Feds to City—Drop Dead: Add to the potential problems of a federal government shutdown a few downsides that are closer to home, even for federal employees who are forced to stay out of work—like, say, uncollected garbage. Turns out the District, because its annual spending bill hasn't passed Congress yet, would also have to close [...]
No Representation, No Taxation: Maybe this Republican takeover of the House won't be as bad for D.C. as people initially feared? The potent combination of Tea Party tax phobias and GOP interest in meddling in our municipal affairs has Rep. Allen West, a Florida Republican, musing that the District should simply be excluded from having to [...]
D.C. Busted: For months, budget experts and politicians have been warning of how bad the District's fiscal situation is, and how much would have to be cut from expenditures (or raised in new taxes) to fill a $450 million gap in this year's balance sheet. Now it turns out the real shortfall is $600 million [...]
They've tried civil disobedience. They've tried legislative maneuvering. Now D.C.'s frustrated statehood activists are threatening to employ a new tactic: Cartographic sabotage.
D.C. Council member Michael Brown is holding a meeting this evening at the Wilson Building to ponder renaming the stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue NW in front of the city government's headquarters. The idea is [...]
Who Needs a Vote?: The Tea Party's rallying cry all of last year was, "No taxation without representation!" So it's somewhat mysterious that among the first moves the Tea Party-powered Republican House did today was to strip D.C. of the mostly symbolic representation we get for our tax dollars, voting down a resolution by Del. [...]
No Taxation Without Taxation Without Representation: Tired of watching the District get shoved around by the feds? Just this once, savor the usual order of things being reversed. The IRS announced today that federal income taxes will be due on Monday, April 18, instead of Friday, April 15, because April 15 is Emancipation Day, a [...]
Doors Closing: Being a concerned citizen in these times of terror requires a lot of fear; if you're not constantly worried some lunatic is going to blow you up, you're not holding up your end of the bargain. Still, it's hard to muster the requisite level of alarm over the latest arrest involving some guy [...]
The District Department of the Environment released an image of a new specialty Anacostia River commemorative license plate this morning. (Check out a larger version here.)
What do you think? The Anacostia River seems awfully wavy, eh? That allows the top of "RESENTATI" in the word "Representation" to peek out of the water; the plates do try [...]
From the fringes of Saturday’s “Restore the Dream” rally, life went on generally as is in the nation’s capital. As "hundreds of thousands" of Tea Party folks and other Glenn Beck rally-goers gathered at in West Potomac Park between the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument—likely adding weight to the already sinking Reflecting Pool—the Batala all-women’s [...]
An update to the anti-statehood license plate cover City Desk told you about on Thursday! In the situation of our BMW driver on Capitol Hill who isn't apparently all that jazzed about the notion of D.C. statehood, a spokeswoman for the city, Kate Stanton, tells us that this particular cover is indeed illegal. It's technically [...]
Have you seen this car? Earlier today, Capitol Hill resident Jay Goodman Tamboli snapped a photo of this BMW parked on 4th Street SE between East Capitol and A streets and sent it out via Twitter. Take a closer look at the license plate. See the cover? It reads "DC's Not a State, Get Over [...]
Activists with DC Vote—whose executive director Ilir Zherka figures heavily into this week's City Paper cover story by writer Byron Tau —staged a "file-in" demonstration on Capitol Hill yesterday, one by one filing into the offices of U.S. Rep. Travis Childers in protest of the Mississippi Democrat's efforts to gut the District's gun laws.
It was Childers' 11th-hour [...]
Stop holding your breath, folks: It's become clear that President Barack Obama has absolutely no intention of putting Taxation Without Representation license plates on his limousine.
ABC News reporter Yunji de Nies got Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on the record at this afternoon's press briefing:
WTOP's Mark Plotkin bought Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs a radio (he'd said he didn't have one). Then he proceeded to press Gibbs on why Obama has yet to put "Taxation Without Representation" license plates on the presidential limo. Gibbs is very nice about it:
