The D.C. Department of Corrections says releasing Program Statement No. 5031.1A will "encourage an act of terrorism." Why, then, did the department make the document readily available on its website, where anyone in the world could look at it?

Read all about it in this week's cover story. Take a look at the document, too, and see if you think it encourages terror.

Lots of terrible stuff happened in the Trinidad neighborhood Friday night. A 13-year-old boy was killed and six others were shot, according to reports. NBC4 and WTOP are on top of the story today. Police tell NBC4 they might reinstall those controversial checkpoints because of the violence. (Never mind that the checkpoints were for some secret, specific reason.)

UPDATE: The checkpoints are back.

The Washington Nationals are withholding stadium rent from the city because, they say, the stadium isn't finished. Well! I've been to a couple games, and I see a fully-functioning stadium. And it costs $11.50 for a beer and a bag of peanuts!

Fellow D.C. taxpayers, listen to my plan: So long as the Nationals withhold money from the city, I'm going to withhold money from the Nationals. The stadium allows outside food. So next time I'm offered a free ticket (which happens weirdly often), I'm going to smuggle all the beer I need by hiding it in a bag along with peanuts and other legitimate items. I predict that this will have no effect whatsoever on the franchise's deadbeat doings, but I will enjoy myself righteously. Join me!

The Washington Post's Shankar Vedantam has a killer angle today on the D.C. handgun ban: An old study found that D.C.'s suicide rate dropped off big time soon as the city enacted the ban in 1976, because handguns make it real convenient for a guy to shoot himself when he gets a suicidal impulse. I highly recommend the article.

President George W. Bush greeted Rolling Thunder bikers on the South Lawn of the White House Sunday. After brief comments, the prez ditched his jacket and tie to pose for photos in a biker vest presented to him by Vietnam vet Artie Muller, president of Rolling Thunder. Bush thanked Muller with a hard-but-friendly slap to the shoulder.

Muller winced. Nerve damage from a shrapnel wound gives him a ton of pain whenever his shoulder is touched. He even wears metal spikes on his jacket to remind people not to grab him there.

"I do that every year, don't I?" Bush said.

Muller nodded. "Yes."

Several parents of students at the Coeus International School have told the Washington City Paper that the school is closing after the end of classes in May. Coeus founder and headmaster Daniel Hollinger, when questioned by a reporter at the school this afternoon, refused to confirm or deny that classes will not be held in the fall.

Hollinger founded Coeus in the fall of 2006 after being ousted by the board of trustees of his previous school, Rock Creek International, which closed last year under financial distress. With Coeus, Hollinger ditched the usual non-profit model used by most private schools. He told the City Paper last year that he hoped being able to attract investors would eventually allow the program to expand on a global scale.

Coeus is located on the sixth floor of an office building on Connecticut Avenue near the Van Ness Metro station.

The University of the District of Columbia’s law school is surging in the U.S. News & World Report specialty ranking for the “clinical training” category. The UDC David A. Clarke School of Law, which won full accreditation from the American Bar Association only three years ago, has tied Stanford for 13th place (and clobbered 19th-ranked Harvard) on the 2008 list.

"It is a very big deal," says dean Shelley Broderick, who notes that UDC law is the only law school in the United States without its own building (the school operates on two floors of a building at the university’s Van Ness campus). “If you look at how richly resourced the other programs are, you know we’ve got it going on at UDC.”

A legal clinic is a teaching method in which law students, under faculty supervision, learn the trade by representing actual clients in court. Broderick says that UDC requires more clinical credit hours than any other school in the country. The school’s predecessor, the Antioch School of Law, pioneered clinical legal training from its co-founding in 1972 by current UDC faculty member Edgar Cahn. Most law schools nowadays offer a clinic of some kind.

Broderick hopes the national recognition will "help us win the hearts and minds of those funding major capital projects” so the school can have its own home. She says the school wants to share a space near D.C. court buildings with other providers of legal service to the poor.

In February, D.C. police up and decided that they would watch video feeds from their surveillance cameras live, in real time. Chief Cathy Lanier told the Washington Post she thought her department under-utilized its cameras. "I thought, 'Why the heck aren't we watching them?'" she said.

Here's why: The law suggests that you aren't supposed to watch. Check out this tidbit from Title 24, Chapter 25 of the D.C. Municipal Regulations:

When CCTV is used to combat crime, recordings may be passively monitored, meaning that the video feeds may not be monitored in real time, and recordings may be viewed by MPD personnel where there is reason to believe that the viewing may help solve a crime.

Metropolitan Police Department spokeswoman Traci Hughes says the law doesn't forbid real-time watching.

"The statute says may, not shall," Hughes told the Washington City Paper. "It’s a matter of legal construction. Because the statute says may, it does not prohibit the Chief from actively monitoring the cameras.”

Art Spitzer, legal director of the local ACLU, doesn't like Hughes's reasoning.

"I don't think any judge would buy her argument," Spitzer writes in an email. "There is a difference between may and shall, but 'may not' means 'no.'"

Washington Gas is making bad service into a form of art. Since November, they've sent me two bills every month--one for me, and one with my name on it for the nice lady who lives in the apartment upstairs. She and I verified that it's her gas bill by checking the meter numbers on the two bills and comparing them to the numbers on our meters. Right after I moved in, she says, Washington Gas sent her a refund check and discontinued her direct payment program. She was baffled.

I've explained the problem to Washington Gas call-takers five times. On Mar. 12, after several calls from me, my upstairs neighbor, and even the management company, Washington Gas sent a guy to check the meter numbers. He confirmed the mix-up. I figured that had to be the end of it, but yesterday, I received my neighbor's bill once again. Like the last two, it says DISCONTINUANCE NOTICE on it. It's for over $1,000 and there's no way for her to pay it.

Washington Gas is just hell bent on sending me my poor neighbor's bill. It's Theatre of the Absurd over here. It's like something from a play by Samuel Becket or Harold Pinter. It's crazy! I explained the problem to a Washington Gas call-taker again yesterday--now I'm escalating the situation with public whining.

I beseech you, teeming millions of City Desk readers, for suggestions on how to solve this problem.

UPDATE 4/9/08: An alert reader forwards me a Mar. 16 Baltimore Sun story on similarly-bad service a Prince George's County deli owner received from Washington Gas this year.

UPDATE 4/10/08: A woman from corporate communications at Washington Gas called my neighbor and me last night to apologize and say the problem would be fixed. We'll see...

The National Park Service is taking its sweet, federal time making improvements at Lincoln Park, the largest and most popular park in Capitol Hill. First, in late October, NPS blocked half of it off with a chain-link fence and gave no warning or explanation. Then, when pressed by D.C. Councilmember Tommy Wells’ office for information, officials even boasted a little bit: “The contract period is for 90 days, however, we anticipate the project taking less than half of that time.”

So, doing the math, the renovation should have been finished by Feb. 19 at the latest. Instead, half of the park remains closed as construction equipment sits idle. Until Tuesday, no work had happened for several weeks.

The feds have two excuses: “a contract modification due to changes with the base material” and the weather.

“When the temperature falls below 40 degrees you really can’t pour concrete,” says NPS spokeswoman Janet Braxton.

Advisory neighborhood commissioner Nick Alberti, whose district includes the northeast half of the park, thinks bad weather is a lame excuse.

“I’m stunned that they would schedule a repaving project during the 3 coldest months,” Alberti writes in an e-mail. “It was either very poor planning or disingenuous to assure us that the park would reopen by Feb 19th.”

Park Service facility manager Frank Young reports that all work should be finished by April 30.

Loose Lips attends Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry's birthday bash, held last night in honor of Mayor-for-Life's upcoming 72nd. Remarkably, Barry actually speaks to LL.

Slate has an article today on the grotesque corruption of a Mississippi forensic examiner who used bogus bite mark analysis to help prosecutors, ultimately leading to the bogus imprisonment of innocent people. The author of the piece has reported on the situation before and offers an interesting observation:

One key problem is that forensics labs often fall under the auspices of prosecutors. Even honest crime-lab workers, medical examiners, and other experts can be subtly influenced to make evidence conform to a prosecutor's wishes.

Pro-prosecutor bias is exactly what Maryland public defenders say is wrong with Dr. William Vosburgh, the director of D.C.’s incipient crime lab, in an October 2007 story in the Washington City Paper. A coincidence: Vosburgh might have testified more about blood-spatter patterns than bite marks during his career in Maryland, but he does know a thing or two about teeth—he used to be a dentist.

Vosburgh responded to the story with an angry letter, and an attorney in Maryland responded to Vosburgh’s miffed missive with a pissed epistle of his own.

Loose Lips attends the Obama Victory Party after polls closed on the Potomac Primary.

Loose Lips queries D.C. Councilmembers about The Real Super Tuesday, the Potomac Primary on Feb. 12.

In today's Washington Post, Metro columnist Marc Fisher PWNS D.C. Councilmember Marion Barry for pulling a huge flip-flop on Mayor Adrian Fenty's proposal to close 23 schools. Barry was grandstanding for TV cameras on Thursday, calling schools chancellor Michelle Rhee "bullheaded" and railing against the proposed closings. Less than 24 hours later, he's shaking the Mayor's hand and calling the plan a "victory for our children."

Fisher asked Rhee what she thought of Barry's flip. She said: "I thought that was fascinating."