Tuesday and today Howard University is hosting the Children’s Defense Fund National Summit, which includes panel discussions on the Cradle to Prison Pipeline® Initiative, a project that seeks to end the cycle of poor minority children ending up destined to be shuffled in and out of the country’s prison system. Yesterday Bill Cosby appeared on a panel titled “The Need for Personal and Community Responsibility” in conjunction with the summit, along with NPR’s Juan…

>> Mark this day, D.C. It took a full 37 days for us to use the “Marion Barry in trouble with the law again” keystroke in 2007. Federal prosecutors are asking that the Councilman’s probation in his tax-evasion case be revoked. They say Barry has failed to meet the terms of his plea agreement by not paying back taxes and not filing again in 2005. After being convicted on federal charges of not paying…

FRIDAY: >> We interviewed Josh Lefkowitz when he was in town performing at the Fringe Festival, and now he’s bringing his thoughtful/hysterical monologue, Help Wanted: A Personal Search for Meaningful Employment at the Start of the 21st Century, to the Woolly Mammoth stage. Tickets are $15, and the show runs through Oct. 8. Details and showtimes are available here. >> Soft Complex has a debut EP, Barcelona, and it’s damn well time for them to…

Twenty-four-year-old actor and writer Josh Lefkowitz is sleeping on a couch in Columbia Heights these days, but he’s hardly down on his luck. After leaving D.C. last year in search of performance opportunities in New York, he’s found himself in the back warm embrace of the District, this time in the form of the Capital Fringe Festival, where he is performing his first monologue, Help Wanted: A Personal Search for Meaningful Employment at the Start…

We know that this whole blog thing is confusing. We’re pretty comfortable with it, but we certainly understand and sympathize with those who aren’t. So when we receive press requests that assume we’re obligated to run everything we’re sent, we respond gently. When prospective writers stop emailing upon hearing that they won’t get paid, we understand. But we receive enough of the following requests — surprisingly many, in fact — that we thought some…

George Mason University art professor Chawky Frenn will give an artist talk this Saturday, Feb. 25 at 1 p.m. at the Fraser Gallery in Bethesda. The at times controversial artist (his painting Nothing Personal is at right) should be keen to discuss his use of often graphic still life imagery (like bloody animal carcasses) in a quest to make big statements about the state of the world. DCist contributor Adrian has his own thoughts on…

Last Monday, the Post profiled ousted American University president Benjamin Ladner. Gina Maria Schulz, who served as “Personal Assistant to the First Lady” — yes, Ladner’s wife — described the man as such: “He was the most ethical man I ever met.” Ladner himself has this to say: “I do feel I’ve done what I’ve done with intentional integrity.” How the Post’s reporters didn’t break out in hysterics is beyond us, given the emerging news…

It was a mere three weeks ago that Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) introduced the District of Columbia Personal Protection Act, a law which if passed would dismantle the District’s three-decades old strict prohibition on the ownership of handguns and limit the ability of the City Council to pass laws regulating the ownership or sale of guns. To date, the law has attracted 31 co-sponsors in the Senate, while its counterpart in the House, introduced…

Again proving that members of Congress know what’s best for full-time residents of the District, Congressional Republicans have again hatched a plan to use their constitutional authority over D.C. to overturn the city’s stringent, yet overwhelmingly popular gun laws. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) announced yesterday that she had introduced the cynically-named “District of Columbia Personal Protection Act of 2005,” which would overturn the Firearms and Control Regulations Act of 1975, the law which banned…

As gun rights advocates celebrated Monday as the former assault-weapons ban lapsed and was not renewed, there is new attention on the District’s strict firearms possession rules. The Post is reporting that there is a majority in the House getting behind a measure, the D.C. Personal Protection Act, that could drastically change D.C.’s gun regulations. … [It] would end a ban on handguns in the nation’s capital; remove a prohibition against semiautomatic weapons; lift registration…