Good morning, D.C. If you missed the news breaking yesterday, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts had a seizure on Monday while on vacation in Maine. While the cause of the seizure is unknown, doctors examined the Chief Justice and determined there was no cause for concern and that Roberts has already fully recovered. It’s likely Roberts will now be prescribed some form of anti-seizure medication because he had another similar episode 14 years…

The Smithsonian Institution continues to bleed to save itself as Sheila P. Burke, the Deputy Secretary and Chief Operating Officer, resigned yesterday. Burke was the second in command to Lawrence P. Small, who resigned as Secretary back in March. The Washington Post reports today that the Board of Regents isn’t taking the call for restructuring lightly, and Burke took the hit after her $1.6 million in compensation from outside activities came to light. The Regents…

Intellectual property junkies, and we know you’re out there, have another case to salivate over. As the Examiner AP reports, the Smithsonian Institution, which houses over 6,000 images of its historical treasures in a publicly accessible online database, got the IP version of a shot across their bow from Public.Resource.Org, which recently downloaded every single photograph and made them available on its Flickr stream. What’s the problem? The Smithsonian claims it retains any “possible copyright”…

Through Petworth News, we learn that the essayist, playwright and thinker Gore Vidal will be laid to rest at Rock Creek Cemetery in Northwest Washington. While this isn’t necessarily anything newsworthy, it’s an interesting item for future chroniclers of the city’s various monuments to note. According to Petworth News (where we snagged this photo), Vidal buried his longtime partner, Harold Auster, at the cemetery last month. The Vidal plot is located near a monument to…

If you’ve noticed anything unusual in the George Washington University campus, it could be because today marks the last day of the week-long “26th Annual National Conservative Leadership Conference” organized by the Young America’s Foundation. (The other YAF) Their website promised participants would be able to “Learn to identify liberal textbook bias and what to do about it,” and “Meet and ask questions of your conservative heroes.” The heros included Ben Stein, Fox News reporter…