Pepco Will Lobby 'Til The Lights Come On: But it won't actually turn the lights on itself. HuffPo D.C. reports: "The power company, fined $1 million by the Maryland Public Service Commission in December for its unreliable service, paid $3.8 million in lobbying expenses while paying negative $508 million in taxes, according to the report." . +3

No Home For Old Bourbon: It's really difficult to get a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle—in any vintage—here in D.C. Young & Hungry sent contributor Sam Hiersteiner to find some in D.C. and even though he found a liquor store that technically sells the stuff, he couldn't buy any. "Technically, yes, we have some," says Stewart Phillips, wine consultant and beer buyer at Schneider’s of Capitol Hill. "We got the 12-year and 20-year this morning, but it went on hold for customers in about 15 minutes.” -1

Remember the Ashburn: After a bit of prodding from us and others, the publicist of the famed Alamo Drafthouse theaters admits the new theater won't actually be a D.C. location. Upside, that means that at some point in the future, there may be an iteration of the famously fussy cinema even closer than 30 miles away in Ashburn, Va.+3

Yesterday's Needle rating: 26 Today's score: +7 Today's Needle rating: 33

The Post ad came in for a bit of mockery—Gawker's Valleywag called it "insane"—but we kind of liked it. So we made our own version. (Admittedly, our production values are a little lower, because we used a Flip camera to shoot it, whereas the Post appears to have spent most of the money they saved by laying off half the copy desk on making theirs. But still!)

Watch here:

And here's the original Post ad, in case you hadn't seen it yet:

D.C. Votes! The election that Professional Washington devoted its last year to predicting may be taking place everywhere but the District. But polls are open here in Our Nation's Capital, too. Not much drama to report: Even without Democratic primary loser Adrian Fenty's tepid opposition to a write-in effort on his behalf, it's a good bet that Vince Gray will emerge triumphant. Still, election made makes up for its lack of excitement via a dose of low-comedy: This morning, a District Board of Elections and Ethics tweet announced that a voter had tried to use a hand-stamp to write a candidate's name. Which wouldn't have been a problem, except that the voter was voting on a touch-screen ballot. +2

Moonies Rising. A year after gutting its staff, killing its Redskins coverage, and generally giving up the pretension that it was a normal newspaper and not a right-wing 'zine, The Washington Times says it's reviving sports, metro, and entertainment coverage. You'd have to be brainwashed in order to double-down on a broadsheet in the current media environment, right? Don't answer that: The changes were announced as control over the paper shifted from one feuding branch of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's family (the one that saw the paper as a giant money pit) to another (the one that spent a quarter-century shoveling dollars into said pit). +3

All the President's Rumormongers: Remember when the D.C. commentariat got all excited for about 24 hours about that rumor that Barack Obama would dump Joe Biden in favor of Hillary Clinton for the 2012 veep spot? "I kind of started the rumor," D.C. investigative-reporting super-duper-super-ace Bob Woodward told a Georgetown crowd, according to a Georgetown Dish report. (The audience laughed, according to the website's report.) We preferred it when Woodward was starting better rumors, like the one about how the President of the United States had conspired to cover up a break-in against the opposition party that was organized by his henchmen. But it would have been cool if he'd spent 1972 reporting on plans to drop Spiro Agnew, too. -3

So Devious it Just Might Work. So, here's the scheme. First, the Redskins get rid of Jason Campbell in favor of aging veteran Donovan McNabb. Then, they improbably bench McNabb at the climax of last week's game, and proceed to audition JaMarcus Russell—the very guy who Oakland cast off before they nabbed Campbell. A ludicrously bad trade-off...or a scheme so brilliant it could only have been hatched by the razor-sharp strategic mind of Daniel Snyder? You decide. -1.

Yesterday’s Needle rating: 46 Today’s score: +1 Today’s Needle rating: 47

That assessment came from a 66-page report obtained by Woodward. Over the weekend, Woodward and Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli, along with other Post officials, held some tense discussions with Pentagon higher-ups about which parts of the report are suitable for public consumption and which parts could endanger operations on the ground in Afghanistan.

The two sides ultimately reached agreement on the particulars and the Post ran the story on Monday.

So here you have a newspaper discussing redactions of a critical document with government officials. Now there's a process that calls for a little explanation from the executive editor, right?

No, wrong. When Kurtz asked Brauchli for comment on the negotiations, Brauchli declined. "I asked him for an interview and he declined to talk to me, perhaps because he knew Woodward had spoken to me," says Kurtz. When asked whether he thought Brauchli's input was pivotal to his story, Kurtz said, "It's always good to have another participant when you're writing about high-level meetings."

Woodward shed some light on Brauchli's silence: "He generally takes the position now that he’s not going to spend a lot of time talking about how stories are done or not done."

Aha! That sounds a lot like the Brauchli Doctrine, which holds that newspapers spend too much time explaining themselves.

In this case, says Woodward, Brauchli essentially delegated the press-talking to him, with no resulting harm to public accountability: Since Woodward sat through the entire process, he was conversant with all the details of the negotiations—and reports that Brauchli did a bang-up job in handling the defense establishment.

Brauchli didn't immediately respond to an e-mail requesting comment on why he didn't comment.

Burned!

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