LAST CALL

Sam Smith

One of the things you learn early as a writer is that the hardest parts of a story are the beginning and the end. The beginning of my story as a Washington journalist was over 50 years ago; the middle has encompassed all or part of one quarter of America's presidencies, and the end will come sometime this year.

I will continue to edit the national edition of the Progressive Review, which has more readers than ever but my wife Kathy and I are moving to Maine where we have deep ties, for me going back more than six decades.

I am leaving my birthplace, a town I have loved but also a place in which I have felt increasingly an exile as local values, culture and community faded - not because they lacked merit but because they did not produce enough power or profit for someone.

It has become a city where the police chief erects apartheid style roadblocks, where the deputy mayor hides a community library in a high rise like it was just another Starbucks, and where the government is spends over $600 million on a baseball stadium but can't keep its recreation centers open all weekend.

It is a city of magnificent views and dismal viewpoints, wonderful communities and dubious egos, natural spaces and artificial words. It is a city that too often can't tell the difference between intelligence and wisdom and, as Russell Baker once noted, the difference between being serious and being somber.

It is also a city in which all politics becomes office politics, and where imagination and free thought are restricted to thirty minutes on weekdays and violators will be towed.

Still, Washington has always been an unsortable amalgam of decadence and decency, undeserved profit and unrequited purpose, subterranean conspiracies and high ideals. Walt Whitman found himself "amid all this huge mess of traitors, loafers, hospitals, axe-grinders, & incompetencies & officials that goes by the name of Washington." Even earlier, Captain Frederick Marry noted, "Here are assembled from every state in the union, what ought to be the collected talent, intelligence, and high principles of a free and enlightened nation. Of talent and intelligence there is a very fair supply, but principle is not so much in demand; and in everything, and everywhere, by the demand the supply is regulated."

One of the things that affects the city's crosscurrents of felicity and felony is what is happening elsewhere in the nation. As a weak colony filled with professional migrants, DC is a beta edition of both the good and the bad. Just as Washington was once deep into the civil rights and peace movements, today it accurately reflects national values sown in the Reagan-Clinton-Bush era that have caused the disintegration of the republic's economy, its global status and its constitution.

You can feel it wandering around downtown, where every last centimeter of the zoning envelope is filled with the dull high rises of a second robber baron era. You see it in the endless piling on of new civil and criminal offenses in place of decent and effective policies. You find it in the official subservience and subsidy to those who already have more than their fair share. You observe it in a school system that values rigid tests and rules but not thoughtful questions and creative ideas.

You see it in the failure to lift a hand to help those unable to play DC's harsh games. And you see it in the increasing division between free and locked down Washington, the former being those parts where you can still cross a threshold without having to prove you are not a terrorist.

Which is not to say you can not find many good things hidden beneath the hubris, behind the ubiquitous fear in the world's most guarded place and under the false renaissance of a city that has spent billions on convention centers, stadiums, arenas, but which can't even provide as many jobs for local residents as it did 20 years ago.

You just have to look harder.

You'll find it still in the neighborhoods like the one I shall miss most: Capitol Hill.

You'll find it in the little oases of commercial sense and service like Frager's hardware store, Distad's auto repair shop and all the other small businesses that get mainly bills and regulations from the city government while the favors go to the big guys.

You'll find it over lunch at places like Jimmy T's, Ben's Chili Bowl and La Tomate.

You'll find it in the files of the Washingtoniana collection at the DC Library, on a trail sign or in an exhibit at the Historical Society of Washington.

You'll find it at the FDR Memorial late on a spring evening or in a quiet spot in some hidden corner high in Rock Creek Park.

You'll find it in a black community that has bravely maintained its values in the face of repression, indifference and socio-economic cleansing. I first did as a young man going to the Howard Theater and as a 20-something member of SNCC, and later in so many ways and places as I was welcomed by, and learned from, those who used the power of decency and friendliness as bridges across cultures and to overcome pain.

You'll find it among the activists of the DC Statehood Green Party who for nearly four decades have risen to the challenge presented by its first leader, Julius Hobson: "What do you want: a Disneyland for the rich or a state for free people?" Youll fine it in their refusal to be silent in a city so colonial, corrupt and contented.

You'll find it among the teachers resisting the dismantling and corporatization of public education.

You'll find it in the artists and musicians who take us away from bitterness and contentions and into better places, those still holding on in a city determined not to even leave them with a pad cheap enough to rent.

You'll find it among those who seek to preserve not only open space and fine buildings, but great communities and wonderful institutions.

You'll find it among those trying to help fill monstrous gaps in government services by working at a food bank or shelter, counseling former prisoners, providing free legal service, or teaching children what the school system can't or won't.

You'll find it in a small band of journalists who haven't deserted the real city in favor of grander stories and sources.

You'll find it among the neighborhood commissions who still sometimes get those downtown to pay attention to things they would rather ignore.

And you'll find it in the shared memory of those who give the city life instead of draining it, add to the local saga rather than diminishing it, and are there for us when so many others aren't.

One place you won't find it much longer, though, is at my place. Sometime this year I'll be off to write the rest of my story someplace else. Thanks for all the good times, the encouragement, the inspiration, the example and the dreams.

Just remember, despite what others would have you believe, a vote in the House leaves you no better off than Algeria when it also was a colony; Washington never was a sleepy southern town and it never was a swamp; there is a J Street (albeit hidden in Northeast and spelled Jay), and most of the people who do serious wrong in this fair city come from somewhere else. We try to teach them different but they never seem to get it.

Thanks for the fun and, as Adam Clayton Powell Jr used to say, "Keep the faith, baby."

PS: Some random anecdotes from the past 50 years can be found here.

SENATE APPROVES TOY VOTE FOR CAPITAL COLONY

Sam Smith

With magnificent irony, the US Senate has pacified the local capital establishment by approving a token vote for DC in the House - carefully balanced by a new and certain GOP vote in Utah. In doing so, however, the Senate included a clear statement that the capital is still a colony by also approving a major change in gun laws to be forced upon the city.

For over a century local and national politicians have used the prospect of a vote in the House to lessen the pressure for, in the early days, home rule and, later on, for statehood. In 1888, conservative newspaperman Theodore Noyes of the Washington Star launched a campaign for congressional representation while strongly opposing real democracy. Noyes wrote, "National representation for the capital community is not in the slightest degree inconsistent with control of the capital by the nation through Congress."

Noyes' view has been confirmed by the Democratic Senate, which made clear with its gun law amendment that a vote in the House doesn't alter the city's true colonial status at all. Instead, the city will continue to be run by what a political scientist in 1899 called a "representative aristocracy."

The energy and constituency for true democracy and self government have withered in the capital as a younger generation - trained in so many ways to accept symbolism as reality - has come into power. Personal status has submerged common goals and personal rights have become less important in a society that has been diligently voiding these rights over the past three decades. In DC, as elsewhere in this country, fewer and fewer even understand what freedom and democracy are about.

DC FRIDAY

Gary Imhoff, DC Watch - [Jim Graham's anti-loitering bill] criminalizes even a couple's taking a stroll in their neighborhood, as long as their neighborhood is designated as a hot-spot and a police officer accuses them of having a criminal purpose for being on the street. Of course, supporters of the bill would say that we can rely on the good intentions and good judgment of police officers to use the law only against bad people. But the point of having written guarantees of our rights is that we shouldn't have to rely on hope that police officers will have good intentions and display good judgment.

Washington Business Journal - The Washington Post Co. income dropped 77 percent during the fourth quarter, largely as a result of a hefty impairment charge related to an underperforming business.. . . As with many papers struggling with falling print ad sales across the U.S., the Post's print advertising revenue declined 17 percent in 2008 to $410.4 million. Daily circulation declined 2.6 percent last year to 633,100. The paper's major money generator in 2008 was its Kaplan education unit, which accounted for 52 percent of revenue during the year, and was up 15 percent.

DC Examiner D.C.'s chief financial officer warned city leaders that budget deficits could reach $1 billion in three years because of the worldwide recession. Natwar Gandhi said credit, stock and real estate woes are contributing to a "deep, long and lasting recession" on a national and local level. He retracted previous statements that Washington was immune to the economic downfall. . . He said revenues from taxes and other sources will fall about $400 million short of earlier projections in fiscal year 2009, $800 million short in 2010, $967 million short in 2011 and $1.1 billion short in 2012. Real estate tax collections are down and will continue to decline through 2012, Gandhi warned. Property owners have filed 4,300 appeals of their 2009 assessments; this accounts for about a $100 million decline.

Dorothy Brizill, DC Watch - [At the] District's Board of Elections and Ethics, the term of Dr. Lenora Cole expired in July of last year. District law states that Dr. Cole would continue to serve on the Board until her replacement was confirmed by the council and sworn in by the mayor. On February 5, Mayor Fenty nominated his jogging pal, Omar Nour, to replace Cole. To date, Councilmember Mary Cheh, whose Government Operations Committee oversees BOEE, has not yet scheduled a confirmation hearing for Nour or publicly asked the mayor to withdraw his nomination. Against this backdrop, Dr. Cole today submitted her letter of resignation, effectively immediately. . . As a result of Dr. Cole's resignation, the BOEE is now down to two members. Should the mayor decide to dig in his heels in support of his unqualified nominee, council consideration of Nour could be long and protracted.

WTOP - The clanging of streetcars hasn't been heard in the District in nearly two generations, but WTOP has learned the city's department of transportation is ready to get streetcars rolling once again. "You will see an announcement in the next few weeks," D.C. Department of Transportation Director Gabe Klein tells WTOP. . . Streetcars last ran in the city in 1962, with several lines heading into and out of Maryland and a few running through Virginia as well.

Gary Imhoff, DC Watch - Peter Tucker opposes the use of Gardasil, a vaccine against cervical cancer that he believes is dangerous, experimental, and untested for use in young girls. Councilmember David Catania is a champion of Gardasil, and sponsored legislation that requires sixth grade girls to be vaccinated with it. Tucker wants to testify about Gardasil at an oversight hearing for the Department of Health that Catania will hold. Tucker signed up as a witness at Catania's hearing and was placed on the witness list. He was then told that he would not be allowed to testify under any circumstances, and that he would not be given any reason for being barred. Here is the relevant rule of the city council, Rule No. 504(b): "If a committee, in the publication of notice of a public hearing, sets a deadline before which a member of the public must contact the committee to be permitted to be a witness at the public hearing, then at the time that the public hearing is held, each member of the public who complied with the committee's requirements shall be given an opportunity to testify." Catania is not just insulting Tucker, and by extension all citizens, by commanding that someone who disagrees with his policy preferences not be allowed to testify before his committee; he is also flouting a rule of the city council.

DC Examiner - A northwest Washington home regarded as the epicenter of the city's gay rights movement has been designated a D.C. Historic Landmark. The home belongs to 83-year-old Franklin E. Kameny, considered the "father of gay activism" by the Historic Preservation Review Board. . . In 1961, Kameny argued to the U.S. Supreme Court that a federal policy calling homosexuals a security risk was "no less odious than discrimination based upon religious or racial grounds." It was the first civil rights claim in a U.S. court based on sexual orientation.

STUDENTS WHO SLIP FROM KIPP

Elizabeth Davis - Since August, I have received eight students in my classroom from KIPP Academy. . . My first instinct upon receiving these students, was that they were unruly, low achievers. . . kicked out of KIPP because their behavior was intolerable, unbearable. I was careful not to allow my preconceived notions about "charter school reject" cloud or inform my judgment about their academic abilities or expected behavior. I was right in doing so. As it turns out, each of these students were good students. Some were great students. But I would have missed the opportunity to discover their talents, their academic abilities and multiple learning styles if I had not cultivated a learning environment that welcomed diverse learning styles and modalities.

Judging from conversations with these students (as well as my own students) I've realized that a teaching/learning environment that only values one way of behaving, learning and socializing could very easily morph into one of social engineering. Is social engineering healthy for creative, imaginative, self-directed learners? I would say no. Judging from my 30 years of teaching experience, I've observed that the world class artists, scientists, engineers, mathematicians, writers, think-tankers, etc, are cultivated in classrooms that afford them the space to think critically, imagine, question social injustice, talk back to their teachers and interrogate the world, not classrooms that require them to sit in a corner for challenging their masters or walk in a single file on the right side of the hallway to confirm their obedience; or chant positive affirmations that will guarantee them success. This process is archaic It's been done already. with slaves, native Americans, just to name a few.

The irony is that individuals who create, fund, promote these types of schools, mostly for children who have been left in the margins of society, would never enroll their own children in them. I wonder why? I wonder how many have done so?

MAJOR BRITISH STUDY FINDS TEST BASED TEACHING IMPOVERISHES STUDENTS

Guardian, UK - Children's lives are being impoverished by the government's insistence that schools focus on literacy and numeracy at the expense of creative teaching, the biggest review of the primary school curriculum in 40 years finds today. . .

The Cambridge University review of the primary curriculum found. . . children are leaving school lacking knowledge about the arts and humanities having spent too many years "tied to a desk" learning times tables.

"Our argument is that their education, and to some degree their lives, are impoverished if they have received an education that is so fundamentally deficient," he said.

The report says schools should be freed of SATs . . . to allow them to make more decisions about what and how they teach. . .

Independent of the government and funded through charitable donations, the review is based on three years of academic research, 29 research papers and dozens of public meetings around the country. It marks 40 years since the last wholesale review of primary education and presents a blueprint for a curriculum that would give teachers control of 30% of their time to teach what they want. . .

The review finds:

- Children are losing out on a broad, balanced and rich curriculum with art, music, drama, history and geography the biggest casualties.

- The curriculum, and crucially English and maths, have been "politicized".

- The focus on literacy and numeracy in the run-up to national tests has "squeezed out" other areas of learning.

- The Department for Children, Schools and Families and the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, which sets the curriculum, have been excessively prescriptive, "micro-managing" schools.

The review accuses the government of attempting to control what happens in every classroom in England, leading to an excessive focus on literacy and numeracy in an "overt politicization" of children's lives. Despite this too many children still leave primary school having failed to master the 3Rs. . .

Christine Blower, acting general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said the proposals "have depth, credibility and, above all, respond to the realities of the primary classroom".

DC WEDNESDAY

Jim Graham, who has never met a legal restriction he didn't like, has renewed his demand for an anti-loitering law that would turn parts of DC into no Constitution zones. Reports Channel 4: "In a move that is sure to cause yet another constitutional battle in the District, D.C. Council member Jim Graham is proposing anti-loitering legislation that would allow police to disperse two or more people gathered in areas known for illegal activity.The police chief would use statistics about arrests for drug, gang, theft and violent crimes to create "hot spot loitering zones." Violators could face a $300 fine. In the past, civil rights activists have questioned whether similar legislation would infringe on residents' right to assemble. The new bill would give the mayor authority to create rules to protect "persons who are engaged in assembly protected by the Constitution."

ABC News - A single father is suing the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority for $200 million, claiming lead-contaminated tap water poisoned his twin sons as infants, causing them ongoing health problems. The water utility between 2001 and 2004 hid elevated levels of lead from customers and federal authorities, plaintiff John Parkhurst of Capitol Hill claims in the lawsuit, which seeks class-action status. WASA failed to take steps to remedy the situation, omitted language from public education campaigns that would have warned people about the problem and continued to encourage residents to drink the water, according to the lawsuit filed in D.C. Superior Court. The complaint comes on the heels of a study that determined hundreds of D.C. children might be at risk of irreversible IQ loss, developmental delays and behavioral problems linked to the lead levels.

USA Service - Heavy use has damaged the Mall's turf, sidewalks, and furnishings, creating chronic maintenance problems for the National Park Service, its official caretaker. A $200 million renovation of the National Mall was removed from President Obama's stimulus package. Interested groups are invited to coordinate efforts for fortifying the open spaces of the mall. Plans include a day or week of service this summer.

DC SATURDAY

Washington Post - About 1,000 people filled an auditorium at the University of the District of Columbia to vent their anger at a proposal that would nearly double tuition at the city's only public college. UDC students, who come from all over the world as well as D.C. neighborhoods, told trustees repeatedly that UDC is the place where people go when they need an education and can't afford any other school. UDC student leader William Kellibrew IV received a thunderous standing ovation at the meeting of a trustees committee when he demanded that President Allen Sessoms resign, and students later began signing a petition. The committee met to discuss Sessoms's recommendation to raise tuition for D.C. residents from about $3,800 to $7,000 a year for four-year students. At a student rally before the meeting, Kellibrew said: "If you're going to double the tuition, how about doubling our facilities? If you're going to double our tuition, how about upgrading books in our library?"

Channel 4 - The District coughed up $48 million on logistics and security while hosting the inauguration festivities, according to the Washington Business Journal. It has received a check for $15 million from the Feds to cover some of the costs, but still faces a $33 million shortfall. The hope is the federal government will pick up the tab for the rest.

Channel 4 - High-volume local energy utilities, including Pepco and Baltimore Gas and Electric Co, have admitted to receiving an unusually high number of customer complaints about rates this winter. Lawmakers have heard the same thing, and they're looking into it.. . . The problem in large part stems from the deregulation of the Maryland electricity markets in 1999. This lovely piece of legislation made utility companies buy power from generation companies in the open market. These suppliers aren't bound by caps and often sell at prices well above the cost of production. The utilities then pass these costs to you, the proud homeowner. Imagine.
And this winter, customers find themselves paying for power purchased in 2007 and 2008, before the energy bubble burst, as utilities pay off those debts. Do not bother calling your utility company to complain about this. They will just tell you to turn your thermostat down from a boiling 62 degrees.

Artomatic will be offering over five weeks of art, music, theatre, workshops and more this year in Washington, DC's Capitol Riverfront neighborhood from May 29 - July 5. Artomatic will be held at 55 M Street, S.E. - atop the Navy Yard Metro - celebrating it's tenth anniversary in a newly built 275,000 square foot LEED Silver Class A building. Registration for Artomatic 2009 will begin in March, and is open to all artists - including painters, photographers, sculptors, graphic designers, musicians, poets, actors and dancers. Artomatic is an unjuried event, so all artists are welcome. Artomatic 2008 attracted a record-breaking 52,500 visitors and 1,540 participating artists.

Washington Business Journal - Dozens of developers have taken a look at the District’s 11 vacant schools and see them as good opportunities, but the bad economy is stopping some from bidding on the properties. Neil Albert, the city’s deputy mayor for economic development, began soliciting bids for the closed schools in December. Bids were originally due Feb. 27, but Albert has extended the deadline to March 27. . . Ellen McCarthy, director of planning and land use for law firm Arent Fox LLP and a former D.C. planning director, said developers tell her they are interested in bidding, “but many are choosing to sit this one out due to the current market uncertainties.”

STUDENTS BEAT MILITARY: WEAPONS TRAINING IN SAN DIEGO SCHOOLS ENDS

Education Not Arms - San Diego Unified, located in the middle of one of the largest military complexes in the world, took the uncharacteristic step of banning rifle training conducted under the military's high school JROTC program. Eleven schools with rifle ranges were affected in the nation's eighth largest urban district. . .

It wasn't until four hours into the board meeting, at 9:00 PM, that the agenda item came up for discussion. The vote was preceded by testimony from about 15 pro- and con- speakers in front of a crowd that was largely in favor of terminating the weapons training program. One school board member said that in all of his many years on the board, this was the most impressive student effort he had ever seen. Even two board members who opposed the resolution expressed their admiration for the students' involvement. When the decision was made, the resolution, which immediately banned all marksmanship training in the district, passed by a vote of 3-2. The crowd then spilled out of the auditorium to hold a loud and joyous celebration.

One of their main concerns was the way schools were tracking students into military training (via JROTC) while denying them adequate class alternatives, especially ones needed to qualify for college. Students from African American and Latino families were being disproportionately affected.

To address the problem, the coalition adopted three initial goals--convince the school district to:

-stop placing students into military science (JROTC) classes without their informed consent.

-stop telling parents and students that the class will help them qualify for college, when it won't.

-ban weapons training and JROTC gun ranges in San Diego schools.

All three goals have now been achieved, the first two by a superintendent' s directive, the third by school board action. Throughout the over one-year long campaign, high school students have played a central role in educating and mobilizing their peers, with support from a variety of community and college groups.

DC WEDNESDAY

Leah Fabel, Examiner - District Mayor Adrian Fenty and schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee touted improvements in graduation and truancy rates Monday - from abysmal to slightly less so. High school students with more than 15 absences by December, an average of one absence per week, declined by 30 percent from 2007 to about 2,290 students in 2008. At all grade levels, that number fell by 16 percent to 3,430 students. Overall, however, more than 7 percent of the District's 46,000 students were chronically truant through December, compared with more than 8 percent in 2007.

There are 21 officially listed rights and privilege of a member of the House of Representatives. Eleanor Holmes Norton has 20 of them, all except voting on the House floor.

In 2008, about 200 more students graduated than in 2007, bumping the graduation rate from 68 percent to 70 percent by last August. Of the District's 17 high schools, 14 increased their graduation rate, but often to still-failing levels. Graduates from Bell Multicultural High School in Columbia Heights jumped by 14 percent, but that still left more than half of its potential graduates without a diploma. At Northeast's Spingarn High, the graduation rate increased by 6 percent to about 57 percent overall.

Loose Lips, City Paper - WASA's Jerry Johnson at water-safety hearing held yesterday by Jim Graham and Mary Cheh, according to Nikita Stewart's WaPo account: "The general manager of the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority told council members yesterday that he would allow a child to drink the city's tap water despite a recent independent study. . . But when asked if he would give that advice to the general public. . . Johnson said, 'I don't know.'"

"Johnson appeared flustered and irritated at the questioning, particularly Graham's inquiries about allowing a child to get a drink of water from the faucet. 'You asked me what I would do, Mr. Graham,' Johnson said. 'That's a trick question. . . . You don't deal with the general public the way you would deal with yourself.'"

Campbell Kilefer, Baltimore Sun - Would Maryland accept D.C.'s problems of many failing public schools and pockets of poverty as the trade-off for adding more than a half-million citizens and a booming D.C. urban economy, as well as the pride and prestige in having the national capital inside Maryland? I think so..

Washington Post - In the District, as startled office workers gathered and stared outside Alex Cooper Auctioneers at Wisconsin Avenue and Jenifer Street NW, about 50 demonstrators forced a pair of workers to retreat into an office, lock the door and call for help on mobile phones. . . The protesters chanted: 'Save our homes! Save our homes!' and 'Bail out Main Street, not just Wall Street!'"

DCist - The Examiner's Michael Neibauer reports that the Adams Morgan Taxi Stand pilot program has been torpedoed after less than three months. What's especially interesting is that the program was apparently discontinued by DDOT all the way back in December, though as far as we know, the agency never announced that change.

Hill Rag - Friendship House, a Hill landmark was abandoned in late November or early December. Since 1936, the site has been the headquarters of a social service organization that for decades supported people with food, job counseling, services for the elderly and summer programs for children. Friendship House and its grounds are listed on the National Registry of Historic Buildings, according to Dick Wolf of the Capitol Hill Restoration Society. Nancy Metzger, chair of CHRS's Historic Preservation Committee is concerned that neglect and damage might be its permanent undoing; "It's a nightmare" Metzger laments. "The roof is torn back and water is getting in the structure, as well as mold." There is a growing fear that this historic property could be irretrievably damaged or even destroyed. The property has been appraised at $5.5 million. Attempts to reach members of the current Board of Directors and those listed on its web site have proved unsuccessful.

NEW WORRIES ABOUT GARDASIL SAFETY

CBS - There are new concerns about Gardasil, the vaccine that prevents a virus that caused cervical cancer. It's approved for girls as young as nine. And five million have received it since it was approved two years ago. The FDA and its maker insist it's safe. But CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson has exclusive information on some very serious side effects. . .

The National Vaccine Information Center, a private vaccine-safety group, compared Gardasil adverse events to another vaccine, one also given to young people, but for meningitis. Gardasil had three times the number of Emergency Room visits - more than 5,000. Reports of side effects were up to 30 times higher with Gardasil. . .

Merck, the FDA and CDC question the value of the new analysis, say they continue to review the data, Gardasil remains safe and effective, and its benefits outweigh the risks. . .

Meantime, Merck has asked the FDA to approve it for boys, who can pass on the cancer causing virus to girls, meaning the number of people getting Gardasil may double.

OBAMA'S EUDUCATION CHIEF PRESIDED OVER A SYSTEM WITH OVER 500 STUDENT BEATINGS BY STAFF

CBS 2, Chicago - Hundreds of students have allegedly been beaten by teachers, coaches and staff at Chicago Public Schools. . . An exclusive CBS 2 investigation discovered . . . at least 818 Chicago Public School students since 2003 to allege being battered by a teacher or an aide, coach, security guard, or even a principal. In most of those cases - 568 of them - Chicago Public School investigators determined the children were telling the truth.

The 2 Investigators found reports of students beaten with broomsticks, whipped with belts, yard sticks, struck with staplers, choked, stomped on and pushed down stairs. One substitute teacher even fractured a student's neck. But even more alarming, in the vast majority of cases, teachers found guilty were only given a slap on the wrist.

CBS 2 informed former Chicago Public School CEO Arne Duncan of our investigative findings shortly before he was promoted to U.S. Secretary of Education. "If someone hits a student, they are going to be fired. It's very, very simple," Duncan said.

Before heading to Washington, he vowed to take action. "Any founded allegation where an adult is hitting a child, hitting a student - they're going to be gone," Duncan said.

But that's not what happened under Duncan's watch. Of the 568 verified cases, only 24 led to termination. . .

And another student was given "100 licks with a belt." The abuse was substantiated, but the records show the teacher was not terminated.

YOU CAN TELL THEM BY THEIR FRIENDS

Washington Post - [NYC Mayor] Bloomberg hosted a recent fundraiser for Fenty's 2010 re-election campaign, sources tell us, and it appears to have paid off big-time in the mayor's campaign war-chest. Fenty's first filing with the D.C. Office of Campaign Finance includes a number of big name Manhattanites, including Jonathan Tisch, chairman of the Lowes Hotel group, billionaire Ronald Perelman, former [GOP] Senator Alfonse D'Amato and Pittsburgh Steelers investor Stanley Druckenmiller.

Michelle Rhee has been invited to join Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin in speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

WHERE RHEE IS COMING FROM

Sue Hemberger, Concerned4DCPS - Failing educational systems exist because schools don't have the resources (however defined) to motivate and help students to learn, but they simultaneously provide the occasion/excuse for the privatization (or commercialization) of public education.

Honestly, I don't think most of the people pushing for privatization of public education give a damn about education. They see a vast industry that hasn't traditionally functioned as a source of profits and think, wow, I want a cut of that. They'll tell whatever story is necessary to justify turning education into a profit-making proposition and, in doing so, they are supported by ideologues who shill for markets whatever the context (but seem to have no qualms about tapping into the state's ability to extract revenue to fund such markets).

The so-called educational "reformers" don't want public school systems to succeed; they want them to be replaced and the best way to ensure that outcome is to ensure that they are broken beyond repair. Enter Michelle Rhee.

REMEMBERING PETEY GREENE

Excellent recent TV documentary, "Adjust Your Color: The Truth of Petey Greene." Find it wherever you can and then read "Laugh if You Like, Ain't a Damn Thing Funny: The Life Story of Ralph 'Petey' Greene as Told to Lurma Rackley." Both are musts for anyone interested in the cultural history of the capital.

Lurma Rackley, Washington Post - Legendary broadcaster Petey Greene sits on the set of his television talk show, "Petey Greene's Washington," burying his face in a huge chunk of watermelon. "I just can't understand why black people started eating watermelon in the closet," he announces, eyes stretched wide with wonder. "I've seen y'all cut it up in little slices . . . but all you got to do is pick it up like this here. ."

So begins "Adjust Your Color: The Truth of Petey Greene," which tells the story of the D.C. radio and TV personality who overcame poverty, drug addiction and multiple arrests to take his hometown by storm in the late 1960s (and continuously for 16 years). . .

"Adjust Your Color" features clips that highlight the range viewers saw when tuning in to Greene's TV talk show. There's Greene with shock jock Howard Stern in black face, but still not out-shocking his host; Greene interviewing Midge Costanza, then a special assistant to President Carter; and Greene as a proud parent talking with his then-young children about their future dreams.

Interspersed among those scenes are interviews with D.C. notables -- including Ben's Chili Bowl owner Virginia Ali, sportscaster James Brown, city council member Marion Barry and actor Robert Hooks -- talking about Greene and how he touched their lives. . .

A natural comedian who could rhyme off the top of his head, Ralph Waldo "Petey" Greene started broadcasting in 1967, two years after getting out of Lorton Reformatory, where he served time for armed robbery. At Lorton, he built on his already locally well-known talent as a stand-up comic by spinning tunes and talking jive as a DJ over the prison's public address system.

Upon release, he took a job as a community organizer at the United Planning Organization, an anti-poverty agency, and worked there until he died.

Once a week, the District native got his chance to elevate civic issues, first on R&B radio station WOL. His shows combined biting humor, homespun advice he learned from his beloved grandmother, information for poor people to find social services, and unusual political commentary. They also showcased how well Greene knew the District's streets, its people and the problems they shared.

Greene launched his Sunday talk show "Petey Greene's Washington" on WDCA-TV in 1972. . . And when cable network BET launched in 1980, Greene's show was selected for the initial lineup. "Petey Greene's Washington" aired nationwide for four years. . .

When Greene died of cancer in 1984, thousands of people lined up in freezing weather outside Union Wesley AME Zion Church on Michigan Avenue NE to pay their respects.

LURMA RACKLEY, WASHINGTON POST, 2007 - Washingtonians of a certain era knew Ralph Waldo "Petey" Greene in his various life phases: as a raggedy kid who could "play the dozens" better than anyone in 1930s black Georgetown; as an often inebriated yet phenomenally funny young comedian at "picnics" in Wilmer's Park; as a rapping, rhyming emcee at Lorton Reformatory, where he served time for robbery; and finally as a legendary broadcaster who charted new territory in straight talk and community activism until his death in 1984 at age 53. . .

In late 1981, Petey asked me to help him tell his life story. . . I spent most of my time cracking up with laughter. He told me that he honed his rapping, rhyming and "joning" skills as a preschool kid dead set on taking the focus off his disadvantages. His father was in jail more often than he was at home, and his mother had her own brushes with the law. His beloved pipe-smoking grandmother Maggie Floyd, known as A'nt Pig, instilled in him a fortitude and an optimism that carried him through the worst of times in his personal life. From the age of 3, Petey heard A'nt Pig say: "Boy, I know your mouth is gone get you killed or get you rich one day. 'Cause you the talkingest damn boy I ever seen.". . .

Toward the end of his life, Petey began to step into his A'nt Pig's full vision for him. He stunned his friends in 1979 when he finally gave up binge drinking. In 1981, he was baptized by the United House of Prayer's Bishop Walter "Sweet Daddy" McCullough. . .

DC Gazette, 1970 - [Activist Petey] Greene "testified" [at a council hearing on marijuana] on behalf of his grandmother, whose opinions on marijuana are based on practical experience. She once told her grandson to quit: "Petey, you gotta stop smoking those reefers because they make you too hungry, and I can't buy all that extra food." Later, on comparing its effects with those of alcohol, "She said she'd rather me smoke reefers and just sit and smile at people than drink that old wine and come in throwing chairs around. "

PETEY GREENE ON HOW TO EAT A WATERMELON

ANTARCTIC ICE SHEET MELTING WOULD SWAMP DC, NYC, LA

Reuters - North America's coastlines would be hit especially hard by rising sea levels if the huge West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapses and melts in a warming world as some experts fear, scientists said.

The loss of that ice sheet alone would inundate some coastal areas, swamping New York, Washington D.C., south Florida, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle, with sea levels in some places higher by 21 feet or more than today, the researchers wrote in the journal Science.

Factors including changes in the Earth's rotation from the loss of the huge ice sheet would make sea level changes highly variable around the globe, they said. The southern Indian Ocean region also would be heavily affected, they added.. . .

"The peak sea level rise occurs on the coasts of the United States -- the New York area and down the coast, the eastern seaboard of the United States," Mitrovica added. "On the West coast, it's even just a little bit bigger."

Mitrovica said this is not imminent, but rather: "It's a time scale of hundreds of years."

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates a loss of the ice sheet would raise sea levels around the world on average by about 16.5 feet.

But Mitrovica said the additional ocean volume would not be like adding water to a bath tub and watching the level rise equally, due to other complicated factors.

The researchers said the melting of the ice sheet would cause the Earth's rotation axis to shift about a third of a mile from its current position. This would move water from the southern Atlantic and Pacific oceans northward toward North America and into the southern Indian Ocean.

DC WEDNESDAY

DC CLIPS

Gawker - Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama's right-hand man, lives in a basement apartment on Capitol Hill rented to him by Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro. Just one problem: He's not allowed to live there. That's what private investigator Joseph Culligan discovered after asking questions of D.C. officials. A zoning administrator responded to Culligan's inquiry and told him that DeLauro's house at 816 E. Capitol St. NE was listed as a single-family dwelling, and as such, could not be rented out. Emanuel, who splits his time between Chicago and D.C., will not have this low-rent problem for very long.

If we had a decent accessory apartment law in this town, what Emanuel is doing would be perfectly legal.

An exhibit of photographs of black Washington between 1911 and 1994, taken by Addison Scurlock and his sons, is on exhibit at the National Museum of American History.

WMAL - The University of the District of Columbia may be about to double its tuition. The school has proposed an increase from roughly 33-hundred dollars to seven-thousand dollars. The hike still has to be approved by the board of trustees, but it could go into effect next fall.

DCRTV - Washington will be losing its only lefty political radio talker. Redskins owner Dan Snyder's Red Zebra-owned WWRC, recently dubbed "Obama 1260," will be flipping to business news next week. The station, which features shows from Ed Schultz, Stephanie Miller, and Bill Press, frequently doesn't even show in the local radio ratings. Program Director Greg Tantum tells the DC Post that he thought the station could work because of enthusiasm over Obama, but that ratings collapsed to a level that could not be measured after the election. But the lowish ratings nearly doubled, he says, at Snyder's right-leaning station, WTNT, 570 AM, which features Michael Savage, Laura Ingraham, and Bill Bennett. Tantum said he will move Schultz to WTNT to give him another shot. . .

On Inauguration Day, Metro set a record of 1.1 million rail trips, which sounds good were it not for the fact that thirty years ago, when Metro's boosters were seeking federal money, they projected a daily ridership only slightly below last month's record.

Washington Times - Judge Brooke Hedge appeared agitated during a hearing for plaintiffs in the bid to reopen the Franklin Shelter on 13th and K Streets Northwest. The shelter, which provided emergency beds and services for up to 300 homeless men, was abruptly closed on Sept. 26. . . "I'm not a legislator, I have no authority to rule that," said Judge Hedge, reacting to the plaintiffs' request that the court reopen the shelter. The closing of Franklin Shelter has caused outrage among homeless advocates, who say that those who were moved out are now suffering on the street or in run-down conditions at other shelters across the District. . . Judge Hedge said that since the opening and the closing of the Franklin Shelter were the responsibility of the D.C. Council, and since the earlier restraining order had failed, it was unlikely the court was going to intervene."I just don't think you have a substantial chance of success," she said.

READER COMMENTS

SOMETHING ROTTEN IN APPLESEED

Back in the day, a ten-mile square was about an hour's ride at full gallop from the boundary to the Capitol. Today, an hour's ride by common ground transportation (automobile) is more like 45-50 miles (neglecting rush hour). So we should update the Constitution by resizing the District, to protect Congress from potential tank attacks originating in Maryland or Virginia, by expanding the boundaries of the District to roughly a fifty-mile radius from the Capitol. - The Sanguine Pen

I once proposed in a radio interview with Rep. Tom Davis that northern Virginia be made part of the federal district, given that it had far more sensitive military and intelligence headquarters than DC. He didn't like the idea. - Sam

STUPID CITY COUNCIL TRICKS

Jim Newell, NBC 4 - Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander wants to ban the sale of cheap, small cigars, usually filled with flavored tobacco, that you always see at 7-Elevens and gas stations. They are called "blunts." And according to Alexander, the tobacco within this is all taken out and filled with "cannabis." The youths smoke these monster sticks to get high, which makes them go crazy, grab their automatic weapons, and kill all humans and animals within a 500-yard radius. . .

According to the Washington Post, "Alexander said 'it's no secret' that the honey, apple and cherry-flavored cigars are bought and then stuffed with marijuana, often by young people." Indeed, this is not a secret. Another non-secret is that sometimes apples themselves are converted into marijauna-smoking devices. As of the writing of this article, apples remain legal.

Washington Times - The District cracked down on motorists who fail to clean their vehicles after winter storms, which can result in chunks of ice hurtling onto other vehicles. The City Council unanimously approved the ordinance, which makes the District the only U.S. city with such a law, but it did not include a $50 fine with the citation. . .

The decision to exclude the fine was the result of several council members saying the bill was too vague and was crafted without consulting the Metropolitan Police Department or the city's Department of Motor Vehicles.

The council's 13 members unanimously approved the bill after council member Michael Brown, at-large independent, made the amendment to omit the fine. "We have cars coming off the roads that are like igloos," he said. . .

Pennsylvania has a similar law, which fines motorists as much as $1,000, but only if flying ice from a vehicle hits another vehicle or person and causes harm.

DC SATURDAY

NY Times - The formulas by which the stimulus money for public schools would be allocated to states and local districts are complex, but take into consideration numbers of school-age children in poor families. The level received per student would vary considerably by state, according to an analysis by the New America Foundation, a research group that monitors education spending. New York would be among the biggest beneficiaries, at $760 per student, while New Jersey and Connecticut would fall near the bottom, with $427 and $409 per student, respectively. The District of Columbia would get the most per student, $1,289, according to the foundation's analysis.

Your editor will join statehood senators Michael D. Brown and Paul Strauss, councilmembers Harry Thomas and Michael A. Brown, Ann Loikow of the DC Statehood Yes We Can Coalition, Anise Jenkins of Stand Up for Democracy, and WTOP's Mark Plotkin for a discussion of DC statehood next Thursday, Feb 5, 7-9 pm at UDC School of Law, 4200 Connecticut Avenue NW, Building 39, Room 201. There will be food and refreshments as well as musical entertainment. More info.

Aaron Lloyd, Politico - If a voting representative will not solve the puzzle of the District's unequal status, why are we fighting for it? If we "win" this battle, and our newly empowered representative votes against Congress controlling our local tax dollars, will we in the District feel better that the bill passed by one less vote? Or will her vote instead be providing legitimacy to a system that is fundamentally discriminatory? . . . I could be an active, enthusiastic part of the movement to get a voting representative for the District, if only I thought it satisfied the rule of first doing no harm. But I fear that this drive to empower Delegate Norton distracts us from the real issues of the District's unequal status. And as long as the District is not a state, or incorporated into another state, no vote of Norton's will free us from inequality.

DCist - Funds for a $200 million renovation of the National Mall was removed from President Obama's stimulus package during a House Rules Committee session. The move is a blow to D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton and to groups like the National Coalition to Save Our Mall, who have been pushing hard for Mall repairs for the last several years. Mall advocates had been hoping the national spotlight on the Mall during Obama's inauguration ceremonies would shore up support for funding restoration work. Visitors to the Mall have long been disappointed to find dead grass, mud and cracked sidewalks around the splendor of the monuments and museums.

Mark Plotkin's reaction to Obama dissin' DC over its handling of icy weather: 'What does he know about Chicago? He grew up in Hawaii.'

NY Times - The Pew Research Center found that while more than 8 in 10 Americans rate where they live now as excellent, nearly half say they would rather live in a different type of community. City dwellers feel the most mismatched. A majority would rather live in a suburb, small town or rural area. The survey found that Denver, San Diego and Seattle top a list of 30 metropolitan areas that people preferred. Detroit, Cleveland and Cincinnati ranked lowest. New York was in the middle, between Washington and Dallas. All of the top 10 preferred areas are in the West or the South, but geography isn't necessarily the first priority for various groups. Young adults prefer New York and Los Angeles. Phoenix is the favorite of Republicans and San Francisco of Democrats.

Michael Neibauer, DC Examiner - About a thousand members of D.C.'s Irish community may be exempted from the city's smoking ban so they can continue the annual rite of toasting St. Patrick with a tumbler in one hand and a cigar in the other. Ward 2 D.C. Councilman Jack Evans has introduced legislation sparing the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, a social organization that comprises much of Washington's elite Irishmen, from the ban for their 81st annual St. Patrick's Day dinner at the Capital Hilton on March 17. The city's smoke-free law provides an economic hardship waiver for struggling bars and restaurants, Evans said, but it leaves no wiggle room for a single event, like the St. Patrick's Day gala or Fight Night at the Washington Hilton. . . Evans is a member of the Friendly Sons organization, though he claims not to partake in the cigar end of the toasting tradition

Washington Post - D.C. Council member Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) has again failed to file his tax returns. The former District mayor has not submitted federal or city tax forms for 2007 -- the second instance in which he has not filed required returns while on probation for tax offenses, said two sources familiar with the situation. Two years ago, federal prosecutors failed to convince a federal judge that Barry should be jailed for violating the terms of his probation, which was ordered in 2006, because he did not file 2005 tax returns. The probation expires in March.

Union City - Add worker unrest to the economic problems facing the Gap. Last Sunday, the clothing retailer's Georgetown store was picketed by local students who are supporting Teamsters who have been on strike against Gap contractor Oak Harbor Freight Lines since last September. The workers struck after the company cut healthcare benefits for workers and retirees.

Bill Myers, DC Examiner - The D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles has issued an emergency order exempting federal judges and their spouses from a rule that requires drivers to surrender their home state licenses when they register their cars in the District. . . It's unclear what the rationale is behind the new order, or why it was classified as an emergency. D.C. has long had "reciprocity" laws that allow members of Congress as well as students and military personnel to keep their out-of-state licenses. This is because such people are considered "temporary residents." However, federal judges are usually lifetime appointees. And a judge's spouse ordinarily has no part in a judge's "official duties." . . . [An official] told The Examiner that the emergency order sprang from "a situation" recently. "We needed to take care of something on an emergency basis," she said. "I can't really say anything else at the moment." She denied, however, that the emergency order came to assuage an angry judge. "I don't think I've ever spoken to an angry judge," she said.

Leaders of the New Capitol Park Towers Tenants Association in SW were threatened with arrest when they met in the lobby of their building to discuss issues including rent disputes, code violations and allged tenant harassment.

Daily Show's Wyatt Cenac came to town to figure out which church Obama should go to.

Martin Austermuhle of DCist mangled the story of DC statehood, writing: " "The last time statehood was seriously considered was in the mid-1980s, when a constitutional amendment to create "New Columbia" failed when not enough states opted to ratify it. Since then, statehood has been more a rallying cry than a reality." Actually statehood was voted upon in the House in 1993 when it lost 277 to 153. Also, in the 1990s, both the New York Times and the Washington Post endorsed statehood. Austermuhle totally misstates what the constitutional amendment was about. It was not to create New Columbia but merely to continue the city's colony status but with representation in Congress.

Washington Business Journal - Despite hosting museums commemorating such things as criminals, airplanes, stamps and even beads, Washington still has no museum that documents the ongoing struggle for gay and lesbian civil rights. When [Tim] Scofield, a former collections specialist at the Smithsonian Institution, saw the National Museum of American History reopen with virtually no reference to the 40-year fight, he took action. . . Two years ago Scofield created The Velvet Foundation to build a museum that will preserve the movement's memory for future generations that grow up never thinking twice about Ellen DeGeneres' sexuality. Once the foundation has a firm grip on its collection and its mission, it will look for a home and begin fundraising in earnest.

READER COMMENTS

Vote in the House

My views are that a voting delegate in the House is fluff, feel good ineffectiveness. My stress would be on total self-government as a prelude to statehood, e.g., a law that provides independence and a date certain for statehood. - Dave

I bet the marshal was a D.C. resident and like the security guard I met at Arlington Cemetery whose face lit up when he saw the statehood posters in my trunk and then waved me through. The regular folks in this town know the score and will take statehood any time over "voting rights." - Ann

FORMER FRANKLIN SHELTER OCCUPANTS SUE FENTY

Former inhabitants of Franklin Shelter have sued Mayor Adrian Fenty over the abrupt closing of the only city downtown shelter this past fall. Plaintiffs are trying to get the city to provide shelter for those in need in the downtown DC area. Since Franklin Shelter was closed, former inhabitants of Franklin Shelter have been sent to the poorest parts of the city, lacking access to much needed medical and mental health services, with few, if any job opportunities. In addition to the loss of mental health and healthcare services, and loss of access to food and day labor opportunities, some former Franklin Shelter inhabitants also lost their possessions when the shelter was abruptly closed.

Mayor Fenty has used the newly implemented Permanent Supportive Housing Program as an excuse to close the shelter, but hundreds of people seeking shelter have applied for this program with little hope of ever being admitted, and the District Council slashed $5.6 million in funding for the program shortly after the shelter was closed.

The Permanent Supportive Housing Program has only housed approximately 300 persons so far. In contrast to this small number, 13,000 single adults and 2,800 adults and children use emergency shelter in DC every year, according to a 2008 study by the Urban Institute on Public Homelessness. And 2,200 single adults were chronically homeless on a single night in January 2008. Many of the homeless suffer from mental illness and are not being treated.

According to homeless advocates Kim Johnson and Pete Tucker, who have been organizing a series of meetings with the homeless about their current living situations, "The situation in other shelters is becoming worse. The New York Avenue Shelter, for instance, is a human rights violation."

Most Supportive Housing placements have been in the poorest sections of the city, in drug and crime-ridden neighborhoods. One participant in the fledgling Supportive Housing Program, Tommy Overton, was brutally beaten in front of his apartment this past fall after being placed in a Supportive Housing apartment in Ward 8.

INAUGURATION (STILL)

This gigapan shot of the Inauguration by David Bergman is the best way to waste a morning on the Internet that we've seen of late. If you were there, you may be able to zoom in on yourself or you can just enjoy closeups of people like Clarence Thomas (below), described as taking "a religious moment to silently pray during President Barack Obama's swearing in ceremony. Witnesses say Thomas was so moved he prayed for nearly 20 continuous minutes, head occasionally falling over onto Judge Scalia's shoulder."

Bergman writes, "After a cab ride, three security checkpoints, and a lot of walking, I was finally in my photo position. I was in the very back row of the platform, standing on a chair behind an AOC photographer. She was nice enough to allow me to attach the Gigapan to the railing next her. The unit takes a series of overlapping images one at a time. In this case, I set it to shoot a grid that was 20 photos wide by 11 photos down. It took about 15 minutes to complete."

Under the grand shot, you'll find over 1200 closeups you can zoom in on. Have a nice day and we'll see you tomorrow. Main Page Bergman's Blog

Eavesdrop DC - On the Mall near 7th street and Constitution during the inauguration: Woman #1: (pushing through the crowd) Coming through, coming through. (Then stops moving). . . Woman #2: Excuse me you can't just stop here in front of me. . . Woman #1: Well, where am I supposed to go?. . . Woman #2: Where were you before? . . . Woman #1: North Carolina.

On the mall at 5:30 am, inauguration day: "I feel really stupid.. I thought this was an actual mall. Like we were going to be watching this in front of Claire's."

A homeless guy: "You all voted for change...NOW GIVE ME SOME CHANGE!"

Charles L. Edson, Letter to Washington Post - I accepted the invitation from the unnamed local official quoted in your Metro article on Inauguration Day problems to "do the math" on the Purple Tunnel of Doom. The results were astounding. Accepting that the 24 magnetometers could each process 400 people an hour (an unbelievable seven per minute), this totals 9,600 admissions an hour. The gates opened four hours before the noon swearing-in, allowing a total of 38,400 ticket holders to make it through. But 52,000 purple tickets were issued. What on earth were the planners thinking? For Inauguration Day in 2013, planning should be left to a class of third-graders who have mastered the art of multiplication.

WHAT'S THE BEST CHURCH FOR OBAMA?

The Daily Show's Wyatt Cenac checks out local churches on behalf of Obama

SOMETHING ROTTEN IN APPLESEED

Sam Smith

I received a letter today from Walter Smith, Executive Director of DC Appleseed inviting me to serve as a plaintiff in an expected suit after Congress approves a voting seat for the city in the House of Representatives.

Now there are a lot of reasons why I wouldn't do this just based on the facts of the situation. Among them:

- The seat is the most pathetic expansion of local power one could have chosen. Its supporters have lifted not one finger for statehood or for any meaningful modification of the city's status other than their favorite: token representation in the House.

- The seat in no way changes the city's colonial status. Algeria, for example, had seats in the French Assembly but remained fully a colony.

- The vote DC is getting is being intentionally countermanded by an additional seat in Republican Utah, which is, as Julius Hobson once put it, like sending a eunuch to an orgy.

- DC Vote, the DC government and their allies have not done anything for real self government while funneling millions of dollars into DC Vote, a group clearly created to distract local residents from their true colonial status.

- This is not a new phenomenon. For example:

1888: Conservative newspaperman Theodore Noyes of the Washington Star launches campaign for congressional representation; strongly opposes real democracy. Noyes writes, "National representation for the capital community is not in the slightest degree inconsistent with control of the capital by the nation through Congress."

1899: A political scientist describes the Board of Trade - which supports a congressional vote only -- as providing DC with the ideal form of local government through a "representative aristocracy."

1919: Board of Trade and Chamber of Commerce advocate congressional representation and oppose home rule.

1934: A special committee recommends a nonvoting delegate but no home rule.

1943: Board of Trade appears before Senate Committee to support representation in Congress but opposes local self-government.

1960s: Segregationist Rep. John McMillan favors a DC vote for president and vice president, says a struggle for home rule will cripple the national vote. McMillan thinks the national vote should "satisfy" DC residents "at least for a while."

1971: DC gets a nonvoting congressional delegate. In first delegate race, the statehood arguments of Julius Hobson are strongly opposed by Walter Fauntroy who will become the leader of a lengthy and futile drive for a constitutional amendment granting congressional representation.

1972: Walter Fauntroy and John Hechinger, later major players in the voting rights drive, sabotage George McGovern's planned announcement of support for DC statehood.

1981: The League of Women Voters, Walter Fauntroy, and the Washington Post - all strong advocates of congressional voting representation - are the leading voices again DC statehood.

1985: The voting rights amendment is defeated with less than half the required states voting for it. Meanwhile years of potential work for full democracy are dissipated and diluted.

2004: Delegate Norton convinces the Democratic Party to drop DC statehood from its platform, to be replaced by a call for voting rights. According to The Washington Times, "Pat Elwood, vice chairman of the [Democratic] state committee, said she agreed with Mrs. Norton's view that statehood 'dilutes' the message of congressional voting representation.

But what was truly astounding about the DC Appleseed letter was that I received it because I had been one of the 20 plaintiffs in the Adams v. Clinton case that a decade ago raised issues never before heard in court concerning DC's status and which included statehood as one of the suggested remedies.

The case was drawn up by the late activist lawyer George LaRoche. He went to major law firms, including Covington & Burling, and to the Corporation Council (now the attorney general) seeking assistance. Not a single establishment law firm nor the city government would help and so LaRoche filed the case himself.

Now comes the truly seedy part. Unbeknownst to us, the local legal establishment started working on a competing case deliberately to sabotage ours. As the author of the letter to me, Walter Smith, has described it: "I was the Deputy Corporation Counsel for the District of Columbia when Corporation Counsel John Ferren and I determined that a lawsuit needed to be brought on behalf of the District and its citizens contending that our lack of voting representation is unconstitutional. . . With the pro bono assistance of one of the District's leading law firms, Covington & Burling, we brought that suit before a three-judge federal court on July 4, 1998." Just weeks after we had filed.

You didn't need to be a lawyer to realize it was a lousy case and its only possible raison d'etre was to put a knife in our more serious litigation.

The special court that heard the case agreed. While it threw out both cases, the only arguments it addressed were in the DC establishment case. One got the sense that their litigation had provided the court with an easy excuse not to address the real issues we had raised. In any case, the corporation counsel and Covington & Burling had not only set statehood back, but all home rule. The one bright spot was that since the court was afraid to address our arguments, they can still be heard another day.

There was, however, one more act that revealed the tawdry motivations of those trying to kill our case. On the night before the matter came to trial I got a call from George LaRoche saying that he had learned that the word had been passed that we were going to cause a disturbance at the federal courthouse the next day and so we should be ready for a major police presence.

It was an absurd allegation. The 20 Citizens included not only this Quaker educated newspaper editor, but a leading minister, a former secretary of the city council and a woman confined to a wheelchair.

Fellow plaintiff Rev. Graylan Hagler of Plymouth Congregational Church and I entered the courthouse together. Inside, a US Marshal comes up and asks, "Can I help you gentlemen?" Graylan asks where we can get some coffee and the Marshal points down the stair, adding, "I've been to your church, Reverend. One of my men is on your vestry. Let's go bless him." The pair returns and the Marshal shakes hands with each of the plaintiffs and leads us to some of the best seats in the courtroom. From threat to honored guests in less than five minutes.

The incident illustrated that in a colony you can't always tell your friends by their title, something of which I was again reminded when I got that letter today from the executive director of DC Appleseed, one of those who once helped kill our lawsuit because it might have brought the city too much democracy.

DC TUESDAY

COUNCIL TO CONSIDER ELECTED ATTORNEY GENERAL

Michael Neibauer, DC Examiner - The D.C. Council will consider legislation making the District's attorney general an elected position, which if passed could be the first step toward seizing the job of criminal prosecutions away from the U.S. attorney. A measure offered by at-large Councilman Phil Mendelson calls for a partisan attorney general election as soon as 2010, so that the AG's four-year term coincides with that of the mayor. If the bill wins D.C. approval, Congress would still have to back it through federal legislation because it amends the District's Home Rule Charter. . . Norton said Monday she would soon reintroduce legislation to create a D.C. district attorney who is responsible for all prosecutions and is wholly independent from the government. She offered the same bill in 2007 and 2006.

INAUGURAL WOES MOUNT

Sarah Abruzzese, Politico - Rep. Jim McDermott's brother had a ticket but never got through the gates. Sen. Lamar Alexander's chief legislative counsel was stranded - with a lot of other people - in a tunnel just off the Mall. Staffers for Sen. John Barrasso fell victim to the now-legendary purple gate.

And a constituent of Sen. Amy Klobuchar - a man who wanted to be here so badly that he sold his snowmobile to come - never got in, even though he had a ticket in his hand. . .

Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said at least 40 people bearing his tickets - including members of his staff - weren't allowed into the ceremony. . .

A large number of people who purchased tickets to official balls through Ticketmaster arrived at the Convention Center on Tuesday night expecting to pick them up at a will call window. But there was no Ticketmaster will call window at the Convention Center - and, given the security perimeter around the building, it's not clear that would-be partygoers could have gotten to one if there were. . .

DC CLIPS

Stand Up for Democracy - On the eve of a congressional hearing on a bill to provide the District of Columbia a single vote in the House of Representatives, the Stand Up! for Democracy in DC Coalition called on DC Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton to withdraw the bill and instead introduce legislation to make the District the 51st U.S. State. "The inauguration of President Obama provides a historic opportunity for change. What better time to change the District of Columbia's status from colony to full membership in America's family of states?"�said Stand Up! President Anise Jenkins. "I am taking President Obama at his word. He personally assured me that he 'definitely supports D.C statehood' last January 2008 at the rally at American University. The time to achieve full citizenship for District citizens is now."� Jenkins said that a single vote in the House would fall far short of the full democratic rights that statehood would bring.

DC Statehood Green Party - William Thomas (known to most as Thomas) passed away this morning. Thomas spent the last 27 years in front of the White House, in Lafayette Park, protesting the inhumane policies of the US, especially the US nuclear policies exemplified by the US dropping nuclear bombs on the civilians of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Thomas is survived by his wife, Ellen Thomas, who resides at the Peace House. Connie still maintains a presence of conscience in Lafayette Park against US nuclear policies.

Dorothy Brizill - The next time we have a major event, like an inauguration, that will attract a large crowd, the government shouldn't try to handle it itself, led by agencies like the Secret Service. It should go to a company that knows how to manage large crowds of people, how to distribute tickets efficiently, how to keep people happy and entertained in long lines and move those lines quickly, and how to provide effective security unobtrusively, without inconveniencing people. . . Next time, subcontract the inauguration to Disney."

WUSA - DC Superior Court held its first Fathering Court graduation. This new program is aimed at helping men and women re-enter the community after spending time in prison. Thirty one classmates are currently in the program. The target of the Fathering court is to find full time employment for the individuals and fortify them with needed parenting and real world skills. Organizers say there is no charge for the Fathering Court, but participants are expected to return to provide assistance and good examples to new program members.

READER COMMENTS

WHERE DID ALL THE CHARTER STUDENTS GO?

My experience looking at charter school stats in another state/city suggests that the best charter schools (most stable, those lacking a crisis or turnover in leadership, etc.) have a retention rate of only about 75% to 80% from one year to the next and that this "leakage" is generally made up in additional enrollment of new students. Additionally, there generally is a two to three year period in which charter schools grow, meaning that the school will generally add more classes, increasing the size of younger classes. The incomplete evidence that exists now suggests that some percentage of students will leave the school early. This could be because of creaming, but it could just as likely be because the school is deemed inadequate by the parent for a whole host of reasons.

I would think that new charter high schools are even problematic than new elementary schools, given the difficulties of starting a new school with new staff, a new school culture, and a new student body of varying levels of educational abilities and experiences.

The population of charter schools are much like the population of trade schools. Scamming is not unusual; but there are a number of honest players. Who knows what the handsomely printed stats mean? Maya Angelou, Shaw Campus, to take an example, reports a "Graduation Rate" of 78.26, compared to a target of 66.23%. Exquisite precision, isn't it? Who knows how many of the graduates were allowed to phone it in, how much is made up, whole cloth. And what it will take to have sufficient numbers of people care.

As for your speculation of transfers back to DCPS: Because of unique student identifiers, [the Office of the State Superintendent of Education] can track this. Again: "Who cares?" By which I mean the question sincerely, not as a disparagement of concern. WTU members have been encouraged to engage in collective system-wide surveilance. They are unwilling to do so; the accuracy and bias of OSSE statistical reports cannot be checked; and so the prevalence of the transfer back to DCPS from charter schools is unknown.

Recognize every parent's first concern. As long as the child is perceived to be much safer in the charter than in the DCPS alternative, the charter is doing plenty. Can you blame them? Nor is this unknown in DCPS. Do you doubt that schools in Ward 3 have long been sought by out-of-boundary parents as much for their safety, including before and after school, as for superior teaching? - incedulous

This is an old issue. The latest annual report on charter schools, published by the charter school board are over two months old. If schools as troubled as City Lights can remain open, would a lack of integrity in the data on student participation in other schools surprise anyone?

As long as there is a perception by parents that charter schools are safer for their children than DCPS will assign them to, and as last summer, contrary to expectations, many will enroll their children in schools perceived to be much safer.

Talk to 5th graders in DCPS schools at this time. Ask them about their own perceptions of danger or safety in middle school that awaits them next year. Then ask them which DCPS middle schools they would be attending if they stayed within DCPS and whether a charter school is in their future. - Harry Travis

If you ever want to get the charters huffy with you over the phone call and ask them what percentage of their 9th grade ultimately graduates from their school! The numbers are stunning and depressing. SEED starts out with a 7th grade of well over 100. They on average they graduate 12-17. This is the dirty secret that no one will cover in this town. Oh and most of the time, the charters refuse to accept any students past 10th grade. If you suggest looking into it by the PCSB, they say, well the student exercised his "choice" or it didn't work out or some other lame excuse.

Add to that the kids who are "counseled out" (this is KIPP's term, not mine) or the kids and parents who are convinced to leave for not following the parental or student responsibility contract that they are forced to sign or the special needs kids who are accepted and then turned out when all of a sudden the charter school can't meet their needs.

And yes, the students wind up back into the only system that has to take all comers: DCPS. With no money, a student who is well behind and has to be tested, we are never, ever going to see any improvement in DCPS.

After 12 years of charter school experimentation, with kids who have now spent their entire school careers in charters why are our scores still so bad? I wish someone, someday look into this. Save Our Schools got blasted and basically run out of town as cranks just because we were suggesting that someone take a rational, objective look at charters. We never had the resources or the access to take on the charters and their lobby. It is such a shame, and one of my great regrets. - Gina Arlotto, DCPS parent Co-founder, Save Our Schools

LONG TIME WHITE HOUSE PROTESTER DIES

William ("Doubting") Thomas, born March 20, 1947, who conducted a vigil outside the White House since June 3, 1981 died after a long illness and a recent year-long government stay-away order from Lafayette Park. Here's how his web site described it:

|||| After Wandering in the Desert, William Thomas sat down on the White House sidewalk with a small cardboard sign, "WANTED: WISDOM & HONESTY," and a flier. He was quickly arrested, the first of many attempts to displace him.Thomas' message has stood north of the White House day and night since 1981, except for a three-month period in 1988 when Thomas was sent to prison by U.S. Judges Flannery and Richey, who wanted to "deter others from adopting your lifestyle." ||||

WHERE DID ALL THE CHARTER STUDENTS GO?

Those questioning the efficacy of DC's charter school system might want to take a look at the official reports of the secondary charters. Most show a stunning disparity between the number of students and the number of graduates multiplied by the number of classes in the school. There are several possible reasons for this, one being that a school is growing rapidly and so there are more students in the younger classes. On the other hand, it may provide evidence of what some suspect: that charters are getting money on a per student basis and then dropping students or letting them drift away over the course of the year, students who may end up back within, and at the expense of, the traditional system.

For example, the Shaw campus of Maya Angelou had 119 students grades 9-12 in the fall of 2007, but only 16 graduates in 2008. If the students were evenly spaced you would have expected a total enrollment of only 64.

One of the Cesar Chavez campuses had 383 students in grades 9-12 in 2007 but only 63 graduates in 2008. If the students were evenly spaced you would have expected a total enrollment of only 252.

City Lights had 62 students in grades 9-12 in 2007 but only one graduate. And so on.

The other anomaly, which the Washington Post and city officials aren't letting you in on, are the number of these schools where the test scores have actually declined over the past year. The report is useful reading for public school advocates.

Update: It's just been announced that City Lights is closing.

Report

DC THURSDAY

INAUGURATION WRAP

Gary Imhoff, DC Watch - First, the good news. There wasn't a single arrest at the swearing-in ceremony or inauguration parade. This is testimony not only to a well-behaved crowd, but also to unusual restraint by the many law-enforcement agencies that overlooked numerous small, harmless infractions. Now the bad news: all our predictions about the ill effects of giving security agencies a free hand to run the event came true.

We said that - unless DC government officials stood up for this city's residents and our visitors and insisted on changes - overweening security restrictions would result not only in gridlock but also in keeping people away from inaugural events. This proved especially true at the parade, which was one of the most sparsely attended inaugural parades in recent memory. One of our friends reported having gone through three checkpoints in a block and a half to get to the Wilson Building, on the parade route. This deliberate blocking of attendees resulted in a parade route that even at the beginning had blocks of empty sidewalks guarded by solid lines of police officers. Most blocks never got more crowded than 7th Street in Chinatown on a Friday night, with spectators only three or four deep at most.

The level and extent of security restrictions was unprecedented. As The New York Times reported, "Though intelligence agencies have detected no credible threat to any inaugural event or to Mr. Obama, law enforcement agencies, operating from a network of centers, will command ground, air and waterborne forces numbering in excess of 20,000 police officers, National Guard troops and plainclothes agents from more than 50 agencies, according to security planners.". . .

The problem arises not just from the massive growth in the size and cost of security for this inauguration, but from the imposition of new and uncalled-for restrictions on the freedoms of Washingtonians and others who attended the inauguration. "With hundreds of rooftop marksmen and thousands of police and guardsmen deployed throughout Washington, inaugural parade participants have been told not to make any sudden moves or turn their heads to look at Obama as they pass his reviewing stand." Luckily, the majority of parade participants had the good sense to ignore this ignoble command; in this democracy, peasants are still able to gaze upon the faces of their rulers. . .

DCist, January 20 - At about 4:15 p.m., a group of about 20 drummers and musicians were parading down the middle of 13th Street NW in Columbia Heights, playing their instruments and headed south to the African American Civil War Memorial at 10th and U Streets NW. The group brought along a wheeled cart with drums and other instruments on it. People in the parade said they were with the Rhythm Workers Union, a local activist group which holds drum circles around the area. Paraders said the event was organized by email, and some people from the Code Pink antiwar group joined up along the way.

Washington Post - "Overall, I've heard great things about biking that day," said Eric Gilliland, the executive director of the Washington Area Bicyclist Association. . . He said the volunteer valets parked 1,127 bikes at the 16th Street location and had to build a separate enclosure with spare crowd-control fencing to handle overflow. At the Jefferson Memorial location, 827 bikes were parked. "We didn't lose a single bike, and the one helmet that went missing was eventually found," Gilliland said.

Peggy Fox, WUSA - Charter buses started dropping off passengers at Reagan National Airport early in the morning, starting a domino affect that overwhelmed U.S. Airways. Dozens if not hundreds of people missed their flights while waiting for hours in the U.S. Airways line for the ticket counter. It appeared many did not know they could move up front and use the automated kiosk. Transportation Security Administration officers closed one doorway to contain the crowds into one line which snaked around orange cones and then out into the cold. . . I asked Morgan Durrant, the U.S. Airways Spokesperson why they failed to get so many passengers on their flights and he said they were overwhelmed by the volume, even though they knew all the passengers with bags would be heading home today. He denied overbooking flights and said U.S. Airways even brought in extra staff to help. Passengers clearly thought it wasn't enough.

Michael Neibauer, DC Examiner - The D.C. Department of Public Works and the National Park Service picked up more than 90 tons of garbage in less than 12 hours following the inaugural festivities, said Nancee Lyons, DPW spokeswoman. On Wednesday there were still two garbage containers with capacities of 20 to 30 tons that had yet to be weighed, putting the potential total mess at roughly 260,000 pounds.

More than 100 city employees worked from 6 p.m. Tuesday to 5:30 a.m. Wednesday to clear much of what was left behind - piles of newspaper, plastic bottles and food wrappers. The worst areas for trash, Lyons said, were K Street NW, Union Station and the Metro area off of Independence Avenue.

ANOTHER DAY WITH RHEE

Kerry Sylvia, Real Education Reform DC - Right before the holiday break I received an e - mail inviting me to be a teacher in this year's 2009 Saturday Scholars program. After looking at the details provided, it seems like the program is going to be a huge investment - hundreds of teachers will be paid $30/hour for 5 and a half hours each Saturday, January 24 - April 18. . .

The program's focus is to help "DCPS students prepare for the spring 2009 DC - CAS." As a teacher who continues to witness DC schools still lacking in so many areas - resources, supplies, enrichment activities, teachers - it is extremely frustrating to see more money and programs focusing on "teaching to the test".

To make matters worse, "The Saturday Scholars program is an intervention strategy for students who are on the cusp of proficiency for Reading and Math on the DC - CAS."

Where are the programs for the students who are at below basic? What about the students in my World History class who are reading at a 4th grade level? Or, the students who cannot pass Algebra because they don't have basic math skills? So, not only are we teaching to the test, but we are choosing to ignore those that need help the most.

What are the priorities of DCPS? Is it really about children first? Or is it about making ourselves look good?

Could DCPS' focus on improving its measures of "student achievement" actually be in conflict with what's best for student learning?

CLIPS


Gwen Ifill apparently thinks Adrian Fenty is DC's first black mayor. According to a NY Times review of her book, "Ms. Ifill writes in this volume more as a reporter than as an analyst, and by far the freshest portions of her book deal not with Mr. Obama, but with other African - American politicians who have achieved breakthroughs on a state or local level - including Artur Davis; Cory A. Booker; Michael A. Nutter; former Congressman Harold Ford Jr. from Tennessee; Gov. David A. Paterson of New York; Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts; Mayor Michael B. Coleman of Columbus, Ohio; and Washington's mayor, Adrian M. Fenty."

Mark Segraves, Capital Community News - The District's chief financial officer, Natwar Gandhi, gave the DC Council a huge lump of coal in their Christmas stockings. Gandhi is projecting a $127 million dollar budget shortfall for this fiscal year. And that's not the worst news. The fiscal year 2009 budget gap can be fixed by shuffling the deck chairs a bit. The city has $47 million in reserves which can be used, and another $80 million will come from a projected surplus Gandhi expects to have after the fiscal year 2008 numbers are tallied. The really bad news is for next year when the District could have a half a billion dollar shortfall a double digit unemployment.

Gandhi projects there will be a nearly $450 million budget gap in fiscal year 2010 and unemployment could reach 9.8 percent. You have to go back to the early 1980s to find a period when the District faced such a dismal economic outlook. The only current DC Councilmember who has ever had to deal with this type of budget crisis is Marion Barry (D-Ward 8), who was mayor during the 1980s. The District's current mayor was 12 years old during the District's last fiscal meltdown, and Jack Evans (D-Ward 2), the longest continuously serving member of the council at 18 years and counting, was just out of college and working at the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The city could spend over $600 million for the Nationals and give $50 million to the Verizon Center but can't cough up enough to keep its own recreation centers open on Sundays.

Washington Post - Nervous city employees in the Community Services Agency of the D.C. Department of Mental Health have been waiting to see exactly how the department plans to contract out public mental health services to private clinics, saving up to $14 million but costing some 200 jobs. . . Doctors, clinicians and assistants are wondering when they will have to search for work. The employee unions have said the proposed plan would be unfair to workers and clients who rely on them. Mentally ill patients do not trust easily, and their transition to private clinics will not go smoothly, they warned. The mental health department serves nearly 15,000 residents, 4,000 of whom are treated by employees at the CSA. Among its many programs are resident training that shows family members how to attend to mentally disabled relatives. Troubled patients go to pharmacy-equipped clinics for prescription medicine, sometimes on the verge of a mental breakdown.

The Nationals are cutting prices for individual tickets by $10 or more in some 4500 seats. This follows a similar cut in prices for another 7500 seats last fall.

HOW MANY ON THE MALL?

1.8 million - Mayor Adrian Fenty

750,000 - 11:49 am, 45 minutes before swearing in according to Arizona State University professor Steve Doig. Excludes parade route and city streets.

1 million - Washington Post. Excludes parade route.

1.2 million - Carl Holmberg, retired assistant chief of the U.S. Park Police, includes parade route.

1.27-1.65 million - HIS Jane. Excludes parade route.

1.4 million - DC police. Excludes 300,000-400,000 on surrounding streets and 72,000 on parade route.

1 million - Clark McPhail, a sociologist who has been analyzing crowds on the mall since the '60s.

1.2 million - LBJ Inauguration

From Washington Post and elsewhere

PARTYING WITH THE COLONIAL WIMPS

While screw-ups such are reported below are common in our fair city, this is the first time the colonial wimps pushing for a token vote in the House have soiled the name, 51st State, with their own incompetence. It's one thing not to support DC statehood, but far worse to harm its reputation.

Erik Wemple,City Paper, January 20 - The situation now brewing this very moment at the John A. Wilson Building isn’t making tons of sense. Standing in front of a throng of about 200 people are three burly-looking dudes with credentials. They are keeping the crowd from entering the 51st State Inaugural Ball, that must-go-to event featuring precious ball commodities like Vincent Gray, Marion Barry, Harry Thomas, and many, many other D.C. council members. What could be the thinking behind keeping the crowd out? Does Gray need to groom his mustache just a touch more before everyone pours in? Does Thomas need to change out of his sweatpants? Are the cheese cubes going too fast? Come on, let the masses into the 51st State!

DCist - Things were clearly a bit disorganized by the time my friends and I got to the John A. Wilson Building for the D.C. Council-hosted 51st State Ball. We didn't run into the security mess City Desk reported, but there was no signage or schedule posted anywhere, so a lot of people were milling around-it was just not clear where things were happening inside city hall.

Events were split up on different floors-there was a DJ on one floor, a stage where I presume Chuck Brown was supposed to play, and a jazz band tucked away in a large conference space. We spent several minutes just trying to find a coat check and were finally told by one of the security guards that he thought they were supposed to have one, but then the equipment didn't arrive in time. Almost everyone was walking around with their coats in their hands, so either there really wasn't a coat check at all, or it was extremely well hidden.

The biggest surprise of the night, however, was that there was no bar. No cash bar, no alcohol, period. Just water and sodas. Needless to say, ball attendees were kind of disgruntled. They were letting people with ticket stubs leave and come back in, so a lot of people left to get a drink at a nearby bar. While we were discussing the booze situation, a woman turned to us and admitted that she had started playing Solitaire on her cell phone because the party was so boring.

My friends wanted to leave early, and I couldn't really blame them. We've since heard that eventually, the live music acts got going, but Chuck Brown didn't go on until 2 a.m.

INAUGURAL DOWN TIME IN THE PURPLE TUNNEL OF DOOM

Channel Four, Washington - While most people were enjoying themselves on the National Mall while watching Barack Obama make history, there were others stuck in the Third Street Tunnel making every attempt possible just to get to their seats for the inaugural ceremony. A lot of them never made it, thanks to a potential security snafu of massive proportions.

At least 1,000 people who had tickets to get into the inaugural event missed out. A lot of those had tickets in the purple or silver sections. Most of those people used mass transportation and arrived early -- i.e., did what they were supposed to do. But instead of seeing Obama's historic day, they spent most of their time walking or standing in the Third Street Tunnel. Why? That's where police told them to go.

Some 1500 people have joined a Facebook page, the Purple Tunnel of Doom, complete with scores of photos and over 500 comments

INAUGURATION GREAT FOR HOOKERS AND COKE DEALERS

NY Magazine - A brief phone survey of D.C.-area hookers found on Craigslist revealed that Barack Obama's inauguration is inspiring great hopes - for their business. A pair who work together expect 30 clients before Wednesday, all paying $200 a pop. Meeka, 21, a "sexy southern belle, new to town," has come into the city specially for the festivities. "I'm busy over the weekend," she told us. "I could make time for you, though." Karina, 26, traveled five hours to get here, and was already "pretty booked up."

All of the women, who charge between $100 and $300 per hour, voted for Obama. Charlie, who implores clients to "come start my engine, bad boy," said she would even provide her services to Barack Obama, despite potential costs to his nascent presidency. Lei, a male prostitute, spoke to us at his plush apartment in an upscale neighborhood. "I actually just finished with a client who was from out of town, the South, I think," the youthful-looking 38-year-old - who is from an Islamic country, and was in an arranged marriage for eight years before coming out of the closet - told us. "I hope the inauguration will bring more business. If it's guys here by themselves on business, then it will."

Obama's inauguration might also make history for D.C. cocaine dealers - although there is no basis to the rumor that some are dyeing their product black. Over five days, one 29-year-old expects to earn cash in the high five figures from out-of-towners, not least because bars are open until 5 a.m. and there are a few hundred parties. The dealer, who grew up moshing to D.C. punk, laid out $3,000 to stock up because he plans on moving "serious weight." On Saturday, lounging in the back room of the Rock N Roll Hotel nightclub, he slipped a bag of coke into the hands of a venerable fortysomething European reporter. "I've had people calling me about this for weeks," the dealer says, as the reporter hands him $60. "I just sold out. I gotta re-up."

ANOTHER DAY WITH RHEE

Kerry Sylvia, Real Education Reform DC - Right before the holiday break I received an e-mail inviting me to be a teacher in this year's 2009 Saturday Scholars program. After looking at the details provided, it seems like the program is going to be a huge investment - hundreds of teachers will be paid $30/hour for 5 and a half hours each Saturday, January 24-April 18. . .

The program's focus is to help "DCPS students prepare for the spring 2009 DC-CAS." As a teacher who continues to witness DC schools still lacking in so many areas - resources, supplies, enrichment activities, teachers - it is extremely frustrating to see more money and programs focusing on "teaching to the test".

To make matters worse, "The Saturday Scholars program is an intervention strategy for students who are on the cusp of proficiency for Reading and Math on the DC-CAS."

Where are the programs for the students who are at below basic? What about the students in my World History class who are reading at a 4th grade level? Or, the students who cannot pass Algebra because they don't have basic math skills? So, not only are we teaching to the test, but we are choosing to ignore those that need help the most.

What are the priorities of DCPS? Is it really about children first? Or is it about making ourselves look good?

Could DCPS' focus on improving its measures of "student achievement" actually be in conflict with what's best for student learning?

DC MONDAY

DC Examiner - D.C. Councilman Phil Mendelson says he's worried that schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee is trying to get rid of veteran educators and is asking Rhee to detail her plan to weed out "underperforming" teachers. . . Rhee hasn't explained her proposal yet, but says she wants to put failing teachers in a 90-day mentoring program. Those who don't improve would be fired or reassigned. The teachers union has blasted the plan, saying that Rhee is trying to bust the union under the guise of helping failing teachers. . . "It's important that there is not only a clear set of criteria that is used when labeling a teacher "underperforming,' " Mendelson's letter states. "But also a fair way to measure the performance of the supervisors responsible for helping these teachers to proficiency."

Mendelson has given Rhee until Wednesday to explain: How many teachers are on the "underperforming" list; how they got there; the years of service for each teacher on the list; the years of service for the "mentors."

Washington Business Journal - D.C. Councilman Marion Barry, D-Ward 8, said he will do everything he can to prevent what he called a "giveaway" of 11 public school buildings by Mayor Adrian Fenty and that there were enough votes on the D.C. Council to stop any sale of the properties. . . Barry said the entire process of closing and managing the schools had been done without proper input by residents or the D.C. Council, which would have to both declare the properties surplus and approve any sale or long-term lease. "I am going to fight as hard as I can, and I think I can get six other votes, to stop the surplus-ing of those schools," he said. "And I know I have seven votes to stop the disposition."

Washington Post - Obama stopped short of promising an aggressive pursuit of D.C. voting rights. . . He described himself as a 'strong proponent' of amending the District's lack of voting representation in Congress but did not portray it as a top priority. . . 'You've got a president who is supportive of it, and I think you've got a majority in both the House and Senate who'd be supportive of it,' Obama said. . . 'But this takes on a partisan flavor, and, you know, right now I think our legislative agenda's chockfull. I would like to explore how quickly we can get it done.'

District Chronicles - Only a year ago, South Capitol Street was a dust-filled road amid the National's stadium construction and the lowering of the Fredrick Douglass Bridge. Businesses in the area suffered due to the decreased traffic into the area, and some of them closed as a result. Business owners struggled to stay afloat in hopes of being able to prosper once all of the construction was complete. The bridge lowering was completed in August of 2007, and the stadium was ready in time for opening day in March of the following year. Eight months have past since opening day, though, and even more businesses have been lost. . . The loss of businesses that is being experienced in the Southwest region is not a much different scenario than what has played out in other predominately Black communities in America. Nearly a half-century ago hundreds of Black-owned businesses thrived in San Francisco's Fillmore District. Then, by use of eminent domain, the government's redevelopment displaced almost 900 businesses and nearly 4,700 homes in San Francisco's Western Addition, where the Fillmore District is located. Many of the businesses did not return after the development.

DCist - The Post and WTOP are reporting that Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley has is moving to abolish the death penalty in his state, following the recommendations of a state panel late last year. O'Malley has pledged to push for abolition during the state legislature's current three-month session, though he is already facing opposition from Senate President and fellow Democrat Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. O'Malley believes capital punishment is too expensive, unequally used and largely ineffective as a deterrent.

Loose Lips, City Paper - Harry Jaffe slaps local politicos for the Wilson Building reviewing stand: "The cost, according to my sources, is in the neighborhood of $250,000. Four years ago, a similar viewing stand cost $100,000 less. Inflation, or inflated egos?. . . Tommy Wells, who represents Capitol Hill on the council, told me: 'I want to keep it as a homeless shelter after the inauguration.'"

STUPID LIBRARY TRICKS

Bryce A. Suderow, DC Watch - I was upset when the head of the DC Libraries "weeded" the collections, removing classics and valuable texts in history and the humanities from the branch I use - the Southeast Branch. The weeding was explained as then-new Library Director Ginny Cooper's "refreshing" of the collections, to bring them up to date. What she did was remove most of the serious books, substitute DVDs, CDs and comic books, and add more computers to branches. In less than a year, she claimed greatly improved circulation statistics at Southeast - and she applied the same plan at all the libraries.

I tried for months to find out what happened to the books from Southeast from Cooper's bureaucrats. I was told various stories - that they were added to the collection at Martin Luther King, Jr., that they would be "always available" - but they would just not take up valuable shelf space at more than one place. Not quite true. Today I learned from librarians that Ms. Cooper sold the books on amazon.com. She didn't bother to remove the stamps and bar codes that identify them as Southeast library books. As a result, conscientious buyers, who bought them for pennies, are returning them to the library, saying there must be a mistake - that these books belong to Southeast Library. Seems as though she just can't get rid of those classics.

DC City Desk - The Fenty administration's contempt for such essential community places as libraries with real books is further exemplified by recent comments by Deputy Mayor Neal Albert who wants the Tenleytown Library stuck in a high rise as though it was just another Starbucks. Said Albert, "a stand-alone library would eliminate any potential cost savings for the library, would make any future development on the site cost prohibitive." In other words, DC is to be one of the few cities in the world in which stand alone libraries are not considered cost effective. If Fenty wants Washington to be world class, a good place to start would by ridding his administration of people like Albert.

DC LETS YOU HAVE YOUR SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHTS AS LONG AS YOU TAKE FIVE HOURS OF TRAINING, PASS A TEST, GET A BACKGROUND CHECK AND THIRTEEN PAGES OF OT

DCist - With all the legislative back and forth over the District's evolving gun regulations since the Supreme Court deemed the city's handgun ban unconstitutional last summer, it's understandable that we'd all be confused as to how one goes about registering a gun. The Metropolitan Police Department has published a guide that attempts to clear up the process.

The 13-page guide details how to transport your gun to a police station for registration, what to bring with you (a valid D.C. identification card, two passport-size photos, proof of five hours of training), what you should expect (a 20-question multiple choice test on D.C. gun laws, $60 in fees for a handgun and $48 for a rifle or shotgun, fingerprints for the background check) and how long the whole process should take (5 days. . .

DC WEDNESDAY

INAUGURAL PANIC MODE

Dorothy Brizill, DC Watch - The Obama Presidential Inauguration Committee held a dress rehearsal for the swearing-in ceremony and parade that will take place on January 20. District residents and visitors first learned of the dress rehearsal and the closure of Pennsylvania Avenue from broadcast news reports, not from the DC Department of Transportation or the DC government web page devoted to inauguration news. By midmorning, however, District residents and visitors who tried to navigate around downtown by avoiding Pennsylvania Avenue found that the Committee and federal law enforcement officials had also closed down large sections of Constitution and Independence Avenues. When several media outlets contacted DDOT about the additional closures and the lack of public notice, they were referred to the mayor's office, the Metropolitan Police Department, and the Secret Service. Late this afternoon, Mayor Fenty told WTOP that he wasn't aware of the issue, but that he would look into what happened today. . .

This inauguration day is shaping up as a government-created disaster that should have been completely avoidable. What has happened this year is that federal and local authorities have panicked at the predictions - really guesses - of extraordinarily high numbers of attendees. At the same time, security officials, who always recommend a complete lockdown, have not been met with any resistance from an inexperienced DC administration that is already inclined to use extreme measures to control citizens . . . Either the extreme measures that federal and local officials are taking to make it hard to get to inaugural events will discourage a large number of people from coming to DC, keeping down attendance and ruining inauguration-related business, or they will create an unnecessary and counterproductive gridlock that this town has never seen before. Or, most likely, they will result in both.

INAUGURATION

Most unusual Inauguration Day ad (in the DC Current): "Inauguration Special: Toilet Tissue: 96 rolls/500 sheets. . . $48/case"

Washington Post - A total of 213 bars, restaurants and nightclubs formally registered with the D.C. Alcohol Beverage Regulation Administration by [the] deadline to serve alcohol until 4 a.m. and, possibly, stay open around the clock for inauguration week. In addition, 73 other establishments have applications pending approval from neighborhood associations with which they have special contractual agreements. . . The majority of the bars and restaurants are in Ward 2, which encompasses Georgetown, Dupont Circle and Gallery Place. Another 26 are in Ward 1, which includes Adams Morgan, and 35 are in Ward 6, which contains Capitol Hill.

Examiner Yeas & Nays - 49,000: Meals the Marriott Wardman Park hotel is expecting to serve over the five-day period surrounding the inauguration. . . 71: Miles of linens the hotel is expecting to use during that period.

The Coast Guard has approved water taxi service to get Virginians over to DC for the Inauguration. It will only cost $90 roundtrip

WASHINGTON TIMES SLASHES EDITORIAL BOARD

Richard Prince, Journal-Isms - The Washington Times, the daily newspaper voice of conservatives in the nation's capital, removed the members of its editorial board on Thursday, reassigning Editorial Page Editor Deborah Simmons and her deputy Tara Wall, both African Americans, to the newsroom.

The others, including Brian DeBose, a former national political correspondent, were essentially fired, DeBose told Journal-isms, although he said they were told they could reapply for positions at the nonunion paper. DeBose, who is vice president of the Washington Association of Black Journalists, said eight to 11 people are affected. . .

In a news release headlined, "The Washington Times Begins Move to More Distinctive and Authoritative Opinion Pages," the paper announced that Richard H. Amberg Jr., associate publisher of the Times, will oversee the editorial and opinion staff on an interim basis. . .

Adrienne Washington, another veteran black journalist at the paper, told readers in June that she was ending her local column of 16 years because "The paper's focus is changing and so, too, is mine." She now writes a more occasional issues-oriented column of news analysis for the national political desk.

PASSINGS: BIG AL CARTER

Washington Post - Allen D. "Big Al" Carter, an immensely productive artist who defied stylistic trends and commercial expectations to pursue his singular vision on no one's terms but his own, died Dec. 18 of complications from diabetes at Virginia Hospital Center. He was 61 and lived in Alexandria. . . His work is in the permanent collection of the Corcoran Gallery of Art and, during the past three years, was featured in museum exhibitions in North Carolina and Minnesota. . .

Mr. Carter sold some of his artwork to friends and collectors, but he was reluctant to part with much of it. Working feverishly at all hours of the day and night, he amassed a cache of thousands of paintings, drawings and collages that varied from wall-size murals to miniature watercolors that could fit in the palm of his hand. Most of his art has never been seen in public.

"Mr. Carter stood 6 feet 3 inches, weighed 340 pounds and possessed a gregarious, larger-than-life personality that made him an unforgettable character to many who knew him. He was known to one and all -- including himself -- as "Big Al" or just "Big."

Much to the annoyance of curators and collectors, Mr. Carter did not date his paintings and offered only vague hints at when they were made. He painted on canvas, TV trays, lampshades, boat rudders and home-movie screens, and incorporated musical instruments, brushes, wood and other objects into works. He often used house paint and rummaged through trash bins behind art stores for half-used tubes of oil and acrylic paint.

DC CLIPS

Jonathan O'Connell, Washington Business Journal - As developers consider 11 former D.C. school buildings the city is offering for reuse, charters schools are crying foul. Charter schools are required by law to get the first crack at empty school buildings, so D.C. offered up 14 of its 31 unused schools to charters in September and is in competitive negotiations for three of them. It then offered 11 directly to developers, issuing a request for proposals in December. But Robert Cane, president of the advocacy group Friends of Choice in Urban Schools, says that isn't enough. He filed a public documents request and found there were 18 charter school bids for the 11 buildings currently up for grabs. Cane doesn't see why developers should get a shot at those buildings if charter schools want them. . . The Fenty administration's position: It gave the charter schools a chance, as required, and those organizations can still partner with developers in bids for schools this time around. The D.C. Council is likely to get involved, with multiple council members already submitting legislation to alter rules for former schools.

Washington Blade - [David] Catania, who is gay, decided against introducing a bill to legalize same-sex marriage in Washington at the Council's first legislative session of 2009, holding off on action he told activists and his Council colleagues privately that he planned to take. His decision followed what appeared on the surface to be an ironic development: A number of prominent gay rights advocates lobbied Catania and other Council members not to take up a gay marriage bill so soon in the legislative year. "We need a few more months to get prepared to do this right," said Peter Rosenstein, a gay Democratic activist. . . Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), who also is gay, said as many as 12 of the Council's 13 members are prepared to vote for a same-sex marriage bill. But Graham said he agrees with the activists who cautioned against moving the bill at this time, saying the major concern is building support for the legislation in Congress and in parts of the city that might take up a voter referendum to overturn a gay marriage bill. "It would be easy to have a misstep that would backfire on us," Graham said.

The Washington Times ran a badly misleading editorial in which it mentioned a constitutional amendment or retrocession as alternatives for giving DC better representation but completely omitted statehood. If this is indicative of what we can expect from the new editorial team at the Times, we're in for a bumpy road.

THE MEDIA MUDDLED STORY OF TEACH FOR AMERICA

Daily Howler, July 2008 - Teach for America isn't GM-but it's no minor enterprise either. A lot of money is involved in the enterprise-and a lot of unfortunate "influence." Sam Dillon profiled TFA founder Wendy Kopp in the New York Times. He offered this overview of the program:

||||| Ms. Kopp has built her group into a powerhouse, with an annual budget of $120 million, a national staff of 835, and partnerships with Goldman Sachs, Google and other blue-chip names. This spring, she presided over its most successful campus recruiting campaign, and made Time magazine's list of the world's 100 most influential people. |||||

Kopp herself received a salary of $250,736 in 2005, the last year for which such data are available-though this fact is almost never mentioned in profiles or interviews. Six other TFA executives received salaries ranging from $125,000 to $202,000 in 2006.

For that $120 million annual outlay, Kopp and her staff of more than 800 recruited roughly 3700 teachers this past year-teachers whose salaries are paid by the school systems which employ them. In short, Teach for America spends roughly $32,000 per teacher just to send its young hires to their schools. . .

But does this program actually work? Therein lies the rub. Media outlets tend to avoid this question. . . Most specifically, they tend to avoid discussing the academic studies of TFA-studies which show that the program is something less than the miracle cure Kopp so plainly suggests. .

[A] 2004 study was conducted by Mathematica Policy Research. . . . In reading, TFA teachers did no better than other teachers in the schools studied. In math, TFA teachers performed somewhat better than other teachers. . . Students taught by TFA teachers progressed from the 14th percentile nationally to the 17th percentile in the school year studied; among other teachers, students began and ended at the 15th percentile. That gain is not nothing, but it's dwarfed by the tales of "incredible success.". .

Other studies had shown results that were even less favorable to Teach for America. . . Stanford researchers found this, in 2005: "Controlling for teacher experience, degrees, and student characteristics, uncertified TFA recruits are less effective than certified teachers, and perform about as well as other uncertified teachers." A 2002 study by Arizona State researchers was even less flattering. Its title: "The Effectiveness of "Teach for America" and Other Under-certified Teachers on Student Academic Achievement: A Case of Harmful Public Policy"

In 2000, Wendy Kopp went to visit GOP presidential candidate George Bush. Afterward she said, "Everyone came out of that room glowing, He really understood education and cared about what we did. He sounds like us, one of our teachers told me."

THE NEGLECTED NATIONAL MALL

Los Angeles Times - The historic promenade that stretches from the Lincoln Memorial to the U.S. Capitol -- the place often called America's Front Yard -- is itself a monument to neglect.

Patches of the once-lush lawn have been trampled to dust. Half of the underground sprinkler system doesn't work. The sea wall around the Jefferson Memorial is sinking, and lately, wildlife is dying in the unfiltered waterways.

Bill Line, spokesman for the National Park Service, which maintains the Mall, likes to say it has been "loved to death," an American treasure battered by 25 million visitors a year -- more than Yosemite and Yellowstone national parks and the Grand Canyon combined. As the crowds have grown, the budget has shrunk, and with $350 million in overdue care, the park service cannot maintain a standard that befits what many consider a national jewel. . .

Though the 2 million people expected to attend Obama's Jan. 20 inauguration will do more damage than the park service can mitigate, advocates hope the historic ceremony will draw public attention to its little-noticed plight. . .

"We would call it a disgrace," said Caroline Cunningham, president of the Trust for the National Mall, a year-old group working with the park service to raise half a billion dollars for a face-lift. There are plans to fix the light posts, upgrade the waterways and shore up the sea wall -- if the money can be raised.

DC THURSDAY

GRIDLOCK WE CAN COUNT ON

Dorothy Brizill, DC Watch - The Secret Service released its plans for street closings in DC on inauguration day, January 20, and they're wildly disproportionate to any past inaugural closing plans. They're not just meant to clear the area around the Capitol ceremony and the Pennsylvania Avenue parade, as they always have been in the past. Instead, they're designed to paralyze the city as a whole and to overburden Metro so much that it will be unusable on that day. Not only will three and a half square miles of downtown DC be closed to car traffic, but, in addition, all bridges and major roads linking the District to northern Virginia will be closed to vehicular traffic. These plans will inconvenience DC residents and workers, and they'll make it difficult for all the visitors to DC to get to the inaugural events they came to see.

As these plans have been made by the Secret Service and the Obama Presidential Inauguration Committee over the past few weeks, it has become increasingly clear that neither group cares in the least about accommodating DC residents, commuters, and visitors. It has also become clear that neither Mayor Fenty nor any DC government representative has played an independent role as a spokesman for our interests, and that nobody representing the city has tried to introduce common sense into the overblown, grandiose "security" schemes that will shut down our city unnecessarily.

Washington Times - The Secret Service announced unprecedented security measures for the presidential inauguration, saying it will shut down all bridge crossings from Virginia into the District and establish a security perimeter that closes or limits vehicular access on 100 city streets.

AAA Mid-Atlantic spokesman John B. Townsend II predicted the bridge closings will overburden entry points to the city through Maryland and create gridlock throughout the metropolitan area.

"It's overkill," he said. "It totally cuts off access from Virginia. This is the most ridiculous thing I've heard of in my life. It just doesn't make sense.". .

RECOVERED HISTORY: ORDERING 1,000 SANDWICHES

Community Walk - 1423 Penna Ave NW (now the Willard Hotel), once the site of Childs Restaurant, was paid an unusual visit by one of Washington's wealthiest women, Evalyn Walsh McLean, owner of the Hope Diamond. Appalled by the condition of the Bonus Army in June 1932, Mrs McLean was walking among them when, as she reported in her autobiography 'Father Struck It Rich," she turned to the chief of police after he announced he was going to get coffee for them and said "All right, I am going to Childs." As she retold it, "It was two o'clock (in the morning). . . a man came up to take my order, "Do you serve sandwiches? I want a thousand," I said. "And a thousand packages of cigarettes. . . I want them right away. I haven't got a nickel with me, but you can trust me. I am Mrs. McLean." The sandwiches and cigarettes were delivered. After this McLean obtained a tent for the markers to use as their headquarters and bought cots for the women and children to sleep on.

DC CLIPS

Gary Imhoff, DC Watch - The writer has a current connection with law enforcement, so asked me not to publish the message with any attribution, but just to use it for my personal information if I wanted. Instead, I decided that it may be interesting to you, so I'll pass it on anonymously: "For the second year in a row, homicides are up in the District. In fact, since Team Fenty and Team Lanier took over, lethal violence in the city has shot up more than 10 percent (169 homicides under Ramsey's last year, at least 186 this year). This is happening at a time when major cities such as Baltimore, Detroit, Philadelphia (Ramsey's new gig) and others are reporting significant drops in their homicides. Lanier's explanation of the 2008 homicide increase in the Washington Times is laughable. Every year, police departments (here and across the country) pick up 'old' homicides that are included in the current year count; she makes it sound as if the first time that ever happened in DC was in 2008.

"None of the facts on crime, of course, follows the Post story line of how well Fenty, Lanier, Rhee, et al., are doing on our behalf. So in the Post we get stories about useless stolen property posted on the MPD web site, but nothing on homicides. To their credit, the Examiner ran a pretty extensive story (for them) when the 2008 murder count passed the 2007 number in mid-December, but I don't recall seeing anything from the Post regarding that milestone. But as you point out in your most recent posting, people who are 'rationally ignorant' of the facts don't know that murders are up 10 percent under Fenty, and they certainly have no way of knowing, when the main news outlet in town ignores the story."

Samuel Jordan - What of the principle of equality for all US citizens who pay federal taxes? Such equality is not achieved with a single vote in the House and no votes in the Senate. What of the principles of legislative, judicial, and budgetary autonomy? . . . Of what benefit is one seat in the House of Representatives if residents of the District of Columbia must continue to be governed by the whim of Congress? Then there is Utah. What crisis in democracy afflicts Utah? Why is the reddest, whitest state in the union the charitable recipient of an additional seat in the House? The Post answers with a nod to maintenance of the "existing political balance" - a poor substitute for principle. Nothing short of statehood meets the combined principle and substance test. Frankly, everything else maintains the existing political balance.

The city council got off to a good start for the year by revoking Chief Lanier's subpoena powers.

Examiner, Yeas & Nays - President-elect Barack Obama has won over the hearts and minds of lots of Americans, but there's one interest group he may never win over: bus drivers. A Yeas & Nays spy was on D.C.'s No. 42 Metro bus this week when the driver called out, "Last stop for H Street!" This took a few regular passengers by surprise, because the bus usually continued on along this route. "Eye Street is blocked off," the driver explained. "Blame it on the president."

Keeping Homeland Security from Wrecking Saint Elizabeth's

THE CAPTIVE CAPITAL

The Democrats will soon be making a big fuss about giving DC a token vote in the House - or, as the late civil rights activist Julius Hobson put it, "sending a eunuch to an orgy. As a sign of how the effort to end the capital's colonial status has deteriorated, however, you probably won't hear much about DC statehood, the logical solution. And you certainly won't be told that in the early 1990s both the NY Times and the Washington Post, which then had more guts, supported DC statehood.

Washington Post editorial, Jan 13, 1993 - It is time to right a great historic wrong. Since 1800, the residents of Washington, D.C., have been the only tax paying U.S. citizens denied representation in Congress. With the election of Bill Clinton, it has become politically possible to give them the status that is their due. We believe now is the time to begin defining an then putting in place an arrangement that puts District residents on an equal footing with all Americans.

It has long been our preference to have this city remain the seat of the national government with increased municipal powers, which, taken as whole, would give residents the same democratic rights enjoyed by other citizens. The goals have included full voting representation in the House and the Senate, complete independence from Congress on budget and legislative matters, control over the local court system including the appointment of judges, an automatic and predictable federal payment formula and the ability to negotiate reciprocal income tax arrangements with neighboring jurisdictions. Achieving each, as a strategy was far more important than what the final package ended up being called. As a step toward that end, Congress passed a proposed constitutional amendment 15 years ago that would have given the city full congressional representation. Only 16 of the required 38 states ratified the proposal, mostly for partisan reasons. Republican lawmakers wanted no more democrats in Congress (and, as some suspect, many legislators wanted no more blacks there as well). The only achievable alternative, if citizens here are to enjoy the full political participation that is there due, is statehood. . .

Denying District residents the right to send people to Congress who can vote on taxes or decide questions of war and peace while at the same time expecting them to shoulder the burdens of citizenship--including the obligation to pay taxes and to fight and die for their country--is wrong. Forcing local officials to perform their duties under today's restrictive conditions is no better. . .

Congress at its whim passes laws regulating purely local matters, including the spending of local tax money. Even the city's own elected delegate to the House of Representatives can't vote on final passage of any legislation, including District-only matters. . .

Statehood opponents argue that the voteless status of the District descends directly form the intent of the Framers of the Constitution-from Washington, Madison and their peers. True, the constitution calls for a federal district (and the statehood proposal allows for one, leaving the `federal seat of government' to consist of the mall, monuments and principal U.S. government buildings). At the same time the government of the United States moved here in 1800, the largest city, New York, had a population of little more than 60,000. What would Washington and Madison say about a voteless city 10 times larger than that? We know what they said in 1776 in behalf of a colonist population only four times larger that today's Washington, D.C. They wanted to be among those who governed themselves. So do the citizens of Washington today. . .

New York Times, November 25, 1991 - The effort to grant statehood to Washington, D.C., could well become a campaign issue in 1992. A bill that would admit the District to the Union as New Columbia, the 51st state, was introduced in the Senate. And hearings on the House version of the bill saw a welcome burst of enthusiasm. Three Democratic Presidential candidates testified in favor of statehood and others sent messages of support.

That's as it should be. The District's treatment is a scandal, albeit one with a long history. The Federal Government runs the city like a plantation, denying it a voting representative in Congress, forbidding it even rudimentary self-rule and limiting severely its ability to raise revenue.

President Bush favors keeping the District on its knees. But Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas, Gov. Douglas Wilder of Virginia and Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa testified before Congress that the District deserved to become a full partner in the Union. The three were on the mark.

Washingtonians have long been denied rights that the rest of us take for granted. They weren't allowed to vote in Presidential elections until 1964. And it was not until the Home Rule Act of 1973 that they could elect a mayor and city council; both had previously been appointed.

The Home Rule Act left the Federal Government's dictatorial powers intact. Congress can overturn any law the District council passes. A powerful senator can throw some cash to friends by attaching amendments to the city's budget bill. And one meddlesome Congressman can by himself trigger bearings on any law by simply raising an objection to it.

The Federal Government is not above extortion. Mr. Bush recently vetoed the city budget, forcing the District to ban the use of locally raised tax revenues to furnish abortions for impoverished women. And Congress used similar blackmail to force repeal of a law that made gun dealers and manufacturers liable for injuries from assault weapons. The citizens have reinstated the measure; gun-lobbying senators may yet thwart it. The District's non-voting representative, Eleanor Holmes Norton, spends much of her time fending off odious infringements like these.

Fiscal restrictions abound. The Federal Government's real estate is exempt from taxation; the city is forbidden to tax the earnings of commuters, most of whom are Federal employees. District officials say these restrictions cause the city to forgo $1.9 billion in revenues per year. Last year the Federal Government paid a paltry $430 million in return. Denied sources of revenue, the city levies some of the highest taxes in the nation.

Those who oppose statehood typically offer weak constitutional arguments against it. It seems fairly clear, however, that Republicans who oppose statehood do so because the District would send two more Democrats to the Senate.

But most Americans understand democracy well. The issue of statehood for the District raises an obvious question: How can we justify championing democracy abroad while inflicting second-class citizenship in the nation's capital? The answer is obvious, too: We can't.

DC SUNDAY

A DC GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL WHO DOES IT RIGHT

Robert E. Pierre, Washington Post - Inside Oak Hill's barbed-wire perimeter in Laurel, harsh punishment for the District's juvenile offenders is out. Therapy is in. The dingy cellblock where the most unruly were sequestered, where they scribbled shout-outs to dead homies and angry threats on the walls, is abandoned. The cellblocks now have carpeting and cushioned furniture.

Striking an officer, smoking marijuana or destroying property no longer gets a young offender thrown into a dark cell to stew. Now, they call a meeting.
It's part of an evolving, controversial effort by the District to deter young delinquents from becoming career criminals by keeping fewer behind bars and surrounding the rest with counselors, drug rehabilitation and social workers at their homes to strengthen broken families.

Vincent Schiraldi is the outspoken architect of change. As director of the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services since 2005, Schiraldi rejects physical punishment and isolation to teach lessons. Instead, he dispatches his charges to camp in the desert, to rebuild houses destroyed by Hurricane Katrina and to perform Shakespeare for the mayor.

"You have got to lock up as few as possible," he said. "The ones you do lock up, you have got to treat them in a way that can turn their lives around and not create the self-concept that the next stop is D.C. jail and the federal Bureau of Prisons.". . .

During Schiraldi's tenure, the number of youths assigned to the agency has ballooned 73 percent, from 420 to 727 as of early this month. During that time, there has been a steep decline in the number of runaways and a 6 percent decline in recidivism as measured within a year of release.

He reduced the number of juveniles at Oak Hill from 120 to 80 by moving those awaiting trial to a facility in Northeast. . . Many juvenile-justice experts have praised Schiraldi, who won an innovators award from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

DC CLIPS

Loose Lips, City Paper - In his first 24 months as the District's chief executive, Fenty and his team have made a few apology-worthy mistakes. They plagiarized a schools document, they botched the response to a police shooting, and they managed the summer jobs program like a bunch of interns. But can anyone remember the guy in charge actually apologizing?. . . When it comes to matters for which he actually carries responsibility, the closest thing to a mea culpa that's ever escaped Fenty's mouth followed revelations that his deputy mayor for education, Victor Reinoso, had copied language from another school district in putting together a strategic plan for D.C. Public Schools. . . In fact, a Washington Post story notes Reinoso apologized to Fenty, but Fenty never actually apologized to anyone.

Houston Chronicle - The number of crashes at Houston intersections with red-light cameras doubled in the first year after their installation, according to a city-financed study. . . Critics of the initiative, which mails $75 civil fines to drivers photographed running red lights at 50 intersections, said the study shows that cameras actually cause more crashes and bolsters their argument that the program is more about generating revenue than protecting the public.

Stupid City Council Tricks - The D.C. Council has joined 15 states in passing legislation that prohibits government investment in companies doing business with Iran.

THE PRICE OF BRIBING STUDENTS INTO BETTER GRADES

Both Obama's education secretary Arne Duncan and DC school chancellor Michelle Rhee have backs bribing students to work better.

Pifactory - I teach in a very kind school. It's quiet. Teachers don't shout. It is supportive. And genuinely sensitive to the needs of its students. But, like in thousands of others, the gorillas, elephants and emperors in their behaviorist clothes stalk the corridors and classrooms.

Our latest, and well-meaning, attempt to unwittingly mobilize an elephant in aid of our students came with the printing of hundreds of little green bucks. Whenever we catch a student doing good, they get a buck and bucks means prizes. . . or something.

Millions of similar fraudulent bucks, or their sticker-star-grade equivalents, have been printed and doled out in classrooms in tens of thousands of other schools all over America.

Not quite on a par with the real bucks for good grades (up to $4,000 a year) proposed by President-elect Barack Obama's nomination for Education Secretary Arne Duncan in his September 2008 plan. But behaviorist rewards nonetheless.

After much initial enthusiasm, the modest initiative seems to have fizzled rather than be trampled. . . No one was sure exactly what the bang was you got for your buck. And that was the first question asked by students. Not, you note, what was it you wanted us to permanently change in our behavior?

Pretend bucks traded for compliance is not a new idea. Two centuries ago, in the first decade of the 1800s the first public school in New York City had tried giving out tickets (exchangeable for toys) to students who did as they were instructed. This early behavior modification experiment in bribery was abandoned because, said the trustees, the use of rewards "fostered a mercenary spirit" and "engendered strifes and jealousies". . .

[Alfie] Kohn. . . gives a blow-by-blow account of the research over decades that has similarly concluded that rewards (and punishments) - much bigger than a few good-humored pretend bucks - do not make sense. They not only don't work, but defeat the very purpose for which they ostensibly are frequently being used.

The risks of rewards include:

- Rewards and punishments are not opposites, just two sides of the same coin,

- The more rewards are used, the more they are needed,

- Rewards don't lead to lasting change,

- Rewards serve the interests of those giving the reward, not necessarily those receiving the reward,

- Rewards avoid asking about the reasons behind the need for rewards,

- Students working for a reward, do what is necessary to get the reward and no more.

- Rewards motivate. . . they motivate people to get rewards,

- Rewards are experienced as controlling, students recoil from anything that appears to diminish their autonomy,

- Consequences, positive reinforcement, tough love and student choices are just other ways of packaging behaviorist rewards and punishments,

And most alarmingly the research reveals. . .

- The more you want a reward, the more you may come to dislike whatever you have to do get it,

- Extrinsic rewards reduce intrinsic motivation,

- Extrinsic motivators, rewards and punishments, are most dangerous when offered for something we want students to want to do. . .

As Kohn warns: "If a teacher stops using extrinsic motivators tomorrow, dumps the stickers and stars and certificates in the garbage can and puts the grade book away, students are not going to leap out of their seats cheering, 'Hooray! Now we can be intrinsically motivated!'"

But at least without an 800-pound gorilla in the classroom there'll be the room to start to focus on the task at hand: helping students find and construct their own meanings on the road to learning.

FROM THE CONGRESSIONAL INAUGURAL COMMITTEE. . .

GETTING TO THE SWEARING-IN

Getting to the swearing-in ceremonies that morning will be very difficult because of the large crowds. In addition to the 240,000 ticketed guests, a million or more people are expected to view the inauguration from the National Mall between 4th Street and the Lincoln Memorial, along with hundreds of thousands of others who plan on watching the Inaugural parade down Pennsylvania Avenue.

The District of Columbia’s inaugural website will have the most up-to-date information on road closures and other travel alerts. We recommend that guests bookmark the site, http://www.inauguration.dc.gov/index.asp, and check it frequently for changing information.

A security perimeter will be established around the U.S. Capitol and the parade route on or before January 20, 2009. Subway stations, bus stops, and streets within that perimeter will be closed. Street closures throughout Washington, D.C., will make traveling by car or taxi very difficult. Bridges from Virginia crossing the Potomac River into Washington, D.C., as well as major roadways from Maryland into Washington, D.C., may be closed to all but bus traffic.

Within 2 Miles of the U.S. Capitol

For those people who will be staying within 2 Miles of the U.S. Capitol, walking to the swearing-in ceremony will be the most reliable method of reaching the ticketed seated and standing areas. Be sure to carefully plan your return trip as well – it won’t be possible to cross the Pennsylvania Avenue parade route, except at designated points and Metro will be extremely crowded.

For some people bicycling may be an option to get close to the U.S. Capitol. While bicycles will be prohibited within the security perimeter on January 20, 2009, the Washington Area Bicyclist Association is working on a plan with city officials to have bike valet stations available outside the security perimeter near the swearing-in ceremonies and parade route. More information is available at: http://www.waba.org/index.php.

Beyond 2 Miles of the U.S. Capitol

Use public transportation to get you as close as possible to the U.S. Capitol and walk from there.

D.C.’s subway system will be running “rush-hour” service all day, but is expecting “crush-level” crowds. Be prepared to wait for space on a train for long periods of time, during which you will have to stand in close proximity to several thousand people. Many Metro escalators will be closed due to crowding and individuals will need to climb Metro stairs or wait to utilize the small number of elevators at Metro stations.

The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) plans to run Metrobuses on Inauguration Day. Check its website, www.wmata.com, for information regarding routes and schedules. As with any other travel planning for January 20, please allow extra time and prepare a back-up plan.

AMTRAK www.amtrak.com, and regional commuter trains, Virginia Railway Express (VRE) www.vre.org and MARC (Maryland) Commuter Train www.mtamaryland.com/services/marc/ will be operating reserved trains on special schedules and are expected to sell out well in advance of January 20. Please visit their websites for more information.

ACCESSIBILITY FOR PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES

There will be no vehicular access or parking in the areas around the Capitol on January 20, 2009. This includes vehicles with special disability license plates or tags. While there will be locations outside the perimeter of the Capitol that will be designated as drop-off points for persons with disabilities, traffic conditions and restrictions may make reaching these drop-off locations extremely difficult.

As noted above, public transportation is expected to be running at “crush capacity” and WMATA has informed us that while Metro Access will operate for its regular customers, they do not expect to be able to provide pick-ups for people after events.

There will be designated areas for people with disabilities in each of the ticketed seating areas on the Capitol grounds, however these areas are limited in size and available on a first-come first-served basis. Persons in wheelchairs or utilizing walkers should be aware that they will need to move across bumpy surfaces, grassy areas, and possible icy areas (depending on the weather).

OTHER IMPORTANT CONSIDERATIONS

The weather in Washington in January is usually quite cold and often rainy or snowy. Please think carefully about whether you can stand outside in cold weather in a large crowd for up to six hours, and whether you are ready for long delays getting home afterwards.

Regardless of the weather conditions, umbrellas will not be permitted in the ticketed areas. Other prohibited items include, but are not limited to: Firearms and ammunition (either real or simulated), Explosives of any kind (including fireworks), Knives, blades, or sharp objects (of any length), Mace and/or pepper spray, Sticks or poles, Pockets or hand tools, such as “Leatherman”, Packages, Backpacks, Large bags, Duffel bags, Suitcases, Thermoses, Coolers,

Strollers, Laser pointers, Signs, Posters, Animals (other than service animals), Alcoholic beverages, Other items that may pose a threat to the security of the event as determined by and at the discretion of the security screeners

Bring with you any medications that you need because there will be very long delays in getting to and from events.

Be aware that it may be difficult to talk or send pictures from your cell phone, according to wireless companies. Please use text messaging to send critical messages.

The JCCIC will provide regular updates of this information to the media and via its website www.inaugural.senate.gov.

DC GOVERNMENT CUTS PUBLIC HEALTH AGAIN

Washington Post - D.C. officials are planning to privatize the city's mental health agency, a cost-cutting move that union leaders say would put about 200 health-care professionals out of work and force thousands of emotionally troubled residents to seek private care. . . They said city counselors provide care to the most difficult cases, people with deep psychiatric troubles. Those patients have developed a trust with their counselors and are less likely to make the transition to a private care provider

"What they're more concerned about are these vulnerable patients," said Vanessa Dixon, a labor representative for the Doctors Council of the District of Columbia. Unlike private agencies, Dixon said, the city treats patients regardless of whether the program is overbooked.

Private agencies "say, 'Oh, we can't see you right now. You have to come back in a month,' " Dixon said. "But you can't tell a mentally ill person to come back in a month. They need the medication immediately. When they don't get the medicine, they can't function in society at all. They can hurt themselves. It becomes a community issue more than just a family issue."

DC CLIPS

It's taken just over ten years for the Washington Post to figure out some of the consequences of the federal takeover of DC's prisons

Robert E. Pierre, Washington Post - Prisoners everywhere look forward to receiving letters and visitors from home. But for more than 6,500 District inmates, these visits are few and far between, because most of them are scattered in more than 70 federal prisons across the country, wherever the Bureau of Prisons can find space. It has been that way since 1997, when Congress transferred authority over District felons to the bureau and shut down Lorton Correctional Complex in Fairfax County, which was close to home but considered crowded and violent. . . "Why are they in North Dakota?" said Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), who plans to push for city teens to be brought closer to home. "It's a trip to the end of the earth.". . . "We the only black people in North Dakota," one of the inmates said, joking.

DC Examiner - For revelers expecting fancy food at their pricey inaugural balls, they ought not expect anything served fresh from the sea or frozen. 'Most events have to be delivered the day before' for security purposes, said Raz Nielsen, director of sales for Occasions Caterers. 'That takes out things like ice cream or raw seafood - we're not recommending sushi or raw bars.'

Mark Segraves, WTOP - The U.S. Coast Guard has proposed closing the Potomac and Anacostia rivers for the 11 days surrounding the inauguration. The U.S. Coast Guard says the restrictions are needed to "safeguard human life, vessels and waterfront facilities against sabotage or terrorist attacks." The closure on the Potomac River would apply to all boats from the Key Bridge in Georgetown down river to below the Wilson Bridge at Rosier Bluff. Boats already docked or anchored in that area before Jan. 14 could stay. The Anacostia River would have the same restrictions from New York Avenue/Route 50 to the the Potomac River. The proposal, which as yet to be finalized, says the restrictions will help the Coast Guard prevent people from bypassing security measures on shore. The Coast Guard may grant waivers or exemptions through the captain of the Port of Baltimore.

Paul Penniman, DC Watch - I recently parked at a broken meter for ten minutes, one of those clearly broken-for-weeks meters that is a prized spot. The ticket writer not only gave me a ticket but parked in a bus stop for a half hour while shopping for personal stuff. I had called in the broken meter, and so I appealed the ticket to adjudication services. They sent me a letter with some mumbo jumbo about "special software that monitors the meter status at all times. Outags (sic) and repair times are recorded by the software, which is then used to confirm whether there was an outage during the time period your ticket was issued. . . . the internal meter mechanism was tested, the meter status report was reviewed for the date and time of your violation . . . no outages were found on the date the violation occurred . . . the meter's internal mechanism was functioning properly." I walk past the meter several times a week, and it is still clearly broken. . . I have until the thirtieth to pay up, apparently. No in-person appeals are possible.

Washington Post - New rules have been proposed for D.C. public libraries, including a ban on sleeping and a limit on bringing in bags, in what library officials called an effort to make the system more welcoming. But Mary Ann Luby, an advocate for the homeless, said the bag and sleeping rules "are going to be hard on people." Chief Librarian Ginnie Cooper said she expected the new rules to take effect Feb. 1 at the Martin Luther King Jr. library downtown and at the system's branches.

Two interesting long essays on DC democracy and representation - by Nell Schaffer and Eli Zigas - are now available free online. Even experienced anti-colonialists will find useful new information here. For example, Shaffer offers this summary of anti-DC comments made during the tumultuous 1990s:

"Columnist Richard Cohen described the District as a banana republic, while Mary McGrory wrote in the Washington Post that the city deserved to return to colonial status. The Economist expressed similar sentiment, calling Washington voters "uniformly indolent." George Will, in an editorial in the Washington Post, maintained that the District deserved to have its sovereignty repealed, accusing its voters of electing "charlatans and demagogues." Will deemed the removal of home rule an appropriate punishment to for Washington's residents who chose "to be corrupted by the culture of pandemic government, the debasement of living larcenously off wealth created by others." The bottom line, according to Will, was the city was "unfit for home rule."

CITY PAPER INAUGURATION GUIDE

DC TUESDAY

THE 90 DAY CURSE

Candi Peterson, Save Our counselors - Whether our eyes are wide open or shut, there can be no escape from Rhee's ninety-day termination plan for DC teachers. I guess the reason that I am concerned about what is happening is because I know that DC Public Schools has always been a retaliatory system lacking in checks and balances. Early on in my public school career, I was riffed unfairly by a vindictive administrator despite having above average ratings. That experience gave me pause and made me suspect of a public school system that allowed many administrators and principals to go unchecked and regularly wreck havoc on programs, employees, and students, all the while refusing to follow rules, just because they were in charge. . .

DC teachers are not at-will employees, and can be fired only for "just cause" by law. The new evaluation process created by Rhee's administration has aborted teachers' due process rights. Based on one structured observation by an administrator, without regard to other performance factors, a teacher can be placed on a ninety-day termination plan. With only the recommendation of a principal and an instructional superintendent, DCPS can decide to terminate a teacher within ninety days or wait until the end of the school year. . .

A veteran teacher who had an exceeds rating for the last five years was targeted by a new principal who wasn't even aware of her stellar performance. A veteran teacher of eighteen years who has the highest test scores in his building was targeted for a ninety-day termination plan after speaking to Chancellor Rhee about the lack of Internet accessibility in his northwest school. It has been reported that the principal of Ron Brown threatened to place all of his teachers on a ninety-day termination plan. The Malcolm X principal allegedly placed six veteran teachers on a ninety-day termination plan after the December deadline. It isn't just coincidence that many of the teachers who are being targeted for ninety-day termination plans are over forty years old, veteran teachers, and members of a minority group, although, of course, there are younger teachers being targeted as well.

EASTERN MARKET

Mike Licht, Notion's Capital - Washington residents got a holiday gift from the DC Government. DC's Office of Property Management is finally rousting the rascals who have mismanaged Eastern Market and is taking direct administrative control on January First. Management of historic Eastern Market has been contracted out to a phantom DC nonprofit called Eastern Market Ventures (or Venture - documents differ). Who is EMV? Primarily Maryland's Site Realty Group, with apparent participation by principals of MilleniuM Real Estate Advisors (which provides the notional DC address - at the Watergate) and New York's Capital Properties..

Why would multimillion-dollar corporations bother battling for Eastern Market's chump-change management contract? Perhaps to gain credibility for bids to manage other historic fresh food markets, something that looked lucrative until Baltimore's Inner Harbor, Boston's Faneuil Hall, and other phony-baloney "festival marketplaces" tanked. Recently EMV, reconstituted as Market House Ventures LLC, ruined the historic Annapolis Market House; Eastern Market was gutted by fire on EMV's absentee management watch.

How did EMV keep the Eastern Market contract? Threats of lawsuits. How did EMV even get the Eastern Market contract when it didn't have the required IRS nonprofit status when it got the nod? Anyone who really cares enough should start by examining political donation records at the DC Office of Campaign Finance.

Mike DeBonis, aka Loose Lips, at Washington City Paper gives the latest facts and specs concerning the inauguration. Latest crowd is 2.5 million plus. . . Loose Lips: That's a steep drop from [Mayor] Fenty's early, fanciful estimates, Mary Beth Sheridan reports in WaPo. Which is good because, as Examiner reports, previous estimate of 4M "could overwhelm regional hospitals and jails, according to experts. And even 2 million, as more modest estimates project, would still prove problematic in case of an emergency.". . . And how bout this idea: "Officials could close the Southeast-Southwest Freeway to accommodate bus parking. That would require the closing of the Roosevelt and 14th Street bridges.". . . Dr. Gridlock has spoken: On Jan. 20, "because there will be a security cordon around downtown Washington, because use of some bridges will be restricted and because there may be limited access to some commuter corridors, transit still looks like the best bet for getting to work under these difficult circumstances." . . . Smithsonian Metro station will close completely. . . "Officials say backpacks, duffel bags, coolers, thermoses, umbrellas, lawn chairs and the all-important stroller must be left at home," says News Channel 8. . .

Sources tell us that the Obama administration plans to ban irony, so let us hasten to point out that the inauguration of the first black president will include discrimination against senior citizens and children:

DC Examiner - No strollers near the Capitol. No tents on the National Mall. None of that Silly String on the parade route. That's just a sample of the items forbidden from President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration for security reasons. And while many people say the inconvenience is a small price to pay to witness the swearing-in of the nation's first black president, others are scratching their heads, trying to figure out how they will sit, snack, carry diapers or transport tired tots.

Some older people are backing out of their inaugural plans, partly because of a no-chair rule for the parade route. Parenting blogs are abuzz with complaints about the less-than-kid-friendly restrictions. Thermoses, coolers and backpacks are out at both the Capitol and the parade route. . .

The tightest rules are reserved for the lucky 240,000 ticket-holders, who get to sit closest to the Jan. 20 swearing-in ceremony on the West Front of the Capitol. There are understandable prohibitions on weapons and pepper spray. But you also can't carry an umbrella. And don't think about holding up any "Yes We Did" signs - posters also are not allowed.

It could get tricky as people congregate along the parade route, where many items allowed on the Mall will be off-limits. That list includes bicycles, backpacks, aerosols (which could include Silly String), coolers, thermal containers and chairs.

Signs or placards can be brought to the parade - but only if they're made of cardboard, poster board or cloth and are not more than 3 feet by 20 feet. . .

The rules aren't so strict on the National Mall, where most people will end up because tickets aren't required. Officials have said everyone will be checked, but they haven't said what that will entail.

People won't be able to see much, except what's on Jumbotrons, but they can bring all sorts of stuff. Besides the obvious no-nos - firearms, explosives, fireworks - the only bans are on alcohol, tents and glass bottles.

DC Examiner - Health officials say hospitals in the Washington region are expecting to see up to 60,000 patients over the four-day inaugural festivities -- roughly double the number of patients they would normally treat. But that projection doesn't take into account a possible catastrophe or an unexpected outbreak.

"If the question is 'Is there a large amount of surge capability built in to hospitals?' The answer is no," said Dr. Eric Glasser, a physician at Georgetown University Hospital and president of the D.C. chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians. "Can we make it work for a short period of time? Yes."

Emergency rooms close to the Capitol will take the surge in patients with life-threatening emergencies like heart attacks, premature births and appendicitis, but officials are still working out details of a plan to ensure mobility of ambulances, which will be hampered by large crowds and closed roads.

Even Baltimore hospitals "are expecting a surge of patients," Michael Schwartzberg, spokesman for the Greater Baltimore Medical Center, said. Hospitals will be ready for everything from sprained ankles to the possibility of an outbreak of the norovirus. The nasty bug responsible for severe stomach and intestinal problems travels quickly in crowds and has recently shown up at big events in North Carolina and Minnesota.

Washington's already busy jails also will be under special stress. On a typical day, more than 1,900 of the 2,164 available spots in D.C. corrections facilities are filled. If even a small fraction of the Obama celebrants run afoul of the law, it could push jails beyond their limits.

This year a 12-hour racetrack event in Sebring, Fla., saw 68 arrests out of 170,000 people. In D.C., the crowds will likely be multiplied at least tenfold. And with bars and nightclubs open until 4 a.m. and protesters expected to descend on the city, officials are worried about handling the surge.

"The biggest mistake anyone is making is encouraging record-breaking crowds to come to Washington," said Paul Wertheimer, principal consultant at Los Angeles-based Crowd Management Strategies.

"They're pushing the envelope too much," he said. "They can't manage the kinds of crowds they are saying might occur."

In 1999, the Woodstock music festival had about 250,000 people, Wertheimer said, with 2,000 toilets and 2,800 police and unarmed guards. Inaugural planners announced that for potentially 2 million people along the National Mall, there will be about 5,000 toilets and 2,300 police and National Guardsmen.

"And people who think that happy crowds are problem-free crowds don't understand what dangers are and how they develop," Wertheimer said, explaining that most assassinations have occurred among happy crowds, and that happy crowds don't deter terrorists.

WASHINGTON POST STILL PUSHING FREEWAYS

Greater Greater Washington - Washington Post columnist and UMD architecture professor emeritus Roger Lewis usually makes a valuable contribution to debates about our region. He supports less sprawling development patterns, plans to make Tysons a "real city", and the Purple Line. That's why I was shocked to hear him recommend not just completing the ICC, but three Beltways for the Washington area during today's Kojo Nnamdi show:

"Ideally what we should have in the metro Washington region is something that looks like a cobweb. We have the radials, we've got one of the circumferential, we probably need three of them. My hometown of Houston, they already built the second beltway. There's an inner loop and now there's an outer loop. The ICC is envisioned, I think, as a fragment, as a beginning of what might be in 100 years be a completed network where you can move circumferentially, or east-west, north-south as easily as you can move radially along the roads that vector out from the city. I think the Purple Line is also part of this."

Houston's beltways have created and cemented the sprawl that Lewis criticizes in his own columns. It's generated stifling commutes, destroyed millions of acres of open space, damaged the environment, and made us completely dependent on petroleum. Plus, we've learned over the last 50 years that building new freeways doesn't relieve traffic, it just induces more. More beltways would make our current problems ten times worse.

DC CLIPS

Metro has just done its part to make life worse for DC's poorer and homeless residents. Doing away with paper transfers means that you're going to need $10 upfront for a Smartrip card to do multi-line riding without paying extra fares. It's not clear whether this is deliberate cruelty or just indifference but either way it's pretty sad.

Raw Story - A police officer for Washington, D.C. pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated assault on a protester he beat in the face with a riot stick nearly four nears ago. An 18-year member of the Metropolitan Police Department, Christopher Huxoll could face up to 10 years in prison for his altercation with a demonstrator during the 2005 Inauguration of President Bush. According to a press release, Huxoll threw the protester to the ground, lifted up his head and hit him across the face with his baton, leaving him bruised and bloody. . . Huxoll said he believed the protester had thrown bottles at him and his fellow officers while policing an unauthorized protest march where there had been reports of vandalism. But Cathy L. Lanier, Chief of the Metropolitan Police Department, said whatever he believed, Huxoll crossed the line.

FENTY'S WAR ON SCHOOLS & COMMUNITY PUTS ANOTHER 11 SCHOOLS ON THE BLOCK

FLUNKIN' DUNCAN

Sam Smith

If we're going to insist on judging our children primarily by how well they score on tests, we should probably do the same for education secretary nominees. The problem is that it spoils the fantasy that the major media has been creating around Arne Duncan. Still, turnabout is fair play, so here are a few of the results.

Duncan was named head of the Chicago schools the middle of 2001. The following results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress cover 2002-2007. To summarize what has happened in Chicago schools: not much. Bear in mind, that even where there has been improvement, it has amounted to less than a 1% increase in test scores over a five year period.

Fourth grade reading

Scores were 3 points higher in 2007 compared with 2005 and 8 points higher than in 2002. Total change: less than one half of one percent.

The 2007 score was lower than that of public schools in large central cities

Eighth grade reading

Scores were one point higher than in 2002.

Fourth grade math

Between 2003 and 2007 scores rose 6 points, or less than three tenths of a percent.

The scores in Chicago rose only 2 more points than in the state of Illinois at large.

Black students gained 6 points, Hispanics 2 points, and whites nine points.

Eighth grade math

Scores rose 5 points in Chicago and 7 points nationwide between 2003 and 2007

Blacks gained 2 points, latinos gained 6 points and whites gained 11 points.

Duncan - like DC's school chancellor Michelle Rhee - has fostered a dysfunctional rightwing, corporatized system of education that not only isn't working, it is damaging our children as it trains them to be obedient worker-drones incapable of analyzing or understanding what is really going on about them. This system is being enabled by the same media that for three decades enabled a dysfunctional rightwing, corporatized economic system that finally collapsed in 2008.

The dangers of this system include:

- Teaching our children only to give the right answers and not to ask the right questions.

- Grossly limiting education to fact accumulation and basic manipulation of data, leaving little time for analysis, creativity, judgment, philosophy, gaining social intelligence, as well as learning about, and participating in, the non-mechanical aspects of life such as art, theater and music. This system deliberately teaches our children not to think.

- Through the use of charter schools, turning public education into what was known in earlier times as pauper schools.

- Damaging communities by destroying schools, institutions that not only served students but their parents and provided commonality in ever more atomized urban areas.

DC FRIDAY

THE WELFARE FATHERS

Washington Post The Fenty administration is providing $10 million in tax subsidies to developers for three projects in neighborhoods where city officials hope to see further investment. The largest beneficiary is City Interests, a development company that is getting $8.8 million for its project, which includes 220 residential units and office and retail space along South Capitol Street in Southwest. A second developer, Four Points and W Street Acquisition, will receive $1.1 million for a residential and retail project along Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue in Southeast. The third, Neighborhood Development Co., is getting nearly $800,000 for a 70-unit apartment building on Georgia Avenue in Petworth.

In September, the District invited developers to bid for the right to redevelop the Park Morton housing project, a 174-unit complex in Petworth. But after developers raised concerns, D.C. officials modified the application process, easing potential financial burdens. Developers no longer have to put down a deposit with their application for the project, according to a memorandum written by Fenty's director of development, David Jannarone. . . Jannarone also wrote that the District is "willing to offer limited pre-development funding" to developers, money that can be used to pay for architectural drawings and other design needs.

Dave McKenna, City Paper - There is something memorable about the battle for the 2008 Unsportsman of the Year Award. The decisive moment came in October, with the announcement from Ted and Mark Lerner, owners of the Washington Nationals, that they'd be paying the $3.5 million they owed the city in back rent on taxpayer-funded Nationals Park-but only in exchange for $4 million more in taxpayer-funded concessions. That put the citizens' tab on the stadium to, oh, about $1 billion and four million. And counting. "I don't understand that deal," says Vincent C. Gray, chairman of the D.C. Council, speaking for pretty much an entire city. "They paid us the three-and-a-half million they owed us, and we give them four million. And that's what they owed us anyway, no matter what?"

COUNCIL'S LAST DAY

Gary Imhoff, DC Watch - By a vote of five to eight, the council rejected the lottery contract championed by Mayor Fenty. The mayor and the Washington Post wanted the contract to be awarded to Fenty's cronies, rather than to the longtime cronies of several councilmembers. Neither group got it, so the contract to operate the DC Lottery will be put up for rebid. Perhaps this time it will be awarded on merit, rather than on the basis of whose friends make the best sounding unverifiable promises about future performance.

Councilmember Mary Cheh turned in an unexplainable performance for a constitutional professor who in the past had championed civil liberties. She introduced an unconstitutional bill to limit free speech and the right to protest by forbidding picketing in residential neighborhoods, and then withdrew it at the last minute. And she amended the gun licensing bill by adding an unnecessary and useless training requirement that guarantees that anyone who files a lawsuit challenging DC's new gun regulations will win, regardless of Attorney General Peter Nickles' characteristic bluster that he will successfully defend them in court. . .

[A bill] passed by a unanimous vote, disposed of sixteen acres of city land on the southwest waterfront for ninety-nine years, at a charge to the developer of a dollar a year. Here's what one correspondent, who wants to remain anonymous, wrote about it: "We need the project, but the deal's terms and details were opaque. This was the worst and sloppiest year-end rush job ever, and the deal is third in size only to the stadium and the convention center. What's the scope of the subsidy? Who knows? What's the sweep of indemnifications? Who knows? What's the recurring added annual subsidy? Who knows? This was emergency legislation, passed in a way that totally denied the public access to the full terms of the deal. Most council members and their staffs don't know and can't articulate even in the simplest terms the outline of the deal or the financial returns on it. You should ask the council members, 'What was the deal? What did DC give and what did DC get? What was the net all-in cost? What is the net financial return to the district?' See what you get as a response. Such a megadeal should not be ramrodded through with such a rush and lack of consideration, certainly not in this fiscal environment."

DC CLIPS

Scott McCabe, DC Examiner Given the choice to serve drinks at a councilman's party or train to save lives, 32 D.C. fire recruits chose to save lives. Last week, The Examiner reported that D.C. Fire Chief Dennis Rubin had ordered his recruiting classes and their instructors to help D.C. Councilman Jim Graham host birthday and holiday parties, at a cost to taxpayers of about $4,000 per affair. Rubin insisted that using the recruits as waitstaff was part of the curriculum because it taught the rookies the importance of community service. But Monday morning, instead of ordering the recruits to that day's party, the fire department asked the recruits if they'd volunteer. None of them raised their hands, and the rookies continued their studies, according to a fire department member who asked not to be identified for fear of repercussions.

When The Examiner showed up to the Columbia Heights Community Center on Monday to photograph the recruits, D.C. Deputy Chief Kenneth Crosswhite insisted that the recruits were there, pointing to four men in the corner. "We're not going to let The Examiner dictate how we manage the fire department," Crosswhite said. But the four men said they were not recruits, but firefighters. Crosswhite then admitted that the recruits were not needed because the firefighters "were tripping over themselves" to volunteer.

Washington Teacher - A 'hit list' is a list of people or programs to be acted against or disposed of. This was the subject of the WTU Delegate Assembly's Tuesday meeting. . . On Tuesday evening, union members told horror stories of principals regularly interviewing DC students about their respective teachers in exchange for bribes of candy. While others told a story of a DC principal rating all teachers as either 'traditional teachers' or 'non-traditional teachers' on structured observations with traditional teachers being given lower performance ratings then their non-traditional teacher colleagues without explanation. Yet another discussed a situation in which a DC principal lied about who actually performed his structured observation. Another teacher reported that a principal lied on a teacher who presented their lesson plans stating they were non-existent. Stories abound of DC teachers not receiving promised interventions and supports.

Now even spying on citizens has become privatized, reports Mark Segraves, WTOP: D.C. will participate in a privately-funded crime fighting effort called Safe City. Funded by Target and Sprint Nextel, the program includes the installation of nearly 30 video cameras on street corners in D.C.'s Ward 5 Trinidad neighborhood. The new system allows police to monitor multiple cameras in real time.

Shelley Broderick, Dean, UDC School of Law - The UDC David A. Clarke School of Law is thriving. Among the best of the good news is that this summer, 92% of the Class of 2008 passed the bar on the first attempt in our main jurisdiction (MD) and 100% passed the DC bar. Nationwide, our first time 2008 pass rate was 82%. These are new records for us, but they are by no means aberrations: 85% of our graduates over the past 5 years who have taken bar exams have passed them, including 100% of bar-takers from the Class of 2004. . . The student body continues to be among the most diverse in the nation. And through our clinical, community service and internship programs and summer public interest fellowships, we provided 85,000 hours of legal service over the past year to some of the District's most vulnerable residents.

DC doesn't make it onto too many Top Ten lists, so it was nice to see us make the NY Times lists for the most corrupt places in America.

Gary Imhoff, DC Watch - Washington has lost two popular longtime restaurants with which nearly everyone has a history. Les Halles, serving thin French-style steaks and fries on a key corner of Pennsylvania Avenue, is already gone, and the historic Market Inn, part of Capitol Hill since 1959, is closing on New Year's Eve.

Washington Post - Dozens of sex workers marched through the streets of downtown Washington, demanding better treatment from law enforcement officials of prostitutes who become crime victims. Clutching red umbrellas and carrying signs that read, "Sex Work Is Real Work" and "Stop Shaming Us to Death," the men and women came from San Francisco, New York and other cities across the country to publicize a rarely discussed issue that they say is not taken seriously. . . "I'm just so tired of hearing, 'If I choose to do X, then I put myself on the line,' " said Charmus, 34, a transgender woman who gave only her first name. She lives in Maryland and said she has worked as a prostitute. . . Once the protesters reached the Justice Department, they stood on the sidewalk and told their stories under the watchful eyes of federal police officers. Leila, a 24-year-old woman from San Francisco, shared an experience that she said showed the importance of sex workers banding together. Leila said a client wanted to pay her at the end of their date and even provided his passport as collateral. She was skeptical, but agreed. Then the client said he needed to take money out of the bank, and she went with him. But at the teller, the client asked for his passport back for identification. When Leila handed it back, the man ran. Leila told the protesters that she chased the man and even caught up with him. He punched her in the face. But when she complained to police, she said, they threatened to arrest her for working as a prostitute.

WTOP - Thursday marks 11 years to the date that Festivus made its TV debut. You remember that from Seinfeld in the days when you actually watched a lot of TV. Around the world people are finding ways to celebrate "The Holiday for the Rest of Us." In Adams Morgan, at a kiosk at Columbia Road and Adams Mill Road people are posting their grievances on a board. Here's a sampling of what's there:"Everything costs too much.". . . "Poor escalator etiquette.". . . "Ladies tights and UGGs are not cute.". . . "I work too hard." On Saturday and Sunday all of the grievances will be read aloud as part of the "Airing of Grievances." And, of course, "Feats of Strength" will be performed, as well.

Now that the council has voted to raise the meter rates, could they get them fixed? Your editor tried three credit cards in one on Capitol Hill and none of them worked, so he had to go a kiosk across the street to get his little piece of paper.

Even in a town where much legislation has the feel of a turtle crossing Pennsylvania Avenue, Tommy Wells and Harry Thomas deserve credit for the most mind-bending insignificant change in a bill. After complaints that the previously approved 5 AM bar closing during Inauguration time was too late, they submitted a bill that changed the closing to 4 AM, which was approved. As we all know, most bar related violence occurs between four and five AM.

You won't hear much about this in the other media, but the murder rate has gone up under Cathy Lanier. Not much, but enough so we don't have to treat her as god's gift to law enforcement especially when she undermines the Constitution with apartheid style neighborhood blockades.

A group of activists including Wendell Berry and Bill McKibben is planning an act of civil disobedience in March at the Capitol Hill power plant. Their argument: "Coal-fired power is driving climate change. Our foremost climatologist, NASA's James Hansen, has demonstrated that our only hope of getting our atmosphere back to a safe level lies in stopping the use of coal to generate electricity. Even if climate change were not the urgent crisis that it is, we would still be burning our fossil fuels too fast, wasting too much energy and releasing too much poison into the air and water. We would still need to slow down, and to restore thrift to its old place as an economic virtue. . . We will cross the legal boundary of the power plant, and we expect to be arrested. After that we have no certainty what will happen, but lawyers and such will be on hand. Our goal is not to shut the plant down for the day-it is but one of many, and anyway its operation for a day is not the point."

FENTY SHOWING BUSH LIKE CONTEMPT FOR LAW

Bill Myers DC Examiner - A key D.C. councilwoman expressed concern Wednesday about a new executive order from Mayor Adrian Fenty that appears to grant Police Chief Cathy Lanier broad authority to issue subpoenas. The order, signed quietly by Fenty last month and posted on the city's Web site last week, gives the chief the power to probe "any municipal matter" and allows Lanier to delegate her subpoena power "to her subordinates."

Councilwoman Mary Cheh, D-Ward 3, a constitutional law professor and former prosecutor, wrote a letter Wednesday to Fenty, asking him to explain the order.

"I have grave concerns over the prospect that this authority may serve as an attempt to make an end-run around the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement," Cheh wrote in the letter, obtained by The Examiner. "To permit the chief of police to issue subpoenas would essentially convert the Metropolitan Police Department into a form of Grand Jury."

Rank-and-file members of the police department are worried that the chief will use her new powers to hunt down dissenters, union official Delroy Burton told The Examiner. "It's an extraordinarily broad authority and it's dangerous," Burton said. "It's unprecedented."

D.C. only has the authority to prosecute misdemeanors and juvenile offenses. Otherwise, it must rely on the U.S. Attorney's Office to investigate crimes and to issue subpoenas.

Tim Lynch, a criminal law expert at the Cato Institute, called the subpoena order "mind-boggling." . . . "This is an extraordinary development," he said. "It places the liberty of every business person or D.C. resident in the hands of a police officer."

American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Art Spitzer said the order violates citizens' Fourth Amendment rights. "The chief could use this power as if she were a grand jury and force people to come in to testify," Spitzer said. "I'd be concerned."

WHAT TO CALL THE HOOD

Came across this in the Hill East listserv, bringing to mind a time back the in 1960s when your editor - egged on by an Alinsky trained organizer - renamed the area for the purposes of his new community newspaper: Capitol East Gazette. The Capitol Hill Restoration Society hated the term Capitol East and many white Hillers didn't appreciate being dumped into a neighborhood that was 75% black. At that time, Capitol Hill generally referred to an area that stopped at Lincoln Park. It's nice to see the struggle still going on.

Living south of what I had thought of as Hill East but across the freeway (and thus psychologically disconnected) from the Navy Yard (and not really close enough to Barney Circle), I always wondered what my neighborhood should be called. A realtor told me it used to be called "Pipetown" for the workers at the Navy Yard but no one uses that any more. "Capitol Hill" didn't seem right but when I asked my neighbors who had lived here for years what to call it, they all said "Capitol Hill." My neighbor, who has lived on this street all his life, calls the neighborhood Capitol Hill but he did say that it used to be called "Southeast." I'd be happy to go with Southeast just to be a contrarian but I don't think the trend is going in that direction. - Amy H

For what it's worth, I live at 16th & D St SE, and my property tax assessment classifies the neighborhood as "Old City I." This isn't dispositive, but I'd be interested in seeing how the city government ID's neighborhoods. - Everett

It may show how long we've lived here, but I always understood Capitol Hill ended at Sixth street and so that made those of us in the seven hundred block on the far eastern edge just beyond Capitol Hill. I think people never have any clear idea. -S. Giesecke

There is the Barney Circle group and a group representing Kingman Park. Both are specifically locales in the general mix of eastern Capitol Hill area. There is also the Capitol Hill Restoration Society that looks out for many interests, including outside the Historic District, but its focus still is the Historic District, I sense. Then there is the Hill East Waterfront Action Network which -- I believe I can say this accurately as a founder of the group -- does not claim or try to represent a specific neighborhood but instead has participants who represent a range of interests and live in a variety of places. But what about the immediate neighborhood west of 19th Street? - Jim Myers

You live in a community, Jim. DC is such a parochial little town, that the issue of a few blocks to the east or west, or north or south of an invisible dividing line, seems to irk people to no end. And to no use, other then to claim ownership of something that doesn't exist.

Instead of people trying to figure out if other people 'belong' to a 'named' community (ungated, and unincorporated, so there is no 'ownership' of the name or designation) or are eligible to comment or post on a listserve or not, they should welcome the active interest, if not the active participation, of people who feel part of a community.

The definition (and designation) should be as (reasonably) flexible as the Constitution, which most rational people acknowledge was written at a certain time and place. . . as broadly as possible. . . and thus lends itself to reinterpretation to reflect the changing times, mores, and circumstances the country faces (within rational limits). Otherwise one ends up like Scalia, drawing lines that aren't there just because the definition wasn't precisely laid out for him over 200 years ago, when an issue (or area) didn't exist. - Dana Wyckoff

On the bright side, I was told by a PEPCO employee the other day that 18th st SE did not exist. We argued about it for about 10 minutes before he finally said "Sir, you can call me back when you have a real address." I guess I'm nowhere. - Apollo

JUST THE FACTS, PLEASE

Russell Mokhiber, Corporate Crime Reporter - Washington, D.C. has one all news radio station. It's WTOP – owned by Bonneville Broadcasting – which is in turn owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

WTOP has one national security correspondent. He's J.J. Green.

With major American newspaper giants closing down their foreign bureaus – and even their Washington bureaus – WTOP somehow has the funding to send Green to Israel for a week to report on how Israel copes with terrorism and the conflict with the Palestinians. . .

WTOP has a history of getting corporations to pay for various parts of their news, business and sports segments. Most memorably, Ledo Pizza bought the naming rights to WTOP's news room -- "The Ledo Pizza Glass-Enclosed Nerve Center."

One day in November last year, a WTOP announcer came on the air to announce that the entire afternoon rush hour news on WTOP was being sponsored by Boeing.

When we asked last year about details of the Boeing sponsorship, we were told by a WTOP spokesperson that "much of the information you are looking for we normally do not disclose."

Yesterday, we picked up the phone and dialed up J.J. Green.

We were just wondering, J.J. Green, now that you're back in the United States, who paid for your trip to Israel?

"That's not public information," Green says.

You mean, WTOP paid for it?

"The station will not release that information."

Did someone else subsidize your trip to Israel?

"You may not get that information.". . .

We ask [VP Jim] Farley – was there outside sponsorship for Green's trip to Israel?

"That's information we keep to ourselves," Farley says.

Did WTOP pay for it?

"It's information we keep to ourselves."

Are you saying that WTOP paid for the trip?

"No, I'm saying it's information we keep to ourselves. And we're not going to tell you."

Why not?

"Because you are obnoxious," Farley says. "We've dealt with you in the past. We have no need to deal with you in the future."

"Good bye."

And Farley hangs up.

2008 STANDARDIZED TEST RESULTS

This year we instituted the first standardized tests for city politicians. As with public school standardized testing, we only give the results and not the standards used to reach them, but we can definitively report that Phil Mendelsohn was the only city council member to come out with a positive score, albeit a not too impressive 5 points. All the rest of the council members had negative scores ranging between minus 4 and minus 8.

The worst city official is Adrian Fenty with a standardized test score of minus 49. Michelle Rhee is second worst with minus 25 points followed by Kathy Lanier with minus 20.

As a result of the poor test scores, consideration will be given next year to closing the Wilson Building and turning it over to a charter government or selling it to developers.

2008 STANDARDIZED TEST RESULTS

This year we instituted the first standardized tests for city politicians. As with public school standardized testing, we only give the results and not the standards used to reach them, but we can definitively report that Phil Mendelsohn was the only city council member to come out with a positive score, albeit a not too impressive 5 points. All the rest of the council members had negative scores ranging between minus 4 and minus 8.

The worst city official is Adrian Fenty with a standardized test score of minus 49. Michelle Rhee is second worst with minus 25 points followed by Kathy Lanier with minus 20.

As a result of the poor test scores, consideration will be given next year to closing the Wilson Building and turning it over to a charter government or selling it to developers.

DC MONDAY

A FEW QUESTIONS ABOUT CHARTER SCHOOLS

Sam Smith

If charter schools are so great, why isn't the DC school system modeled on their decentralized pattern?

Why aren't more individual DC public schools using the charter school model?

If charter schools are so great, doesn't that mean the ideas of Fenty and Rhee aren't that great?

Isn't the fact that parents get to choose whether they want to send their kids to charter school a de facto form of tracking, which is to say favoring children of parents with determination and sense of direction?

Imagine a child whose parents are employed and ambitious and a child whose single parent is a apathetic drug addict. Which child will likely end up in a charter school?

A certain number of students drop out, or are pushed out, of charter schools during a school year. The budget, however, doesn't go with them as they return to public schools. How much does this cost the public school system and how much does it rig the results in favor the charter schools?

How many students apply to charter schools but are rejected on some grounds? How many are quietly discouraged from attending for one reason or another?

8th grade math and reading scores declined for DC public schools between 2005 and 2007 while charter school scores improved. How much of this is due to the charter schools being better and how much to them having siphoned off better students from the public schools?

Some feel the charter school movement is driven by anti-union sentiment. If this is not true, are there any charter schools in DC that would accept a union agreement with their teachers?

DC CLIPS

Michael Neibauer, DC Examiner - A D.C. Council member is mulling emergency legislation that would bar demonstrations outside homes in residential neighborhoods, a response to increasingly aggressive protests by an extremist animal rights group. . . The legislation, at least one draft of which was obtained by The Examiner, would make it a misdemeanor "for any person to repeatedly engage in unwanted targeted picketing before or about an individual's dwelling place in a residential neighborhood with the intent to intimidate, threaten, abuse, annoy, or harass the individual."� Picketing under the measure is defined as "marching, congregating, standing, parading, demonstrating or patrolling without the implied or express consent of the occupant." The bill drew immediate repudiation from labor groups and the American Civil Liberties Union. The legislation is certain to affect unions and other organizations that use picketing as a means of getting their message across, said Johnny Barnes, executive director of the ACLU's national capital-area chapter.

Update: Chee has at least temporarily withdrawn this anti-free speech measure.

Washington Times - The District's unemployment rate is 7.4 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics. About 6,000 homeless people live in the city, roughly 250 more than at the same time last year. . . A recent local survey shows families -- particularly single-parent families -- are among the hardest hit by the nation's faltering economy, which started its descent a year ago with failing mortgages, then spread to the financial markets and now to all sectors of the economy. The result has been about 10.5 million people across the country out of work and a national unemployment rate of 6.7 percent -- the highest since 1993. he survey, by the District-based Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness, also shows the number of families needing short-term help from one of about 26 shelters in the city increased by more than 58 percent since last year, from 89 to 141 people. Roughly 49 percent of homeless families served locally are single women with children, like 33-year-old Brandi Barrow.

PASSINGS

Robert Prosky

Adam Bernstein Washington Post - Starting in 1958, [Robert] Prosky began an affiliation with Washington's Arena Stage that transformed him over 23 seasons and 130 roles from a struggling actor to one of the most versatile and prolific performers in a top regional theater.

He jokingly attributed his success to his paunch and prematurely gray hair, telling The Washington Post, "This hair and this gut are the two reasons I got started as an actor. I could play men 50 when I was 30, maybe 25. I could always play the funny fat man."

He also excelled in drama and at one point called on memories of his father, a Philadelphia butcher with a seventh-grade education, for his interpretation of Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman.". . .

He once told The Post he turned down the role of a bartender on "Cheers" and was grateful not to have been a part of the hit comedy because "doing the same role for 6 1/2 years" sent a chill down his spine. . .

Looking back on his career, Mr. Prosky told The Post: "Survival is of utmost importance for an actor in this society. I remember doing a commercial with Arena actors Terrence Currier and Mark Hammer. We played bugs in tights and leotards, with wings pinned on our backs and a sequined number on our fronts. We were the price of the television set and we did a tap dance. When my eldest son saw it, he said, 'Dad, do we need the money that badly?'. . . "At the time, I recall, I was performing Willy Loman in the evenings."

Warren Robbins

LA Times - When he started the Museum of African Art in 1964, Robbins had never been to Africa, never worked in a museum, never been involved with the arts and never raised money.

His vision of a museum of African art for Washington grew out of a trip he took in the early 1960s, when he was a cultural attache with the U.S. Embassy in Bonn, Germany. He and Sen. S.I. Hayakawa (R-Calif.) were visiting Hamburg one day and strolled into an antique shop where a collection of African sculptures caught Robbins' eye. He bought 32 pieces. . .

Six years later, he heard that a former Capitol Hill home of Frederick Douglass, the 19th-century abolitionist icon, was on the market. Robbins raised $13,000 -- his first foray into fundraising -- and took out a $35,000 mortgage to buy the house, where he put his pieces on display as the Museum of African Art. Later he purchased other houses on the block -- nine in all -- as his collection grew. . .

"With little money, through the largesse of friends and collectors, and an undeterred dream, Robbins established what would become one of the world's preeminent museums for exhibiting, collecting and preserving African art," said Sharon Patton, director of the National Museum of African Art, in a statement.

"He has a handsome facial structure, decorated with a Mephistophelean beard and enough black hair to show he's an artiste," Sarah Booth Conroy observed in the Washington Post in 1979. "He is a hunchback, not that it's kept him from piloting planes, skiing or collecting a number of 'longtime relationships' with women.". . .

Initially, he had to confront resentment against a white man running a black museum. He had a ready answer: "I make no apologies for being white. You don't have to be Chinese to appreciate ancient ceramics, and you don't have to be a fish to be an ichthyologist."

LEAVE NO BANKER OR DEVELOPER BEHIND: MAJOR CHARTER SCHOOL SCANDAL IN DC

This is the best Washington Post story we've seen in a long time.

David S. Fallis and April Witt, Washington Post When a band of Brookland neighbors packed a public meeting to try to stop one of the District's public charter schools from moving to their quiet cul-de-sac, their pleas seemed to receive a warm reception.

Thomas A. Nida, chairman of the board that supervises one of the nation's largest charter school systems, encouraged testimony from the group on that summer evening in 2007. "And anything else you've got to say, put it in writing and we'll take it," Nida said, noting that the charter board would not decide on the move for a month. "That way we will give everybody a chance to express their views."

What Nida failed to mention was his own stake in the matter. As a senior vice president at United Bank, he had been working on a $7 million loan to the Elsie Whitlow Stokes charter school to finance the very relocation that neighbors opposed.

By the time the D.C. Public Charter School Board approved the move in August 2007 -- with Nida recusing himself from the vote -- the loan deal was done. Nida's employer would receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in interest payments for years to come.

Homeowners on the losing end of that dispute had encountered one of the hidden financial conflicts of interest in the city's burgeoning charter school movement. Key members of the public bodies that regulate and fund the schools have taken part in official decisions that stood to benefit themselves, their colleagues, employers and companies with whom they have business ties, The Washington Post has found.

The Post's review found conflicts of interest involving almost $200 million worth of business deals, typically real estate transactions, at more than a third of the District's 60 charter schools. The conflicts are documented in thousands of pages of internal charter board documents, land records, tax returns, audits and other records reviewed by The Post.

James V. Grimaldi and Theola Labbe-DeBose,Washington Post - Thomas A. Nida often has played two roles when District charter schools enter into real estate deals. As a banker, he has arranged loans to the schools or their landlords. And as chairman of the public board that oversees charters, he has approved the schools' borrowing and spending. But in one episode, Nida ended up wearing three hats.

The deal centered on the old Kingsman public school, a Northeast landmark that closed in 1993 because of declining enrollment. Kingsman became an eyesore and a haven for drug dealers, with punched-out windows and peeling paint cascading onto the floors. In 2003, a charity bought the dilapidated edifice from the city for about $300,000 and began to renovate it for charter schools.

Nida was the bank officer who handled the initial $2.45 million construction loan to the tax-exempt organization, Charter School Development Corp., known as CSDC. Soon after, Nida was appointed to the Public Charter School Board and began taking official actions that affected CSDC and its tenants. Then, as a banker, he refinanced the loan. After that, he joined the nonprofit group's board of directors, where he further helped expand its financing to obtain city revenue bonds.

Finally, in July 2006, Nida made a move that led to a financial windfall for CSDC. He led the effort and cast the deciding vote that shut down one of the two charter schools renting space in Kingsman, clearing the way for the other tenant to purchase the 54,810-square-foot building.

CSDC made almost $1 million from the sale. "We made a nice gain on it," said Frank Riggs, the former California congressman who is the group's chief executive, "which we need, to be candid with you, to offset the risk for properties we own in northwest Indiana."

Nida did not disclose his multiple roles in the Kingsman deal at a public hearing, according to a transcript, or before the vote, according to two charter board members who voted against the closure. Nida also has not listed his CSDC board membership on the financial disclosure forms he filed with the city. Nida said yesterday that he did not think he needed to disclose the position because it was unpaid.

April Witt and David S. Fallis, Washington Post - The D.C. charter school credit enhancement committee has operated largely out of public view for most of its eight years of existence. Yet it has awarded $47 million in taxpayer loans and guarantees to more than 30 schools or their developers. That generous funding has been a decisive factor in the District's charter school system's becoming one of the largest in the nation.

The committee's generosity has also benefited banks and private companies that have business ties to committee members, including the current chairman, Barbara "Bobbie" Hart, public records show.

Committee members or their employers have had financial ties to about a third of the applicants or projects that the committee has voted to fund with public money. Since Hart joined the committee in 2006, the panel has voted repeatedly to award taxpayer funds to charter schools or developers with ties to Adams National Bank, where Hart is a vice president. Hart has recused herself from all but two votes involving applicants that had given her loan business or were about to, records show. She declined to comment.

Congress created the five-member committee to award taxpayer money to help lease, buy or build charter school facilities. The committee, which operates under the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, has awarded charter schools or their developers about $22 million in "credit enhancement" money, typically for collateral to secure commercial bank loans. The committee has lent an additional $25 million for facility-related expenses. ad_icon

The committee has been dominated by bankers, developers and investment professionals appointed by the mayor's office and the charter school board. Of the 10 people who have served as members since 2000, more than half have been involved privately in the financing or development of schools or worked for companies that were, records show. Overall, almost $20 million in taxpayer funding has been awarded to schools or developers that conducted business with committee members or their companies.

One of the original members of the credit enhancement committee was Matt HoganBruen of Bank of America. During his five years on the committee, it awarded millions in taxpayer subsidies to charter schools or their developers that were Bank of America loan customers, records show.

"It is the policy of Bank of America and the personal policy of Matt HoganBruen not to knowingly vote on transactions positively affecting" Bank of America customers, a bank spokesman said in an e-mail. The statement said it was "not uncommon" for the committee to discuss financing without members knowing which banks were involved.

DON'T SELL DC SHORT

Bill Mosley - Why stop at a single vote in the House? Norton and Fenty counsel against demanding too much too soon. But the political stars may never again be aligned in the District's favor as much as they are now. It's possible that Democrats could lose seats in 2010, thereby diminishing the District's chances. And the District is a very different place than in 1993 when the previous statehood bill was defeated in Congress. Then, the District was plagued by a crack epidemic and stood on the brink of fiscal insolvency. Today, crime is declining and the District has produced balanced budgets for 12 consecutive year. The district has become a magnet for retailers, and more people find it a desirable place to live.

Norton, in particular, has opposed an immediate push for statehood because the District lost some of its state responsibilities, such as prisons and courts, in the 1997 DC Revitalization Act. But this should be no obstacle. A statehood bill could simply include a provision that would require the District to assume these functions. The financial burden of taking on these duties would be substantially eased by the fact that statehood would enable the District to enact a commuter tax – something it is currently forbidden to do.

Moreover, never in our country's history has voting representation been awarded by any method other than statehood, and a voting-rights bill is certain to be challenged in court. Should we abandon the constitutionally tested path of statehood for the uncertain ground of stateless voting rights?

DC FRIDAY

WTOP - Estimating how big the Inauguration Day crowds will be in D.C. is a huge challenge, and so is guessing the need for port-o-potties. Almost 150 will be set up outside Metro stations, but the total number to be placed downtown has yet to be determined. WTOP asked Bob Barton with United Site Services, the largest rent-a-john company in the United States, how many he thinks the city will need. "We've certainly heard estimates anywhere from two to three thousand toilets", Barton says. But the only problem isn't just how many, but where. "1,500 portable toilets, if you put them side by side, is a line a mile and a half long, " he says. Barton's company has already received an order for more than 500 toilets from the architect of the Capitol. And for some of the VIP events, Barton says they'll bring in luxury restroom trailers.

WMAL - The Secret Service is giving out more information about what to expect on the National Mall and along Pennsylvania Avenue on Inauguration Day, January 20th. Federal officials today urged people not to arrive on the National Mall until at least 4 a.m. and added the parade route will not be open until 7 a.m. Those heading to the Mall can bring chairs, coolers, strollers, backpacks and food, but cannot bring alcohol, glass containers, tents or firearms. There will also be no camping out either on the mall or along the parade route. No strollers, coolers or chairs will be allowed along the parade route. The Secret Service does not expect four-million people for the event as some have predicted. As far as Metro goes, the transit agency says it can handle up to 960-thousand people on Inauguration Day, but expect what they call "crush" load conditions. They advise people to walk when possible.

Thorns to Mother Jones for adding to the widespread misinformation about DC statehood. Said reporter Jonathan Stein, the statehood movement "has never generated the nationwide support needed to pass a constitutional amendment." No constitutional amendment is needed for statehood. Just a majority of the Congress and the president's signature.

Washington Post - The District's 2008 homicide total is on pace to equal last year's while other jurisdictions are experiencing fewer slayings, suggesting that city leaders are struggling to maintain significant declines in the homicide rate in recent years. "It's perplexing why the number of homicides is not going down in the District when it is going down elsewhere," said D.C. Council member Phil Mendelson, at-large Democrat and chairman of the Committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary. . . Metropolitan Police Department statistics show that 175 homicides were reported in the District as of Tuesday morning, equal to the number on the same date last year. This is the second year of police Chief Cathy L. Lanier's tenure, and the number is approaching last year's total of 181 homicides during all of 2007. By comparison, police officials said, Baltimore's homicide rate has dropped from 270 last year to 221 to date, and Richmond's homicides stood at 33 compared with 50 in 2007. In Philadelphia - where former D.C. police Chief Charles H. Ramsey took the helm of the police department in January - homicides have dropped from 375 to 313 through Tuesday morning. In Prince George's County, 125 homicides have been reported to date compared with 133 at the same time last year.

DC Examiner - District fire academy recruits will spend part of their training time serving drinks and passing out cake at a council member's ward parties rather than learning how to save lives and fight fires. D.C. Fire Chief Dennis Rubin has assigned the 32-member recruiting class and its instructors to serve as waiters and hosts at a Holiday Bash on hosted by D.C. Councilman Jim Graham. This comes four months after Rubin ordered the recruits to help with Graham's 63rd birthday at the Columbia Heights Community Center. . . .Rubin said the parties are community events. Working at them helps introduces the rookies to the public and reinforces the lesson that the firefighter's job is about community service, Rubin said. The recruits help out by serving lunch, pouring soft drinks and helping invalids out of vehicles, Rubin said. . . Kenny Lyons, head of the District's paramedics union, said using District employees to further aid a political figure, such as a D.C. Council member, is a "woeful violation" of the Hatch Act. The federal law prohibits D.C. government employees from engaging in partisan political activity while on duty or in uniform. "He's using the recruits to write a political check," Lyons said. "This totally blows my mind. It's either ignorance or arrogance or both, but it's no excuse for violation of the law."

RECOVERED HISTORY: THE BATTLE OF FT. STEVENS

The news that the ferry Jubal Early had become stuck in the Potomac River recalls an overlooked moment in DC and American history

The July 11, 1864 Battle of Ft. Stevens, which not only was the only time the Confederates directly threatened Washington, was important in another regard: it was one of the few times in history where bureaucrats have played a significant military role, having been called out (along with lightly wounded troops in the hospital) to help defend the city.

In the summer of 1864, Confederate General Jubal Early pushed his way towards Maryland with 20,000 men. General Wallace, a Union recruit trainer in Baltimore, found himself faced with an invasion but was uncertain whether the target was Washington or Baltimore. Wallace chose Frederick, MD, to make his stand, with the help of troops sent by train from Baltimore. With only 6,000 troops to defend six miles of river, he found himself overwhelmed. On the afternoon of July 9, the Union force left some 1,800 casualties and retreated to Baltimore. The confederates lost 1,300 men.

Though his own force was battered, Early knew the immense coup that capturing Washington would be. Further he probably knew that Washington had only about 9,000 regular troops to guard the whole city, Grant having removed some 14,000 soldiers to help him battle Lee around Richmond and Petersburg. Early sent out sorties on July 11 toward Ft. Stevens, located at the north end of Washington. They found a battlement protected only by home guards, clerks, and recovering soldiers literally rousted from their hospital beds to help defend the city. a ragtag force of 2,300.

By light of the next day, however, Early found the fort manned by regular troops, reinforcements who had arrived from Virginia and who repulsed Early's sorties. By the end of the day, Early was in full retreat. There had been 874 casualties. Among the spectators for the two days were Abraham Lincoln and his wife. One Ohio soldier would remember, "Lincoln got to the fort ahead of us. He was quiet and grave. He mounted the parapet so he could see better, and I saw him there in full view of the Johnnies, watching them and what went on inside. You can imagine what a target he made with tall form and stovepipe hat."

Lincoln became the only president ever to have come under direct fire and, according to legend, was told by a young soldier named Oliver Wendell Holmes to "get down, you damn fool." Still another story has a colonel telling Lincoln, "Please come down to a safe place. If you do not, it will be my duty to call a file of men and make you." Lincoln replied, "And you would be quite right, my boy. You are in command of this fort. I should be the last man to set an example of disobedience."

The Union force held and Early gave up his invasion of Maryland and DC and returned to the upper Potomac at a crossing known as White's Ford, which would later become the home-port of perhaps the world's only ferry whose bridge once consisted of an overstuffed armchair on the same deck as the cars. It was called the "Jubal Early."

Early admitted to his staff that "We didn't take Washington, but we scared Abe Lincoln like Hell."

HOW ABOUT POLICE CHECKPOINTS FOR ADAMS MORGAN?

News of a murder near Adams Morgan's on 18th Street raises the possibility that Police Chief Kathy Lanier will want to establish police checkpoints for those coming to the popular entertainment district just as she did for Trinidad. It would be interesting to see whether staffers at WPFW and City Paper - both just a couple of blocks from the crime scene - would be permitted through the blockade.

Of course, they could cite Archbishop Desmond Tutu on the Gaza checkpoints: "Coming from South Africa . . . and looking at the checkpoints . . . when you humiliate a people to the extent that they are being. . . humiliated - when you do that, you're not contributing to your own security."

But we suspect that it won't be necessary because Adams Morgan isn't Trinidad. Murders in the better off parts of town have fewer victims because the police don't lock everyone down.

EDUCATING FOR GREATNESS, NOT GRADES

From a group of educators

In 1983 a National Commission on Excellence in Education issued a "Nation At Risk Report" and set in motion a series of government-imposed reforms, all based on a false goal, student achievement in curriculum. The latest of these reforms, "No Child Left Behind," put extra pressure on teachers to ignore the diverse needs of students and to standardize their education through scripted reading, writing, and math. This top-down pressure is evidence that public school teaching is not regarded as a profession in our society.

Over many years our culture has become so obsessed with curriculum we have lost sight of our purpose - curriculum for what? Student achievement in curriculum has become a false goal, an end in and of itself. Grade-point-averages have become the main indicators of achievement in education. We have a cultural cramp - a mass mind-set that spawns counterfeit reform movements.

For genuine reform of public education we must start with a clear purpose. We suggest Education for Human Greatness.

In 1973, ten years before "Nation at Risk," the teachers at Hill Field Elementary School in Clearfield, Utah decided to ask parents about their priorities for the education of their children. In interviews with thousands of parents, over several years, teachers were surprised to learn of three needs that parents felt were more important to them than the need to have a child achieve in reading, writing and arithmetic.

First, parents wanted teachers to respect children as individuals, to pay attention to each child's special needs, and to help youngsters develop their unique talents and abilities.

Second, they wanted children to increase in curiosity and passion for knowledge - they wanted children to "fall in love with learning."

And third, parents wanted teachers to help children learn how to express themselves, communicate and get along. The priorities were so consistent with nearly every parent, the teachers surmised that these may be the core needs of people in every culture - the need to know who we are and what we can become (identity), the need for knowledge (inquiry), and the need for respect and love (interaction).

This finding led to a new concept - curriculum should not be viewed as a goal, but as a tool to help students grow in identity, inquiry and interaction. Even though the concept was temporarily smothered by the standardization movement, it remained alive all these years and has now evolved to become a framework for authentic changes of public, private and other forms of education with four priorities added as shown below:

1. Identity - Help students learn who they are - as individuals with unlimited potential, develop their unique talents and gifts to realize self-worth and develop a strong desire to be contributors to family, school and community.

2. Inquiry - Stimulate curiosity; awaken a sense of wonder and appreciation for nature and humankind. Help students develop the power to ask important questions.

3. Interaction - Promote courtesy, caring, communication and cooperation.

4. Initiative - Foster self-directed learning, will power and self-evaluation.

5. Imagination - Nurture creativity in all of its many forms.

6. Intuition - Help students learn how to feel and recognize truth with their hearts as well as with their minds - develop spirituality and humility.

7. Integrity - Develop honesty, character, morality and responsibility for self.

Surprise: When reading, writing, math and other disciplines are taught as tools rather than goals, students learning produces more depth and breadth, they retain more of what they learn and are able to apply it to solve other problems. This "higher vision" allows teachers to perform as professionals who involve parents and inspire students to accomplish amazing things.

OBAMA'S EDUCATION CHOICE

Greg Palast - Trial balloons lofted in the Washington Post suggest President-elect Obama is about to select Joel Klein as Secretary of Education. If not Klein, then draft-choice number two is Arne Duncan, Obama's backyard basketball buddy in Chicago. . .

Klein, who lacks even six minutes experience in the field, was handed management of New York's schools by that political Jack-in-the-Box, Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The billionaire mayor is one of those businessmen-turned-politicians who think lawyers and speculators can make school districts operate like businesses. Klein has indeed run city schools like a business - if the business is General Motors. Klein has flopped. Half the city's kids don't graduate.

Klein is out of control. Not knowing a damn thing about education, rather than rely on those who actually work in the field (only two of his two dozen deputies have degrees in education), Klein pays high-priced consultants to tell him what to do. He's blown a third of a billion dollars on consultant "accountability" projects plus $80 million for an IBM computer data storage system that doesn't work.

What the heck was the $80 million junk computer software for? Testing. Klein is test crazy. He has swallowed hook, line and sinker George Bush's idea that testing students can replace teaching them. The madly expensive testing program and consultant-fee spree are paid for by yanking teachers from the classroom.

Ironically, though not surprisingly, test scores under Klein have flat-lined. Scores would have fallen lower, notes author Jane Hirschmann, but Klein "moved the cut line," that is, lowered the level required to pass. In other words, Klein cheats on the tests.

Nevertheless, media poobahs have fallen in love with Klein, especially Republican pundits. The New York Times' David Brooks is championing Klein, hoping that media hype for Klein will push Obama to keep Bush schools policies in place, trumping the electorate's choice for change. . .

The anti-union establishment has a second stringer on the bench waiting in case Klein is nixed: Arne Duncan. Duncan, another lawyer playing at education, was appointed by Chicago's Boss Daley to head that city's train-wreck of a school system. Think of Duncan as "Klein Lite."

Duncan was once captain of Harvard's basketball team and still plays backyard round-ball with his Hyde Park neighbor Obama. But Michelle has put a limit on their friendship: Obama was one of the only state senators from Chicago to refuse to send his children into Duncan's public schools. My information is that the Obamas sent their daughters to the elite Laboratory School where Klein-Duncan teach-to-the-test pedagogy is dismissed as damaging and nutty.

Lawyer Duncan is proud to have raised test scores by firing every teacher in low-scoring schools. Which schools? There's Collins High in the Lawndale ghetto with children from homeless shelters and drug-poisoned 'hoods. They don't do well on tests. So Chicago fired all the teachers. They brought in new ones - then fired all of them too: the teachers' reward for volunteering to work in a poor neighborhood.

It's no coincidence that the nation's worst school systems are run by non-experts like Klein and Duncan. . .

It's not just Klein's and Duncan's empty credentials which scare me: it's the ill philosophy behind the Bush-brand education theories they promote. "Teach-to-the-test" (which goes under such pre-packaged teaching brands as "Success for All") forces teachers to limit classroom time to pounding in rote low-end skills, easily measured on standardized tests. The transparent purpose is to create the future class of worker-drones. Add in some computer training and - voila - millions trained on the cheap to function, not think. Analytical thinking skills, creative skills, questioning skills will be left to the privileged at the Laboratory School and Phillips Andover Academy.

We hope for better from the daddy of Sasha and Malia.

DC SATURDAY

ANOTHER DAY WITH RHEE

Sue Hemberger, Concerned 4 DCPS - Rhee wants to be your personal savior -- she seems delighted to reach down and take on some individual's request (find me a job, find me a school, fix my computer) because what she gets in response is so much flattery (which can then be translated into great PR on an anecdotal level). Reminds me of State of the Union Addresses where some ordinary Joe gets to sit with the First Lady while the President tells his humble and inspiring tale. Or, more surrealistically, of Bunuel's Simon of the Desert.

Gary Imhoff, DC Watch - The Washington Post shares Rhee's faith that the path to improvement is to get rid of older, experienced workers in favor of younger, inexperienced ones, assuming that the new workers will have an initial burst of energy and enthusiasm that will make up for their lack of background and knowledge. Malcolm Gladwell, in his new book Outliers, argues "that excellence at a complex task requires a critical, minimum level of practice," and that "researchers have settled on what they believe is a magic number for true expertise: 10,000 hours," It's a commonsense notion, long ago distilled into three words: "practice makes perfect." Rhee rejects it; she thinks teachers are best at the beginning of their careers, and that practice at teaching makes them imperfect. Similarly, over the past few years the Post has used repeated worker buyouts to rid its newsroom of many of its best writers and editors, those with years of experience and depth of knowledge in their fields. As readers of the newspaper, we've seen how well that is working out.

DC CLIPS

When your editor first heard about the plan to name a portion of South Capitol Street "Taxation Without Representation Street" he immediately recalled answering his door on A Street NE and being confronted by five firemen, a hose, and several hatchets. "I think you want A Street SE," he said. Now imagine a tourist calling 911 and reporting a fire or a mugging on the Taxation Without Representation Street. The dispatcher says, "That's not a street. What's the real name?" And the tourist replies, "Well, that what it says on the sign." And the flames go happily on.

Since the DC Council has finally admitted that it can't ban gun owners, it will just harass them instead. The new legislation requires renewal of gun licenses every three years and annual notification as to whether they still own a gun. They also have to undergo a background check every six years. Of course, if you're a murderer or other violent criminal you'll just keep on ignoring all gun laws, so the only people affected will be the good guys.

Valencia Mohammed, Informer - Hundreds of bands from all across the country are competing for an opportunity to showcase their talents in the upcoming Presidential Inaugural Parade . . . While more than a dozen groups hope to be the entity to represent the District of Columbia, many residents believe the nation's capital should have more than one participant. Sources said Howard University, Ballou, Cardozo and Eastern Senior High School are at the top of the list to represent the District. The tug-of-war to represent the place where the first-elected African American president will live has become a silent "battle of the bands." According to Maj. Maurine Schumann, media spokeswoman for the Armed Forces Inaugural Committee, it has received over 1,500 applications for bands, motorcades, organizations and other parade participants. "We've never seen anything like this" Schumann said. "

Marc Segraves, WTOP - Jim Graham, the bow tie wearing councilmember from Ward 1, thinks some of his colleagues in the D.C. Council are quiche-hating ingrates. "I think there's an anti-quiche sentiment," Graham tells WTOP. . . Each month a different councilmember takes a turn providing the food and drink. With 13 council members, it takes a while for a member's turn to come up. When it's Graham's turn -- the Council sometimes leaves the table unsatisfied. Most months the banquet includes eggs, bacon, grits, potatoes, juice and coffee. There's usually so much food staff members can count on plenty of leftovers. This month Graham provided his customary "light" buffett, which didn't offer much for the members, much less the staff. "The introduction of a nice spinach quiche I thought would be refreshing," Graham said.

"Who is responsible for this?" questioned Councilmember Tommy Wells with a look of disappointment on his face. Councilmember David Catania, who at previous breakfast meetings has picked his food by its color, didn't have a lot in the way of choices. "This is a Graham thing isn't it? And he wonders why he can't get any votes. . . Another breakfast like this and Graham won't be able to get the Ten Commandments passed." Graham was not amused. "I detect an absence of gratitude," he said.

DC Indymedia - Metro's Rider's Advisory Council voted 14-2 to call on the Metro Board to hold public hearings on its random bag search policy and to delay the implementation of the searches until after such hearings. In late October, the transit authority announced that Metro Transit Police would begin searching Metro riders' belongings. At tonight's RAC meeting, Metro Police testified that the controversial searches have not begun. "This is a constitutional issue," said Pat Elder of the DC Bill of Rights Coalition, "The RAC is right to ask Metro to delay implementing this policy that has such significant constitutional implications. The Fourth Amendment is supposed to protect us from unreasonable searches and seizures.". . . The RAC passed its resolution after hearing from concerned transit riders from the DC Bill of Rights Coalition, the National Lawyers Guild, the ACLU, Flex Your Rights, and the Defending Dissent Foundation.

Windy City Times, Chicago - To many politicians and journalists, the communist menace was much closer than the Soviet Union. Joseph McCarthy, a senator from Wisconsin, built his career around accusing government employees of being disloyal. But McCarthy was not alone in this. Lots of public figures together helped make the hunt for communists and their sympathizers a national campaign. In the process, precious freedoms of speech and association were compromised, and lives were ruined. What most history courses don't tell you, however, is this: During the McCarthy era, the witch hunters ousted a lot more gay men, lesbians and bisexuals from government jobs and the military than they did political radicals.

David Johnson, a historian who studied at Northwestern University and now teaches at the University of South Florida, has written a very gripping book titled The Lavender Scare. He offers a close look at life in Washington DC in the 1940s, '50s and '60s, when the purges of "sex perverts"- as gays, lesbians and bisexuals were labeled - were at their height and the persecutions most intense. He paints a terrifying portrait of government investigations, secret surveillance and police abuse. Women and men lived in fear. Co-workers and neighbors spied on one another and became informants. FBI and military investigators engaged in chilling interrogations of suspects. Thousands and thousands of folks lost jobs or were expelled from the military. Many others were cut off from prospective employment. Some packed up and left town; others took their own lives.

WMAL - DC Police are investigating a rash of license plate vandalism in the Mt. Pleasant area. Some area residents say their tags were spray-painted black and they wonder why their cars were targeted. Many of the tags were from out-of-town and Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Jack McKay expressed concerned that someone may resent non-locals taking parking spots and the vandalism would make them go away. News Channel 8 reports that some of the painted tags are from the District and that finding leads some residents to believe that the vandalism is just a random, inconsiderate act.

Philip Kennicott, Washington Post Staff - Over time, the U.S. Capitol has taken on two very different faces. What was once deemed the back side of the building -- facing the Mall -- became a grand, ceremonial front, with the addition of dramatic stairs, terraces and landscaping that emphasized its prominence on a hill. To the east, the old "front" of the Capitol became, by contrast, more modest, accessible and pastoral. Before ground was broken for the new Capitol Visitor Center in 2000, you could stand on the east side and imagine cows and sheep grazing, as if in the foreground of a romantic landscape painting. This duality -- grandeur and authority vs. simplicity and openness -- also expressed an ideal of government. To survive, a republic must have authority, tradition and ceremonies. But it must also have its yeoman side, which allows the people to wander the halls of power as equals with their legislators.

The "truth to power" side of the Capitol, the East face, has been demolished by the new Visitor Center, a tragically misconceived and overscale addition, which opens today. The East face has become something entirely new, with a false and slick pomposity created by an impressive promenade over an imposing bridge, which seems to cross a kind of moat. It is a historical and aesthetic jumble, a nonsensical place and a gross disfigurement of one of this country's most important and iconic buildings.

Michael Neibauer, Examiner - The District's Department of Transportation receives 400 to 500 service requests each day due to malfunctioning parking meters. City officials have fielded more than 100,000 complaints about its parking meters already this year - an average of several gripes apiece for its aging stock of meters, and a huge increase in angered customers over recent years. . . The long-term trend is even more shocking. In 1995, the city registered only 2,665 meter complaints, meaning the annual increase since then is more than 3,800 percent. . . Texas-based ACS State and Local Solutions is in the second of a five-year, $20 million contract to maintain the District's meters. The company is assessed an $11.98 fine for each day, after 72 hours, that a failing meter goes unfixed. Lisle said the company is meeting its contractual obligations.

Washington Times - A D.C. Inspector General's audit has found that city employees made numerous mistakes in awarding a multimillion-dollar service contract for the District's traffic-camera system that opened the city to potential legal action. "A flaw in any component of the evaluation process places the District at risk for litigation, compromises the integrity of the evaluation process and limits the District's ability to determine whether it is receiving the best value for the goods and services it procures," the audit states.

A new group has been formed to push for DC statehood. Called DC Statehood Yes We Can, the new organization should provide some relief from the taxpayer subsidized colonial wimps at DC Vote. Fifth generation Washingtonian Ann Loikow is behind the effort.

EMENDATION

Harold Cox - I am writing to correct something that was pointed out to me in one of your recent blogs. My name is Harold Cox and I still work for DC Public Schools. I was not fired; however I understand your confusion because I was re-assigned to another school along with 17 of my fellow workers at Coolidge High School this past June, 2008. We were all given letters by Leland Burton, the principal that said we would not be offered positions at Coolidge for the upcoming school year.

I based my letter on the fact that I spoke out about a document Mr. Burton was requiring teachers to sign who re-applied for their jobs at Coolidge. I say this because just earlier last year in a feature story by Washington Post writer Lonnae O'Neal Parker I was praised by Mr. Burton as one of the best teachers he had. How I went from that to being a undesirable can only be explained by the aforementioned incident with the document I refused to sign.;

Although I have been moved from the school I was assigned on August 19, (Wilson High School) I am still on DCPS payroll and placed at Dunbar High School. I am glad that I was able to clear this up because it has caused some undue stress for a number of my associates.

DC WORKERS TAKE ON FENTY

DC Labor - Catastrophe, intimidation, terror. These were words used to describe DC Mayor Adrian Fenty's two years in office by over a dozen speakers at a Workers' Rights Board (hearing. The hearing - which took place at the Wilson Building to a standing-room only crowd of hundreds of residents, workers and activists - was held to examine Mayor Fenty's assault on DC public sector workers and proposals to cut public services.

"I see what is happening right now as a major catastrophe," said Roger Newell, chair of DC Jobs with Justice. "We need to speak loudly and strongly that working people made this city and stuck with this city through times of crisis. Workers should be respected not attacked and politicians who attack workers should be held accountable."

Metro Council President Jos Williams said that Mayor Fenty has created an "environment based on intimidation" of workers through the gutting of the Public Employee Relations Board, abolishment of the Labor-Management Partnership Program and the appointment of School Chancellor Michelle Rhee who "has made it her mission to make every employee at-will."

"The door was closed to labor immediately by the Mayor after taking office," said Dwight Bowman, AFGE National Vice President for District 14. "The Mayor chose to ignore our efforts to reach out." Bowman also compared Mayor Fenty's refusal to address the crisis with the PERB to similar moves by the Bush Administration to destroy the federal grievance process.

"I have never seen a climate like what is occurring now," said Jeff Canady, a 17-year teacher in the DC Public Schools. "Everyday I run into workers and teachers who have horror stories about intimidation on the job. . . It is an absolute climate of intimidation and terror that teachers are facing." Canady argued the problem is not bad teachers but a lack of resources, supplies and support for teachers as well as Chancellor Rhee's "complete lack of understanding about what needs to be done."

Candi Peterson, a 16-year veteran of DCPS and active member of WTU Local 6, criticized Fenty and Rhee for the firings of hundreds of DCPS workers which, she argued, created overcrowded classrooms and forced teachers to work in areas outside their certification. "Rhee regularly blames teachers and argues that union contracts and teachers' seniority rights stand in the way of the best education for our children." But the reality is that her "anti-union tactics support more privatization and outsourcing of public education, the creation of more unchecked charter schools, unsound educational practices, gutting hard-earned job protections and union busting"

THREE GOOD REASONS TO END THE POLICE CHECKPOINTS

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Washington Post - In June, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, his attorney general and the D.C. police announced the introduction of a military-style checkpoint program under which police stop drivers and allow only those with a police-approved "legitimate reason" to continue on the public roadway. This strategy is sorely in need of a reality check -- or three.

Reality check No. 1: Let's say that you are driving home, exhausted from work, lugging groceries and carrying your child in the back seat. Lights, police and roadblocks await you. Your car is stopped, an armed police officer comes over and you must roll down your window. Your child begins crying. You must now prove to the police officer's satisfaction that you have the right to drive on your own block.

Visiting a friend? You are driving lawfully down the street when you find yourself blocked by police cars. The police suddenly approach your car, flashlight shining. Your license plate number is written down. The officer demands to know who you are, where you are going, what your purpose for driving is, and the name, address and phone number of your friend. He tells you that your reason for driving is not "legitimate"; now you cannot drive past the roadblock.

William Robinson, a retired schoolteacher, coach and 50-year resident of Trinidad, told me that former students simply stopped visiting him during the checkpoints. They turned around because they didn't want to have to answer to the police for just a social call. . .

Reality check No. 2: One might say that the checkpoint is an unfortunate inconvenience but that at least it is a way to reduce violent crime. A worthwhile trade-off of constitutional rights for security, so the argument goes. But that is not the case.

According to statistics that the D.C. police have filed with the court, comparing the initial Trinidad checkpoint period to the week immediately preceding it, violent crimes increased 100 percent, as did nonviolent crimes, during the checkpoint period. Also, the number of violent crimes committed during the checkpoint period in the police-designated "neighborhood safety zone" was 10 percent greater than the average for the nine weeks immediately preceding it and more than 40 percent greater than the average for the preceding seven weeks. Shootings surged elsewhere in the city while police were mobilized (or more accurately, immobilized) to stop lawful drivers at Trinidad checkpoints. . .

Reality check No. 3: Eight years ago, the Supreme Court stated, "Without drawing the line at roadblocks designed primarily to serve the general interest in crime control, the Fourth Amendment would do little to prevent such intrusions from becoming a routine part of American life." Both the federal and local courts of this jurisdiction have described as unconstitutional attempts to impose crime control checkpoints on the public -- even without interrogation components or the refusal of passage. . .

CHARTER SCHOOLS: CHERRY PICKING AND ROTTEN APPLE DUMPING

Crystal Sylvia, Concerned 4 DCPS - The problem with charter schools "counseling out" families or informing parents they can't meet the needs of a particular child is twofold. First, there is the issue of charter schools getting the money for students and then keeping those funds once the child leaves. The charter schools get to use the money to support the remaining students but the public schools have to support the incoming students with no additional funding. And since a lot of these kids come with some type of challenge or need, the effects on the public schools are even more burdensome.

The second concern is that since charter schools are able to do this they can essentially "cherry pick" students while claiming to accept all students. This of course helps with behavior and discipline issues as well as with test scores. Now I know charter schools are not doing this all of the time but it is happening enough to be a significant problem. Last year in April my school received 5 students from charter schools in just one week before DC CAS testing. The children strained an already skeletal staff.

So while charter school supporters can exaggerate success stories, in the end charter schools are not solving the fundamental problems in public education in DC. I know there are parents who are very happy with the charter schools their children are attending so I am not saying all charter schools are bad. But it I think at some point there needs to be an honest assessment followed by changes in the regulations to address these issue and stop charter schools from cherry picking students.

LOW INCOME RESIDENTS TAKE ANOTHER HIT

Ed Lazere, Hill Rag - When the DC Council cut millions from the city's budget last month - in response to a looming fiscal crisis - one of the victims was the "New Communities Human Capital" program. This $4 million cut, which eliminated the program, didn't raise many eyebrows. . . The New Communities initiative is supposed to give selected low-income neighborhoods a new look - and with it new hope - as a mixed-income community. It's embraced enthusiastically by politicians but less so by residents who worry that it's part of a plan to displace them. The "human capital" investments are intended to help residents move ahead economically so they can take advantage of their new community. Now that funding is gone. Meanwhile, bulldozing has begun.

The Idea behind New Communities: Turning Blighted Neighborhoods into Mixed-Income Oases The goal of New Communities, according to its website, is "to redevelop the neighborhoods into healthy, vibrant communities for current and future residents." . . .

The initiative is designed to reassure residents - who see the city gentrifying around them - that this redevelopment will help rather than push them out. The goals include replacing all low-income housing that is demolished, phasing the redevelopment so that no one has to move out of the area during construction, and allowing all residents to return (if they meet certain rules set by the community). Residents were engaged heavily in the planning. . .

Even before the DC Council eliminated New Communities' human capital funding, there were signs that the initiative wasn't living up to its lofty goals. At Northwest One, some 200 households have been moved out, despite the pledge to "build first." Scattering the community makes it unlikely that it will be able to come back together when construction is done.

DC's 2009 budget included $4 million to replenish funding for the New Communities human capital programs, but the council cut this funding entirely in its budget gap-closing plan. It's not clear whether the case management side of New Communities can go forward at all this year.

HOW RHEE GETS IT WRONG

Dean Shareski, Ideas & Thoughts - [Jay Matthews] article features Washington's chancellor of education, Michelle Rhee and her relentless efforts to improve schools. I admire her passion. I'm not all that impressed with her perspectives.

"'The thing that kills me about education is that it's so touchy-feely,' she tells me one afternoon in her office. . . People say, 'Well, you know, test scores don't take into account creativity and the love of learning,' she says with a drippy, grating voice, lowering her eyelids halfway. Then she snaps back to herself. 'I'm like, 'You know what? I don't give a crap.' Don't get me wrong. Creativity is good and whatever. But if the children don't know how to read, I don't care how creative you are. You're not doing your job.'". . .

I've been in a number of schools of late and seen students whose reading scores are the least of their problems. If you've been in schools lately you know what I mean. 15 year olds, living on their own, coming to school high, 1st graders so full of anger they threaten classmates lives and the list goes on. These students do not need to see their reading scores meet or exceed grade level by the end of the year, they need "touch-feely" teachers. By "touchy-feely", I mean teachers that have time, expertise and passion to help them function as human beings, never mind reading. Reading is priority number 236 in their list of needs. I spent a few hours watching these at risk students building a canoe from scratch. Students who, for a change, were attending school, interacting politely with adults, finding a purpose. No standardized test in the world could measure this. But the gains made by these students because of "touch-feely" teachers is unquestionable. These teachers deserve a raise.

I've also been in schools with students who are so far above reading level and ability that the curriculum and classroom activities are laughable. They sit in their desks and hate it when teachers ask them to consider how they learn or what they want to learn; they just want to be told what to do because they're good at it and have had years of success playing that game and are upset when a teacher wants to change the rules. They need opportunity to show their creative side. They need to be teaching others. They might ace a standardized test and the teacher might be seen as successful. I'm not sure the teachers or students have done anything worthwhile.

These two diverse groups of students are the reason standardized tests and Rhee-like one-size-fits-all education isn't valuable. . .

Every education system on earth has the same hierarchy of subjects. Every one, doesn't matter where you go, you'd think it would be otherwise but it isn't. At the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities, and the bottom are the arts. Everywhere on earth.

PROHIBITION IN DC

The Capital Underworld, 1932 - "Compared with New York and Chicago, Washington is not a wicked city. It experiences brief flashes of gang warfare which the local press tries to play up as important. It revels in the murder mysteries of Mary Baker, Navy Department clerk, and of Virginia McPherson, daughter-in-law of the assistant to the Secretary of War. It is baffled by the robbery of the Salvadorian Legation, accomplished as a larger consignment of Scotch whisky had arrived and was piled up in the rear garden. And it is horrified at the nocturnal operations of more than a hundred Negro degenerates who swooped down regularly upon the encamped Bonus Army as soon as it became dark. Compared with the big-time racketeering of New York and Chicago all of this probably is puerile and petty, but it plays an important and influential part in the life of the nation's capital. Furthermore, Washington's underworld has two or three distinctions of which in a modest sort of way it can really boast. One of these is the ease of securing immunity. The capital may witness few crimes, but in few cases is the culprit ever brought to justice. Another distinction is the complete and unrestrained freedom of the neighboring counties of Maryland, where an amazing White Slave traffic, operating through a chain of tea houses, furnishes recreation to capital residents. Finally, Washington probably boasts more small, independent bootleggers per capita than any other city in the country and has established a unique and universal system of liquor distribution. . . . Police occasionally interrupt these too-obvious law-breakers, but the great rank and file of bootleggers and petty criminals who ply their trade in the nation's capital enjoy an immunity almost unsurpassed even in New York and Chicago. This is due to three factors. The first is the influence of Henry Mencken's Free State of Maryland, which surrounds the District of Columbia on three sides. The second is the natural laziness of the capital police. The third is the prestige and pull exercised by so large a number of those enjoying official status, a factor which makes convictions difficult and disrupts police morale."

Izzy Einstein, the famous prohibition agent, keeps a record of how long it takes to get a drink in various cities. DC comes out badly. Not only does it take an hour (as opposed to 11 minutes in Pittsburgh and 17 in Atlanta) but he has to ask directions from a cop.

Emmitt "Little Man" Warring and his brothers Leo Paul and Charles "Rags" run the numbers in the late 1930s. According to a Washington Post article by Nancy Lewis [3/1/87], "Emmitt, the ninth of 10 children born to a Foggy Bottom barrel maker and his Irish immigrant wife, was the leader of the brothers' numbers business. Before then, in Prohibition, Warring had run the Washington area's version of "Thunder Road," bringing rye and corn whiskey from Prince George's County and southern Maryland stills to the city's "liquor drops," using Georgetown teen-agers who drove "high-powered touring cars" for $50 to $100 a trip. The Warrings' shift from illegal booze to illegal numbers -- which they preferred to call the "commission brokerage business" -- was soon bringing in $2 million a year, and Emmitt's "Little Man" moniker described only his 5-foot 4 1/2 inch stature . . . The brothers operated out of a third-floor room at 2423 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, but their domain was all of Georgetown and Foggy Bottom, and by 1936 they had at least 56 employees - the number listed on their income tax returns." The brothers are indicted on tax evasion charges in 1938, but the trial ends in a hung jury. The second trial ends in a mistrial after the judge reports that Emmitt Warring has offered a juror $600 and given whiskey to a US Marshal to pass to the jury. The third trial ends after two months, when all three brothers pleaded guilty. The business keeps on and is earning at least $7.5 million a year by the late 1940s.

Progressive Review - There was a club on the edge of town owned by Jimmy LaFontaine. It was a club with standards, as Gaillard Hunt described in a Prohibition era novel:

Couldn't sit here all night, tho. Have to do something, Do the usual thing -- the best thing. Whatever happens eleven and ten is still twenty-one and aces still beat kings.

He slipped the bottle into his coat pocket and stood out in the street. Far down the street a taxi was coming. It slowed down as it got closer, then stopped. He got in and said, "Jimmy Lafontaine's."

About the time the taxi turned into Bladensburg road the whisky began to hit him. It made him less mad and the knot in his belly began to loosen, By the time they got to the place he was feeling almost good.

The doorman looked at him sharply, then shook his head. Peter tried to argue with him, but he only said, "You know the house rules. No one been drinking can get in." He whistled to the taxi which was loitering in the drive and shut the door.

Peter got back in the taxi and. said, "Son of a. bitch. That guy's idea of a drunk is same as Volstead's. Let's go back to town."

The doorman was as famous as LaFontaine, as Shirley Povich described in a 1989 Washington Post article:

In the 1920s and '30s there were also in Washington indoor sports such as dice-throwing, poker games, blackjack and track odds on the races everywhere. One temple of chance, located in Bladensburg, just across the District line, was known as "Jimmy's;" it was impeccably conducted by the legendary Jimmy LaFontaine, who stood for no nonsense by anybody and was proud of a clientele that included many stylish Washington names.

At Jimmy's a huge fellow named Josh Licarione frisked everybody at the door to help keep the peace. Licarione, it seems, had played football for a time at George Washington University. The story goes that after an especially heroic victory at Griffith Stadium, the president of GW was overjoyed enough to visit the team in the locker room and not only praised the gladiators but continued told them, "Any of you boys who are in the vicinity of my office, come in and pass the time of day with me." That was when Licarione said, "By the way, where is that school of yours?"

Povich was wrong about one thing: the club wasn't over the city line; it was on it. We had sometimes heard that one advantage of this was that if, for example, a raid were pending from the Maryland side, LaFontaine would simply lock the Maryland gates, giving his customers time to evacuate through the DC entrance. But Tom Kelly, who covered the beat, tells us it wasn't as complicated: if there were reports of illegal activities, the called police department would simply say (with at least 50% certainty) that it wasn't in their jurisdiction.

A Washingtonian who grew up in Brookland remembers hearing about the club and its ten to twelve foot wooden walls. He says a relative who once won a lot of money at the club was driven home by Fontaine's security people to make sure he made it safely.

ANOTHER DAY WITH RHEE

From another generally terrible article on Rhee in the archaic media:

Time - Rhee is, as a rule, far n