Maureen Dowd, in yesterday's New York Times column, "Boy, Oh Boy," on Joe Wilson's outburst during Barack Obama's speech to Congress: "Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it."

Read More "Scenes from Post-Racial America: The Outburst Edition" »

Good morning sweet, sweet, City Desk readers, and welcome to another installment of Freedom Friday! We have a new justice at the Supreme Court of the United States--isn't that exciting? Dear race-baiting Republicans: Better luck next time (kisses).

In other other interesting news, the New York Times fired its second token conservative yesterday. Ben Stein, of the late John Hughes' Ferris Bueller's Day Off, was relieved of his financial column for acting as "a commercial spokesman for FreeScore, a financial services company," according to Felix Salmon. Not too long ago the Times declined to renew William Kristol's contract because of the error-riddled dreck he scribbled in crayon on ripped paper bags and then forced into the NYT courier's chubby cheeks for transport. I completely agree with both decisions but find it sickening that the Times can't seem to part with Maureen Dowd,  a plagiarist, total luddite, and liberal sycophant; or Alessandra Stanley, who writes her column using a quill filled with unhappiness and checks her reporting against the ingredients list on a box of crack-cocaine. Simply put:  The Times needs to hold its writers to a higher standard.

Birthers after the jump.
Read More "Our Morning Roundup: Birthers, Ben Stein, and the Nature of Reality" »

Stop me if you already read this at DCist, but Reality Blurred's Andy Dehnart reports that

Bravo is spinning off yet another series from its Real Housewives franchise: The Real Housewives of D.C., which will be the fifth in the series....

The series will be produced by [D.C.'s] Half Yard Productions, which produced Discovery’s American Loggers. Different production companies produce the different spin-offs, perhaps to keep them fresh.

This is absolutely fantastic. Would it be too much of a stretch for Half Yard to recruit Maureen Dowd?

Washington City Paper's twitter account (@WCP) is leading the hunt on this one. Twitter your guesses as to which neighborhoods are most likely to produce Half Yard's "real housewives" and tag your tweets #realhousewivesdc. Guess correctly and there may be some swag in it for you.

Good morning, City Desk readers, and welcome to a balmy addition of Freedom Friday. Last week I wrote that police in Mississippi arrested Pete Eyre, Adam Mueller, and Jason Talley of the Motorhome Diaries for filming a traffic stop. Thanks to the support of many liberty-minded folks the country over, the boys received $2,580 in bail donations and spent $1,487. Guess what they're doing with the rest? Sending it back, via Paypal, to the people who gave it to them. (Take note Timothy Geithner, you theiving sumbitch.)

Don't Ask, Don't Tell and a teensy bit more about Maureen Dowd, after the jump.

Read More "Our Morning Roundup: Don’t Ask About Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" »

Colleague Mike Riggs has already noted a few wrinkles in the Maureen Dowd-Josh Marshall plagiarism incident.

Putting it bluntly, Riggs says: "Dowd stole some shit and admitted it." Fair enough.

In Slate, Jack Shafer has an uncharacteristically mellow view of the proceedings. After chiding, "Bad, Dowd, bad—deserving of hard time in a pillory!," Shafer proceeds to exonerate the columnist—Dowd "almost sets things right," he says, a conclusion the media critic arrives at through six-point reasoning:

1. She responded promptly to the charge of plagiarism when confronted by the Huffington Post and Politico. (Many plagiarists go into hiding or deny getting material from other sources.)
2. She and her paper quickly amended her column and published a correction (although the correction is a little soft for my taste).
3. Her explanation of how the plagiarism happened seems plausible—if a tad incomplete.
4. She's not yet used the explanation as an excuse, nor has she said it's "time to move on."
5. She's not yet protested that her lifting wasn't plagiarism.
6. She's taking her lumps and not whining about it.

Taking these points one by one:

Read More "Jack Shafer Throws Maureen Dowd a Bone on Plagiarism" »

In case you missed it, Maureen Dowd flat-out plagiarized either a) Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall or b) One of her friends, who quoted Josh Marshall in a phone call with Dowd. Either way, Dowd stole some shit and admitted it. Michael Calderone reports that it doesn't really matter. From NYT spokesperson Diane McNulty:

Read More "This Just In: Maureen Dowd Can Do Whatever the F*ck She Wants" »

This weekend was all about crimes and Councilmember Jim Graham talking about crimes. There were shootings in Mount Pleasant, Columbia Heights, and Adams Morgan (that one involved D.C. Police), and a fatal shooting on 4th Street SE. Graham reported out the Mount Pleasant shooting for the listserv and bloggers everywhere. He's a better police spokesperson than the real police.

On Saturday, Colbert King stepped away from the juvenile crime beat to write about Fenty's ego. King thinks the mayor isn't so invincible. Why? The mayor's hubris may trip him up. King writes:

"The mayor out and about in the District of Columbia is not the candidate who captured all 142 precincts in the 2006 Democratic mayoral primary. There's a different man in office today. People seem to know it....

He's still quick with the smile and handshake, still good with names, still works the crowds, and makes all the photo ops. No D.C. government good deed gets announced without his presence.

But nowadays, something else comes with him when he shows up on the scene. There is a certain haughtiness in Fenty's bearing, a trace of scorn in his demeanor, a sense of self-importance that was not present (or at least was not noticeable) in him before."

Meanwhile, there were lesser crimes uncovered. I went to my first Nationals game of the season. When friends tried to buy the $10 tickets, they were told that they were all sold out. When we got inside the stadium---with the $20 tix---we couldn't help but notice plenty of empty seats in the 10-buck section. Conspiracy!

And then Maureen Dowd offered a very laughable excuse for plagiarizing TPM's Josh Marshall in her column.

*The Post leads with a piece on how the Bush administration had already prepped their ghastly, torture-like tactics "long before they were granted legal approval to use such methods," ignoring the advice of an Army lieutenant colonel who pointed out that a strong-arm approach "usually decreases the reliability of the information because the person will say whatever he believes will stop the pain."  The New York Times takes a different angle: why didn't administration officials do their homework on the origins of those techniques?

*Maureen Dowd visits Twitter HQ to find out "if the inventors of Twitter were as annoying as their invention. (They’re not. They’re charming.)" (The real question: Is Maureen Dowd as annoying as this column?)  In her umpteenth use of the screenplay gimmick (at least she wrote it herself this time!), Dowd confesses her own Twitterific ambition: "When newsprint blows away, I want a second career as a Twitter ghostwriter."  Someone sign this woman up!

Read More "Our Morning Roundup: Torture, Guns, and Susan Boyle" »