Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a non-partisan watchdog organization, announced today that it has asked the Department of Justice and the Senate to look into whether Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) violated federal bribery law when she earmarked $2 million for a reading program for D.C. public schools after receiving tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the executives of the company that designed the program. According to a release, Landrieu directed......

Sure, Harriette Walters might have stolen upwards of $44 million from the District's coffers, but at least she wasn't stealing directly from low-income school children. According to a WTOP report this morning, District officials have arrested and charged a city official with submitting false expense reports totaling $11,385 for big bills at local restaurants and strip clubs. Emerson Crawley, a program manager at After School for All at Shaw Junior High School, allegedly spent the......

The thinly veiled sexism oozing out of today's Examiner column by veteran local politics observer Harry Jaffe is hard enough to take, but to whomever thought up this gem of a headline, be they copy editor or author, DCist salutes your willingness to go boldly where no human beings in the 21st century were thought to be capable of going anymore. Yes, if the recent Office of Tax and Revenue scandal has taught us......

In most any public or private sector job, losing $31 million on your watch is a surefire way to get yourself fired. CFO Natwar Gandhi's reputation for saving the city's finances has thus far protected him from what is to date the District's biggest corruption scandal. But his fortunes might be changing. Buried towards the end of an article from the Examiner today on an investigation into the tax refund scheme that milked the city......

Good morning, Washington, and welcome back to work after a nice long holiday away. We hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving vacation as much as we did ours. That is if you can take a long enough break from all the online shopping you'll supposedly be doing from your desk today to tell us about it. Stay tuned until the week before Christmas for your next update on the holiday shopping habits of Americans -- we......

Still in the office, D.C.? Yeah, us too. We hope you're only sticking around because you don't need to travel this holiday season. If so, enjoy the empty halls, bask in the quiet, and call it a day early. If not — well, good luck on the roads and at the airport. It sounds like they're going to be predictably nasty. There Seems To Be Some Sort of Holiday Occurring: And consequently you can......

Good morning, Washington. In case you didn't believe us when we first told you that this tax office corruption scandal was going to get bigger and badder as the week went on, just check out the trio of stories on offer from the Post this morning on the widening scandal. First and foremost, it turns out Harriette Walters and Diane Gustus allegedly worked together to steal $4 million more than originally thought, bringing the grand......

>> The biggest D.C. government corruption scandal ever? [WaPo, updated from earlier story] >> Will there finally be enough places to lock up our bicycles? [WJLA] >> An Emerging Columbia Hts.-Petworth Food Split? [Free Ride] >> Bloomingdale Farmers Market not a given for next year? [In Shaw] >> Could H Street NE put a cap on the number of bars that can open there? [City Desk] Photo by sally henny penny......

Add one more major D.C. government corruption scandal to the list. NBC4 is reporting that the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington is set to announce a major public corruption investigation involving District city workers and the theft of about $16 million in property tax money. The Washington Post has the details on the indictments, which accuse two D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue employees -- Harriette Walters and Diane Gustus -- of fabricating tax refund......

Welcome back to work, Washington. Perhaps you're struggling to focus this morning, having only barely recovered from the weekend's Halloween festivities. Perhaps you just had a difficult time extricating yourself from your bed on this first cold morning of the year. Whatever the case may be, DCist recommends a strong cup of coffee with a dash of Rumbler to get your motor running today. The Rumbler is described as a "high-tech blaster" being used in......

Good morning, Washington. It looks like California's still on fire, and likely to remain so. Most versions of the aforelinked AP story include the phrase "firefighters all but concede defeat," and the Post is calling the resulting evacuation the largest in modern history. It all sounds pretty grim. Good luck, West Coast. Yet More Stadium Parking Controversy: The Post reports on the latest in a seemingly neverending series of deliberations over parking at the......

We read all the local columnists, so you don't have to. This week we find meat-eaters being compared to Michael Vick, a lot of bum opinions on city schools and District residents being called "granola." Courtland Milloy: According to Milloy's Wednesday column in the Post, your choice to eat a hamburger isn't all that different than Michael Vick's decision to brutally fight, torture and kill dogs for money. "We'll kill a duck, deer, turkey --......

Good morning, D.C. If you missed the news breaking yesterday, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts had a seizure on Monday while on vacation in Maine. While the cause of the seizure is unknown, doctors examined the Chief Justice and determined there was no cause for concern and that Roberts has already fully recovered. It's likely Roberts will now be prescribed some form of anti-seizure medication because he had another similar episode 14 years......

By DCist contributor W Jacarl Melton Femi Kuti performs tonight at the 9:30 Club. Doors at 9 p.m. $25 Following in your father’s footsteps isn’t easy because there will be the inevitable comparisons, especially if your dad was a musical vanguard. Femi Kuti can’t avoid the path his father, Fela, blazed so he’s decided to embrace it and further his family’s legacy in Afrobeat. It goes without saying that Fela Kuti was one of those......

The Smithsonian Institution continues to bleed to save itself as Sheila P. Burke, the Deputy Secretary and Chief Operating Officer, resigned yesterday. Burke was the second in command to Lawrence P. Small, who resigned as Secretary back in March. The Washington Post reports today that the Board of Regents isn't taking the call for restructuring lightly, and Burke took the hit after her $1.6 million in compensation from outside activities came to light. The Regents......

Dorothy Brizill, the Executive Director of DCWatch, the ubiquitous local government watchdog group, was arrested and charged with assault yesterday after Tara Bridgett, an aide to deputy mayor for education Victor Reinoso, said Brizill grabbed her shirt and yanked the ID badge hanging from a lanyard around her neck. Brizill, who has been a local legend in D.C. politics for twenty years for her hardcharging questioning of municipal goings on, had been meeting with Reinoso......

MONDAY: Leftover anger from last week's G8 Summit? Check out John Perkins at Politics and Prose tonight. He'll be discussing his newest book The Secret History of the American Empire: Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth about Global Corruption, which details the shady deals behind U.S. foreign aid to developing countries. 7 p.m. TUESDAY: Hurricane season is upon us yet again, and this August will mark the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's devastating impact......

MONDAY: Cullen Murphy, the Atlantic’s managing editor, will be at Politics and Prose to talk about his new book Are We Rome? Murphy is of course referring to spreading corruption in Washington, our imperialist tendencies and the outsourcing of government work to private contractors. Personally, we'd rather read a book comparing our government with a different empire, but we won't hold our breath on that one. 7 p.m. TUESDAY: Dancer and award-winning actress Victoria Rowell......

FRIDAY: >> There's another Hirshhorn AfterHours event planned for tonight, when the museum stays open late for a party, this time featuring DJ Spencer Product in a celebration of the new exhibit Wolfgang Tillmans. $10 in advance, $12 at the door, 8 p.m. to midnight. >> KRS-One is "The Teacher" for a reason -- besides being an over-40 MC still preaching against violence, misplaced hatred, and government corruption, he's also been a crucial influence for......

Given that the state of the District's public schools is one of the city's most pressing problems, we were excited to see Mayor Adrian Fenty host an online chat at the Post to clarify and explain his ambitious plans for a mayoral takeover. Unfortunately, the chat ended up sounding much like most of President George W. Bush's public appearances -- staged and scrubbed free of criticism. Fenty fielded 16 questions in total, none of which......

So you're Jane Fernandes. In January you're set to take control of Gallaudet University, the nation's premiere institution of higher learning for deaf and hard-of-hearing students. But since your selection in May, it's been nothing but headache after headache. Students protested the decision until summer break, but showed surprising resolve and kicked off the protests again this semester. So far they've taken over a building, blocked all entrances to the campus, taken 133 arrests in......

If Hitler had been a gangster, what color tie would he have worn? To some, that inquisitive trajectory is irrelevant and even downright disrespectful. Hitler was not only obsessed by power and violence, but a monster to whom, most would say, we should never extend the benefit of a psycho-history. To Bertolt Brecht, however, the value of an inquiry into Hitler the gangster outweighed the dangers. Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (pictured), now......

Somehow, the world of -ists managed to make it through the week despite news that Jen & Vince broke up. -Chicagoist had fall on their mind as they made squash and fudge, read "House of Leaves" and ">tried to figure out what's next for the Cubs. Not fall related, but still of utmost concern, the whole skinny black pants thing. -Torontoist fought off an evil scourge of raccoons and went to go see who......

Written by DCist contributor Christopher Durocher Fresh from his underwhelming appearance on Oprah, former New Jersey governor and "proud, gay American" James McGreevey will speak and sign copies of his new memoir, The Confession, at Books-a-Million in Dupont Circle tonight. The Confession chronicles McGreevey’s rise to national prominence as one of the country’s most powerful governors and his dramatic fall after admitting to an extra-marital affair and attempts to make his lover (or object of......

Last week, Stare DCisis explored what happens when the Supreme Court stops being polite, and starts getting real with states acting unconstitutionally. Virginia, in particular, was the perpetual thorn in the side of the early Supreme Court. Though Chief Justice John Marshall was a former Virginia legislator, the state's supreme court had some real authority problems taking orders from Marshall once he moved across the river. It may seem patently obvious that the Supreme Court......

The District has seen good times in the last few years. Business is booming and neglected properties and neighborhoods are seeing new investment. Crime has plummeted over the past decade, and corruption in the government has faded even as the city's coffers have filled with new tax revenues. The ebbing of many of the city's old problems has combined with the election year to place a new and intense focus on fixing the city's......

Word to the wise -- if you're skimming some company money off the top for personal expenses, spread some of the love around. If not, well, it's going to come back and bite you in the ass. That's exactly what happened with former American University president Ben Ladner, who was fired from his $875,000-a-year job last October after news emerged that he had been too liberally spending university funds on personal expenses and opulent parties......

Franklin Foer, a longtime writer for The New Republic, was recently named editor of the venerable political magazine. A fourth generation Washingtonian, he's authored a book called, "How Soccer Explains the World," (which we heartily recommend), and his writing has appeared in a host of publications, from The New York Times to Spin. Mr. Foer was good enough to take a few of our questions, on blogging, city life, and those cursed Chelski footballers. What's......

MONDAY: Tony Kushner will discuss the plays of Arthur Miller with Jeffrey Brown at the Avalon Theatre, 5612 Connecticut Ave NW. Topics may or may not include who the baddest Jewish playwright of our time really is, and whether anyone who convinced the likes of Marilyn Monroe to convert has any competition in that category to begin wtih. Tickets are $13 each; two tickets are included with the purchase of a book. 8:15 p.m. WEDNESDAY:......

The weekly Ist wrap-up is written by Seattlest editor Dan Gonsiorowski. DCist helps us make more sense of the world this week. Posts like this concert review are the reason for Scott Stapp. DCist also enumerates the reasons for playing ultimate frisbee, Condi's tight buns, their love of a local convenience store, and their jealousy of a person in Seattle calling the city. LAist documented graf artist Banksy's most recent visit to LA in one......