Results tagged “shadowsenator”

We missed this City Desk report that D.C. Shadow Senator Paul Strauss pleaded guilty last Friday on charges stemming from his DUI stop in Adams Morgan last year. Strauss is one of the District's two elected shadow senators, a symbolic position charged with lobbying for statehood that carries few privileges and no pay. Following his guilty plea, Strauss received 11 months probation and must pay $400 in fines. The police account of Strauss's arrest stated that he had a 0.16 percent blood-alcohol level, twice the legal limit, that he "appeared confused" and that he flashed his U.S. Senate badge at the arresting officer.

Update, 3:30 p.m.: The statehood site is now live, though it's pretty basic.

Paul Strauss isn't the only senator in recent history to be brought up on criminal charges, but he may be the only one whose credentials as a senator are somewhat iffy.

The City Paper sent two reporters down to D.C. Superior Court this morning to hear the 'not guilty' pleas of both recently re-elected Shadow Senator Paul Strauss and former At-large Council member Harold Brazil. Strauss's not guilty plea on DUI/DWI charges merited an exclamation point on the City Desk blog, while Brazil's not guilty plea on assault charges stemming from an altercation at a Georgetown tattoo parlor last month did not. Neither men were willing to comment on their legal troubles.

For most of the year, D.C. Shadow Sen. Paul Strauss is a senator in name only. His elected position doesn't pay him a salary, he has no real standing in Congress, and he spends much of his time trying to educate as many influential people as he can about D.C.'s non-voting status. But at the Democratic National Convention, a shadow senator gets to play make believe.

WTOP's Mark Segraves got a hold of a partial list of the folks who've been receiving tickets to use the city's free luxury box in the Verizon Center -- the one that the D.C. Council is so miffed they're being boxed out of -- and there's some fun tidbits he discovered.

Most of those invited to D.C.'s Luxury Suite at the Verizon Center by Fenty either contributed the maximum $2,000 to Fenty's campaign or worked on the campaign. The rest of the tickets, with only a few exceptions, went to friends, family and the mayor's senior staffers of the mayor.

Segraves linked to the list he received, which shows that City Administrator Dan Tangherlini, Ward 2 Council member Jack Evans, Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development Neil Albert and Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee all received tickets to the hotly sought after Hannah Montana concert.

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...

What a night, eh Washington? If you're like us, you were up late listening to Kojo and Jonetta break down the election results as they came in on WAMU. Our favorite moment of the evening came just before 10 p.m., when Mayor Williams told co-host Jonetta Rose Barras she was crazy to suggest that anyone believed he had waited too long to decide if he would seek a third term. For the record Jonetta —...

Everyone else has taken their shot, so why not the City Paper? Today the weekly's local politics column, Loose Lips, threw its support behind a number of candidates for next week's D.C. primaries. But more surprising than the picks was the biting tone in which they were delivered -- this is no Post endorsement, they seemed to remind us. Columnist James Jones sided solidly with candidates that bucked the establishment and railed against those beholden...

Good morning, Washington.