- Forget the heat kinks on the tracks; the investigative journalism du jour is heat inside Metro cars. The Post’s Robert Thomson was on a mission yesterday to find out exactly how hot Metro cars actually could get. (Conclusion? Very hot.) WTOP’s Adam Tuss gets WMATA general manager Richard Sarles on the record today; on overheated cars, Sarles simply said, “it happens.” Sarles also told Tuss that some Metro trains have been reduced to six cars from eight due to cars being pulled out of service with air conditioning issues.
- Some big national news this afternoon: a federal judge in Boston ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines the words “marriage” and “spouse” in exclusively opposite-sex terms, violates the equal protection clause of the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution. The ruling essentially bars the federal government from instituting a ban on gay marriage.
- Did it really take three Washington Post reporters to uncover that Mayor Fenty got a ticket last night?
- True to his word, Jose Andres is going to take octopus off the menu at all of his restaurants after Paul the Octopus correctly predicted Spain would defeat Germany yesterday. (I’m glad I ordered that grilled tentacle the last time I was at Atlantico.) On the plus side, Andres tweeted today that there’d be free cava and food at all Jaleo outposts if Spain is victorious on Sunday.
- From the Department of Ridiculously Expensive Real Estate: The Georgetown Dish notes that “the most expensive house on the D.C. market” — a 22,000 square-foot mansion with a ten-car garage, nine bathrooms and a pool with a wet bar — is now listed for a whopping $19.5 million. Of course, that’s a relative deal compared to the $1,200/square foot that the owners of this condo in the Watergate are asking for.
- Citing a statistic that 20 percent of DCPS students were truant in 2008-09, At-Large Councilmember David Catania suggested upping financial penalties for parents of children who skip school.
- Arlington’s Capital Bikeshare now has locations and a color scheme.
- The Washington Blade conducts an “unscientific” poll which shows Fenty with a seven-point edge over Gray, with plenty undecided. In a similarly “unscientific” poll, your DCist editor-in-chief is 100 percent sure he’s sick of hearing about where LeBron James will earn a paycheck next year.
Photo by Chris Rief aka Spodie Odie.
