Photo by the_sauce_dc

>> It isn’t just Mayor Vince Gray who’s getting all the questions about whether or not there was a “shadow” campaign on his behalf in 2010. Loose Lips asked a bunch of the mayor’s top campaign aides, and they deny having any knowledge of an illicit, off-the-books operation to get Gray elected. “So if the feds are right, and there was a shadow campaign,” Suderman writes, “the world of people who knew about it was a very small one indeed.”

>> When Wal-Mart started snatching up plots around D.C., the company promised that its first stores here would open by the end of 2012. But progress is going much slower than that, the Examiner reports.

>> Earlier this week, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters President Obama opposed a Republican bill that would have outlawed abortions for D.C. women after 20 weeks by saying “The president’s position on a woman’s reproductive freedom is well known.” But wait! Isn’t this the same president who last year told House Speaker John Boehner, “John, I will give you D.C. abortion”? Well, there wasn’t an election last year, Chuck Thies reminds us. Guess we’re a swing state.

Briefly Noted: Federal workers bumming out about sequestration … Police looking for suspects in 7-Eleven robbery … Television about Washington has never given our city an accurate portrayal, but only D.C. complains about that … Wild dogs on the loose in Maryland.

This Day in DCist: In 2011, everyone was getting sued! In 2010, 40 percent of mayoral candidate Sulaimon Brown’s campaign photos featured the candidate with Vice President Joe Biden.