Man Stops Traffic at 17th and K to Demand $200 Million
Morning Roundup: Goodbye, Abe Edition
Judge Throws Out WTU Suit Over Teacher Layoffs
Vegetate to Close at the End of the Month
Morning Roundup: Rain Won't Go Away Edition
Good morning, Washington. Last night was the NBA draft lottery, the event that determines which teams will have the privilege of making highly speculative bets on freakishly athletic basketball prodigies. The Washington Wizards have just come off of a terrible season, making them mathematically incapable of drawing a spot any worse than the fifth... which is what they drew, of course. Great.
More on Bloomingdale Shootings: The Post has the latest on yesterday's series of shootings in Bloomingdale, which left four people injured, — one seriously — and made the evening commute in the area a mess. A brown minivan fled the scene and eventually crashed, injuring four police officers in the process and leading to the arrest of the van's three occupants. Police Chief Lanier has speculated that the shootings were gang-related.
Loudoun Teacher Suspended For Death of Student Years Ago: The Post's Loudoun Extra section reports some unexpected fallout from yesterday's Hill testimony about the restraint and abuse of schoolchildren. One of the incidents highlighted in the report and testimony concerned a Texas teacher who restrained a student by lying on him, which resulted in the child's death. No charges were filed, and the teacher now works in Loudoun County — and her bosses were apparently quite surprised to learn about the past incident. She's been placed on administrative leave while the county reviews whether she was appropriately forthcoming about the incident when interviewing for her current job.
Final Va. Gubernatorial Debate: The Examiner's William Flook takes one for the team, sitting through the final debate among the candidates vying for the Democratic nomination for the Virginia governorship. It sounds like things heated up a bit as Brian Moran and Creigh Deeds took collective aim at apparent front-runner Terry McAuliffe. Exciting! Or at least it's what passes for excitement when you have three candidates with very similar policy positions and a need to differentiate themselves.
Briefly Noted: Barbara Jordan Public Charter School closing doors due to low enrollment... Man claiming to be police officer assaults teenage girl in Prince William County... Amtrak cutting some rates out of D.C. for the summer... Former AARP employee pleads guilty to fraud scheme... Maryland giving unclaimed money to residents, swears it's not a scam despite obvious similarities to contents of your junk email folder... Civil war artillery shell found in landfill, disposed of by bomb squad... Some purple line funding to come from road projects... Traffic congestion down thanks to gas prices and sluggish economy... Virginia man sentenced to five years for fish fraud...
This Day In DCist: One year ago commenters were bummed about Benjamin Banneker's apparent selection as the face of D.C.'s state quarter and a life-or-death standoff began between the city and a local art gallery (the lives in question belonged to some goldfish).
Image posted to DCist Photos by Flickr user mosley.brian
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As a follow up to Martin's post yesterday regarding carrying weapons in national parks, the credit card bill passed the Senate yesterday with the amendment. See Section 512. Rumor has it that the House will act quickly to pass the bill and the President's expected to sign.
Here's the Post's article from this morning: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/19/AR2009051903660.html
Ok I have more! Here is the House Rules resolution to split the gun amendment from the credit card reform bill: http://rules.house.gov/SpecialRules_details.aspx?NewsID=4266
I'm ignorant when it comes to Congressional parliamentary procedure. So here's the question: if the House (1) votes to split Sec. 512 from the rest of the bill and (2) defeats Sec. 512, does the bill go back to the Senate for reconsideration?
To bring this back to DC, I really, really hope the Council and Norton are seeing the writing on the wall here and are scrambling for a compromise by changing DC laws. Illyerere should be pushing them.
1) Totally rescind the Dec. 2008 rules
2) Change Ensign amendment to only cover making it okay for DC res to buy handguns in Md., or Va.
Both sides get to claim victory. DC gets vote and holds on to registration.
That makes too much sense, however.
Not 100% sure, but according to people more knowledgeable than I on this subject, the Senate would have to pass it as a separate bill.
That sounds right.
The reason I'm curious is that I'd heard that the House was trying to arrange a situation where they could vote on the gun provisions separately from the credit card bill, but not have that vote affect the bill. Basically, according to the story I heard, the leadership wants to allow the House D's to record a vote against the gun provision, but they don't want the bill to return to the Senate b/c (a) the White House wants the credit card bill ASAP, and (b) there's no guarantee that the Senate would pass it w/o the gun provision.
However, H.Res. 456 sorta sounded like the House was going to try to segregate the issues, but it could just be that I misinterpreted the resolution.
Anyhow, the House passed H.Res. 456 and they're debating the credit card bill now, so it looks like we'll see how it plays out soon enough.
If I read it right, the House passed the bill w/ the gun law amendment? What else should I expect I suppose, I've been in the city long enough not to be surprised.
There are already groups suing to stop the measure.
That sure seems to be the case.
People are gonna sue over the gun thing? Really? How does anyone have standing, and, even if they have standing, what basis to they have to challenge it? This should be fun.
That said, hopefully some college group is suing to block the provisions on the under-21 credit card rules. Out of all the irritating provisions in the credit card bill, that one is just flat offensive.
Roundup before 9 am = Awesome.
Roundup before 9 am = Awesome.
Since when is it proper school procedure to restrain students by sitting on them? Isn't that what duct tape is for? I also highly recommend that Loudon County investigators consult the FBI database of those Convicted of Crush Fetishism, Lickers, Undergarment Fetishists and Frotteurs (COCFLUFF). This is an invaluable asset when performing background checks on new hires, potential neighbors, blind dates, or when you just need a laugh.
How dare you make light of this!! We at Girls Rock welcome anyone, regardless of gender, or species identification. Just because you are a flounder born into a catfish's body, is no reason to be penalized by the law.
Damn good point. Maybe the catfish identified itself as a flounder.
Tom Lee did this morning's Morning Roundup. Do you want to know how I know? There wasn't an expose on the fact that the Zoo's Communist Bear isn't preggers.
Don't look at me. I've got a bulletproof alibi. I was banging the emu. Her husband likes to cower in the closet and watch.
I would have if I'd seen it! After all, you're talking to the guy who coined the name "Butterstick". But the terrible price of my slightly earlier roundup schedule is that sometimes news that breaks in the morning may not make it into the MR (the Post's piece went up around nine).
But don't worry: you can count on the same wall-to-wall panda coverage that you've come to expect from the DCist brand.
Keep up the early postings
"...wall-to-wall panda coverage..."
I keep coming back for more panda on panda action.
Looks like a real spicy story in that AARP debacle. Fake company. Retired people. Hairy boyfriend. MMMMmmm!