But yesterday on WTOP, Riggins sorta explained his harshness. In a prepared statement delivered before his scheduled radio spot, Riggins said what he meant was that Snyder was "a bully," and that bullies have to be called out. While specifics would have again helped, there are already years worth of anecdotes about Snyder's bullying ways -- only an organization run by a dark-hearted bully would treat Jim Zorn the way he's been treated this year, for example.

So the bully explanation made Riggins' judgmentality understandable.

But just when you thought Riggins had found his bearings, he lost 'em again.  The former Redskins star, who will not say "Redskins" when talking about the team -- he usually says something like "the Washington NFL franchise -- compared the plight of Redskins Nation to the plight of the American Indians in the 1800s.

His words, as transcribed by the Great Steinographer:

"I think it's ironic indeed that the name of this franchise, being what it is, is figuratively representative of the long suffering of a proud and noble people. And it's also ironic that the leader of this franchise, not unlike the U.S. government 150 or so years ago, is leading his people on a trail of tears.

Ummm....Did Riggins say that Redskins' owner's conduct is "not unlike" that of the folks behind one of history's worst genocidal rampages?

Hell, yes, he did!

Oh, my. What metaphor didn't make the cut as Riggins was putting together this speech? Were Hitler and slavery thrown on the cutting room floor?

The mind races...

No name has yet been determined, but starting next month, Segraves will be taking over the public affairs show on WDCW-TV now hosted by Chris Core, the longtime WMAL-AM talk show host now at WTOP.

The show, Segraves says, will be 30 minutes long, will be predominantly in interview format, and will cover more than strictly city politics. The show will have a more regional focus and will cover various current events, social issues, and cultural matters.

Segraves will also keep his duties at WTOP. Same goes for Core, who says he's signed a contract to embark on a new project, although he's forsworn from sharing details ahead of an official announcement. Core says he put in a good word for Segraves with Channel 50 management.

The show will be scheduled against the Sunday morning network talk shows. "My feeling is that people who are looking for that type of show are surfing the stations, and if they find a local alternative, they might stop for a while," Segraves says.

Among broadcast shows covering local political affairs, Segraves' program joins a select group, including NewsChannel 8's NewsTalk With Bruce DePuyt, WAMU-FM's Kojo Nnamdi Show, and WTOP's Politics Program With Mark Plotkin, not to mention Jonetta Rose Barras' Tuesday show on WPFW-FM.

Says Segraves, "I hope the show will have a bit of an aggressive edge that I bring to reporting, but it won't be limited to just politicians and hard news."

Prepare for the softer side of Segraves, people!

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

WTOP's Mark Segraves noted the huge time suck for officers on the Fenty bike detail:

"Documents obtained by the police union through a Freedom of Information Act request show officers from the Special Events Branch are routinely detailed for the "mayor's bike ride," racking up hundreds of man hours - many of which officers spend waiting for the mayor.

On multiple occasions, WTOP witnessed uniformed officers waiting for one to two hours for the mayor's cycling team to arrive for their training rides.

Thanks to Fenty, Lanier is now forced to offer some kind of lame quote. This past summer, Lanier had to defend her officers' zany response to that Fenty traffic accident. Now comes her weak defense of her department's escort service for Fenty's bike team.

Lanier told WTOP:

"For the mayor to have a security team when he's out riding his bike is not unusual. It's not uncommon. I don't look at their daily agenda of where they go or what they do. I don't know about running stop signs and stop lights and things of that nature."

There are few officials who are more prepared, more media savvy than Lanier. She rarely offers up an "I don't know" response when getting grilled before the D.C. Council. She almost always has an answer and the stats to back her up. This is a chief that lives the job. For her to not know where the mayor is or what her officers are doing is laughable. Can we blame the mayor for Lanier's sudden drop in I.Q. points?

WTOP's Mark Segraves has the hot scoop: He is reporting that Mayor Adrian M. Fenty regularly uses motorcycle-mounted police to escort his cycling team as they train throughout the District and Maryland. This happens during weekday business hours, leading to traffic backups.

Moreover, Segraves says, Fenty and his team, D.C. Velo, use the cops to run red lights and stop signs (mere misdemeanors in LL's book) as well as traverse thoroughfares verboten to cyclists, e.g. the Clara Barton Parkway along the Potomac.

WTOP's video is above. Fenty, in comments to Segraves, declined to address the story, except to say if he did anything illegal, he won't any longer.

More from Segraves' piece:

According to sources familiar with the mayor's security detail, Fenty became furious after he spotted WTOP videotaping a recent bike outing. L

Last month, Fenty spotted WTOP with a video camera as he rode along Rock Creek Parkway. Minutes late, as Fenty and his teammates rode along the parkway, the mayor darted across the road and onto the bike path, where he dismissed the police escort and took off through the woods.

A few days later, when WTOP caught up with the mayor and his bike team again, they had moved their training ride to Bethesda, where more than 20 cyclists - along with a D.C. Police escort - tied up traffic along Goldsboro Road, MacArthur Boulevard and other major roadways.

UPDATE, 4:55 P.M.: Not to detract from Segraves' report, and his extensive videodocumentary evidence, but Examiner's Bill Myers aired a similar report almost a year ago.

So how did the Red Line metro crash death toll jump to nine last night then fall back to seven this morning and then back up to nine? Last night, City Desk reported that three news outlets---WUSA9, WTOP, and WJLA---had confirmed that nine had died in the crash. WTOP cited the D.C. Fire Department as its source. WJLA had cited Metro.

This morning, Fenty stated that the number of confirmed dead was actually seven. That number soon increased back up to nine.

At least one fire department official is trying to figure out how and why there was so much confusion. One reporter City Desk contacted speculates that it may have to do with just the gruesomeness of the scene.

Deputy Fire Chief Kenneth Crosswhite says the death toll should not have gone up to nine last night. "I don't know how that number got out there," he says. "I'm very disappointed. We had no idea that there was nine. I called the command post and said, 'Are we at nine?' They said, 'No, we're at six.'... [They said] we have not recovered any more bodies."

Crosswhite is trying figure out who leaked the increased death toll last night. "Maybe you could help me out," he says. "Where should I look? I talked to Metro's PIO and I talked to NTSB, their PIO. I don't know where that number came from. If you find out please let me know so it doesn't happen again."

The Fire Department's own spokesperson, Alan Etter, says he isn't the source for last night's number. "I didn't talk to anyone at all last night," he says. "Nor did I get any new information---they might have talked to someone at the scene."

Dave Statter, the runs the STATter 911 blog and is a reporter with WUSA, says it may have come down to body parts. "My impression is that last night's information which came from sources around 11:20 PM was based on what the camera saw or parts of bodies being seen," Statter says via e-mail. "They had not gotten to those bodies in time for the 8:00AM press conference so the official count was left at 7. After the press conference access was made and five bodies came out bring the official toll to 9."

Councilmember Jim Graham appears to side with Statter for an explanation on the confusing death toll numbers. "I think it has to do with the way the car was crushed," he says. "There was a lot of uncertainty about what was in that crash. That's just pure guess work on my part having been on the scene."

Graham says he plans on asking about the death toll issue at this afternoon's Metro Board hearing on yesterday's crash.

*photo by Darrow Montgomery

Mark Segraves, who also questioned Nickles, already posted an item about Nickles' strong statements on Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry. Asked if not paying your taxes should disqualify a person from public office, Nickles said his "personal view" is that it should.

But what really caught the ear of LL is statement Nickles made about the DeOnte Rawlings case. Asked by Segraves about the Fenty administration's commitment to transparency, Nickles raised the subject of the Washington Post's in-depth investigation of the Rawlings case published last Sunday.

That article, by Cheryl W. Thompson, he says, contained an illegal leak. Nickles says the article names an individual who provided grand jury testimony indicating that Rawlings shot first at officers James Haskel and Anthony Clay.

Now it's unclear who that might refer to. The article cites Haskel's "recorded statement to police" in which he says "I thought he's trying to scare us and then out comes the gun....And I'm like, oh, my God, he has [inaudible] because he's standing there with the gun there and I'm like, okay, I get my gun out [inaudible] the gun out the window, he fires. I bang off two rounds. He runs off." Thompson also mentions Clay's statements to police, including that he saw the "muzzle flash" of DeOnte's gun.

Said Nickles, "That material should never have been disclosed. It put the life of that individual in jeopardy. I've talked to the Post, we're going to pursue that matter vigorously....It is inappropriate in the name of freedom of the press or whatever to disclose grand jury material. That is the law."

Segraves asked Nickles if he was planning to bring legal action against the Post.

"Probably not against the Post because the law is not as good as it should be when something like this happens in a criminal grand jury matter, but I think I know how that was leaked, and I intend to pursue the leaker."

Segraves asked if he suspects it was a D.C. government official.

"I'm not going to discuss the evidence I have indicating the inappropriateness of putting a life in jeopardy in get a story in the paper. Completely inappropriate and beyond bounds."

If Nickles is claiming that the leak and the Post's disclosure are putting Clay or Haskel in jeopardy---the only two persons named in the articles as having seen Rawlings fire a shot---he has no leg to stand on, seeing as their names have been in rightfully in the public record since shortly after the incident happened in fall 2007. And yet he is going to pursue a witchhunt for a leaker?

Bizarre.

The other possibilities are that he's concerned about the naming in the article of a heretofore unnamed party.

That might be D.C. cops Anthony Fucci, Daniel Egbert, or Jeremy Bank---who responded to the scene that night. But their statements are included based not on grand jury testimony but on depositions given earlier this year for a civil case---and those depositions are part of a public court record.

Or perhaps he's speaking of Bobby McNair or "Fat Stink", who are named based on "[r]ecords obtained by The Post." Neither of them, however, are said to have seen the shooting, only that they helped track down the missing minibike well afterward.

Or maybe he's talking about Clifton Coleman, the 18-year-old who told police, after being arrested for shooting his girlfriend a month after the Rawlings incident, that DeOnte had shot twice at police. If he told a grand jury that, it was no surprise: "Sources" told Examiner's Scott McCabe that much, naming Coleman, back on Oct. 18, 2007. And at that time, Coleman had also spoken to Gregory Lattimer, the lawyer representing Rawlings' family in the current civil case (and, LL suspects, the person Nickles has in mind as the leaker).

If the leak of that information is such a big deal, and it's putting Coleman's life in danger, why not pursue the leaker back then?

Again: bizarre.

A spokesperson for Fenty refused to say where the mayor is today, whether or not he's in the country, or how long he will be gone....

D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray, who is second in the line of succession to the mayor and the second-highest ranking elected official in town, is in the dark.

"The Chairman was not informed. I am told the Mayor does not inform the Chairman when he is going out of town as a practice," Gray's spokesperson Doxie McCoy writes in an email to WTOP.

Mayor Fenty talked to WTOP about the controversy over his recent trip to Dubai. I'm sure LL will have a smart take on this. I'm just semi-shocked that Fenty claims to have no regrets over that trek in which the United Arab Emirates government shelled out $25,000 to the mayor. And he attended that tennis tournament in which an Israeli female player was barred. And when confronted about the trip, he claimed to have always wanted to go to Dubai.

Even more shocking, Fenty plans to keep his future trips secret:

"The mayor says while he does have more out-of-town trips planned, he will not release any details of those trips until after he returns -- and only if required by law to do so.

'I'm not going to tell you,' Fenty tells WTOP."

So much for transparency. Is this the kind of BS other big city mayor's get themselves into? This controversy has been going on for weeks. Shouldn't this tell us something about how Fenty handles his own screwups? How much longer will it take for Fenty to actually give a straight answer on this? LL asked Fenty about these issues some days ago and got some similiar stonewalling.

The dad's DHS?!?!!!
and he has no smoke detectors?? what-da-ef? I feel so secure knowing a dad with no smoke detectors is watching my homeland. UnBelievAble.
by kckat @ 11:55am - Thu Dec 4th, 2008

Here's another good one:

This family needs to prioritize.
To be a fly on the wall and listen to the discussion this family had must of been interesting. I wonder if it went something like this:
"Let's not have smoke detectors, but let's get a hot tub, and we'll either wire it ourselves or bring in a guy standing on the corner to wire it. With the money that we save we can hire a nanny who will watch our triplets. Two working battery powered smoke detectors would probably cost us less than $30, but given the cost it will take to heat the hot tub, let's wait."
Must make some of us feel pretty safe that this Dad works for Homeland Security. Be afraid, be very afraid.
by John D. @ 7:56am - Thu Dec 4th, 2008

Or how about someone who derides a man who may lose three children because he has a nice house?

You forgot to mention
the house is probably worth a million. The man should be locked up for child negligence. Unforgivable.

by BAC @ 8:11am - Thu Dec 4th, 2008