In this morning's roundup, we told you how the tenure of Andrea Pringle, Vince Gray's new Deputy Chief of Staff, was already off to a rocky start -- local government watchdog Dorothy Brizill filed a formal complaint with the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics, accusing Pringle of voting in the District's 2010 mayoral primary while living in Montgomery County. more ›

Marc Fisher: As the Senate gets ready to debate the District voting rights legislation, Fisher lists the dozen top reasons why senators from both parties should vote to enfranchise the city's residents. The more and more we look into it, the better the case looks. Let's hope the Senate agrees. Tom Knott: You know Knott's verbal insanity is in good form when the title of his weekly column is "It's Gathering of Eagles vs. nitwit... more ›

Yesterday we threw together a list of the people in the District we considered influential, taking after a similar annual list put together by GQ that compiles the movers and shakers on the federal side of the city. One of our nominees was Dorothy Brizill, a well-known civic activist and political gadfly who runs DC Watch, the closest thing we have to a citizens' inspector general. And as we expected, last night she offered us... more ›

Just this week, GQ published their annual "50 Most Powerful People in D.C." list. Populated by the likes of Condoleezza Rice, Nancy Pelosi, Karl Rove and Tim Russert, the list better describes the movers and shakers in "Washington", but not the District. And since we're snobs about local news and happenings, we threw together a little list of the people who really exercise influence in or over the lives of people who live and work... more ›

In a town where motorcades are less a spectacle and more an annoyance, Mayor Adrian Fenty's modest security detail has never raised many eyebrows. But now Fenty has done away with it altogether -- and no one really knows why. According to a Post report, Fenty has decided to ditch the police security detail and drive himself around during the month of August instead. And beyond simply shedding daily armed protection, Fenty has also been... more ›

Happy Friday, Washington! Oh, wait. It's Tuesday. But we're not going in to work tomorrow! Oh, wait again. We have to come in on Thursday. And Friday. This is confusing. We'll have some more info for you later today on how to avoid the crowds and have a stellar 4th of July celebration -- just as soon as we can wrap our heads around the idea of stumbling to our desks on the 5th, totally... more ›

Since 1983, Loose Lips, the City Paper's weekly local politics column, has been the place to get quirky news and commentary on the District's political figures. But today, James Jones, Loose Lips columnist for the last two years, bids farewell to the paper. Jones came to the City Paper after a stint at WAMU, and his first column was published on March 11, 2005. According to the folks at the City Paper, Jones has taken... more ›

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... more ›

How much is public service in the District worth? This Tuesday the D.C. Council might tell us. In its last legislative session of the year, the council will be debating a number of measures and proposals, one that would provide funds for the trasitions of mayor-elect Adrian Fenty and council chair-elect Vincent Gray. But more than just provide them with the money needed to prep their teams for next January's handover of power, the legislation... more ›

D.C. Watch's twice-weekly online newsletter The Mail has long been a source of news, opinion, and analysis on District politics. Since 1995, founders and main contributors Dorothy Brizill and Gary Imhoff have used the newsletter to root out government waste and take on political shenanigans, both left and right. And while much of The Mail's content spawns response after response, one recent non-political announcement has drawn some debate -- should The Mail become a blog?... more ›

Last week we reported that D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams takes in $152,000 in compensation, a salary some viewed as excessive and others as not excessive enough. But if this is how much we currently judge the city's chief executive to be worth, what would we pay, let's say, the chief librarian? A lot more, as news has it. The Common Denominator reported on Friday that the D.C. Board of Library Trustees decided to hire Ginnie... more ›

Leave it to community activists Dorothy Brizill and Gary Imhoff to come up with ideas for D.C. while on vacation. After returning from a European vacation last week, Imhoff wrote in his introduction to DC Watch's regular email newsletter about a surprising discovery the two had while on the Portuguese island of Madeira -- the small island was totally covered by a public and free wireless internet system. A number of local municipalities have built... more ›

Is that the sound of cats hissing and clawing? No, it's merely D.C. Vote and D.C. Watch, two District-based non-profit political organizations, going at each other. The two, which have usually peacefully co-existed and even complimented each other's work, recently engaged in an online volley of arguments and accusations. On the one side, D.C. Watch's Gary Imhoff and Dorothy Brizill, on the other, D.C. Vote's Ilir Zherka. So far four rounds have been fought, with... more ›

As expected, city activist and DCWatch director Dorothy Brizill and other anti-slots agitators succeeded in convincing the D.C. elections board to throw out thousands of petition signatures, placing the future of the proposed ballot initiative in jeopardy. According to the Post," ... elections board Chairman Wilma A. Lewis criticized virtually every aspect of what she described as an overly ambitious attempt to collect signatures from 5 percent of the city's registered voters in just five... more ›