Our thoughts go out to the family and staff of Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Ohio), who was hospitalized in critical condition after suffering an aneurysm Tuesday night in Cleveland. An initial report from WOIO in Cleveland announced that Tubbs Jones had died, but doctors at Huron Hospital in East Cleveland said that she is alive, although she has "very limited brain function" and that the aneurysm is in "an inaccessible part of her brain." The......

View Larger Map When Joan Wages, President of the National Women's History Museum, was successful at moving the Suffrage statue to the Capitol rotunda from the depths of the basement, it served as a metaphor for women's history. She wanted to bring the accomplishments and contributions of women into the light and placed in full view for all to see and learn. Founded in 1996, the National Women's History Museum, a private organization, is currently......

We expect this from Rep. Mark Edward Souder (R-Ind.), but Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi? Say it ain't so. The Hill is reporting that Pelosi may allow legislation to come to a vote that would do away with the city's current ban on semi-automatic guns, trash the registration requirement for all guns and allow District residents to purchase guns in Virginia and Maryland and bring them into the city. But in a surprising twist,......

Dr. No has struck again. Yesterday the Senate was unable to pass a legislative package of 35 programs worth $10 billion that had been held up by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Ok.). The package -- known as the "Tomnibus" bill -- included $1.5 billion for Metro that Coburn deemed wasteful because his constituents are too poor to come to Washington (no, seriously). But Democrats couldn't convince enough Republicans to join them to push the measure through,......

If you're a press secretary for Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Ok.), today's a good day. Both the Post and the New York Times are running profiles on the senator, affably known as "Dr. No," for his persistent opposition to bills that fund government programs he considers wasteful. Coburn has held up some 80 bills during his tenure, and it's gotten so bad that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) felt compelled to introduce legislation last week......

Not normally the kind of thing we'd choose for Photo of the Day, but Lilliang's capture of aging exercise guru/talk show guest Richard Simmons on Capitol Hill today deserves a post of its own. Simmons was here to testify before Congress about childhood obesity, and to promote legislation that would mandate more recess and physical education in public schools. Good for him. Somewhat more embarrassing is this video of Simmons's visit to the Fox......

They say that it's good to never give up, but would someone send Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) a memo telling him that sometimes it's cool to throw in the towel? According to a press release issued yesterday by DC Vote, Souder is looking to re-introduce legislation that would do away with the District's gun laws. Didn't the Supreme Court recently rule that the city's gun ban was unconstitutional, and didn't the police recently start registering......

Both the Post and the Examiner have stories covering testimony provided by D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, among others, to a congressional subcommittee yesterday about the state of the National Mall. "We should all be ashamed" of what the average Mall visitor sees, Norton told the panel. “There’s no great national park that suffers from this kind of neglect." Norton introduced a bill last year to revitalize the Mall. Anyone who spends time on the......

Photo by Sommer Mathis We just ran into District Department of Transportation's Manager for Bicycle, Pedestrian, and Transportation Demand Management Programs, Jim Sebastian, at the corner of R Street and Rhode Island Ave. NW, on his way to a meeting on one of the new SmartBikes we've been eagerly anticipating. Doesn't Jim look sporty? While he was test driving one of the bikes, which have smaller front wheels than standard bikes, Sebastian told us......

Call them merely symbolic acts, but the D.C. Council and Mayor Adrian Fenty have made a number of gestures this year to express their collective anger at the continued disenfranchisement of District residents. Today there's one more. Via D.C. Wire, the Council is planning on removing a prohibition on spending federal funds on lobbying activities related to District voting rights from the city's fiscal 2009 budget. The prohibition has long been imposed by Congress (the......

Where have you gone, Louie Gohmert? Way back, you said that "Washington, D.C. is also the only city in the entire country that every senator and every member of Congress has a vested interest in seeing that it works properly, that water works, sewer works, and no other city in America has that." The only reason we ask is to see if you could kinda tap on Sen. Tom Coburn's office door and sorta ask......

Both the Bike Sharing Blog and some of our Flickr contributors have spotted several of the SmartBikeDC racks being erected around town in the last week. The city's first bike sharing company, which we first told you about last year, is expected to be in full gear in May, with a soft launch rumored by the end of this month. The list of planned bike rental locations can be found here. The rack pictured is......

Rep. Albert Wynn may have served 16 years in the House of Representatives, but his announcement yesterday that he was retiring eight months before his final term ends may be the cheapest move in his political career. Wynn, who lost a hotly contested primary to Donna Edwards earlier this year, announced that he was leaving his seat for a job at a local law firm starting in June. His transition to a better-paying job comes......

Late breaking news in the Times Square Armed Forces recruiting center bombing early this morning: eight House Democrats reportedly received mailed letters today from someone claiming responsibility for the bombing. The letters also included photographs of the Manhattan recruiting center before it was bombed, along with the words, "We did it." The Associated Press has published an email that was sent to members of Congress today from Sen. Dianne Feinstein's (D-Calif.) office that reads:A few......

"Godfather of Go-Go" Chuck Brown made a special appearance at an open meeting of the Congressional Black Caucus yesterday to lend some star power to the work of the musicFIRSTcoalition, which supports legislation that would force regular over the air terrestrial AM and FM radio stations to pay royalties to artists each time they play a song. The U.S. is apparently one of the only countries that doesn't require radio stations to pay to......

The Post is reporting today that a majority of the members of Congress have filed a brief before the Supreme Court arguing that the District's gun ban should be ruled unconstitutional. All told, 305 members -- 55 in the Senate; 250 in the House, 68 of them Democrats -- signed on to the brief, which was pushed by famous gun enthusiast Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.). The brief argues: ...historically Congress has interpreted the Second......

Good morning, Washington. It really is freezing outside, people are dropping like flies from this terrible cold going around town, and over in Iowa, we hear there's some kind of a fake election going on that's going to dominate the news cycle all day. It could all be enough to get us down, but yet, we carry on ... until we read this story about an 11-year-old boy in Burke, VA who has been......

Over at Huffington Post, Andrea Batista Schlesinger of the Drum Major Institute has a nice roundup of what she thinks are the best public policy initiatives of 2007. Number six on her list is the D.C. Voting Rights Act, and she has a solid grasp on why congressional representation for the District is so important:Eleanor Holmes Norton, D.C's indomitable delegate, can debate with the best of them, but without the D.C. Voting Rights Act, neither......

When in the closing days of 2006 we looked back on the year in D.C. voting rights, we optimistically hoped that 2007 would finally be the year that saw some movement on enfranchising the District's residents. Movement, yes; resolution, not so much. So as we wind down 2007, we're again left hoping that maybe the coming year will be the one. The primary mover in the D.C. voting rights movement in 2007 was legislation......

The Washington Post has a fantastic story on today's front page accusing Sen. Mary Landrieu (D.-La.), in her role as chairwoman of the Senate's D.C. appropriations subcommittee up until earlier this year, of forcing an unproven reading program on the District's kindergarten and first grade classrooms in exchange for $80,000 in donations from the company that designed it. It's a long story, but it's worth reading all the way through. On the surface, it tells......

>> Congress finally, finally went home. [The Hill] >> CFO Natwar Gandhi is "deeply sorry" for the Office of Tax and Revenue scandal: "It's tearing me apart." [City Desk] >> An MPD officer has been arrested and charged in a federal child sex sting. [WJLA] >> Gallaudet University received more than $6 million from a Fredericksburg woman who left the bulk of her estate to the university. [AP via WTOP] >> Alexandria's lackluster Landmark......

Christmas seems to have come early for the District. Yesterday we reported that a congressional ban on needle-exchange programs was finally lifted and that we were getting our D.C. postmark back. Today we find out that the District will join the other 50 states and get its own quarter. Buried in a larger article in the Post on a $515.7 billion spending bill that allocates funds for the District, the announcement was made with almost......

>> Congress has taken away D.C. CFO Natwar Gandhi's pay raise in the wake of the Office of Tax and Revenue embezzlement scandal. Happy Holidays, Mr. Gandhi! [WaPo] >> What kind of person steals a wheelchair? [NBC4] >> Free holiday EP from Vandaveer. [You Ain't No Picasso] >> Marvin is already expanding. [Prince of Petworth] >> Christopher Hitchens sings at the Reason Secular Christmas party. [via City Desk] Photo by AlbinoFlea......

Say what you will about the $515.7 billion spending bill the House of Representatives passed yesterday, there is a silver-lining for the District -- the ban on the use of public funds for needle-exchange programs was finally lifted. For the past nine years Congressional Republicans successfully prohibited the District from using any of its resources to promote needle-exchange programs, regardless of their efficacy in combating the spread of diseases such as HIV/AIDS. As a consequence,......

With the opening of its ongoing Exploring the Early Americas exhibit today, the Library of Congress marks the beginning of a transformation that by the Summer of 2008 will “merge cutting-edge technology with the knowledge and inspiration embodied in the Library’s unparalleled collections and curators.” The exhibit features some of the 3,000 items representing the "beginning" of America (that is, the beginning of European documented America), that Jay I. Kislak has been collecting for more......

Remember those billboards that popped up in the 1980s that counted up the national debt, dollar by dollar? Pretty scary, huh? Well, District voting rights activists want something similar for their cause. Today the D.C. Council held a hearing on legislation that would allow the city to place two large LED billboards -- one outside the John A. Wilson Building and the other outside the new Washington Nationals stadium -- that would display the amount......

DC for Marriage, an eight-month-old group advocating same-sex marriage rights in the District, will hold a "Marriage Equality Community Forum" tomorrow night at 7 p.m. in room 412 of the Wilson Building. This is the group's first public event, which is co-sponsored by several local LGBT organizations including the DC Center, DC Black Pride, AQUA DC, and the Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League, among others. Yesterday, DC for Marriage announced Sabrina Sojourner, the first open......

"Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is hereby proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by conventions of three-fourths of the several States: "Article – Section 1. The eighteenth article of amendment to the......

You may have heard by now of the scandal brewing in the Capitol Café (the small eatery in the basement of the Capitol building). If not, here's the skinny: Indiana Congressman Mark Souder (R) allegedly wanted a toasted turkey sandwich real bad; Café worker Kennison Battle (known as Mohammed) allegedly gets to work on sandwich but makes fatal error of grilling aforementioned sandwich; Souder allegedly tries to correct Battle, who allegedly attempts to set it......

We were taken aback by this beautiful photo by Samer Farha in the DCist Flickr pool this morning. After only a quick glance at the tag "Library of Congress," I was trying to place this building somewhere in the city, but then realized this is a shot of the gorgeous architecture of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, out in Culpeper, Va. Tucked in the Blue Ridge Mountains, both American and international film, television, and......