Ah, sarcasm. There’s always a time and a place for it. But if you’re a member of the D.C. Council, which hasn’t exactly been on its best behavior of late, it might be wise to lay off a little bit when journalists are looking into your involvement with a bribery scandal that involved one of your closest confidants. Cue Jim Graham — the Ward 1 Councilmember was the subject of another lengthy piece by Alan Suderman yesterday afternoon, digging deeper into whether or not Graham used money, obtained by his chief of staff Ted Loza through an FBI informant, to purchase gift cards for less than fortunate constituents.
Graham’s email reply to Suderman’s request for comment? “Didn’t you know the 2nd gunman in the grassy knoll was to be entombed in Area 51 but the plane on which he was transported mysteriously disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle?” Nice. Of course, that might be the second best quote in Suderman’s piece: Loza apparently said “people are looking very closely, all thanks to Marion Barry,” in one of his conversations with the informant.
>> Metro delays! Road closures! Weekend!
>> Nick DeSantis gets to the bottom of why D.C. shot to the top of its parenting rankings, despite residents’ claims that empirical data doesn’t quite prove that. Turns out, it’s less bunk than we imagined: the ranking was earned mostly on the back of a “Charm and Culture Index” that the magazine pieced together with hard numbers. “There’s nothing subjective about it,” according to the magazine’s executive editor.
>> A man was shot just before 7 a.m. this morning at 8th and Jefferson Streets NW. The man was transported to a hospital with non-life threatening injuries; the investigation temporarily caused the closure of the intersection. Anyone with information is asked to contact police at 1-888-919-CRIME.
>> In what police are calling a “horrible accident,” a Prince William County toddler died after being left inside a minivan for several hours.
>> Virginia was selected to be the future home of the National Museum of the U.S. Army, which will feature “a museum with exhibit halls, a theater and a veterans’ hall” and open at Fort Belvoir in 2015.
>> President Barack Obama and Speaker of the House John Boehner will be hitting the links today at “a yet-to-be-disclosed course in the Washington area.” One question: which one will be wearing pink pants?
>> The things you learn in the obituaries: You know who and what we have to thank for bar codes? Alan Haberman, who was able to achieve consensus on the modern bar code design by taking a bunch of his colleagues out to see Deep Throat.
