Photo by bencarrdus.

Good morning, Washington. Dan Snyder has failed at so many different things during his tenure as the owner of the Washington Redskins — one hopes that his attempt to bully the media by threatening to sue the Washington City Paper will turn out to be yet another addition to that list. According to the Washington Post, Snyder is considering taking legal action against the alt-weekly newspaper for a piece that sports columnist Dave McKenna wrote in November 2010, titled “The Cranky Redskins Fan’s Guide to Dan Snyder,” an encyclopedia of Snyder’s on- and off-field failings during his tenure running the team. Snyder is claiming that McKenna defamed him in the piece and is also apparently seeking McKenna’s dismissal. City Paper, to their credit, doesn’t appear to be backing down. Snyder’s paranoia comes off as overwhelming in the report, as his attorneys have even gone so far as to tell the Post to save emails between McKenna and sports blogger Dan Steinberg to see if “there was any agreement…to cross-promote McKenna’s pieces.” What, is aggregation also on Snyder’s hit list? Of course, in the short term, the legal threat only means is that more people will read McKenna’s piece — as they should.

More Pepco Problems: Even though the ice storm which had the federal government preemptively allowing workers to telework yesterday and the day before has kind of petered out, there were still issues with power outages last night. More than 11,000 outages were reported at one point last night. While most of those issues were cleared up by early this morning, it’s still another blow for Pepco, who has been under round criticism from local governments for their recent performance. During the D.C. Council session yesterday, Ward 4 Councilmember Muriel Bowser introduced a bill which would require electric companies who didn’t turn power back on within 24 hours to reimburse affected customers for the cost of a hotel room.

Ethics, You Say?: An interesting report in the Washington Times this morning breaks down the disclosure of the outside employment undertaken by members of the D.C. Council. The District only requires members of the legislative body to disclose who paid them if the client did business with the city or would be affected positively by legislation brought by the Council. This leads to situations like Council Chairman Kwame Brown pulling in $45,000 in 2009, but being able to give no explanation for that income other than “self-employment.” If the Council was really serious about increasing transparency, this sounds like as good a place as any to start.

Briefly Noted: Second arrest made in Latisha Frazier murder case…Your pocket guide to official winter weather terminology…Vince Orange pulls in good numbers, but 43 percent still undecided in at-large race…Midwestern blizzard affecting flights at D.C.-area airports…D.C. government furloughs made official…How Georgetown students got out of Egypt…Despite a “lack of predictive skill,” we’ll take Phil’s optimism and run with it.

This Day in DCist: Last year, we dug into where local anti-same sex marriage efforts were getting their funding, and one such pastor really lost his cool in front of the Council; in 2009, we helped get out the word for a man who needed a photograph of his proposal at the Obama Inauguration.