He might not be throwing out the first pitch at tomorrow's Nationals home opener, but President Barack Obama will be traveling through town this morning en route to a speech at Georgetown University this morning. The speech will begin at 11:15 a.m. -- traffic restrictions have been in place around the Georgetown campus since 6 a.m. this morning. more ›

A police investigation is underway at Ballou High School today after a D.C. police officer and a security guard were sprayed with mace by a young person. WUSA9 reported this afternoon that a police officer had recognized a juvenile inside the school from an outstanding arrest warrant in Virginia -- at some point after that, the suspect produced mace and sprayed both the officer and a security guard near a secondary exit and fled the school, which is located at 3401 4th Street SE. Several police cars have been stationed outside the building this morning after the incident, which took place just before 10 a.m. Police are reportedly pursuing aggravated assault charges. more ›

If there are two things most people know about WTOP Political Analyst Mark Plotkin, it's that one, he's not very tech-savvy, and two, he's passionate aboout District voting rights. So passionate, it seems, that he even got himself kicked out of the White House yesterday. According to fellow WTOP reporter Mark Segraves' account of the incident, Plotkin, along with the rest of the D.C. press corps and various local elected officials, attended an event at... more ›

We mentioned the nearly completed documentary film about the award-winning Ballou High School marching band, called simply Ballou, in a previous, less up-beat post about some fights that broke out there during the first week of the school. The film is still in its final post-production stages, but while the filmmakers are busy mixing audio tracks, the student musicians who are featured in the film are getting ready for a visit from The Ellen... more ›

By DCist contributor Spencer Ackerman It's pretty appropriate for a cooking expo so near the Chesapeake Bay that the first olfactory experience greeting a visitor to the Metropolitan Cooking & Entertaining Show is a powerful blast of salty, baking fish. No one is going to mistake D.C.'s answer to the New York Fancy Food Expo -- a 100-stall extravaganza of middlebrow-to-high-end cooking, oenophilia, celebrity chefs and cheap wares -- for the food-porn original. But with... more ›

Mayor Williams Not Informed of Threat to City. Things can happen in a flash, and yesterday's air scare left the District's mayor, like so many others, somewhat unaware what was happening in the city. MSNBC reports that the mayor says District authorities didn't know what was going on until after the all clear was sounded. Says the mayor:

Critical and potentially life-or-death information about threats facing district residents needs to be shared immediately -- not five, 10 or 15 minutes after the fact ... I am concerned about the apparent delay in alerting key decision-makers in the city.

Marion Barry Teaches Chemistry?: As Wonkette pointed out yesterday, Marion Barry went back to school and taught chemistry to a bunch of Ballou High School students as a visiting dignitary-turned-substitute teacher. While Wonkette makes light of Barry's history putting certain chemicals in his body, as the Post reports, the former mayor-turned-Ward 8 councilman actually has a "bachelor's and master's degrees and some doctoral credit in chemistry." While Barry did talk a bit about chemistry, he... more ›

Well, D.C. It seems that we're almost through Inaugural Week. Though thousands of out-of-towners, constituents and other party-goers will be still around today and into the weekend, the city should be getting slowly back to normal. A quick question to those out there who are experienced travelers ... Considering the gargantuan number of fur coats brought in for Inauguration festivities, how do you pack a fur coat into one's luggage? It seems that if fur... more ›