Hey there commentariat, and welcome to a special four-day version of the Say. Hopefully your government mandated three-day weekend was filled with more heartwarming moments under umbrellas and fewer power outages. Regardless of how your Independence Day weekend was spent, the week leading up to it was certainly a busy one in comment-ville.

This week's Comment of the Week comes from SystemError, who, upon learning that the D.C. Council endorsed the use of voting rights signage at Nationals Park, asks a really tough (and depressing) question:

What will come first: DC Congressional Representation or Nat's World Series Win?

They both seem so far away sometimes.

After the jump, it's all your pre-Independence Day musings and thoughts.

Photo by Pianoman75

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Of course, our best wishes (and many of yours) go out to Brian Beutler and his family. Here's to a speedy recovery.

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In L.A., they've got parents who push their kids too hard to be stars. Here, well, we've got a serious problem with parents pushing their kids into activism. Right, NotInTheCoolCrowd?

I saw the CUTEST kids today in front of the White House, wearing "Young Suffragists" t-shirts and chanting "Give DC a Vote! Give DC a Vote!" I cheered them on while the tourists looked on in confusion.

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We quoted some crime statistics regarding the safety of a possible bus depot at L'Enfant Promenade, but jamie thought that they didn't tell the whole story:

The reason there's no crime at the proposed bus terminal is because there's aren't any people after dark at the location of the proposed bus terminal. There is no residential or night life there. It's like saying that Haines Point is safer in the middle of the night than Adams Morgan. I'm sure it has far less crime. But would you hang out at night down there?

While I am not speaking for or against the proposed terminal, if people started waiting for buses all the time in an otherwise deserted area, I bet you'd start getting opportunists taking advantage of the easy pickings. It's not a completely absurd argument.

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Meters or zones, it still seems like there's a fair bit of confusion regarding the minutiae of the taxi cab's, ahem, flexible fare system.

But not all is lost - commenter Chris G explained in detail his experience of getting a refund from the DCTC. Thanks for the info, Chris!

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As we noted in our Comment of the Week, the long talked about D.C. Voting Rights signs for Nationals Park were finally endorsed by the D.C. Council. Of course, SystemError wasn't the only one with questions - most of you were pessimistic about the chances of ever seeing such signs anywhere close to the stadium - which led to some other ideas.

flapjack thought it might be easier to go with a less conspicuous strategy:

what's the policy on fans bringing politically oriented signs into the stadium themselves? couldn't the city just recruit a lot of people to wave posters that say taxation without representation? or wear shirts with the same slogan? The odds of that showing up on tv are higher than a giant sign outside the stadium.

But RJ has seen that it wouldn't fly:

Flapjack,

I saw one game this year where a person in the Presidents seats had an Obama sign, it was viewable on TV for about 1 sec, and the next shot of home plate security was there, the next shot after than she was being moved to a less viewable area.

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Comment Crazy for $400, Alex: This substance, popular amongst pretty much every single person on the face of the planet, caused a large number of comments on DCist's Photo of the Day for July 2.

(Do you really have to ask? Hint: it's not not beer.)

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Metro did stay open until 3 a.m. on the Fourth, but didn't pass out any fancy fliers to tourists this year. The alternate to said fliers is brought to you by juanfe:

Send all the tourists to New Carrolton and then give them a flier telling them to call their congresscritter and bitch about the fact that their beautiful DC trip was ruined because Metro has no dedicated funding source to make pretty 4th of July maps.

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Don't worry boondoggle, we'll always be your wingman. Especially with those Mrs. America contestants.

Any of you gals interesting in dating a guy who comments on a blog? No?

Sigh.

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This week's episode of The Magical World of Monkeyrotica finds our hero facing down the monster of the District's public school curriculum:

There's so much kids could learn at Club Monkeyrotic Elementary:

- watering down drinks 101
- proper identification of a suspicious roofie colada
- how to whine in just the right frequency to get the bouncer to let you in
- the dos-and-donts of cockblocking
- approved techniques for holding your girlfriend's hair while she vomits
- how to spot the LNS douche based solely on level of table service, brand of vodka, and cologne
- when to use the line "Don't you know who I am?"
- answering the eternal question: "Does this make me look fat?" (Answer: No, but your ass does.)

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Olsson's is filing for Chapter 11 protection; and whether it was due to the lack of a niche in a crowded market, not enough of a general selection, or the lack of physical product available - it led to many of you bemoaning the potential loss of another local business.

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gmg gives us a lesson in journalism ethics:

OK, but no, that actually does NOT yet justify calling it murder, at least not in the legal sense. "Murder" in the legal sense does NOT cover all homicides. (The boring old MSM are sticklers about this.) Was the guy probably murdered? The evidence certainly looks pretty bad, but that still doesn't make it OK for a media source to use the word as fact at this stage of the game. A prosecutor may CHARGE someone at the jail with this guy's murder, and then that person may be tried for murder, and possibly convicted.

Is this splitting hairs, especially in a case like this where the evidence so far looks very damning to the jail/cops? Yup, but I still can't let it go. No one ever seems to understand the legal difference between homicide and murder, and cases do happen where the distinction is a lot less clear. (Saying someone was murdered before there are charges or a trial could in some situations be libelous!)

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So, what concerns you more? The news that SmartBike's rollout depends on Pepco, or the lack of Jim Sebastian pictures? Be honest.

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Award Time!

This week's Avatar Award For Achievement in the Field of Avatars is proudly presented to no_pants_mcgee, whose reppin' a solid LOLcat (shockingly, one of the few that we've ever seen in our tenure of picking these things out). It may be cliche, but we really, really like Star Trek II.

And our Username of the Week for this post-Fourth edition is twoOHtwo, who combines something succinctly D.C. and, you know, fun word capitalization. You know, like that joke - "which state is higher in the middle than at the ends?" Yeah, well we think it's funny.