

The current locomotive fleet consists of 20 engines that can pull an average of six cars; the new engines the VRE is purchasing are more powerful and efficient, capable of pulling 10 cars each (at 144 passengers a car) and will help the service expand its current capacity.

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News, Sports Fix, The Daily Feed
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Nationals Sign Strasburg for $15.067M

Photo courtesy of
‘Stephen Strasburg’
courtesy of ‘jpangan3’

Congratulations to Stephen Strasburg, who just became the highest paid amateur draftee in the history of Major League Baseball. The #1 draft pick has been paid $15.067M for his services, as broken by Nationals Farm Authority this evening. We’re still waiting for how the deal breaks out, but it will be a 4-year deal, for a total of $15.067M in salary, approximately 50% more than the landmark contract Mark Prior received in 2001 for his signing with the Cubs.

Is it worth it? We’ll see. I’m pleased to see the Nats sign Strasburg for less than $20M, which was the magic number in my head for his first four years. No idea where he’ll end up first, or how quickly he’ll be there, but a good bet would be the Potomac Nationals in the next week or two. Here’s hoping this is money well spent.

News, The Daily Feed
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Sen. Cardin Faces Town Hall

View more news videos at: http://www.nbcwashington.com/video.

Senator Cardin (D-MD) had the first of several town hall events yesterday at Towson University, and, as expected, it was a bit rowdy. While no one got arrested, and no one was beaten by an SEIU member, it doesn’t appear that anything actually happened. I suspect no one was actually convinced of anything, and that the Senator didn’t change his mind on any of this.

So, the question remains: why have these at all? Is it just for cathartic shouting?

News, Sports Fix, The Daily Feed
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Jordan Zimmermann to Miss 18 Months

Photo courtesy of
‘Nats pitcher Jordan Zimmerman’
courtesy of ‘afagen’

Even when things are good, it’s hard to be a National. Pitcher Jordan Zimmermann will missing approximately 18 months with what looks, to the dismay of everyone, like a ligament tear in his elbow. The Nationals will seek a third opinion, but if that confirms the diagnosis, it’s likely he will have Tommy John Surgery, where they remove a ligament from somewhere else on your body (usually a foot, forearm or leg) and replace the torn ligament in your elbow.

It’s not a death sentence, but any stretch of the imagination, as more than 83 percent of athletes recover to their previous strength, but it’s still a huge blow for the Nationals to lose one of their best pitchers this early in his career.

The worst of this is the timing. Not just for the Nats in the middle of an 8-game winning stretch, but because there are just five days left before the deadline to sign Stephen Strasburg before the window closes for a year and it’s likely he heads to Japan. This could go either way: Either Boras has the Nats right where he wants them, and is able to get $50M, or the Nats say to Boras, “We just saw one of our best prospects tear a ligament randomly. You get $18M and you like it, or you take your chances with Japan.”

We’ll see how the Lerners play it in a few days.

Food and Drink, News, The Daily Feed
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DC Beer Week ’09

Photo courtesy of
‘Maryland Game’
courtesy of ‘InspirationDC’

In two weeks, the DC area is having its third major beer event of the summer (suck it, Rob Kasper).  “Hoppy” Jeff Wells and Teddy Folkman, Chef at Granville Moore, will be hosting around 10 breweries during the first annual DC Beer Week.  The event will kick off at the Rock and Roll Hotel on Sunday with a “Unity Jam” and will continue at various DC establishments throughout the rest of the week. Yours for Good Fermentables, a local beer blog, has the complete event list.  Hopefully this is an event that will expand in years to come.  A good showing by DC residents this year will likely peak the interest of breweries around the country.

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Life in the Capital, Media, News, The Daily Feed
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The Only Way To Read The Hill’s Pretty Fifty

Photo courtesy of
‘The US Capitol from The Library Of Congress’
courtesy of ‘KrS-NrY’

Like clockwork, the Hill has released their 50 Most Beautiful People list. While this usually leads me to find a large bottle of alcohol and drink myself to sleep, and rant and rave about a sad commentary about our duly elected representatives, it also lets me wait in joyful hope for the coming of the snark, or, Jason Linkins’ hilarious metacommentary on the writing staff at the Hill. Don’t click through to the Hill, it’ll just make you want to take someone’s life. Between the bad writing, the horrific photography, and the human interest stories that will have you rooting for global warming, there is a beautiful opportunity for well-placed snark. This one’s a must-read.

News, The Daily Feed
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Drama Mama Kate Gosselin Moving to Rockville

Photo courtesy of
‘2008 10 11 – Rockville – Gibbs St N2’
courtesy of ‘thisisbossi’

Unlike pretty much the whole world, I could not give a crap about Jon & Kate Plus Eight. I had never even heard of the show before Jon and Kate decided they’d rather live apart than together with their eight kids. But, apparently, like a never-ending string of plagues, she’s moving to Rockville. First the Interns, then Real World DC, now Kate Gosselin?

I thought the Obama Administration was supposed to rejuvenate DC, not be a douchebag magnet. C’mon Mr. President, can’t you do something about this? The Nation demands its Capitol be a GOOD place to live.