Did you rage this weekend? If not, did you get your living room spackled, sanded, and primed? Did you spend so much time listening to 105.9 the Edge that you found yourself thinking things like, On third listen, I adjudge that the bass line of "Living on a Prayer" is the most important part of the song? Are you me?

No? THEN LET'S RAGE!

1) RAGE AGAINST HEALTHCARE; RAGE AGAINST ANTI HEALTHCARE RAGERS. Universal-healthcare proponents had two victories this weekend, one courtesy a vote and another courtesy some Tea Party protesters who went Mel Gibson on members of congress. It reminds me of what a friend said about John Rocker after he flamed out: "Put a redneck in front of a microphone, this is what happens." This friend lives in the same town as John Rocker and avoids microphones.

2) RAGE AGAINST IMMIGRATION NONACTION. Of all the things Obama hasn't gotten done, this is...one of them.

3) RAGE AGAINST THE WARS IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN. And yes, in case you were wondering, this protest did bring out the guy on stilts dressed like Uncle Sam.

4) RAGE IN RUSSIA. This was rage against Putin, in 11 cities, but they called it Day of Wrath because dayofrage.com was taken.

5) RAGE AGAINST THE WASHINGTON POST Oh my god if I read one more Andy Alexander item about this I'm gonna write in to complain. March 9. March 11. Today. I am not celebrating this celebration of the "celebration" of gay marriage!

6) MARYLAND RAGES AGAINST WINNING. On the plus side, no reports of a riot as of Sunday night at 11:13.

7) RAGE AGAINST OUTSIDE-THE-BELTWAY TYPES: Arlington man wins National Marathon. Arlington way to go!

8) NATS RAGE AGAINST JESUS and send him to Pennsylvania. Hope you like pretzels, Jesus!

9) NOT RAGE BUT FASCINATING: T.C. Williams in Alexandria sends 80 percent of its students to college. It's in the top 4 percent of U.S. high schools for AP placement. And it's been deemed "persistently low achieving" and faces radical surgery. In today's Outlook, T.C. teacher Patrick Welsh writes a typically sharp column about the school, torching Alexandria for enrolling "newly arrived" 18- to 20-year-old immigrants in high school; "Had we done as Arlington and Fairfax counties do and offered them enrollment in an adult education program, their Standards of Learning scores would not have counted, and it's very unlikely that T.C. would have gotten the 'persistently low achieving' label. We would also be serving those students better." He also briefly tells the story of Alexandria's star-crossed effort nearly 13 years ago to create an alternative school for kids who aren't making it in T.C. Activists thought it was racist; the plan sunk.

Photo by Flickr user ep_jhu

The article points out how the two entrepreneurs have prospered under the Fenty administration. In general terms, we knew that already. What we didn't know was how. Take, for example, this excerpt from the piece, on how Fenty frat buddy Skinner has been approaching developers about doing biz with the city:

Since his return to Washington, [developer R. Donahue] Peebles said, at least two of Skinner's associates suggested that he hire Skinner, who they said could help him win District projects and gain access to the mayor and his top aides. Peebles said the associates told him that Skinner's fee was $10,000 to $20,000 a month.

Peebles said Karim approached him after an appearance on the Howard campus in 2007 and told him that Fenty was seeking to empower a new group of minority builders, including Karim. As African Americans, Karim and Skinner could benefit from city requirements that developers partner with minority-owned companies.

Karim, Peebles said, told him that "if I wanted to get to do a development deal with the District of Columbia government under Fenty, I'd have to do business with them and their circle, this new inner circle. He gave me this whole spiel about how it was a new day and how the old guys' day was up. Essentially, the message was I was going to need him."

Peebles said he was angered by what he considered a "flagrant pay-to-play overture." He rejected Karim's offer, he said, and refused to hire Skinner.

That's some choice reporting there, though you have to wonder: How reliable is Peebles as a source for a story that bashes Fenty—-a guy whose job Peebles covets. At least he's on the record, which is not the case for every developer who dishes on Skinner and Karim. Even so, a lot of great revelations in the piece.

How did Fenty respond to the allegations? By running away, of course. The Post had to try to ambush the guy after an event. Here ya go: "Fenty declined to talk in detail about his relationships with Skinner and Karim. In a brief interview as he left a news conference last month, he said his administration has awarded contracts properly."

So typical.

Post ombo Andy Alexander had his chance to lower the boom on the internal hullabaloo over Rahm Emanuel. You know, the one in which Dana Milbank and Jason Horowitz did some amazing rehab work for the White House chief of staff, only to sustain a roundhouse blow from Post columnist David Broder for shoddy reporting and failure to break news.

But Alexander came up a bit lame on this one: "I think Broder is partially right."

What it boils down to, wrote Alexander, is an overreliance on anonymous sourcing: "Broder said he was troubled by the number of anonymous sources in Horowitz's story. 'I think it's a general problem at this paper,' he said, adding 'it's a particular problem when it involves a matter of policy or personnel and readers are left in the dark about who's talking.'"

Good point, and it hews to a theme. There are a lot of planks dear to Councilmember Fenty that have lost their appeal to Mayor Fenty. Sure, snow response is a good one. A better one, though, is transparency. The Ward 4 councilmember always chanted about it, always expected it of everyone else. Furthermore, he was equal to his words, because he, as councilmember, was perhaps the most press-accessible politician in town. That's all changed now, too, in ways that we've too exhaustively chronicled to regurgitate here.

Note to D.C. residents: Curbside recycling to resume starting Monday, following the snow recycling holiday. Man, those trucks are going to fill up fast after the all the paper and plastic had piled up over the past two weeks.

Colbert I. King: Great on D.C. issues, not so great on national issues. But in this column, he weaves them together nicely, talking about how differently Ward 8 Councilmember Marion S. Barry Jr. and Prez Barack Obama use the term "empowerment." King, sticking to a long tradition of his, blasts Barry for poorly representing his constituents: "If the D.C. Council votes to censure him for corruption, as is quite likely, and takes the next step of stripping him of his committee chairmanship, as is possible, Ward 8 representation will be relegated to an even more powerless position."

More Post stuff: Ombo Andy Alexander does his take on letter-writing to the Washington Post. This is one of those columns in which the ombo sorta takes it upon himself to explain the newspaper to readers. That is, I don't need this in my Sunday paper: All letters are edited, and the writers approve substantive revisions. "The copy desk fact-checks the letters and, working with the writers, fine-tunes them for publication." I enjoy the more investigative sort of ombo column, like this one, for example.

On his blog today, Alexander gives his patented treatment to the Bill Turque–Jo-Ann Armao–Michelle Rhee–Fred Hiatt meltdown. The post includes comments from Metro reporter Turque, who wrote the blog post heard around the newsroom, and from top Metro editor Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, and from education editor Craig Timberg, and from other key players.

It covers all the central ethical issues involved in the spat—except perhaps the most important one.

While the Post seems obsessed with whether Turque was on firm ground in slamming Armao and the editorial board over its favorable editorials about schools Chancellor Rhee, and whether he could have been more guarded or fairer in his writing, no one seems too concerned with the paper's digital hygiene.

To recap: After Turque blasted the people on the other side of the firewall, newsroom brass took down the offending blog post, edited out all the juicy stuff, and reposted it without any italics. Meaning, there was no explanation that the original post had been altered and, honestly, bowdlerized.

That's bad enough. What's worse is that the ombo chose not to explore the question in his posting on the matter. So what you have here is a newsroom that doesn't seem to respect blogspace and an ombo that ignores it—not a constructive combo.

Reached on the matter, Alexander would say only, "It’s a legitimate issue that I plan to look into. I never comment beyond my blog or column."

Let's dig into some stuff, right now: Hooray for Post Ombo Andy Alexander, who stood up for the paper's decisions to run various disturbing photos of the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake in very prominent spots. As usual when the paper does anything other than put politicians and more politicians on the front page, people get pissed.

Here's David Beck of Arlington, as featured on the "Free for All" page:

I take exception to your choice to run the Jan. 15 front-page photo showing the lifeless Haitian schoolgirl slumped in the rubble of her school. I understand the need to report the extent of the devastation and tragedy in Haiti, but showing the crushed child would be needlessly frightening for any young reader who saw it.

I'm sure that, as soon as the paper came into the house, thousands of families did the same thing as I did, hiding it so their children would not accidentally stumble on it. Nothing could be done, however, about the newspaper racks throughout the Washington area.

Tragedy and death are part of this world, and children need to learn about them, but that photo's sudden appearance was not the way to do it.

Alexander notes that truth and reality need to be treated with immediacy, or something like that. And he's right. Somehow, people feel that nothing unpalatable should ever appear on the front page of newspapers, because they can't prepare for that. I've heard that same sentiment expressed with respect to certain covers that Washington City Paper has produced.

My take: Yes, news organizations should be careful about the images and language they thrust into the public eye via street boxes. No, news organizations cannot guarantee that they'll never shock, upset, or offend people with those images and language. Sometimes it's going to happen, and sometimes it's going to happen for a good reason. Haiti's catastrophe gets over the bar by a good couple of feet.

Now on to the NFL: Finally the playoffs yield an excellent game, a balanced contest with high-caliber play on "O" and "D." But as well as both the Vikes and the Saints played on Sunday night, the best players in the whole affair were announcers Troy Aikman and Joe Buck. What they lack in personality when compared to, say, the classic Madden-Summerall team, they make up for in poise and expertise. Witness the third-quarter play on which Saints defender Anthony Hargrove slammed Vikes QB and Drama King Brett Favre to the turf. The announcers had a disagreement, with Buck saying that Hargrove had violated NFL rules that bar lifting and slamming; Aikman thought it a legit hit. I couldn't decide, but I loved, just loved, the smart and extemporaneous and calm little debate that Aikman and Buck pulled off in the midst of a critical playoff game. Here's just one of the tweets out there on this question: "Troy Aikman=3 superbowl rings, Joe Buck=weasel with microphone. How can Buck disagree w/Aikman re: football tackle method?"

And wouldn't you know: Favre seals it with an INT.

Since the suspense is by now killing you, I'll let it fly. It's Washington Post Metro columnist Robert McCartney, the too-often overly evenhanded Robert McCartney. Titled "A Look at the Dan Snyder You Don't Hear So Much About," the piece talks about how Snyder's charity has given boatloads of money to organizations that help children. Here's the columnist's take:

I'm not defending his management of the team, and I realize he shares his wealth partly out of self-interest to improve his image in the community. Nevertheless, a string of people whom I interviewed last week praised Snyder for being sincerely considerate and benevolent and said the toxic reputation he's acquired is incomplete and misleading.

This is a classic case of betcha journalism—as in, I'll betcha you can't write a favorable column about Dan Snyder. And so, you go ahead and try to find something good about him. As a strategy for columnizing, it's a good one. Everyone wants to read the contrarian take, everyone wants to see if you can make the asshole look the part of a genius, and everyone wants to hate on you for even trying.

Yet McCartney should have gone further. He should have focused, say, on London Fletcher, a good free-agent pickup. He should have noted that after the Post exposed the lawsuits against season ticket holders this season, the team moderated its behavior. He should have pushed the argument till it burst at the seams.

Speaking of things Snyder-related, how 'bout that Skins game? After having ended Detroit's losing skid, how glorious would it have been for the Skins to have ended another streak this year, only in a fashion that boosts the team, not deflates it? Well, just like the last couple of Skins games, a great outcome just barely slipped through their hands, or slipped wide of the uprights, as the case may be.

DCist has a little post on a nasty NW fire mid-weekend.

Washington Times posts AP story giving context to the Salahi drama. Dropping in unannounced on the prez was once a time-honored tradition, goes the report: "Americans staked their claim to the White House in muddy boots on fine carpet, picnicked on the grounds, parked their carriages and then their cars outside and tromped inside to look for the man, often finding him. They did not need invitations, engraved or otherwise."

Congratulations to Post Ombo Andy Alexander for staying on the story of the Washington Post and its historically lax corrections practices. In this iteration, Alexander nails the paper for taking forever to print simple corrections. It's all a legacy going back to the Ben Bradlee years and perhaps beyond—a stubborn refusal to admit you're wrong. It lingers. Here's one example cited by AA:

– A photo caption identified an officer as being in the Coast Guard. A reader pointed out that he was in the Navy. A correction ran, but more than 10 weeks later.

Redskins and Giants: They're looking more and more like NFC East twins. One squad can't move the ball yet shows a little life out there on the field; and hey, so does the other. With the same results: Another loss. On the Giants front, this fourth straight defeat comes just before their bye week. So that means that the team's beat writers—with, of course, nothing more to write about—will spend a week and a half talking about the psychology of going into the bye week with a loss. You know, how it lingers and on and on. Deadly.

Washington Post ombudsman Andy Alexander hops on one of my pet peeves this week. The topic of his column is the paper's over-reliance on anonymous sourcing. That's a tired story in American journalism, but he's the ombo, so fine. But after you drill into his column a touch, you get to this gripe:

When they must be used, The Post doesn't do a good enough job of explaining why.

The Post's internal policies say: "We must strive to tell our readers as much as we can about why our unnamed sources deserve our confidence." That means offering enough description so readers can evaluate the quality of the source. Did they actually see or hear what took place? Do they have first-hand knowledge?

A review of anonymous-source usage over the past month shows that readers often got only bare-bones attribution. Of roughly 100 Post news stories using unnamed sources, fully a third provided no meaningful description. Typically, they referred vaguely to "sources," "officials," a "State Department official" or a "Democratic official."

And to all that, I say, hey, who really gives? I mean, readers know that when anonymous sources winds up in the paper, those sources don't want readers—anyone—to figure out who supplied the information. In other words, they want no identifying information in there. Not a trace. Yet people like Alexander, not to mention the Post's internal handbook, insist on as much identifying information as possible.

The result? We get a lot of bullshit qualifiers: "a source close to the negotiations," "a source who has seen the document but didn't want to be identified because he stands to be fired if he is outed." Well, I've never seen that last one, but you get the notion: These attempts to assure the reader that the source is bona fide never amount to anything. It's just wasted characters. The bottom line is this: The information has to be sound, whether it's supported by anonymous sources or not.

A senseless death: Two men rob a liquor store on upper Georgia Avenue, according to an account in the Washington Post: "Based on the account of at least one other employee in the store, investigators believe that two men, one armed with a handgun, entered the business and demanded money from [employee Rufina] Hernandez. Hernandez 'was cooperating and was fully complying with all the demands,' [MPD Sgt. John] Johnson said, but one of the suspects 'shot her anyway.' The two suspects fled on foot, Johnson said."

But the big news around town continues to be Marion Barry, the embattled Ward 8 councilmember. We reported on Friday night that Barry's office played a key role in setting up and controlling several nonprofit groups that get money directly from D.C. Council appropriations. News Channel 8 is on it, too.

*Post columnist Bob McCartney gives a look at D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty's prospects for reelection, 17.5 months out. There's some tepid analysis here, such as this: "Fenty's image as an engaged, energetic official focused on helping constituents, long one of his most valuable assets, is eroding. It has suffered from a series of mini-scandals, including Fenty's allowing a friend to drive his city-issued SUV in violation of the law, the installation of a $75,000 heater at a public pool that he uses to prepare for his triathlons and having a petty battle with the council over temporarily withholding their tickets to Nationals baseball games." McCartney's columns generally had a little coda, often on a second topic. They're generally more lively and interesting than the main piece. This time, it's a nice little riff on the hypocrisy of those who have said that the Barry shenanigans disqualify D.C. residents from ruling themselves. What about Nevada, McCartney asks.

And sorry to belabor the Post, but we've got to say that this week's column by Ombudsman Andy Alexander marks a coming-out for this fellow. Alexander nailed the whole "salons" scandal at the Post, revealing that tons of people could have and should have and had plenty of information at their hands to have blown the whistle weeks ago. Instead of suffering all that embarrassment after the Politico scoop. Here's an important snippet from the guy's reporting:

on June 24, roughly 200 managers were given a quick explanation of the "salons" idea at the end of a two-hour meeting in the cavernous auditorium on the lobby floor of The Post's downtown headquarters. These periodic "extended staff meetings," often including multiple short presentations, are held to brief managers on corporate strategy, and the details are considered confidential....

In an interview, [Executive Editor Marcus] Brauchli said it was his responsibility to vet the concept and that it is "understandable" that no news managers at the meeting raised a caution.

"When the publisher and the editor both appear to have signed off on an idea, I think it is perhaps true that a certain complacency sets in," he said. For that reason, lower-level managers might be less inclined "to stand up and say: 'Whoa, this is a bad idea.' "

Over the weekend, the paper's ombudsman, Andy Alexander, wrote in favor of the decision to go with a Web-only presentation of a two-part series by reporter Paul Duggan on the mysterious 2006 murder of Wone, a 32-year-old lawyer.

Here's why Alexander determined that editors made the right decision in restricting the piece to washingtonpost.com:

The affluent and educated Washington market is unique. Post research shows that most area households have computers and that nearly 80 percent have broadband access. Even among households where The Post is read only in print, 86 percent have a computer and 81 percent accessed the Internet in the past 30 days. So while those readers may not like to read online, they have the capability.

And there's yet another crock of nonsense muttered in connection with the Wone two-parter. That well sure does run deep.

I mean, nice job by Alexander getting statistical in his analysis—that's what real reporters do. But if this region is so wired, and if print subscribers have broadband oozing out of their floorboards, then why have a print edition of the Washington Post to begin with?

Here's the lede:

In the 1952 movie classic "Deadline-U.S.A.," a crusading editor played by Humphrey Bogart is on the phone with a gangster who warns him: "Print that story, and you're a dead man."

Sure, Alexander goes on to discuss instances more recent than that, but what prompted this whole riff? Slow news week, perhaps.

Then again, tough to focus on whether your local ombudsman is following journalistic convention when the pathway just got cleared for Roger Federer to claim his 14th grand slam championship. Yes, Rafa Nadal got bested over in Paris. How, I have no idea. Bleacher Report has the skinny on it, saying it's one of sports' great upsets. "The tennis world momentarily stopped. The clay court world as one knew it ended," says BR.

Yeah, this is so hard to fathom. Consider how Nadal won the Australian—that is, he beat Federer not long after enduring a massive semifinal that would've drained every last drop of life out of any other player on the tour. So to lose in the fourth round to a player—Robin Soderling, and, yes, that translates into "a player"—boggles the mind and the hypothalamus while it's at it. Now it's time for Federer to rule, and to follow in the glorious slipstream of the Sports Illustrated jinx.

Key factoid from Amanda Hesser's takedown on Michelle Obama's lax attitude toward cooking: "Research by the NPD Group showed that Americans ate takeout meals an average of 125 times a year in 2008, up from 72 a year in 1983. And a recent U.C.L.A. study of 32 working families found that the subjects viewed cooking from scratch as a kind of rarefied hobby." Hesser's right: We as a country suck so bad when it comes to cooking and doing our own thing in the kitchen.

Washington Times has the scoop on the latest moralizing about Sonia Sotomayor's quip about having a leg up on white males by virtue of being latina. How many news cycles you think it'll take to kill this "story"?

The Washington Post got itself in a teensy-weensy bit of trouble with a recent Travel section article on a fabulous regional escape. A piece by freelancer Pamela Redmond Satran touted the down-home joys of Lynchburg, Va., complete with recommendations on where to eat, drink, and shop. It ran a bit afoul of the neutrality police, however, in this graph (emphasis mine):

That's part of what makes Lynchburg, Va., so wonderful. Few people go there expecting much. It's out of the way, seen as a poor relation to posh Charlottesville, an hour to the north, and genteel Lexington, an hour northwest. Its reputation as home of conservative Christian-oriented Liberty University and the late Jerry Falwell hardly bodes well for style, culture and night life.

Oh, shit—more fodder for all those liberal-media-promoting conspiracy theorists. And even more fodder a several lines down, where Satran talks about where to get a soy latte.

Anyhow, someone complained to Post ombudsman Andy Alexander about the apparent bias in suggesting that conservatism is inconsistent with culture. Alexander agreed, and so did Nancy McKeon, the travel section editor,
who told the ombo, "Mea culpa." In letting the line slip through, McKeon reasoned that, hey, a town with a conservative Christian university wouldn't be a hopping place for nightlife.

Satran's take on the situation is a touch more curious. Take a look:

"What I meant was that people from more cosmopolitan places like Washington and New York might not guess that a city with a conservative Christian culture would have great style, culture, and nightlife. But obviously I believe that Lynchburg does have those things. Why do city folk assume that a conservative Christian town won't have cool shops and groovy bars? For some logical reasons, as Nancy McKeon points out, especially when it comes to the nightlife part of the theory: Lots of conservative Christians don't drink, for instance, or dance. And for some reasons that have everything to do with stereotyping and prejudice. I intended in my story to break down rather than propagate such prejudice."

OK, well, if that was what Satran was trying to say, why didn't she just write it that way?

Photo courtesy of Nannette Saunders

It was uttered in a session with reporters who were eager to get the official word on how the Bush administration was leading the country in the aftermath of the attacks. In the years after Fleischer said those words, columnists everywhere have been referring to them, commonly in ways that hammer Fleischer and the Bush people for attempting to stifle the free exchange of ideas and accept those of the government.

And that's just how Milbank used the statement in a May 12 column. Here's how he played it:

"I think there are a lot of topics that are better left for serious reflection rather than comedy," Gibbs said. "I think there's no doubt that 9/11 is part of that." It had an unfortunate echo of Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer's denunciation of comedian Bill Maher after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001: Americans need to "watch what they say."

Except for one problem: When Fleischer said those words, he really wasn't denouncing comedian Maher, at least not directly. Here's the transcript of what Fleischer said:

Q: As Commander-in-Chief, what was the President's reaction to television's Bill Maher, in his announcement that members of our armed forces who deal with missiles are cowards, while the armed terrorists who killed 6,000 unarmed (sic) are not cowards, for which Maher was briefly moved off a Washington television station?

A: I have not discussed it with the President, one. I have …

Q: Surely, as a—

A: I'm getting there.

Q: Surely as Commander, he was enraged at that, wasn't he?

A: I'm getting there, Les.

Q: Okay.

A: I'm aware of the press reports about what he's said. I have not seen the actual transcript of the show itself. But assuming the press reports are right, it's a terrible thing to say, and it's unfortunate. And that's why—there was an earlier question about has the President said anything to people in his own party—they're reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do. This is not a time for remarks like that; there never is.

That "earlier question" that Fleischer references above relates to a statement by a Republican congressman who had said the following:

If I see someone come in and he's got a diaper on his head and a fan belt around that diaper on his head, that guy needs to be pulled over and checked.

So the record shows that Fleischer's speech-chilling statement was directed more at the bigoted congressman than at Maher. Sure, there's some daylight for Milbank, in that he could argue that Fleischer was addressing both. Milbank told Alexander that the press secretary "was basically telling people 'we're at war; shut your mouth.' "

Um, total bullshit. You could argue that Fleischer should have been more definitive in addressing two different remarks about the aftermath of 9/11. That he should have done this better or that better. But looking back on the exchange, it's far easier to believe Fleischer's contention that he was preaching tolerance than Milbank's contention that the press secretary was preaching suppression. (Christopher Hitchens, in Slate, took apart the entire slander, from start to finish, in September 2006.)

Whatever Fleischer's intentions, there is no question that Milbank erred in writing that Fleischer's remarks constituted a "denunciation of comedian Bill Maher." It's clear from the record that Fleischer was primarily addressing the diaper remark. Any standard of fairness demands that Milbank specify—at least—that Fleischer was denouncing a Republican congressman and Maher. Of course, that takes some of the zip out of the writing, doesn't it?

What it all amounts to is a fabulous test for the Post's new policies on corrections. Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli has launched a big initiative to take seriously the Post's mission as the region's paper of record, sometimes reaching years into the archives to issue corrections. The following example ran in the paper in late April:

A July 5, 2006, article misstated the name of a float in the previous day’s Independence Day parade on Constitution Avenue NW. The float was called “Sikhs of America,” not “Sheiks of America.”

Now comes one of the paper's best columnists, a franchise of sorts for the Post. He screwed up, perpetuating a common and facile slam against a former White House official. How 'bout a correction for him?

Speaking of pools, I continue to hear from people in the community about the strange axing of Clark Ray, the guy who ran the city's Department of Parks and Recreation, until he was unceremoniously fired by the Fenty regime. A couple of parks-oriented community types over the past several days have bent my ear, saying, hey, here was a guy who was actually working hard, trying to make things happen—and then comes the hook.

However, if you look at City Desk from late last week, our amazing Loose Lips columnist Mike DeBonis reports of mass firings at the rec department. Could this be what forced the reckoning—that Ray refused to clean house the way that Dan Tan and others were insisting? A possibility.

Elsewhere, you gotta credit WaPo reporter Allison Klein for this piece, about how the Pentagon's maze of inroads, off-roads, and access roads constitute a trap of sorts for drunk drivers. Never driven drunk there, but I have felt as helpless as a drunk trying to get out of there on one or two occasions, both following trips to Costco.

On the media front: How many more columns is Andy Alexander going to write on the corrections problem at the Washington Post before taking someone to task for it? I mean, who deserves the blame for letting the backlog of uncorrected stuff get so big?

Also on the media front: Commenters are going wild on the Washington City Paper's piece on Foreign Policy magazine. What a community we're building.

Have no idea how the Redskins made out in the draft. How no idea how the Eagles made out in the draft. How no idea how the Giants or the Cowboys made out in the draft. In the coming days, fans and commentators will be delivering grades to all these draft performances, and all of it is useless. You're better off reading about Foreign Policy magazine, in fact. Because even though we can organize information like no one's biz, we can beam updates everywhere, aggregate all kinds of shit, and ping to our heats' content, but one thing we'll never be able to master is how well a college football player will perform in the NFL. Never.

Colbert I. King: Slamming the D.C. Council, among others, for their pettiness regarding baseball tix. Points well taken.

And some pricey vandalism took place Saturday around Logan Circle.

In other not-really-news, visitors overwhelmed the District this weekend, in every possible way, crowding and closing off the streets, jamming the Mall for just-past-peak cherry blossoms, checking out and participating in parades, and so on. It was enough to make me feel anxious for a sweltering, humid weekend deep in August when the Mall looks and feels like the Sahara.

One of my weekend obsessions these days is what Andy Alexander, the Washington Post's ombudsman, is saying about things at the city's long-dominant daily. This week he's writing about how the paper doesn't do a good job of disclosing its ethical and reportorial standards, as other prominent papers do.

OK, so disclosing them to the public is one thing–good point, ombo.

But then he takes it one step further: "A separate question is whether The Post adheres to the policies in place. In my first two months as ombudsman, I've found a disturbing lack of attention to the standards and ethics rules."

Alexander then goes on to talk about how "a surprising number of staffers told me it's been years since they reviewed them." So the lack of attention to the standards doesn't mean that Alexander has found actual violations of the standards, just that people aren't, like, having in-house seminars about them.

That seems like a non-issue. If you want to talk about the standards and rules, can't we come up with some sort of wrongdoing first?

Unreal: The Washington Times sent someone overseas to cover President Obama. We are talking original WashTimes content here!

WaPo has the scoop on tourism season here in D.C.: It's up! Actually, it's down. Well, maybe in-between, or something like that. You try to figure it out.

An amazing bit of insight from a WaPo subhed on the fate of the national economy: First quarter ended on an upswing, but it is not certain that the worst of the crisis has passed. Now that's taking a stance!

Weekend weather was a mixed bag, with a wet Saturday and a schizophrenic Sunday. Yeah, I know—you know that. But I am trying to break the mold here, giving weather "retrocasts" instead of forecasts.

And what a snoozer this NCAA tourney is. No parity in that league, whatsoever. Too many blowouts to make for good watching, Villanova v. Pitt notwithstanding. Can't wait for the NBA playoffs, when teams that are well matched hit the hardwood.

Does Colbert I. King like At-Large Councilmember Michael A. Brown or not? Hard to tell from this column what the Pulitzer-winning King thinks of the freshman. But, as always, it's required reading for the D.C. political class. And if King's columns speak loudly, you gotta check him out in person. We had him on a panel for our Washington City Paper "Best Of" party, and he was the only one the crowd could hear at Lotus Lounge. He also had some great "Best Of" picks, ones that no one else had. Several were old D.C. standbys that'd closed years ago.

A tale of two ombudsmen: On Sunday, the Washington Post's Andy Alexander went the blah route, telling readers about how the paper is changing—physically—by combining some sections with others. An enormous waste of space a, all told, considering that the Post itself has gone to great lengths to explain the changes to readers. I suppose that Alexander did provide one insight, namely that the changes were motivated by budgetary considerations. Yeah, not so insighty.

At the New York Times, Clark Hoyt was digging deep into the paper's newsroom, telling people why and how key stories come to rely on anonymous sources. Hoyt drilled into three examples of stories that were supported in one way or another by anonymous sources and interviewed the reporters on how they handled the sources. A good primer on how news gets packaged in Washington.

And speaking of anonymous sources, how about this piece by the Washington Post on the brutal interrogation of terrorism suspect Abu Zubaida. In this piece, reporters Peter Finn and Joby Warrick, along with researcher Julie Tate, set up something of a battle of the anonymous. At issue is whether the coercion of interrogators squeezed anything of value out of this longtime U.S. detainee. One nameless source on this question:

"It's simply wrong to suggest that Abu Zubaida wasn't intimately involved with al-Qaeda," said a U.S. counterterrorism official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because much about Abu Zubaida remains classified. "He was one of the terrorist organization's key facilitators, offered new insights into how the organization operated, provided critical information on senior al-Qaeda figures . . . and identified hundreds of al-Qaeda members. How anyone can minimize that information — some of the best we had at the time on al-Qaeda — is beyond me."

Later in the piece, another view: "'We spent millions of dollars chasing false alarms,' one former intelligence official said."

The weight of the reporting in the story aligns with the latter point of view. But still: When you have one faceless bureaucrat against another, and little in the way of independent, verifiable data supporting either side, it's a frustrating ride for the reader.