Federal workers may have had Christmas Eve off of work this year, but D.C. Department of Public Works parking enforcement officers apparently did not. No matter, though: DPW says it will dismiss tickets doled out during rush hour on Dec. 24, says WTOP. DPW Director William Howland Jr. explained that the agency believes "that many people thought enforcement was lifted since federal workers were given the day off." If we were DPW employees, we don't......

The Examiner ran a story on Monday about Bloomingdale's recent round of talks with the city regarding opening a new store in downtown D.C. Along with the recently approved development at the Old Convention Center site, sources in the Fenty administration told Michael Neibauer that the talks have included the controversial Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library at 9th and G Streets NW as a "possible option" for the store. The library, as you'll recall,......

The D.C. Council voted 10 to 3 today to give Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee the power to fire nonunion central office employees. Council members Marion Barry, Phil Mendelson and Harry Thomas Jr. were the only votes against giving Rhee the power to fire. Thomas tried to get the council to approve an alternative bill that would have affected fewer workers, but the Council voted that alternative down 10-3 as well. The Washington Post story......

Good morning, Washington. We hope you had a pleasant and restful evening despite the howling wind and bitter cold. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee had a bit of a rough night last night herself, as she was greeted by throngs of angry Ward 5 parents at the first community meeting that allowed her to present the school closures plan to the public. Ward 5 D.C. Council member Harry Thomas Jr. had set up the separate meeting......

Ticket holders for Saturday's Wizards v. Raptors match up probably made their purchases with visions of Gilbert Arenas and Chris Bosh dancing in their head. With both stars injured for the game, instead it turned into the Roger Mason Jr. v. Jason Kapono show. It turns out this wasn't a bad thing at all. After not playing at all in Thursday's loss in Philadelphia, Mason Jr. came off the bench to score 15 big......

If you've taken a D.C. taxicab since the stroke of midnight last night, you may have been surprised by a cab driver insisting that you pay an extra $1 gas surcharge. Didn't the gas surcharge expire in September? It did, but last week the D.C. Taxicab Commission quietly passed an emergency measure to bring back the $1 fee, beginning at 12:01 a.m. this morning and lasting until 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday, January 29, 2008. “Prices......

>>Dinosaur Jr. just can't stop re-uniting. Their relatively recent comeback album, Beyond, was a solid return to form, and despite the years, these guys still bring it with their feedback-drenched power-trio jams. An odd combination of opening band names: Awesome Color and Dead Confederate. At the Black Cat, $20, 8 p.m. The Woggles -- that ageless bunch of garage-dwelling retro-rockers from Georgia -- plays DC9. They'll be joined by D.C.'s terrific purveyors of garage,......

One of these guys might be the next president, so it's good to try and parse where they stand on District voting rights. At least that was the thinking over at D.C. Vote, who recently recorded and sent in a number of videos of District residents asking the presidential candidates from the Republican Party where they stood on D.C. voting rights. The videos, eleven in all, were submitted to CNN for the upcoming CNN/YouTube......

MONDAY >>Satisfy your cheese cravings as former American Idol star (and Richmond, VA native) Elliot Yamin plays the 9:30 Club, with the Last Goodnight and Josh Hoge. $25, Doors at 7 p.m. >>Australian pop singer Ben Lee -- he of the short-lived Bens and "Catch My Disease" moderate fame -- comes to Alexandria's Del Ray neighborhood to play the Birchmere. Joining him is are Cary Brothers. $19.50, 7:30 p.m. TUESDAY >>Dinosaur Jr. just can't stop......

Howard Kurtz's WaPo column today concerns the kerfuffle over Tim Page's angry email to Ward 8 Council Member Marion Barry's office that we told you about yesterday. As you'll recall, Page, who writes about classical music for the Post, received an unsolicited press release from Barry's office about the city's deal with Specialty Hospitals of America to purchase the Greater Southeast Community Hospital. Page then fired off an angry email in which he called the......

D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty announced this afternoon that new time and distance meters for D.C. taxis must be installed no later than April 1, 2008. The announcement came about nine hours after the end of a 24-hour taxicab driver strike in response to the Mayor's decision to abandon the zone system. Fenty and D.C. Taxicab Commission Chairman Leon Swain Jr. also announced the pricing structure for the new meters: a $4 flag drop charge, then......

Tuesday and today Howard University is hosting the Children's Defense Fund National Summit, which includes panel discussions on the Cradle to Prison Pipeline® Initiative, a project that seeks to end the cycle of poor minority children ending up destined to be shuffled in and out of the country's prison system. Yesterday Bill Cosby appeared on a panel titled "The Need for Personal and Community Responsibility" in conjunction with the summit, along with NPR's Juan......

>> Plans for the District's biggest hotel, with 1,400 rooms, near the Washington Convention Center, are on the verge of being shelved. [WaPo] >> A healthy baby boy was born on I-270 this morning, proving once again that life is really just God's cheesy network sitcom. [WJLA] >> Apparently those recent repairs at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library didn't include water fountains, ceilings or bathrooms. [City Desk] >> A photography exhibit that......

Those of you who watched the Joint Hearing of the House Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committee know that the hearing itself was disrupted several times, both by technical issues and by protesters in the room. You may not have been aware that there was a ruckus in the hallway outside the hearing as well. This video shows U.S. Capitol Police speaking with Hip Hop Caucus President Reverend Lennox Yearwood, Jr. on Monday after......

>> Media conglomerate Viacom announced that it will donate $1.5 million in cash and promotions to help build the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall. [NBC4] >> A child described as a 20-month-old black boy was found adandoned in a stroller in Capitol Heights Tuesday morning. [NBC4] >> An improperly disposed cigarette was to blame for the fire that damaged Capitol Lounge and Trover Gift Shop last week. The fire began......

So who do you turn to if you're an embattled administration facing an unpopular war, bitter criticism both at home and abroad, an exodus of senior staff, and the barrel of a long year's worth of lame ducked-ness? A retired general? Nope. A political mastermind? Nah, that would be too easy. Perhaps a captain of industry? They're too busy starting and running multi-billion dollar foundations. Well, then how about someone who made his name by......

Yesterday a judge in a courtroom in the Virginia hinterlands wrote out some nasty doubletalk and upheld a set of draconian penalties Virginia has unleashed upon commuters with jobs in D.C., raising the question once again of why Northern Virginia taxpayers continue to fund a state government run by rural Southerners who hate us and want us to be miserable. Before yesterday's ruling, the fees had been deemed unconstitutional in district courts in Henrico County......

We've spent plenty of time debating whether or not the District's taxicabs should stick to the zone system or join the rest of the modern world and employ meters. Last year, Congress passed legislation giving the District until this October to switch to meters, and more recently, the D.C. Taxicab Commission released a study that found that on average, meters were cheaper. Of course, cab drivers have long opposed the prospect of a switch, and......

A group of friends gathered last Friday night at a rain soaked campground just outside the village of Cooperstown, NY for a weekend that had been in the works for over a decade. All of us, just north of 30 and pals since high school, grew up in D.C.’s Maryland suburbs and were in town to celebrate the induction of Cal Ripken, Jr. into baseball’s Hall of Fame. The event was so much more than......

If you missed this story in Saturday's Washington Post, do make sure you check it out, for your own personal safety if nothing else. It seems the enormous popularity of the ugliest shoes on the planet, Crocs, has led to an alarming increase in the number of escalator mishaps on Metro this summer, as the shoes' soft resin soles can easily be grabbed by the metal teeth of the moving steps. Once trapped, the Crocs,......

Good morning, Washington. It's the last Friday in July, and we can already feel the impending doom and gloom of D.C.'s traditional No News August, a time when the Washington Post publishes lengthy ruminations on humidity and local TV news begins investigating whether your children's toy water guns are really safe. But as if feeling the need to grant us one last interesting Friday before the new month begins, D.C. Council member Harry Thomas......

>> Buzzworthy singer/guitarist Marnie Stern will be at the Rock and Roll Hotel with openers Zulu Pearls. 9p.m., $10. >> DDOT and ANCs 1B, 1C and 2B are hosting a public meeting on the future of the U Street corridor tonight, with an aim to discuss existing and proposed conditions of the neighborhood as well as address transportation concerns for the corridor. 6:30-8:30 p.m. in DDOT's second floor community room in the Reeves Building......

Now that it turns out there's almost nothing more embarrassing than watching self-made videos of goofy Americans asking leading questions to presidential candidates, we'd like to suggest you take a valuable lesson from the experience by choosing not to enter your workplace this morning wearing wraparound sunglasses, a Viking outfit or a salmon-colored suit jacket. We'll leave the choice of affecting an over-the-top southern drawl up to you, but you can probably guess where......

MONDAY: Lisa See, author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, will be at Politics and Prose to talk about her latest book, Peony in Love. 7 p.m. We had to yell "STOP THE PRESSES!" for this one. Laura Sessions Stepp, our favorite Washington Post personality, will be at Arlington Central Library to promote her latest book Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both. For those of you unfamiliar with......

Mayor-For-Life Marion Barry continues to amaze us. Not only is he utterly untouchable by the long hand of the law, but he is an amazing politician; he just keeps getting elected to practically anything for which he's run. Now, he's even won a race he wasn't actively campaigning for: Barry (or his likeness, rather) was selected to fill the last slot at the forthcoming Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum in Penn Quarter. The museum, which will......

>> Since Tuesday is the new Thursday, we'd recommend heading over to Rock and Roll Hotel for a stellar line-up of DJs including Ken and Juan of East Coast Boogiemen, Lexus King, Devin Byrnes of Exit Only, Aaron Sparks and Keenan. 8:30 p.m.- 1:30 a.m., free all night long. >> Montreal's The Besnard Lakes play with Dirty On Purpose at the Black Cat's backstage, 9 p.m., $10. If you can't get enough of the......

FRIDAY: >> Even though Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is an obvious choice for the movie-going crowd this weekend, the Avalon Theatre -- just north of the Potter madness at the Uptown -- is showing Talk to Me, the new biopic on the life of famed Washington, D.C., talk-show host and activist Ralph Waldo "Petey" Greene Jr. 5:50 and 8:30 p.m. >> Unbuckled alumni The Vita Ruins celebrate the release of their......

The author of this post is Rawn James, Jr. It was posted earlier, but inadvertently removed from the site. Our apologies to the commenters who had already chimed in! The first line of The Godfather is spoken by the broken undertaker whose daughter's attackers have escaped justice. "I believe in America," Buonasera tells the camera and the Godfather. In one of the most well-acted single takes in American cinema, the proud middle-aged immigrant sobs impotent......

Welcome back to work, Washington. This week promises not only to feel longer than normal thanks to its coming on the heels of a holiday, but also hot enough that you might want to consider setting up an ad-hoc shower in your office, as there's little chance you'll get there without breaking into a sweat first. The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments has issued a Code Orange alert because of the heat wave, and......

The Examiner reports that renovations are underway at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, the central branch of the D.C. Public Public system. The improvements come after former Mayor Anthony Williams' proposal to replace the building with a new flagship library two blocks away on the site of the old convention center was first tabled by the D.C. Council and then shelved by the Fenty administration. Improvements to the outdated and long-neglected MLK Library......