We’ve always wondered:Where the police have reason to believe that a suspect is concealing cocaine between his buttocks cheeks, is it reasonable under the Fourth Amendment for the police, at the scene of the arrest, to reach into the suspect’s undershorts and seize the cocaine as a search incident to the suspect’s arrest?While this might sound like a late-night joke between first-year law students, it’s actually a question the U.S. Supreme Court is set to…

>> Mayor Fenty has changed his mind and now says emails to and from city officials will be kept indefinitely. [WTOP] >> More Fenty decisions! He’s considering a drastic change to the role of the hated D.C. Taxicab Commission. [Examiner] >> Several people on a Boston-bound flight out of DCA were taken to a hospital after complaining of feeling sick and were found to have elevated carbon monoxide levels. [WCVB] >> Jack Bauer spotted in…

>> Mayor Adrian Fenty and Schools chancellor Michelle Rhee will reportedly ask city officials for an extra $81 million to fix D.C. Schools’ totally screwed up special education system. Expect D.C. Council chair Vincent Gray to totally lose his shit tomorrow. [Examiner] >> Amazon begins offering same-day local delivery to D.C. [DC Metblogs] >> 6 reasons the Maryland Renaissance Festival did not suck. [Arjewtino] >> Police are investigating an apparent murder on the grounds…

>> Hundreds of protesters met on the National Mall this morning in support of the Jena 6. [AP / WJLA] >> Voting rights advocates plan to target specific Senators who might be swayed to change their votes. [Free Ride] >> Parking space jockeys: more entrepreneurial than lawn jockeys. [Penn Quarter Living] >> “Now this is some cold-ass eviction.” [DC Metblogs] >> Eighty-five hybrid taxicabs to storm Arlington in a fit of environmentally-conscious rage. [WaPo]…

In times when security fears, whether justified or not, begin to creep over our lives, it’s important to remember that the tiny chipping away of legitimate rights can be a slippery slope to unwarranted governmental authority over our lives. We wrote in June about photographer Chip Py’s experience in downtown Silver Spring, as well as Kate Mereand’s similar confrontations all over D.C., and their subsequent formation of DC Photo Rights, a Flickr group dedicated to…

>> President Bush’s appointees to the United States Supreme Court, Justices Roberts and Alito, ensured the court upheld the constituionality of Bush’s so-called partial-birth abortion ban in a ruling this afternoon. Justices Kennedy, Scalia and Thomas joined the majority opinion. Justices Ginsburg, Stevens, Souter and Breyer made up the dissenting opinion. [WaPo] >> Now that Gilbert is injured, perhaps it’s time to draft him for the job he’s really meant to do. [Mothering Hut] >>…

>> A Calvert, Md. dog saved its owner by performing the Heimlich manuever on her. Everybody loves an adorable animal story at 5:30 p.m. on a Tuesday. [AP] >> Giant local employer Fannie Mae expects it will lay off hundreds of workers in the wake of huge federal fines imposed in their accounting scandal. We’re sorry, unsuspecting Fannie Mae employees. [Examiner] >> Rounding out Washington’s Sports Coverage is Jordan Baker’s preview of the upcoming panda…

Our friends over at DC Metblogs have been all a flutter over the recent unveiling of USPS mailboxes decorated to look like R2D2, and we can hardly blame them. R2 is, after all, secretly the most powerful leader of the Rebel Alliance. So thanks to Flickr user epmd for snapping this shot of a new R2 mailbox in downtown Washington and adding it to the DCist Photo pool. In fact, Flickr users all over the…

>> Was your commute this morning a mess thanks to a failure on the part of WMATA to plan for the DST switch? [DC Metblogs] >> Remember when we asked you about police presence in your neighborhood? Don’t forget to fill out the MPD’s official Community Survey before it closes on Wednesday, so you can tell them what’s going on where you live directly. >> Army Surgeon General has requested early retirement in the…

Thanks to our friends over at DC Metblogs, today we learned that our much-beloved Panda Cam ranked as one of the 25 most interesting webcams of 2005. But before Butterstick and Motherstick break out the fermented bamboo juice and celebrate their newfound national fame, though, comparisons are in order. The Panda Cam ranked alongside the camera documenting the construction of the Raleigh Convention Center, the GracelandCam, the camera inside Tennessee’s Anderson County Sheriff’s Department jail,…