Did you know that much of the city’s trash is trucked to Fairfax County, where it is incinerated and turned into electricity? According to the Department of Public Works and the “waste-to-energy” industry, it's a "win-win" scenario; the trash disappears and the country reduces its dependence on foreign oil. What could be more patriotic, especially since officials say filters on the smokestacks keep nasty pollutants from escaping into the air around the Lorton plant.

Well, in a report released today, environmentalists take aim at those claims. Clean Water Action, the Toxics Action Center and six other groups from around the country are seeking to debunk the growing buzz around waste-to-energy plants as sources of clean “alternative” fuel. Their conclusion: an incinerator is an incinerator is an incinerator. 

"The core impacts of all types of incinerators remain the same: They are toxic to public health, harmful to the economy, environment and climate, and undermine recycling and waste reduction programs,” according to the report, “An Industry Blowing Smoke."

It's high school graduation season here in the nation's capital which means two things: ridiculous crowds outside Constitution Hall all day, every day; and the publication of Education Week's graduation issue.  It's the latter that is causing greater concern because contained in the June 11 edition are the results of the magazine's ten-year analysis of public high school graduation rates across the country.  And unfortunately, D.C. Public Schools ranked 50th out of 51 states and territories.  According to the poll, 48.8 percent of public school students in the city graduated in 2006.  So what do we do now?

Read More "Are D.C. Public Schools a Lost Cause?" »

Yesterday, an important moment came between all the memorials and tributes marking the two-year anniversary of the massacre at Virgina Tech. Two victims' families filed lawsuits in Fairfax County. The families of Julia Kathleen Pryde and Erin Nicole Peterson had opted out of the $11 million settlement and had to meet a two-year time limit to file suits. They met their deadline.

Good for them.

Read More "Remembering And Fighting For Erin Peterson" »

Ringling Bros. is in the midst of its annual run of shows in our market. The circus plays Fairfax through this weekend.

The show is yet another link to an amazing and underpublicized chain in the area's pop cultural history. It goes back to brothers Izzy and Irvin Feld, who were literally snake oil salesmen growing up in Hagerstown in the 1920s, and later started a record business in the 1940s out of their store, Super Cut Rate Drugs, a pharmacy on 7th St. NW in Shaw.

The record retailing operation, which quickly turned into a cash cow by catering to the city's otherwise ignored black pop fans, led the Felds to form a production company that booked concerts and other large entertainment events.

The Felds took over management of Ringling Bros. in 1957, and bought the circus whole a decade later.

Musically, among the Felds claims to fame are discovering Paul Anka, promoting Buddy Holly's last tour in 1959, and producing some shows on the Beatles U.S. tours, including a Baltimore Civic Center concert in 1964 and the DC Stadium show in August 1966, held about week before the Fab Four gave up live performances altogether.

(A case could easily be made that without the Felds, Beatlemania never would have happened on

Read More "The Greatest Show Goes On for the Felds, DC’s First Family of Entertainment" »