The Issue: As summer began giving way to fall, idyllic life in the Palisades was shattered by a dose of cold, cruel reality from D.C. electricity provider Pepco. To improve electrical reliability, Pepco wanted to cut down about 400 trees in the neighborhood as well as (gasp!) 16 others along a few blocks of MacArthur Boulevard.

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Yes, that Benin. Bear with me on this one, folks. It's going to take a minute, but I'll get there.

1. WTOP reported this morning on the Census Bureau's research on travel patterns in the D.C. metro area. The findings: of the region's 2.2 million workers, about 1.5 million commute alone, and about 600,000 carpool or use public transit. The average commute time was about 32 minutes.

Read More "What Do D.C. and Benin Have in Common?" »

Traffic is flowing again now on 16th Street, after being closed for about an hour between Euclid St. and Columbia Rd. NW. while police and fire departments responded to a reported gas leak at the Embassy of Switzerland Cuban Interests Section.

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Sunday, New Hampshire Ave. & Randolph St. NW.

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McKinley Technology High School lost 15 staff members on Oct. 3 to controversial "reductions in force," an effort by Chancellor Michelle Rhee to fix what she says is a budget deficit in District schools. The teachers were escorted out of the school by police, as if they posed a danger to their pupils. Students were angered, and hundreds of them left school to denounce the moves, garnering the attention of the media, teachers advocates, and the D.C. Council.

Over a week later, the episode still casts its shadow at McKinley. “The whole atmosphere totally changed,” according to senior Jessy Beach, an organizer of the protests. “You can sense the dreariness,” says Kyler Jackson, a sophomore. "Overall, it's just very gloomy," says senior Ikechukwu Umez-Eronini.

Read More "Students: Post-RIF McKinley High School “Dreary”" »

Haven't had enough fun at the expense of Chancellor Michelle Rhee's "Braveheart" Education Next story? Head over to D.C. Wire, where Bill Turque makes a medieval jab at the profile and its over-the-top lead image:

"The accompanying story by June Kronholz is, as the picture suggests, almost uniformly admiring. Although it doesn't address what happened to the real Braveheart, Scottish rebel William Wallace, who was hanged, disemboweled, beheaded and quartered in 1305 for rising up against the British crown."

Read More "Michelle Rhee: Not the Real Braveheart" »

Read More "Photos by the Intern: National Equality March" »

The Examiner reported last week that Ward 6 Councilmember Tommy Wells "is proposing to erase rules that prohibit fowl within 50 feet of any building 'used for human habitation.'" Essentially, us Washingtonians would no longer be forbidden to raise chickens in our backyards.

The article says the bill "was drafted on behalf of a Capitol Hill family," who used their small backyard to house eight hens until animal control intervened. Well's Chief-of-Staff, Charles Allen, said that the family and a few friends approached the Councilmember to request legislation.

"This is all part of that sustainable urban life we're trying to create," Allen said, evoking the recent spike in the popularity of community gardening.
Read More "Coming Soon: Chicken Legislation!" »

Davita Simpson, 54, perches a cross the street from Metro Center. She leans against the wall by an ATM, timidly promoting Street Sense to the sharply-dressed weekday morning pedestrians. Selling the paper isn’t a great source of income, she says, “but it helps me get by.” Simpson is currently homeless. She began selling papers about a year ago to supplement her SSI checks.

At a time when newspapers all over the country are dropping like flies, Street Sense, the biweekly nonprofit newspaper on homelessness and poverty whose neon-vested vendors are omnipresent around Metro stations and commercial strips, is growing.
Read More "Street Sense Survives, Thrives During Recession" »

Read More "Photos by the Intern: Fiesta DC" »

Last week, D.C. education nonprofit DC VOICE released the results of their Ready Classrooms Project, a survey of 104 DCPS teachers conducted in the spring. The study, now available online, reports teacher sentiment on a wide range of issues: class size, “teaching to the test,” parent involvement, classroom management, school safety. There's lots of interesting stuff, but here's the whammy stat:

"The teachers were asked if they like how the school system is run and to provide reasons for their answers. Eighty percent of the teachers replied no to this question, 8 percent replied yes."

The remaining 12 percent said they both like and dislike aspects of DCPS management.

When the 80 percent were asked to explain their discontent, the most common response was "a lack of respect for and blaming of teachers." Other frequent complaints are "poor communication between the District and local schools" and "a rigid governance structure" that "does not pay attention to what is happening in the classroom, nor allow for questions to be asked."

The District's unemployment rate "rose dramatically" to over 11% last month, the Washington Post reported on Saturday. There were about 36,000 Washingtonians without jobs in August.

11% is certainly not pretty, but D.C.'s actual unemployment rate is probably higher, because the unemployment rate that appears in the newspaper is often misleading.

The problem? It doesn't include what the Bureau of Labor Statistics calls "marginally attached workers"--people who want a job, but aren't looking because they don't think there's much chance of getting one. Also left out are those who are involuntarily working part-time.
Read More "D.C. Unemployment: It’s Worse than You Think" »

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty's massive re-election fundraising drive has brought unsurprising results--a boatload of money from the business world (especially real estate developers) along with some smaller chunks of cash from ordinary folks. As of July 31, $2.7 million.

One contribution, though, sticks out among the lawyers and executives: $1,000 from "Spitzer, Eliot" at "985 5th Ave, New York, NY 10021" back in June.

Why does the disgraced former governor of New York have any stake in the mayor's re-election bid?

"I've met him, he's a good person, he's worked hard, and so I like to support candidates like that, people like that who work hard for their city," Spitzer told the Washington City Paper over the phone.

Spitzer's donation came a few months after he helped engineer the purchase by his father's company of a $180 million downtown D.C. office building. Did the purchase affect his decision to support Fenty?

"Absolutely not," Spitzer said. "One has absolutely nothing to do with the other. To suggest the two are related is, frankly, quite stupid."

The mayor is "a friend and somebody who I admire," Spitzer said, but refused to explain their relationship any further. Pressed on the matter, he said only that the two "met in a governmental context."

Fenty said that the donation came from a fundraiser in New York. Who held the fundraiser? "I'll get you that information," said Fenty.

The mayor said he had no second thoughts about accepting donations from a guy who'd used the District as a call-girl liaison pad. He also acknowledged milking his relationship with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other Big Apple muni-luminaries to build up his campaign coffers.

"We've had a great working relationship particularly with the city of New York," he said. "It's a relationship that spans between city hall, education, and our similar passions on that end. There's a strong development community that works between New York and Washington D.C."

Fenty is the third candidate to receive a contribution from the ex-governor, after Mark Green and Cy Vance Jr. Is he flattered by that distinction?

"I guess the best thing to say about any particular donation is every single one of them is important. Every single one of them is appreciated."

Additional reporting by Mike DeBonis

Last year, Central Union Mission attempted to bring its 128-bed homeless shelter to the 3500 block of Georgia Avenue, but was shot down by Ward 1 Council member Jim Graham and a group of residents in a rather shameless case of NIMBYism. "Good news!!! Central Union Mission is not moving to Georgia Avenue in Ward One," Graham wrote on his website after he fought off the shelter.

Now, as the Prince of Petworth has relayed in two recent blog posts, the local ANC 1A will be considering a new proposal on Wednesday night.  The Mission is trying a more moderate tack for the space, which it owns: retail combined with affordable housing.

Read More "Petworth Commenters Mobilize Against “Poor People”" »