Good morning, Washington. It looks like today’s going to be cloudy and cold, with the weekend bringing snow — snow! — at long last. We know, we know: it’ll just be godawful slush and freezing rain, and in the unlikely event that it sticks around until Monday, we’ll no doubt still have to go to work (we’ll just be more cold & damp than usual when we arrive). But it doesn’t matter; we still get…

Time to talk about everybody’s favorite topic! It seems that efforts are being made to revive the idea of a D.C. smoking ban. The Post’s Eric Weiss reports today that Council member Kathy Patterson introduced a bill that proposes smoking bans in workplaces and public enclosed spaces; any violations carry up to a $1,000 fine. Patterson’s bill might stand a better chance of not languishing for months, as it was drafted specifically in order to…

We reported last week that the mayor’s office announced they were planning to build a “bioterrorism and forensics lab” at the site of the former D.C. General Hospital in southeast. We also summarized a Feb. 10 Examiner story where the mayor talked down the proposed lab, but identifying it as a biosafety level 3 lab. (The story is no longer available on the web) Proposals to construct labs with a biosafety level 4 rating –…