In the world of politics, nearly every elected official or civic leader has at one point said something stupid, regrettable, insulting or downright confounding. But in recent years, well-known personalities in Virginia have had a disproportionate number of serious flubs, many of which have become national scandals. The mother of all these foot-in-the-mouth moments is surely George Allen's infamous 2006 "macaca" comment. Caught on tape and beamed to a national audience via YouTube, the insensitive......

It's D.C. in October in an election year, which means you're going to hear a lot about politics. That's not necessarily a bad thing, there are probably a lot of educated conversations going on around town from folks not involved at all in the horse race. And then there's this guy, who apparently supports either a higher birth rate or venereal disease. Overheard of the Week At Taqueria Distrito Federal on Saturday afternoon: 20s guy......

Via Notions Capital, a weeks-old Politico story we missed contains a tidbit about a funny exchange said to have taken place between perennial fringe presidential candidate and consumer advocate Ralph Nader and the Washington Post editorial board.Nader recounted a recent meeting with editors at The Washington Post, who he said told him the paper wasn’t covering his campaign because he had no chance of winning. According to Nader, he replied: “Then why are you covering......

Former GOP presidential candidate and governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee surprised practically all of the country a few months back when he ably and deftly spoofed himself on an episode of Saturday Night Live, proving that he was not only a good sport about his candidacy and didn’t take himself too seriously, but that there were some discernible comedic chops there. Last night at the DC Improv, Huckabee proved his SNL appearance was no fluke,......

Last week we brought you extensive coverage of the D.C. delegation's activities at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. Now that the Republican National Convention is underway in St. Paul, can you expect the same kind of reporting? No, but it's not for lack of trying. DCist submitted a request to be credentialed for the RNC several months ago. On July 7, we received a reply from the RNC Special Press Credentials Office with the......

Dick Heller, the man who sued to overturn D.C.'s handgun ban, arrives by bicycle to pick up his gun registration today. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) The Post caught Dick Heller, original plaintiff in the U.S. Supreme Court court case that eventually made it legal for D.C. residents to own handguns for personal security, picking up his handgun registration certificate this morning. Heller, a security guard, may now legally keep the gun he registered in his......

Dick Heller's quick to the draw with his legal filings. While his original complaint against the city -- the handgun ban -- took years to work its way through the courts and resulted in the recent historic Supreme Court ruling against the restrictions, Heller is moving much more quickly these days to make sure that he can exercise his Second Amendment rights. According to City Desk, Heller has filed a lawsuit against the city challenging......

If you agree with some of the commenters in the Roundup that WUSA's account of Dick Heller's experience at the District's gun registration office this morning was a little confusing, seems like you're probably right. D.C. Wire has what appears to be a better report that Heller didn't even bring a gun with him to register this morning, but instead expressed "his frustrations with the District's continued ban on semiautomatic weapons." What's up with that......

The Washington Blade reports that Ward 8 Council member Marion Barry has come out -- in support of same-sex marriage, that is. The mayor-for-life made his stance known for the first time last week at a meeting of the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, the city's most powerful LGBT political group. During the meeting, Barry responded to a question about same-sex marriage saying, "I don’t think you should make that question a litmus test. But if......

Voters in the city of Falls Church made history this week as Lawrence Webb became the first openly gay black man elected to public office in Virginia. Webb announced his candidacy last fall and was up against several other candidates for the three open City Council seats in Tuesday's general election. He won a seat by a margin of 39 votes with all precincts reporting. Nader Baroukh and Robin S. Gardner won the other two......

The Politico has a story this morning on D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton's ties to real estate developers. A long list of powerful developers have recently made contributions to her re-election campaign, many of whom have projects underway that have benefited from Norton's political support. The list of Norton’s donors reads like a “Who’s Who” of well-connected real estate developers: the Ratner family, which controls Forest City; Victor MacFarlane, a San Francisco developer who owns......

Transit is inherently tied to politics, and as such, involves quite a bit of perspective. Bearing that in mind, here's a question for those readers out there that drive to work everyday: how would you like having tolls escalate with the amount of traffic density in order to fund those same roads that you currently sit idly on? Well, if the Department of Transportation and the Bush Administration have their way, you might be looking......

It's always exciting when major sex scandals elsewhere turn out to have local connections. If you somehow haven't been inundated with the news already for the past couple of hours, New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer has publicly apologized after having been caught on a federal wiretap arranging for a prostitute to meet him in a hotel room. Turns out, the hotel room in question was right here in D.C., though it's unclear which hotel that......

THURSDAY: Happy New Year! Jerrold M. Post will be at Politics and Prose to read from his latest book, The Mind of the Terrorist. Is there a more depressing way to start the new year than discussing the psychology of terrorism? Only in Washington. 7 p.m. Cultural historian Jane Rhodes will be at the Olsson's in Penn Quarter to read from Framing the Black Panthers: The Spectacular Rise of a Black Power Icon. 7 p.m.......

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,......

Hilda Mason, 91, who served more than 20 years on the D.C. Council, died yesterday at Washington Hospital Center. The Post has an obituary up (which perhaps unsurprisingly but a little creepily appears to have been largely written some time ago, as it notes at the bottom that one of its authors passed away in 2006), which details Mason's status as the grand dame of local D.C. politics, having served on the Board of Education,......

It was 234 years ago Sunday that American colonists dumped tea into Boston Harbor as part of a symbolic protest against being taxed by the British while not having a representative in the Westminster Parliament. Yesterday District voting rights activists remembered the event by holding their own tea party, this one to protest the union's last standing example of taxation without representation. Though the wind whipped across the Potomac River, about 80 activists and......

FRIDAY: >> Bay Area songstress Goapele’s (pictured) musical background is almost as diverse as her ethnic background. Born to a South African political exile father and a mother whose parents survived the Holocaust, she studied at the Berklee College of Music and later would form musical partnerships with the likes of hip-hop acts like the Hieroglyphics crew and E-40. However her 2005 release, Change It All, established her as especially talented when it comes to......

>> A winter weather advisory is in effect in parts of the area as freezing rain and sleet are expected to move in Thursday morning. [NBC4] >> A boy under the age of 10 was hit by a dump truck just after 4 p.m. at the intersection of 13th Street and Potomac Avenue SE. [WJLA] >> Um, so, forget about that Ron Paul blimp ever actually getting here, we guess. [Wonkette] >> "a multitude......

>> Canada's The Most Serene Republic bring their large and melodic sound to The Rock and Roll Hotel tonight, with Bellflur and Watch Man Walk. $10, 8:30 p.m. >> Married Charlottesville rockers Paul Curreri and Devon Sproule will share the stage out at Jammin' Java tonight, touring in support of their latest releases, Sproule’s Keep Your Silver Shined and Curreri’s The Velvet Rut. 8 p.m., $10. >> Rescheduled from last week, Judith Jones, cookbook......

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......

>> Oh noes! The Ron Paul blimp launch was delayed, and rescheduled for its D.C. appearance on Wednesday at 3 p.m. [via Wonkette] >> D.C.'s Beacon House Falcons of Edgewood Terrace won Pop Warner Football’s Pee Wee Division I Super Bowl championship on Saturday. [Notions Capital] >> Former D.C. Police Chief Charles Ramsey no longer thinks handgun bans are such a good idea now that he works for a city that doesn't have one.......

Is everyone already leaving town for the holidays? Our calendar here at Reader, Meet Author is looking a little lonely right now. If you have any tips or complaints that we're not posting all the awesome poetry readings, feel free to email us. MONDAY: Caroline Kennedy will be at Politics and Prose to share the Christmas prose most dear to her. It's all in her latest book, A Family Christmas, which includes tributes to Irving......

Libertarian-leaning Republican presidential candidate and hero of the Internets Ron Paul has gotten himself a blimp, and it's headed this way. According to a just-released flight plan, the blimp, which will read "Who is Ron Paul? Google Ron Paul" on one side and "Ron Paul Revolution" on the other, will launch from Elizabeth City, N.C., Monday and flyover Washington circa 3 p.m. the same day, with a rally planned for 4 p.m. and another re-launch......

Now that the gloves have come off in the relationship between the D.C. Council and Mayor Adrian Fenty, it's apparently time for more of their amusingly petty disagreements to become public. The Post has a hilarious story in today's District Extra about a brewing battle over exactly how the city's allotment of free Wizards tickets will be distributed. Turns out last week the mayor's office slyly attempted to pick up all 24 tickets for the......

>> The Capitol Christmas Tree lighting ceremony is scheduled to take place at 5 p.m. this evening on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol. >> Washington-area writers Michelle Brafman, Merle Collins, T. Greenwood, Joanne Leedom-Ackerman, Faye Moskowitz, Barbara Mujica, Jessica Neely, Amy Stolls, Hananah Zaheer, and Christy J. Zink will be at Politics and Prose to read from their contributions to the latest anthology, Electric Grace: Still More Fiction by Washington Area Women.......

Up until last year, the D.C. Council's weekly breakfast meetings were closed to the press and the public. The meetings, which then council Chair Linda Cropp claimed were merely social in nature, were thought of by local reporters as the place where city politicos hammered out sensitive deals -- and did so away from the prying eyes of the District's residents. Even though that has now changed, we've never really gotten much of a sense......

To celebrate the release of Electric Grace: Still more Fiction by Washington Area Women tonight, editor Richard Peabody and ten of the book’s forty-two contributors will be reading selections from their work at Politics & Prose tonight at 7 p.m. Faye Moskowitz, a memoirist, poet, short story writer and professor, will read from her story “Completo (A Triptych),” from the journal, Story Quarterly. Professor Moskowitz—or just Faye, as she would have it—grew up in Detroit......

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......

>> The law firm that uncovered widespread fraud at Enron is now investigating the tax fraud case at the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue. [WTOP] >> The swear word directed at Mayor Fenty by Council member Marion Barry, revealed. [City Desk] >> "So if giving CNN yet another chance to screw up major debates is the first mistake, then allowing Wolf Blitzer to moderate one of them (Anderson Cooper the other, meh) is......