Since it's been established here, here, and here that terminology matters, it seems worth pointing out the screaming language on the front page of the Washington Examiner yesterday: "Suburban dreams turn into ghettoes." The headline inside the paper said: "Foreclosure crisis creating suburban slums."

The story by Bill Myers and David Sherfinski began:

Two years of economic collapse have pockmarked the D.C. region's affluent suburbs with blight, and experts are worried that the foundering cul-de-sacs and towns are on the verge of becoming the region's next ghettoes.

Here's another term - "ghetto" - that gets thrown around far too much, and too casually, in talking about urban (and, in this case, suburban) problems.

Read More "More on Why Words Matter: The Examiner Says D.C. Suburbs Are Becoming “Ghettos”" »

I wrote a column this week about the killing of Sal Culosi, shot three years ago last weekend by Fairfax County SWAT officer Deval Bullock. At the time of his death, Culosi was under investigation for sports betting.

Nobody was ever charged with any crimes in either the gambling investigation or the killing of Culosi, who was unarmed when he was gunned down in front of his house.

Culosi's death came during what felt like a spree of deadly and indictment-free police shootings in Northern Virginia.

Just five days before Culosi's killing, a civil jury had awarded the family of Prince Jones $3.7 million in a wrongful death suit.

Jones, an unarmed Howard U. student, was shot five times in the back in a Falls Church driveway in September 2000 by an undercover Prince George's County cop, Carlton Jones (no relation).

Read More "The Killing Fields of NoVa…" »

For the barely current issue of City Paper, I wrote about the Georgetown Hoyas' new t-shirt shooter, called the T-Shirt Gatling Gun.

Who cares that the team is slumping? The few seconds it takes for the multi-chambered air rifle to fire a couple dozen shirts into the stratosphere are worth a trip to the Verizon Center.

Before encountering the Hoyas' toy, I don't think I'd heard the phrase "Gatling Gun" since high school history class. (I'm a product of Fairfax County schools, where civil war minutiae gets treated like breaking local news. )

But, as any military buff would be aware but I hadn't a clue, the Gatling Gun never went away as an implement of destruction.

And now, in fact, it's really in vogue.

Apparently, Barack Obama's escorts carry a Gatling Gun with them, just in case.

Here's footage of the presidential firepower in action.

Prepare to be scared. No, really.