A ghoulish sequence of events in Chevy Chase, a part of the District known for its Mayberry quality: Michael and Virginia Spevak, both in their 60s, were found dead at their home on the 5300 block of Belt Road. Their car, a 2005 Toyota Scion, was found torched in another neighborhood. City Desk coverage with pics of wreckage.

Is change possible when Tom Daschle is sitting in a Cabinet post?

Can we please see an end to these predictable Republican Party post mortems?

Little chance that D.C. region is serious about giving us a real winter.

Speaking of winter, the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden skating rink down on the Mall is rocking these days. You’ll find a lot of people down there skating very poorly. More poorly, I’d say, than your average cross section of tourists and locals would be expected to skate. It’s not entirely attributable to poor skating skills across the country. The problem, in large part, results from dull skates. I went down there with a family member this weekend, and the person couldn’t stay up because the person’s skates constantly failed. They were duller than a butter knife. Tried to exchange them for sharper versions, but no dice. They guy at the rental booth said that when people want sharper skates, they bring their own. Now there’s a winning operation for ya.

How many bailouts can we pull off before we all sink?

Herewith a little peek into exactly why the editorial board of the Washington Times has zero credibility.

On Sunday, in a controversial column, Washington Post Ombudsman Deborah Howell slammed the Post’s news operation for a tilt toward president-elect Barack Obama–in news stories, in photographs, and in a failure to dig deeper on certain matters.

One of those matters, in the words of Howell, was this: “The Post did nothing on Obama’s acknowledged drug use as a teenager.” Though I think Howell has been a great ombudsman, chiding the paper for failing to investigate the teenage drug use of any full-grown man amounts to a brain fart.

Now look at how the Washington Times editorial people are playing the Howell column. As a perch to denounce the liberal media conspiracy, of course. Check out how they paraphrase the bit about drugs: “The column also says that the president-elect deserved more scrutiny of his past relationships with Tony Rezko and his admitted drug use.”

“Admitted drug use”–sounds pretty powerful, pretty damning. Of course, if you do the responsible thing, and add in “teenage,” that takes away a bit of the sting. But the Washington Times editorial board, of course, doesn’t have time for such qualifiers. Admitted drug use. Better to leave that notion hanging there–the notion that, hey, perhaps this guy has been using drugs all along, that he pops ‘cid before he hits the Senate floor, that he gives his best speeches when high, that a quick snort or two keeps him going on the 24-7 campaign slog, that he can’t relax at night without eight or nine scotches….That’s what admitted drug use suggests.

But if any group of people is qualified to make such a judgment, it’s gotta be the people at the WaTi edit board. Nehi Grape–that’s the edgiest those people have ever gotten.

The Washington Times gets all enterprisey on Barack Obama’s electoral juggernaut.

Leonard Downie Jr. said he’d still be a busy fellow once he stepped down as Washington Post executive editor in early September. And here he is, just weeks later, in the prime spot in the Sunday Outlook section. Not reminiscing about his years atop the Post; not talking journo-ethics. Nope, he’s defending this fine city against all the attacks from the campaign trail. You know, the ones that ascribe all the great problems of America to Washington, D.C.

The signature line from Downie: “Large numbers of Washingtonians have dedicated much of their lives to real public service that does not involve the ego trips, trappings and hypocrisies of elective office.”

It’s a fine argument, and one that all locals need to read every four years, if only to leave something of a counterpoint in this otherwise counterpoint-less offensive. Funny thing, if there’s one notion that’s genuinely bipartisan these days it’s that Washington is a terrible place because of its partisanship.

Downie’s piece, however, does suffer from one colossal omission, having to do with the following sentence: “Never mind that the biggest mess in America today, the crisis in the financial markets, is largely the creation of the private sector, which has left it to Washington to clean up.”

“Largely,” here, is the key word, enabling the author to say, OK, maybe government shares some blame, but not the preponderance. The truth, as we’ve learned the hard way, is that this is the private sector teaming up with its toadies in the public sector to devise a financial sector virtually free of regulation. Government is way too culpable for this crisis to get anything approaching a bye.

And I must say that Downie had my civic pride in full blossom there at the end of the piece. But then he sneaked in a plug for his upcoming book, The Rules of the Game, and I kinda lost my municipal buzz.

*Just how desperate is James Gilmore in his battle for a Virginia senate seat?

*Do you believe that Obama is on the verge of a blowout victory?

*Blogger writes Pedestrian Plea, tells D.C. drivers to calm the f*** down.

*New Haven, looking great great in a photo illustration.

A lot of stuff happened this weekend, including the rush for a bailout package, the Skins’ victory, fine weather, and more mudslinging in the presidential race. But the event that’s keeping my attention is what allegedly happened out in western Maryland on Friday night. Dunbar Senior High School was out in Cumberland in a tilt against Fort Hill. The Crimson Tide was up, 14-8, when Coach Craig Jefferies pulled his players off the field, after they allegedly heard taunts including the N word out there on the field.

Now, the Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association is conducting a probe to see what happened. The refs said they didn’t hear anything racial, and Fort Hill Coach Todd Appel says the same thing. The coach told the Washington Post that he’d spoken to one of the six black players on the 38-player roster, and the player said he’d heard no epithets. Dunbar players counter that the Fort Hill players were saying things under their breath.

I’ll be interested in what the probe turns up. I am not sure that a Maryland athletic association should be trusted to have the final word on the conduct of one of its members.

*fishbowldc rocks an item about WaPo aggregation tool.

*A good luck at the economics of the bubble from the NYT’s David Leonhardt

*Wes Pruden: Read at your own peril.

*Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher clocks in with a strong piece on the investigation that exonerated Prince George’s County police officers who stormed the home of Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo. The cops overturned the place, killed Calvo’s dogs, and wreaked other forms of destruction. And for no good reason. In the end, it’s all about the “no-knock” raid.

*Here, the Washington Times engages in perhaps the most useless genre of journalism on earth: The pre-game analysis piece. It’s about how the Saints’ passing attack poses problems for the Redskins.

*Compelling: A mini slideshow on nytimes.com documenting Ike’s doings in Texas.

*Enterprising: DC Teacher Chic works weekends! In this edition, she hammers a librarian who insults children. The rot!

*Emotional: Reaction to the David Foster Wallace news

Having missed the Sarah Palin-Charlie Gibson interview of last night, I awoke this morning eager to gobble up analysis of this much-anticipated event. In my morning reading, I found two sources with distinct spin on the news here are some key excerpts from an account in the Washington Post.

*”Gov. Sarah Palin linked the war in Iraq with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks…The idea that the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein helped al-Qaeda plan the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a view once promoted by Bush administration officials, has since been rejected even by the president himself.”

*”In the interview…she was confronted with questions about the U.S. relationship with Russia and her fitness for office, and she appeared to struggle when asked to define the “Bush doctrine” on foreign policy.”

And herewith some excerpts from an account in the Washington Times:

*Headline: “Palin touts readiness in 1st interview”

*”Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin said Thursday she is ready to be vice president and warned the U.S. needs to be vigilant in the face of Russian aggression, including being ready for war if it means defending NATO allies.”

*”Mr. Gibson at one point implied Mrs. Palin was stumbling over the question, telling her he was getting ‘lost in a blizzard of words there’ when she was fumbling over how far the U.S. could go to pre-empt an attack.”

*”[S]he did stress that during her recent trip she also met with wounded U.S. troops at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany - something Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama failed to do during his recent overseas travels. And at another point, she noted she has been in touch with Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili.”

Which story does a better job of capturing the utter truth of Palin’s coming-out interview? Is the Times too nice, the Post too critical?

The Washington Post is ready with the latest in Bob Woodward’s probe of of the full eight years of the Bush administration. Haven’t read the book, just the first excerpt in the Post. Verdict: Not a lot of red meat for a Sunday excerpt. Best little tidbit was a top White House aide telling the prez about Iraq:

“It’s hell, Mr. President,” said deputy national security adviser Meghan O’Sullivan.

This took place around 2006, pre-surge, when things in Iraq were looking, well, like hell.

But outside of that rare glimpse into Bush administration truth-telling, Woodward’s working with a lot of bureaucratic goop in this bad boy. Sure, he clues us into a spat between Condi and a top military official, but the key revelation in this first installment is that Bush was seeking a strategic re-evaluation of the situation in Iraq during this 2006 time frame. Good spade work, Bob, but hardly memorable stuff.

*Who woulda thunk that Roger Federer would’ve made it to the U.S. Open final, given his struggles this summer? And who would’ve thunk that his opponent wouldn’t be Rafael Nadal?

*WashTimes on Palin’s post-convention coming-out.

*This is the guy you want to listen to when it comes to analysis of the Fannie-Freddie takeover.

*And let me just say this about Favre’s debut with the Jets. Indeed, green machine fans, you are 1 and Oh after barely squeaking out a vick over the Dolphins. It happened in part on account of the heroics of your new QB, who threw a vintage heave for a TD in the first half of this tilt. Don’t, however, get giddy. This is a guy who, I’ll predict right now, will toss at least five more INTs than TDs before the year is over or he’s benched, whichever comes first, in car-maintenance parlance. Just wait till he starts to feel a bit comfortable with the system, because that’s when he starts improvising, starts calling his own little plays in the huddle, sandlotting it. And that’s precisely when the defense swoops in, grabbing duck after duck after Favrean duck. I suppose you could look upon this year as Favre’s best chance to pad that NFL-record pick total.

Longtime Washington Times columnist John McCaslin has got a key memo from Peggy Cusack, chief of staff of the Denver convention. After some morale-raising points, the memo asks convention staff about this matter: “6. Does anyone know where Mark Squier is? I just found his USSS ID - in the women’s restroom.”

Squier is a longtime political strategist who’s done media/opponent-smearing work for a whole swath of Dem big names. He’s a producer of the convention, too, one of the people responsible for making sure that the events of this week portray a strong, resurgent Democratic Party.

How did his flappy plastic thing end up in the bathroom. Any journalists out there in Denver? ,

With just one week to go before the back-to-back major-party conventions, a lot of journalists are catching up on their vacationing. I offer up this proof:

*The New York Times is fronting the news that the Kremlin is going to withdraw from Georgia, but is a bit worried about getting hung up in that terrible Atlanta traffic. Otherwise, check out the vid about how John McCain’s politics were “forged in a prison cell.”

*The Washington Post has published the winners of its travel photo contest.

*Los Angeles Times goes big with its feature “Secret Spots of the West,” a kind of “Escapes” for Angelenos.

*The Washington Times just talks more about Michael Phelps.

*And DCist is talking about what’s going on in other cities, just to complete the travel-theme.

Twelve parts? Mistakes in the investigation? Gary Condit?

Yeah, Washington Post put the region on time warp mode Sunday, introducing an investigative series on the unsolved murder of Chandra Levy, that most famous of Washington interns. In its own words, here’s how the Post justifies the spilling of so much ink:

The serial will show how the sensational nature of the media coverage quickly overwhelmed the investigation. It will expose the fleeting acts that later loomed large and will reveal undisclosed clues, meaningful and false: a DNA swab in a dark parking lot, Chandra’s last computer search, a conversation with a jailhouse informant who said he had the key to the case.

In the end, the serial will reveal how an enormous effort by the D.C. police, the FBI and prosecutors was undercut by a chain of mistakes, a misdirected focus and missed opportunities that allowed a killer to escape justice.

Trouble is, we pretty much knew that basic thematic outline. And this first chapter in the series is not much of a read for anyone who, well, has lived in this country for the past eight years or so: Remember that the Chandra case was not a local or regional story, but a national one–everyone who has cable is familiar with the narrative.

So the paper had damn well better have something more than just the revelation that the media attention overwhelmed the detectives. I’ll wait and see. But hold on–there’s one thing I am not going to play wait-and-see on, and it’s my up-to-hereness on interviews with Chandra Levy’s parents. I have nothing against them, and I feel terrible about what happened to them. However, over the past several years, I’ve heard plenty from them, plenty enough to need to hear no more. So you go ahead and listen to this interview clip that the Post posted; I’m not gonna.

The Washington Times has a pretty thorough presentation on the passing of beloved Tony Snow.

The New York Times throws tons of resources, with great results, at the meltdown of Fannie and Freddie.

Of course, yeah, I know, whatever: It’s been a week since Nadal beat Federer at Wimbledon. Which means that historians still haven’t quite had time to anoint this one as the best title match ever. But check out the highlights, and perhaps you’ll agree.

And what about this whole Brett Favre bullshit? This fave of broadcasters everywhere has jerked around his team time and again. Now he wants back on the gridiron. On Sunday, a rally of Packers fans pressured team owners to reinstate Favre as the starting QB. But the team knows better and is going with the “final” word on the matter that Favre delivered in March, when he said he was retiring. Good on the owners: They watched that game in January, against my New York Giants. Favre effectively ended that tilt by throwing an INT. How fitting.

Well, summer is upon us, and so is seasonal journalism at its best and worst. In recent days, the Washington Post has done a raft of these old standbys, including the one about the guy who built his own baseball stadium, the one about the lifeguards from ex-Soviet republics (rip-off of this story?), and the one about the last day of school.

So that’s what the Post has been up to. Over at the Washington Times, those folks don’t have the resources to cover the seasons quite as exhaustively. So they do other things, like this piece on the EU from the AP. I must confess to great troubles making my way through stories on the EU, but this one is different; it’s about the EU’s action freezing the assets of Iran’s biggest bank. This could signal a critical turning point in the EU’s relations with this rogue state and send ripples throughout the Western alliance, such as it is. Or perhaps it’s just another act of bureaucracy–only time will tell.

But one thing about the Washington Times‘ presentation of that EU story: Has anyone out there mentioned or pointed out that this great new site is a bit too much? I mean, check it out. It’s too much black space, with altogether too many bells and whistles attached. If you’ll recall, this is the site built by the great Interneterian Roger Black. Credit WaTi with signing up the best in the biz, but in this case the best in the biz may have gone just a bit too designy on us. Check it out for yourself.

First official weekend of summer, and from a news perspective, it feels that way. Just not too much popping out there. Our regional paper of record has started out summer with a lot of sappy seasonal fare, from the guy who constructed a baseball field in his front yard, to the women from the ex-Soviet Union who come here to work as lifeguards (huge ripoff from this Washington City Paper story), to the piece on the last day of school.

Over at the Washington Times, they have fewer resources with which to exhaustively cover the seasons. So they go for the AP story on how the candidates are sparring over the federal role in flood-prevention, given the disasters going on in the Midwest in recent days. But as you shop for your AP on the WT site, you do notice that the redesign went, well, perhaps a bit too far into the future. Open this site, and it’s like WHOA, I’ve just stepped into Web 200.0! I mean, I know those folks at the WaTi were all talking about vid and multimedia and bells and whistles, but this is whistling perhaps a bit to much.

And regarding what is certainly the hottest topic in local news–our Nabe Issue, that is–a certain blogger appears to be hammering us a bit for our take on the Carryouterbanks!

Hey, WaPo’s Outlook section on Sunday ran a piece by toe-sucker Dick Morris. The idea here was for Morris to give presumptive Republican nominee John McCain some unsolicited advice on winning the presidential campaign against Barack Obama.

Talk about surprising editorializing! Morris urged McCain to not worry too much about the far right, let the Rev. Wright speak for himself, and–this is the utterly shocking part–tack to the center! You don’t say, do you, Dick? You still believe in going up the middle? Amazing that anyone still listens to this guy.

*Politico fires up this piece on Elizabeth Edwards. No Clinton endorsement! Hold on–isn’t that something of a nonstory? I mean, who at this point would stick neck out to endorse Clinton?

*WaTi’s Sean Lengell gives us the latest on Sen. Edward Kennedy’s status (Resting at hospital.)

Former Postie Sharon Waxman laments the buyouts at the Washington Post, saying that the paper has “jumped the shark.” This thought appears on Waxman’s very own blog, which features this terribly precious little note to readers:

Why this site?

Why indeed? It’s been over a year now that friends have been urging me to enter the new millenium.

But I’ve been delaying. I think: I already write for The New York Times. I am working on a new book. How much more do people really want to read? And how much more do I really have to say?

These questions remain unresolved. Personally, I’m still divided on the topic.

As FishbowlDC is narrating, the Washington Times this week is following up on an ominous memo sent out earlier this spring by Editor John Solomon. Though he thanked his colleagues for tips on saving money, he noted that staff reductions were in store.

Fishbowl puts the tally of the fallen at twelve, with more likely to come. Newsroom staffing stood at about 200 when Solomon took over in late January. Word is that staffers are bracing for a meeting at 11:30 this morning to discuss the ongoing “restructuring.” As in so many other newsrooms these days, that word is just a euphemism for giving people a box and telling them to get their shit out of here by noon.