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.

Greater Greater Washington looked at the use of the word and its social and racial implications a few months ago; City Desk followed up.

The Examiner story (the main online headline is "Bedroom community blues" instead) referenced dropping home values, falling tax revenues, the high foreclosure rate in some local jurisdictions, and the fact that some - many? it's unclear - former single-family homes are now being (gasp) rented out. It quoted the president of the Kettering Community Association in Upper Marlboro, Linda Crudup, describing the vandalism of some of those foreclosed properties, in the form of broken windows and doors kicked in. It vaguely spoke of "neighbors who just a few years ago worried about curb height or speed bumps" now finding themselves "fighting to keep drug dealers from setting up shop in boarded-up homes." The story also cited an increase in homelessness in Prince William and Loudon and noted one Fairfax County district is "littered with hundreds of boarded-up McMansions."

Those are real problems, to be sure. But they have nothing to do with the term "ghetto," or the actual thing.

Ideas? Comments? I’m at eniedowski@washingtoncitypaper.com, and on Twitter.

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).

Fairfax County prosecutor Robert Horan, who later wouldn't bring charges in Culosi's killing, didn't charge Prince Jones' killer, either.

And only a month after Culosi was killed, unarmed 19-year-old Aaron Brown of Annandale was shot and killed in the parking lot of an International House of Pancakes by Carl Stowe, an off-duty Alexandria police officer.

Brown was in the backseat of a car full of friends who were accused of trying to run out without paying a $26 check when Stowe fired the fatal shot into the side of the vehicle.

Had one of the restaurant's waiters or short order cooks gunned down a patron under the exact same circumstances, murder indictments would surely have followed. No charges were filed against Stowe, who was working at the IHOP as a security guard when he killed Brown.

Stowe's other employer, the city of Alexandria, paid a $1.1 million settlement to Brown's family.

In Greece, one such police shooting -- the killing in December of an unarmed 19-year-old student by an Athens cop -- sparked a month of riots that has left governments all over Europe afraid.

Other than some quiet protests organized by some of Jones' Howard classmates, the three Northern Virginia killings inspired no civil disobedience.

Perhaps that's why these things happen more around here?

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.