City Desk was scheduled to meet up with D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray for an interview Tuesday afternoon. The venue? The Thomas Sweet ice cream parlor in Georgetown, a place the chairman's mayoral campaign picked. In the process, City Desk–with photographer Darrow Montgomery in tow–may have ruined an ice cream outing for President Obama's daughters, Malia and Sasha, who are said to have a soft spot for Thomas Sweet's sweets.

Sorry, but City Desk did not have any advance knowledge of a White House ice cream outing. We promise!

As City Desk was waiting for Chairman Gray to arrive at Thomas Sweet, security agents with ear pieces came in to check out who was hanging around. Clearly they were trying to be low key. Was it Mayor Adrian Fenty's security detail? Nah. Staffers told City Desk later that the casually dressed guys with buzzcuts and earpiece wires were indeed the Secret Service's advance team.

With Montgomery's cameras out on the table, ready to shoot some new photos of the D.C. Council chairman, City Desk surmises that the Secret Service assumed we were there waiting to capture a priceless ice cream moment involving the first family. Not the case! After a few minutes of procuring some ice cream, the entourage disappeared. Whoever was eating the ice cream would not be doing it inside Thomas Sweet's air conditioned bliss.

After City Desk told the Thomas Sweet crew we were there to interview the D.C. Council chairman, the one Secret Service guy lingering around left as well.

Gray was running late. But he had a very good reason: Earlier in the day, there was an attempted burglary at the chairman's Hillcrest residence across town. We're waiting on an official statement from the campaign on the attempted break-in, but Gray told City Desk that the would-be crooks weren't able to gain access to his home. Police are investigating.

"They probably heard the alarm and I guess they took off. ... They never got in," Gray told us. "I don't know who did this this, but I don't put aside any possibility to tell you the truth."

Maybe it's time to build a big fence around the chairman's home? Oh wait ...

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

The piece itself is pretty harrowing, describing monstrosities straight out of the biography of Rasputin:

The latest victim in Chicago's long year of student killings is 15-year-old Alex Arellano. On May 1, he was chased, beaten with baseball bats, run over by a car, shot and burned. His body was found days after he disappeared from his family's home on the city's South Side.

All of which is unspeakably depressing. But what the hell does it have to do with the President's daughters?

The mention came in response to a question directed at Michelle Obama by Steve Kroft about how she would conduct herself as first lady. He followed up with a question about whether the Obamas were "seriously" considering a public school for their girls Sasha and Malia. Michelle Obama punted on that one.

Here's what she had to say:

The primary focus for the first year will be making sure the kids make it through the transition. But there are many issues that I care deeply about. I care about military families and the work-family balance issue. I care about education. Both Barack and I believe that we can have an impact in the D.C. area...you know, in terms of making sure we're contributing to the community that we immediately live in. That's always been something that we try to do, whether its in our own neighborhoods, or in the schools that we've attended. So there's plenty to do.

[Kroft] Did you seriously consider sending the girls to public school?

You know, we're still in the process of figuring out that transition and what we have asked people to understand is that the decision that we make will be based on the best interests of the girls. We haven't made that decision yet. We want that to be a personal process, and people have been really good about respecting that.