Photo by Tracy Clayton
Good morning, Washington. We don’t know about you, but we were really feeling the love this weekend. Between the sunshine-induced smiling faces all over town and the absolutely huge crowd that came out to the DCist Exposed opening on Saturday (more on that later), there wasn’t much that could have dampened our moods.
So was anyone not feeling the love quite as much? Mmm, we’d have to say D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty and The Washington Post. The paper on Sunday dished out its second front page rebuke of the mayor in just the last week, this time focusing on how things really work between Fenty and his cronies/buddies Sinclair Skinner and Omar Karim. There’s some interesting tidbits revealed in the story, including a whole section from potential mayoral hopeful Don Peebles in which he claims Skinner and Karim tried to tell him he had to work through them if Peebles wanted any city contracts while Fenty was mayor. And then there’s this, which I can only assume reporters Nikita Stewart and Paul Schwartzman threw in there out of a sheer sense of irony:
Former mayor Barry (D), now the Ward 8 council member, said Fenty’s friends have turned up in D.C.-sponsored projects often enough to raise questions.
“There’s nobody in this government more Afro-centric than I am, but you can’t hide behind that,” said Barry, a longtime advocate of minority set-asides. “The problem I have is the circle is so small. The same ones over and over again. It’s not fair.”
Well sure, if there’s anyone who knows something about what’s not fair …
The Census is Coming! The Census is Coming!: Both the Examiner and the Post cover the federal push to hire local 2010 Census workers. “Census offices in the Washington region are seeking roughly 10,000 census takers to pepper the area in search of those who don’t respond to the 10-question survey.” Most will earn about $20 an hour. And for those of you who just can’t wait to take the survey, look for the form in the mail in mid-March.
Briefly Noted: Pentagon entrance reopens today … Alexandria students get longer school days to make up for snow days … The Silver Line is on track, says Rep. Frank Wolf … Hit-and-run victim identified, but police still haven’t released her name.
This Day in DCist: In 2009, the National Zoo was lousy with baby elephant shrews, and 2007, the Dismemberment Plan was planning a pair of reunion shows to help Callum Robbins.
