On the very day that a D.C. Council committee is debating legislation that would allow police to further crack down on prostitution affecting parts of Ward 7, a candidate for the ward's seat on the council agreed to community service in the wake of a prostitution-related arrest late last year. more ›

The balloon effect seems to apply to the District's efforts to crack down on prostitution, writes WAMU reporter David Schultz in a must-read piece today. Crack down in one place, and it'll simply appear elsewhere. more ›

The Post has got some intimate details on why a candidate for the Ward 7 seat on the D.C. Council was arrested in December, while the City Paper went ahead and Xtranormalized it. more ›

According to both the Post and City Paper, Ward 7 D.C. Council hopeful Kevin Chavous, Jr. was arrested late last week for allegedly soliciting a prostitute. more ›

If you're a barber in the District, you have to be licensed and regulated by a city board. But if you're a tattoo artist or piercer, you're in the clear -- currently, the District remains one of the last places in the country in which tattooing and piercing are wholly unregulated. That looks like it will soon change, but how dramatic the change will be is yet to be determined. more ›

Under current D.C. law, prostitution is illegal. Simple enough, right? Well, no. more ›

Good morning, Washington. Perfect. That’s what the Washington Capitals remain. In a matchup with the Detroit Red Wings Saturday night -- only the second time in NHL history two teams with records of at least 5-0 faced off -- the Capitals popped seven goals on 25 shots, securing a 7-1 victory over the Red Wings and launching the team into the venerated spot of being only the fifth in league history to start a season 7-0-0. more ›

Today, the D.C. GOP welcomed Ron Moten to the fold in his run against Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander. Here's why it makes sense, and how it's still going to be an uphill climb. more ›

Ron Moten, the Peaceaholics co-founder who had made overtures about running for the D.C. Council seat currently held by Councilmember Yvette Alexander (D-Ward 7), now tells the Washington Post that he is planning on running -- as a Republican. more ›

The Mayor's office and other agencies were quick to deny a rumor that a 7 p.m. curfew would be put into effect tonight. The quickly spreading rumor first caught traction when Council Member Yvette Alexander sent the news out on her Twitter account: "The Mayor has called for a 7pm curfew. I have 2 hours to get home!" Once the tidbit had reached to the point where FOX DC had announced the curfew, many were quick to jump on the news and refute the curfew. According to Matt Ackland, Alexander admits she heard the news herself from the radio. more ›

This afternoon, the District's Office of Campaign Finance released the results of an investigation into allegedly improper campaign spending by D.C. Councilmember Yvette Alexander (D-Ward 7). The report found that Alexander did use her constituent services fund to fund her reelection campaign, but cleared her of other charges. more ›

Campaign signage for the April 26 At-Large Special Election has only recently come down -- but it will soon be replaced by signs for candidates vying for seats on the D.C. Council in 2012. With a new election calendar in place for the year to come -- the primary date has been moved from September to April 3, while the general election remains in November -- campaigning is beginning earlier than usual. more ›

Oh Pepco, when will we get over our on again/off again relationship? Too often we've been left in the dark by your absence and you're one too many ruffles because of it. Ward 7 D.C. council member Yvette Alexander wants the District's Public Service Commission to take a hard look at Pepco's recent spike of power outages across the area, going as far as calling the company's service "subpar." The increased scrutiny stems from an outage last week that left the downtown NoMa business district in the dark for two days. Pepco asserts that outages are rectified mostly within minutes or hours, however this latest blackout has drawn the ire of many business owners, residents and D.C. government officials. "You can't guarantee 100 percent service is never going to go out," said Pepco President Tom Graham to NBC4 while on site during repairs. more ›

During yesterday's legislative meeting, D.C. Councilmember Mary Cheh introduced a piece of legislation which would allow notary publics to conduct marriage ceremonies in the District. The bill, which Cheh, along with Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) and David Catania (Ind.-At-Large), previously introduced last year, seems like a pretty common sense thing for the city to do. But not everyone on the Council is on board. more ›

On Friday, we noted a Washington Times report which detailed how Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander's shuttered her privately-leased constituent services office at 2524 Pennsylvania Avenue SE after falling behind on phone bills and rent payments. Today, the Times' Jeffrey Anderson digs deeper into the issue, and finds that phone bills might be the least of Alexander's problems with the office. more ›

The cavalcade of various financial issues plaguing D.C. Councilmembers continues unabated: the Washington Times reports that the phones at Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander's constituent services office on 2524 Pennsylvania Avenue SE were recently turned off because the office ran up $5,388.68 in unpaid phone bills to Verizon. more ›

It's easy to forget that there are a whole lot of people who are still getting Twitter. Take, for example, Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander, who assumed that the new @MayorGray account -- an obvious satire feed to those who use Twitter all the time -- was actually being produced by Vince Gray. more ›

Alan Suderman has the juiciest political story of the day with Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander's decision to fire her communications director Andre Johnson because, according to Alexander, Johnson lied to her about participating in the Marion Barry reality show, "Mayor For Life." more ›

City Desk reports that the D.C. Council has killed the Special Committee on Statehood and Self-Determination -- and it's Council member Marion Barry's (D-Ward 8) fault. more ›

As a follow-up to our earlier post detailing some of the divisions that have emerged within the D.C. voting rights movement over the gun amendment, we just received a statement from D.C. for Democracy formally announcing that the organization is opposed to passing the legislation with the amendment attached. more ›

Ward 7 D.C. Council member Yvette Alexander (D) has to have the worst luck out of all of her colleagues when it comes to crime. Back in June of 2007, she had her purse stolen while at a gas station. And now today, D.C. Wire reports that a suspected robber pulled a gun on her Wednesday afternoon. more ›

We missed this one in the Examiner this morning: Among the legislative business conducted by the D.C. Council on Tuesday, the body gave initial approval to a bill that would require gas stations in the city to install video surveillance cameras. Reporter Michael Neibauer has fun with his lede: "D.C. Councilwoman Yvette Alexander was victimized at a gas station, and now all District service station owners appear likely to have to pay." The Ward 7 Council member rarely makes headlines, but you may recall that her purse was stolen at a Southeast gas station way back in June, 2007. She introduced this legislation in October of that year, and it's apparently taken this long to bring it to a vote. What was the hold up, Yvette? A second vote is still required before the bill becomes law. more ›

UPDATE: Wesley Denton, a spokesperson for Sen. DeMint, has responded by email: more ›

As anyone who has ever tried to get to H Street NE without a car knows, the area isn’t terribly accessible. Visitors to the area are often faced with a long walk from Union Station, trying to figure out the X2 bus schedule, or the often difficult task of finding a cab back at the end of the night. But all of that is has now changed. more ›

While we soak in Barack Obama's historic victory over Senator John McCain (who delivered a moving and honorable concession speech), we can't ignore the change that came to our own backyard. Few of the results caught any of us by surprise. We did, though, rid ourselves of a pesky ANC commissioner, though. more ›

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... more ›

DC for Marriage, an eight-month-old group advocating same-sex marriage rights in the District, will hold a "Marriage Equality Community Forum" tomorrow night at 7 p.m. in room 412 of the Wilson Building. This is the group's first public event, which is co-sponsored by several local LGBT organizations including the DC Center, DC Black Pride, AQUA DC, and the Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League, among others. Yesterday, DC for Marriage announced Sabrina Sojourner, the first open... more ›

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... more ›

D.C. Council members Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) and Yvette Alexander (D-Ward 7) announced the creation of the Poplar Point Coalition over the weekend, just days before the RFEI's are due from developers for interest in the 130 acre site known as Poplar Point. The announcement comes as tension has been building between the DC United owner, Victor MacFarlane, Ward 8 Council member Marion Barry, and Mayor Fenty. Several months ago a disagreement over total figures... more ›

Good morning, Washington. What a difference a day makes, right? Just yesterday we were complaining bitterly about the heat and about when administrative law Judge Roy Pearson would finally be brought before the panel that will decide his fate for a hearing. But both problems have been resolved, as if by magic, while we slumbered. The current temperature outside is 57 degrees in our nation's capital, with an expected high of 66. And Judge... more ›