Medical Montel: Between infomercials for blenders, financial counseling, and security companies, Montel Williams may soon be busy here in the District. The talk show host is part of a group that's applying for one of the medical marijuana licenses up for grabs; he's the public face of a dispensary in Sacramento, Calif., already. (Williams has MS and has been actively supporting laws allowing medical use of pot for a while.) That California outfit is fairly popular—one online reviewer recently called it the Neiman Marcus of Marijuana. No word on whether that means Williams' group will try to set up shop in Mazza Gallerie. +2

No Parking, Seriously: Should your car be stolen in the District, the police may not find it, but the Department of Public Works will. Just ask Brandon Bray, whose car was stolen, then left for six weeks in a tow-away zone in front of a school, where it accumulated $300 in parking tickets, some of which were there so long that they melted to the windshield. He now has the car back, and won't have to pay the fines. Guess that "tow-away" thing doesn't mean much, though. -1

Knock First: Metropolitan Police Department officers were very eager to get inside a home a few years ago, after someone stopped for a traffic violation told them her son, who dropped a gun as he ran from the stop, lived at that address. The only problem? He didn't. Police spent 45 minutes with a battering ram, drill, and crow bar breaking into the home, doing more than $10,000 in damage to the door and the interior walls—then refused to pay for it, because they had a warrant. Never mind that the information that led to the warrant was erroneous. Eventually, the homeowner sued, and five months after they first complained, got paid back for the repairs they did. Still, let that be a lesson: Don't live in a house the cops might want to bust into. -2

Ni Hao Saxa: Vice President Joe Biden was at the Verizon Center to see the Georgetown Hoyas beat the Duke Blue Devils a couple of years ago, along with President Barack Obama and thousands of others. But only now is the true depth of Biden's devotion to the team becoming clear—his first stop, upon arriving in Beijing yesterday, was at a gym to watch the Hoyas (on a preseason tour of China) play the Shanxi Brave Dragons. The visiting college team won, 98-81. Look for the Brave Dragons to drop out of the ESPN/USA Today coaches' poll as a result. +1

Yesterday's Needle rating: 63 Today's score: 0 Today's Needle rating: 63

If you missed the link in Loose Lips Daily yesterday, let us recap. The House Energy and Commerce Committee—which obviously likes the bill—offers the following as the "Benefits of Health Care Reform In the District of Columbia":

363,00: The number of D.C. residents already with health insurance that will receive "improved" coverage.

Up to 134,000 and 17,300: The number of families and small businesses, respectively, that will be eligible to receive tax credits and other help in purchasing coverage.

75,000: The number of beneficiaries that will receive improved Medicare coverage, including on currently unsubsidized medications.

6,000: The number of uninsured residents that will receive coverage.

5,600: The number of residents with pre-existing conditions that will be able to get coverage.

400: The number of families protected from bankruptcy due to unaffordable health costs.

67,000: The number of young adults that will be able to receive coverage on their parents' plans up to the age of 26.

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, who, we all know, couldn't vote for the legislation but would have, says the bill also will provide up to $54.6 million for the District's 42 community health centers. LaShon Beamon, spokeswoman for the D.C. Department of Health Care Finance (DHCF), told City Desk that DHCF is still in talks with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to determine the amount that will go to the city and how the funds will be used.

Photo by Leoncillo Sabino, Creative Commons Attribution License

Well, our new Web site has been live for more than 24 hours now—plenty of time for you to have decided what you like, what you hate, and what you really, really hate. So let us know. We might even listen!

Are you excited for our Best of D.C. 2010 issue, out in print tomorrow? Pick it up, it's the best! In it, you will learn much more than just where to go for the Best Burger, the Best Barbecue, and the Best Wine List. You'll also find out the Best Dandy (no, it's not you), the Best Edible Cold Remedy, and, according to the Readers Poll, the Best Place to Smoke Weed.

Speaking of weed, get ready to grow some! D.C. Councilmember Phil Mendelson says a provision that would allow "home cultivation" is under discussion and could be added to David Catania's medical marijuana legislation. You could get five or six plants! I mean, there's rules and everything, but still.

As the Washington Post points out this morning, a lot is at stake in how the city sets up the whole program, which will likely center around five (or some other number of) dispensaries. Luckily, there are lots of people with experience willing to help: like a "Netherlands company offering indoor-growing technology" and a "California dispensary proposing a new franchise."

(Could you go wrong with either one? Advice, Mike Riggs?)

More from the Post:

Council members are looking to the 14 states where the use of medical marijuana is legal for answers. Steph Sherer, executive director of Americans for Safe Access, which supports legalizing pot for medical reasons, said that once policymakers become more familiar with regulating marijuana dispensaries, it becomes a routine part of governing.

"It's a boring clinic. It just maybe smells different than anything you've been in before," said Sherer, a D.C. resident who uses a marijuana spray four times a day for neck spasms.

That's actually what the clinics are going to be called: Boring Pot Clinic No. 1, Boring Pot Clinic No. 2, Boring Pot Clinic No. 3, etc.

In other non-pot-related local news, a flasher (description: white male) has been exposing himself to women on the Washington & Old Dominion bike trail. It's happened at least 11 times since January.

Speaking of white males, Joe Biden got really, really excited at the East Room signing ceremony for the healthcare bill yesterday. Barack Obama said things like:

“Our presence here today is remarkable and improbable. It has been easy at times to doubt our ability to do such a big thing, such a complicated thing. It’s easy to succumb to the sense of cynicism of what’s possible in this country."

Biden, not realizing he was being picked up on a mike, said simply: "This is a big fucking deal."

Happy hump day.

Photo by ElPablo!, Creative Commons Attribution License

Good morning, City Desk readers, and welcome to another Freedom Friday! How about this "heat wave," enh? ENH?

Michael Phelps, Olympiad and hero to long-necked people everywhere, crashed his Escalade in Baltimore last night. To give you an impression of how bad the accident was, here's WaPo's headline: "Phelps Uninjured in Two-Vehicle Crash." There wasn't enough room in the headline to mention that the person in the other car was left uninjured as well–only "shaken up."

It's an important story because Michael Phelps is A FAMOUS SWIMMER AND IMPORTANT YOUNG MAN, and when he was fresh out of high school, he was arrested for driving under the influence. Five years is nothing in journalism years–so maybe the the solid graf that addresses Phelp's sobriety was worth including. Then again, there's this [emphasis mine]:

Police found no reason to perform any tests on him, [Officer] Guglielmi said. Officers also examined both vehicles and found no evidence of drugs or alcohol, he said.

Throwing in that bit about the drugs–something WaPo didn't bother to do in a single one of these traffic accident stories from Tuesday–now that was pure genius! After all, there was that DUI, and the picture of Phelps taking a monster hit with those Aquaman lungs.

But as good as WaPo is about keeping us abreast (swimming joke!) of Phelp's fuck-ups, the paper was strangely silent about Subway, which dropped the heavily wreathed Phelps like an ugly newborn seven months ago in the wake of the bong pictures, only to bring him back on board in recent weeks for a series of print and TV commercials, in which Phelps gushes about his love for jalapenos and banana peppers alongside a nervous and sad-looking Jared.

C'mon, Phelps gettin' his endorsement back wasn't worth even a blog post?

Do you cry easily, sweet reader? The September issue of Esquire features a heart-breaking story by John H. Richardson about Warren Hern, the only remaining late-term abortion provider in the country. For the last several decades, Hern has been the target of brick-throwing, gun-firing, vitriol-spewing, COLLEAGUE-MURDERING "Pro-lifers." Told with an elegant yet enthralling second-person voice, Richardson's story is almost enough to make a non-believer embrace Original Sin, if only as an explanation to what tempted Bill O'Reilly's mother to raise the spawn of Satan as her own. In fact, it's almost enough to inspire a guy–who, as Dogbert once said, doesn't like to get "gooky stuff" on his "paws"–to put his money where his mouth is. Too bad  I'm too damn dumb for abortion school!

Obesity is apparently off limits, but I'm pretty sure it's still OK to call smokers "addicts." Thankfully, there's a less unhealthy alternative on shelves as we sprechen! From Jacob Sullum at Reason:

A new review of 89 studies confirms that the cancer risk associated with smokeless tobacco is tiny when compared to the cancer risk associated with cigarettes....

[The authors] estimate that if all male cigarette smokers in the U.S. had used smokeless tobacco instead, the number of tobacco-related cancer deaths among them would have been 1 percent what it actually was in 2005 (about 1,100 vs. 105,000).

Holy metastasizing lung tumors, Batman, why hasn't some do-gooding (good-doing?) public health advocate endorsed Snus? Sullum can tell you:

This comparison highlights the absurdity of the main "public health" objection to promoting smokeless tobacco as a harm-reducing alternative to cigarettes. Opponents of this strategy claim to be worried that it could lead to more tobacco-related mortality in the long run if it attracts nonsmokers to smokeless tobacco. But Lee and Hamling's numbers indicate that if a significant percentage of smokers switched to oral snuff, the tobacco-related death toll would be smaller than it is now even if every nonsmoker in America started using oral snuff too. By the professed standards of public health, which seeks to minimize morbidity and mortality, this is a no-brainer. As with the opposition to electronic cigarettes, something else is going on here: a moralistic crusade to conquer sin disguised as a scientific quest to conquer disease.

If you've never read Jacob Sullum on cigarettes (and weed), you should. Especially if you're the kind of person who knows what's best for everybody but your coke-snorting daughter. (Catch that? I just said "F you!" to Vice President Joe Biden, Destroyer of Families!)

Happy Friday, y'all. Don't get scammed!

Apparently, watching the funeral online was an important part of yesterday's Congressional schedule.  Politico posts this message from the head of the House's tech operations.

"The Michael Jackson event is causing even more inbound Internet BW usage.
We are monitoring both Internet connections and they are maxed out at 155 Mbps inbound."

More District news, plus Obamas in Russia after the jump.

• A Metro driver was suspended without pay for 5 days after a video of him texting someone surfaced on YouTube, according to WJLA.  Whatever the message was, it probably could not have waited for a minute until the train pulled into a station.  Metro officials want everyone to know that this video was taken 2 and a half weeks before the fatal crash at Fort Totten, so he obviously did not injure anyone by looking down when he was supposed to be, you know, DRIVING THE TRAIN.

• The City Council is discussing changes to the stalking laws that got Marion Barry into trouble this weekend.  Unfortunately for Barry, their plans will amend the current law to include cyber-stalking and other forms of Internet predation, so he's not off the hook.  In other incriminating news, City Desk reported yesterday that Barry's alleged stalking victim received $20,000 in city funds for "consulting services."  What sort of consulting services was she providing?

• Although he was in Moscow meeting with Prime Minister Putin, President Obama spent most of yesterday explaining what his Vice President and Chief of Staff meant when they started babbling incessantly about the economy and health care.  After Joe Biden announced on Sunday that the administration had grossly misread the economy, Obama clarified the economic situation with NBC's Chuck Todd.  Apparently, they did not "misread" the economy, they just had insufficient information.  The same went for Rahm Emanuel, who announced that the White House would be comfortable with a health care policy "triggered" by worsening economic developments, since the path to universal coverage is "negotiable."  Obama vaguely reiterated the need for a "public option" in comments today.  Well, when the cat's away, the mice will play.  Or just stop thinking about what they're saying.

That's essentially what Pro Football Talk is saying. According to the site, La Canfora has been hired away from the Washington Post by the NFL Network, the future cable powerhouse owned by the NFL, which is run by the NFL owners, none brasher than Snyder.

On some levels, the departure was inevitable. La Canfora was good enough at his job, as the Post's Skins beat writer and the force behind Redskins Insider, the paper's most popular sports blog, to cause the Skins organization to launch a campaign against him. Snyder's message board, extremeskins.com, his media mouthpiece, Larry Michael, and his, well, everything else, Vinny Cerrato, all went crazy trying to attack La Canfora.

Michael had "The Sourcerer," a silly feature used on a Skins cable TV show to belittle everything La Canfora wrote. And then things got really ugly when Snyder gave Cerrato, who would "no comment" every question from La Canfora for his Post stories, a radio show on the sports station he owns, WTEM. Cerrato railed against the beat writer as soon as he got on the air.

The lowpoint of the feud came with Cerrato and Michael accusing La Canfora of tattling to the NFL in hopes of getting the league to launch a tampering investigation of the Redskins. (Tampering? Snyder?)

La Canfora fought ugliness with ugliness, calling Cerrato a liar and mocking the organization in emails to detractors. As predicted in this space many times, the beat wasn't big enough for both Cerrato and La Canfora to stay on another season.

Cerrato kept his football job, though the radio gig was such a disaster it can't come back. So it's La Canfora heading off, leaving writing for talking, as all typists aspire to do.

But, working for Snyder?

Aw, what the heck? That's the eventual fate of us all.

***

Speaking of tampering: An odd story out of Nashville holds that the Titans ARE NOT behind the much-discussed tampering investigation of the Redskins.

Ever since Snyder signed Albert Haynesworth, there's been grumbling from the Titans that the Redskins had opened negotiations with the run-stopping, pass-rushing behemoth before the free agent signing period opened on Feb. 27.

That's a no-no, punishable by the loss of draft picks. But now, amid all sorts of talk that the NFL is interviewing suspected tamperers at Redskins Park, the Nashville City Paper is reporting that the Titans never "filed a written formal complaint," and that the team doesn't want to be seen as vindictive after losing Haynesworth.

So, if nobody from the Titans kickstarted this whole Redskins inquiry, who did? Who would have enough animus against Snyder's organization to try to cause big trouble for the burgundy and gold?

Hmmmm. Let's pin it on Jason La Canfora!

***

Yesterday, the Dallas Cowboys had a ribbon cutting ceremony for their new billion-dollar-plus stadium yesterday.

At least $350 million of the stadium's cost came from public moneys.

Your move, Dan Snyder!

(If I had the funds lying around, I'd chip in another $350 million for the Cowboys new home so long as they promised that the move meant we'd never again have to watch Clint Longley highlights on Thanksgiving from the old place.)

***

Here's what big talk gets you: Bigger bond!

The guy who allegedly told investigators in Florida that he'd sold steroids to Caps and Nats, Richard "Andy" Thomas, found out yesterday that his bond had been nearly doubled, up to $425,000.

(It's great to see bonds and steroids discussed in the same paragraphs again, ain't it? Just like old times!)

Apparently, Thomas has said he was drawn to PEDs so he could "be like Arnold" Schwarzenegger. Schwarzenegger doesn't get enough credit for being the godfather of steroid abuse in this country.

Other than from the White House and City Paper, anyway.

No names of Caps or Nats players that Thomas allegedly sold the drugs to have yet been released.

Speaking of names: How do you get "Andy" out of Richard? Sounds totally like a "Don't call me 'Dick!'" move. Dick's totally out of vogue, you know.

***

Joe Biden is the Anti-Arnold Schwarzenegger!

Vice presidents get accused of falsely taking credit for big things even when they don't.

Maybe that's why, hot as the topic is these days, Biden never mentions that he led the way to having steroids made illegal in this country.

But, hell if he didn't: In May 1989, back when he chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden called a hearing about the use of steroids in the NFL. According to a Washington Post report on the hearing, Atlanta Falcons guard Bill Fralic told the committee that "approximately 75 percent" of all "linemen, linebackers and tight ends" in the league used steroids. NFL czar Pete Rozelle testified at the same hearing that random testing detected that only "6 to 7 percent" of players were juiced, but Biden said he "would have trouble not believing Fralic."

Biden had sponsored S.1829, a Senate bill making steroids a controlled substance, in the 100th congress, and, according to the vice president's office, later wrote the Senate version of a House bill that outlawed possession of the drugs.

Again: Biden is the anti-Arnold!

(Full disclosure: I occasionally play in a really bad band with people who work for the vice president. We could use some performance enhancers.)

***

Because polls are the future, the folks at wizardsextreme.com, a fan site for our Wiz, are asking readers to vote on their all-time favorite Wizards/Bullets player for every jersey number. Though participation has been less than spotty, and current team members are doing far too well in the votes, it's a fun concept and a good excuse for a trip down memory lane. Currently, #5 is up, and Juwan Howard, who was basically run out of town, is winning big. Kwame Brown, also run out of town, has zero votes.

The first poll, over #0, of course went to Gilbert Arenas in a romp. Kevin Duckworth, despite his recent death, got zero votes.

***

Few things make me madder than a spelling bee being treated like a sport. But that's our lot, now that software has rendered the required skill less useful than Betamax repair. Even the best sports blogger of our age has fallen for this scam.

Obviously, spelling's only been given sports status to provide cheap programming for ESPN.

Step up and pay the athletes, ESPN!

Out of protest, I'm canceling my regular Friday lunch with the best sports blogger of our age today. Well, out of protest and because I'm going away for a while...

***

Story tips? Wanna Play the Feud? Tube amps for sale? Send to: cheapseats@washingtoncitypaper.com.

*The President and Vice President supped at Ray's Hell Burger in Arlington yesterday. According to the Post, they went dutch.

*THIS WEEK IN CAL THOMAS: The Washington Times commemorates the 30th anniversary of Margaret Thatcher's election as Prime Minister with a fawning piece whose best moment is its opening anecdote:

The newly elected Mrs. Thatcher takes her all-male Cabinet to dinner. The waiter asks her what she would like to order.

"I'll have the beef," says she.

"What about the vegetables?" asks the waiter.

"They'll have the same."

*Haven't played the Post's "build your own D.C. budget" game? Then you haven't lived.

*D.C. Police have arrested Delante Samuel Sharp for the 2008 murder of Mario Antwon Settles and Shanell Adams in the 1700 block of Q Street SE.

*14th & You has a rundown on the upcoming ANC meetings in the Logan/Dupont/U Street area.

*Mr. T in D.C. can't read any more. "Try Kite Runner," his wife beseeches. It doesn't take:

Each time, it felt like I was wasting time, slugging through pointless description and character development. I got antsy, and had to put the book down, preferring to read the summary on Wikipedia. It was impossible to read!

Mr. T chalks it up to the internet's realignment of his attention span. My advice, as someone who fell out of and then back into the habit: Start with a mean book of essays! Bite-size, episodic, light—perfect training wheels to get you going. Maybe even one of these.

*Tonight's City Lights rec: Robin Rose's "Cypher" exhibition at the Katzen Arts Center. Maura Judkis calls it "a broad-reaching show, examining life and death, politics, history, and consumerism, but Rose pulls it off."

*Why hasn't Howard Wolfson updated his indie music blog since mid-March? Could it have anything to do with Terry McAuliffe's run for governor?!

At 5:30 p.m., I spot a woman wearing a mask exiting a metro bus at Mount Pleasant and Irving. Do I have Vice President Biden to thank?

The New York Post reported that lawyer Thomas Dunlap had come to the paper while trying to sell the tape to media outlets for as much as $2 million. Dunlap was representing the guy who claimed to have shot the video.

When I read the story, posted on Drudge, the anonymous rat's lawyer's name sounded familiar.

And then it hit me: HE'S THE KICKBALL GUY!

Dunlap, of the firm Dunlap, Grubb, and Weaver, with offices in Leesburg and DC, was the plaintiff's lawyer in what has to be the first federal lawsuit ever filed about kickball, and one of the bizarrest cases I've ever come across.

In 2006, Dunlap's client, the World Adult Kickball Association (WAKA), sued relatively teensy upstart DCKickball for, among other things, violating copyright law.

Dunlap contended that DCKickball stole its kickball rules from WAKA, which, to the untrained eye, sure seem just like the kickball rules used by third-graders the world over. For its offenses, WAKA wanted $356,000. (In 1998, one of WAKA's founders had told me he had cribbed the group's rules from softball and his own memories of playing kickball as a kid.)

Dunlap, while in the kickball heavy role, also sent cease-and-desist letters with similar infringement claims to other kickball confederations around town (the NAKID kickball league) and all over the country, accusing them of stealing WAKA's "intellectual property and trade secrets."

One more time: It's kickball!

And since then, if I can believe what I read in the New York Post, Dunlap's gone from representing playground bullies to working for even bigger creeps.

For Ashley Biden's sake, I hope there's no video of her playing adult kickball. That would really be sad.

(Now I'm just waiting to see if the rat played for WAKA.)

When Joe Biden came by, he gave a shout-out from the stage to the governor of Pennsylvania, and the guy standing beside me started waving his arms and yelling nice things at the new Vice President.

I was next to Ed Rendell!

Rendell's my favorite governor, even though the only things I know about him are that he's a huge Philly sports fan and that he's appeared on the Eagles post-game shows for years.

So I took the opportunity to tell him sorry about what happened in Arizona. I figured the Eagles' NFC Championship loss would still be on his mind no matter how great a day this was for Rendell's political party.

I figured right.

"That last play was pass interference," Rendell said in that dog-bark of a voice he uses when he's excited.

Then, as any good Philly sports fan would, after starting out blaming the refs for the loss, Rendell recounted the Eagles miscues that he also felt cost them a trip to the Super Bowl.

"We shoulda had their guy at the 50 on that 4th down," he huffed. "But...."

Rendell told me he's going to the Super Bowl anyway, to root for his state's other team.

Now I wanna move to Pennsylvania just so I can have a governor like that.

Reporting by Ruth Samuelson, writing by Erik Wemple

This, to me, is an awkward exchange. First, politicians need to stop making jokes about hair-plugs, even if they've got a few. Second, give me a good belly-laugh any day over the halting, drawn-out, don't-know-whether-he's-laughing-or-crying chuckle that consumes Biden for nearly a minute.

Don't get me wrong: I would take a bullet for Joe Biden. But it sure would be nice to see a politician laugh with the joyful abandon of Bill Clinton back in (say) 1995:

According to Dep. Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, Yeltsin was visibly impaired by a serious cognac buzz at the time of the press conference. Clinton, of course, took the situation in stride, later mollifying a vexed Talbott with, er, a stiff highball of truth:

We can't ever forget that Yeltsin drunk is better than most of the alternatives sober.

Now that's what I call straight talk!

In related non-news, a hard-hitting trend-piece published yesterday in the New York Times heralds the umpteenth resurgence of political humor.