Parade Gallery.  Georgia Ave, Silver Spring, MD.  Nov. 19th.  © 2011 Matt Dunn

Recycling Legislation: Our federal overlords on Capitol Hill generate 5,300 tons of solid waste a year; after all, as any Tea Party activist will tell you, most bills are hundreds and hundreds of pages long, and printing them all out means a lot of garbage. Now the Architect of the Capitol has grand visions of [...]

Gone for Good: The Washington Nationals have, contrary to all usual behavior in past seasons, won 11 of their last 12 games, including one this afternoon, and looked like a decent ball club while doing it. So naturally, manager Jim Riggleman decided this was the perfect time to resign. Riggleman apparently was bothered that the [...]

Updated below.
Dispatch from a Silver Spring source, who lives right over the D.C. line and still doesn't have power:  "Pepco sucks ass. Forty-four hours with no power and no relief in sight. I was so fucking angry I left my home at 12:30 after midnight to drive the streets looking for a Pepco truck. I [...]

Vote for Me: The only election that really matters in D.C. municipal affairs, the Democratic Party primary, is under way. Mayor Adrian Fenty and D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray both scour the District for votes. For a clue as to which candidate feels more confident, check the locations of their evening parties—Fenty will be at [...]

Phillips Flames Extinguished: A fire in a museum is about the worst nightmare any curator could have. So when the Phillips Collection started blazing this morning, it would have been easy to panic. But museum workers spirited artworks out of the building as soon as they realized the fire had started, and the areas directly [...]

Silver Standoff: A gunman strolls into the Discovery Communications headquarters in downtown Silver Spring and takes hostages, apparently in an attempt to get the cable conglomerate to stop airing shows that encourage people to have babies. Why? Because the gunman is nuts. The alleged suspect, James Jay Lee, was arrested in the same place two years [...]

UPDATE, 5:50 p.m.: Suspect James Jay Lee is dead, according to Washington Post sources.
UPDATE, 5 p.m.: Police shot the suspect, James Jay Lee, apparently because they feared he was going to set off what they believed was an explosive device. The three hostages he had taken were freed safely. Lee is in police custody.
A [...]

Local gay-rights activists are growing increasingly concerned about the recent spike in so-called pick-up crimes in and around the District.
The organization Gays and Lesbians Opposing Violence (GLOV) has issued two alerts warning gay males to be wary of hooking up through phone chat lines or via the Internet, as the risk goes far beyond contracting sexually transmitted [...]

A third suspect has been booked in connection to the Brian Betts homicide case. Montgomery County Police have charged Deontra Q. Gray, 18, with one count of first degree murder, one count of armed robbery, and one count of conspiracy to commit armed robbery. Gray is being held without bond.
Two other 18-year-olds–Sharif Tau Lancaster and [...]

As the death of Principal Brian Betts continues to be investigated, I spent part of my night reading something unrelated to his murder. I read the Facebook tribute page that had inevitably been created to honor his memory. On that page, there is no surplus debate, no one demonizing Michelle Rhee. And there is no [...]

Updated 2 p.m.
Earlier this morning, Michelle Rhee released a statement on the suspicious death of Brian Betts, principal of Shaw @ Garnet-Patterson MS. He was found dead in his Silver Spring home. MOCO police say Betts appears to be the victim of a homicide.
Read Rhee's statement as well as Councilmember Jack Evans' statementin full after [...]

Tim Carman with the story, more photos after the jump

Paying out-of-pocket for medical procedures like an MRI sucks. Paying for them in, say, Chevy Chase, Md., sucks even more. According to a release put out today by the Angie's list of medicine, Healthcarebluebook.com, the disparity between what you'd be charged for an MRI of the cervical spine (no contrast) at a Rockville imaging center [...]