Photo by crisbirch

…there was a big stink about a D.C. police officer pulling a gun at a snowball fight? Well, as the case winds down and reports emerge that Det. Michael Baylor will face a 10-day suspension, various people have come to Baylor’s defense, including the Examiner’s Harry Jaffe. In a column today, Jaffe argues that Police Chief Cathy Lanier is throwing a good cop under the bus for not having done anything wrong. Jaffe argues that Baylor did nothing wrong, writing, “He radioed dispatchers about the crowd. He got out and radioed for scout cars. He did draw his weapon but kept it at his side. He paced. Snowballers nailed him in the head. When uniformed cops arrived, he holstered his weapon.” Of course, Jaffe seems to miss a key point — Baylor did not identify himself, making him just some guy with a gun at an otherwise innocent snowball fight. Either way, as the case winds down and the weather warms, we’ll be first to warn against any impromptu summertime water gun fights. No, really, that would just be dumb.

More on the Fenty Fundraising Machine: The Post brings more details of Mayor Adrian Fenty’s now historic $3.9 million haul for his 2010 re-election campaign, one which no challenger is even close to matching. It looks like Fenty has continued bringing in money from outside the city, drawing contributions from hip-hop producer Irv Gotti and wine critic Pierre-Antoine Rovani. (Sommer detailed his other contributors from a late January finance report.) In other races, only Ward 5 seems to be heating up, with two challengers to Council member Harry Thomas taking in modest sums.

Local Failing Schools Eligible for Federal Funds: The Examiner brings word of 25 area schools that are eligible for federal stimulus funds because they’re doing so badly. Anacostia, Eastern, Spingarn and Dunbar were listed amongst the District’s worst schools, while Maryland added 14 schools in the suburbs around the District — all in Prince George’s County. Virginia listed Alexandria’s T.C. Williams High School, even though relative to the District’s worst public schools, it’s doing pretty well. At T.C. Williams, only 84 percent of students were proficient in reading and 77 percent in math, while at D.C.’s Spingarn only 17 percent were proficient in reading and 15 percent in math.

Pointless Mention of Federal Building in a Headline Award Goes To… The Examiner, for “A casino 14 miles from the White House?” The paper reports that the Maryland State Senate is considering legislation that would allow a casino to be added to the Rosecroft Raceway in Fort Washington. To the headline writer, the fact that the site would be within 14 miles of the White House seems to add some important context; to us, it’s just another pointless mention of a federal building in a story that has little to do with the federal building in question. Did you know that there’s a strip club within a mile of the White House? Yep. Does it matter? Nope.

Briefly Noted: Maryland booze lobby pushes to nix tax increase … A Times Square for the District? … Answers sought in case of missing Maryland man … D.C. to spend more than $400 million on SE building … Former D.C. hospital packed with homeless families.

On This Day in DCist: On this day last year, same-sex marriage advocates began their outreach strategy as part of the fight to legalize the practice in the District. In 2008, a bunch of D.C. bands headed to South by Southwest.