Last month, Washington Examiner gossip columnists Tara Palmeri and Nikki Schwab drafted a hot little item about Miss D.C. 2009 Jen Corey "kicking some tail at the local bars." Corey, the gossips reported, recently physically defended herself after being repeatedly "spanked," "touched," "pushed," "slapped," and "sexually harassed" by men in public. Corey's got a different word for what those men are doing— "sexual assault"—and she wishes the Examiner would use it.

The terminology dispute arose today, when Palmeri and Schwab attempted to get some additional mileage out of Corey's history of being publicly sexually assaulted. The gossip duo asked newly-crowned Miss D.C. 2010 Stephanie Williams if she would also "slam a man" while out at the bars, and reported that "Williams, 23, told Yeas and Nays that she respects all of the controversial decisions of her predecessor Jen Corey, including that bar fight last month."

Corey took to Twitter to contest the Examiner's characterization of the "bar fight," which suggests that Corey was the aggressor—not her sexual assailants.

"Still pissed @washexaminer for not getting the story right. My controversial decision to fight? You mean defend myself when attacked?" she wrote, adding: "Apparently @tarapalmeri is the only reporter in dc who doesn't understand the term 'sexual assault' #stillcantgetitright."

Palmeri also jumped on Twitter to defend her work. Her excuse? She didn't actually write that story—she just slapped her byline on an intern's reporting. And if Palmeri attached her name to a story that happens to downplay the seriousness of sexual assault? Well, that's hilarious!:

Corey's response:

UPDATE: Examiner moves on to victim-blaming to defend its journalism.

According to the Examiner:

Five out of eight Washington-area universities reported an increase in sexual offenses to the Department of Education from 2007 to 2008. The University of Virginia and Virginia Tech as well as Georgetown, George Mason and Catholic universities reported an increase in sexual assaults—which include rape and any other sexual act against someone's will.

This is how the Examiner crunches that data: "Women are increasingly being victimized on college campuses across the Washington region, with romantic relationships behind most of the assaults, according to the FBI and statistics from local universities."

Nope. It's certainly possible that more women were assaulted at local colleges in 2008 than were in 2007. But equally possible is that more women reported their assaults to authorities. So based on the data, we're really not in a position to either panic or pat ourselves on the back here.

But let's take a closer look at the data. Of the eight schools the Examiner included in its data, five saw their sexual assault report numbers fluctuate by only one assault. At Virginia Tech, reports increased from 3 to 4 assaults. At George Mason, they dropped from 12 to 11. At Catholic, they increased from 1 to 2. At American University, they dropped from 2 to 1. At the George Washington University, they increased from 5 to 6.

Of the three remaining schools, The University of Virginia saw the highest jump in reports—5 to 16. Georgetown saw reports increase from 8 to 10. And at the University of Maryland, reports dropped from 21 to 17.

What do these numbers mean? Absolutely nothing, probably. Unfortunately, the Examiner's go-to campus expert, University of Maryland administrator John Zacker, doesn't help to clarify matters:

He said sexual assault on campus is much higher than data reveals—the number of assault cases ranged from three to 16 in area colleges during 2008, but only 5 percent of victims file a report.

Zacker said students are building higher thresholds for obsessive behavior and waiting longer to report incidents—if they report them at all.

"There are some [victims] that incur this behavior for months without reporting it," he said. He said the invasive nature of campus investigations also deters victims from reporting—especially considering only 10 percent to 25 percent of students found guilty of sexual assault face expulsion, according to a report by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit research center.

Zackler knows that there are huge barriers to reporting sexual assault on college campuses, so it's disingenuous for him—and the Examiner—to claim that a small fluctuation in the already tiny number of sexual assaults reported on campus has any sort of statistical significance. But even more bizarre is the fact that Zackler is actually arguing against the data's (likely insignificant) trend. If more students reported assaults in 2008 than 2007, where is the evidence that students today are "building higher thresholds for obsessive behavior and waiting longer to report incidents—if they report them at all"? Zackler may have personal knowledge that some victims on his campus have high thresholds for obsessive behavior and wait a long time to report their incidents, if they report them at all. But situating Zackler's observations as a frightening trend without presenting any comparative data is extremely misleading.

Thanks to Representative Jack Kingston of Georgia, a rider just added to D.C.'s District's 2010 federal appropriation bill will effectively trash all clean needle exchange programs in this city. According to the Examiner:

an amendment recently offered by Republican Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia, and accepted by the Democrat-led Appropriations Committee, bars the District from distributing clean needles or syringes to drug addicts within 1,000 feet "of a public or private day care center, elementary school, vocational school, secondary school, college, junior college, or university, or any public swimming pool, park, playground, video arcade, or youth center, or an event sponsored by any such entity."

Can anyone think of a space in D.C. that's not within 1,000 feet of any of these things?

I'm glad to see that Congress doesn't want to completely eliminate needle exchanges in the city with the highest HIV rate in the country—it just wants to push clean needles to the one obscure spot in D.C. that's football fields away from any public or private . . . anything. The Examiner reports that The House Rules Committee has already "nixed nine proposed D.C.-related amendments offered by Republican members involving guns, gay marriage, abortion and marijuana." Clean needles didn't make the cuts cut.

Local needle-exchange provider Dr. Phil Terry notes that Kingston's fear of needles may, ironically, bring the clean needles closer to his workplace: "There's virtually no area in D.C. that would meet those restrictions, except maybe Capitol Hill," Terry said.

DCist says it all: "Considering the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the District of Columbia, we think it's fair to label this latest maneuver in the House as absolutely despicable."

Photo by Todd Huffman

Recently, a study was released by the Harvard Business School showing that "culturally conservative states are America's biggest purchasers of Internet pornography." The revelation gave D.C.'s liberal bloggers an opportunity to descend on their Republican prey like ruthless, moral vultures. Observe:

First, Paul Fidalgo, the "DC Secularism Examiner," weighed in with his requisite gloating commentary, calling the news "delightful" and "hilarious," and informing readers that "it's okay to love every minute of this." What's so funny? "It turns out that the ultra-red Utah was #1 in online porn subscriptions," he writes, "and eight of the top ten porn-loving states voted for John McCain in 2008." He then cites his favorite "schadenfreude" moment in the report: "In states where more people agree that 'Even today miracles are performed by the power of God' and 'I never doubt the existence of God,' there are more subscriptions to this service," because, apparently, people who believe in God aren't allowed to watch porn or they're mean awful hypocrites.

Then, "DC Ethical Issues Examiner" Laura Harrison McBride chimes in and blows the secularist out of the water with her own gloating gloaty gloat. McBride, for her part, paints conservatives as Puritanical overlords who are districted from their mission of preventing Laura Harrison McBride from politely drinking her martinis only by the prospect of hypocritically jacking off in the privacy of their darkened home offices.

So, has this study proved once and for all that conservatives are horrible hypocrites worthy of a good smiting from the liberal bloggers of the world? Or perhaps something else can account for the amount of Internet pornography consumed in these great Republican centers?

a) People in Utah have to get their porn on the Internet because it's, like, kind of hard to buy it anywhere else, DUH.

b) Conservatives don't care about the war on porn anymore, they're on to more important things like shunning abortionists and preventing the gays from devaluing their marriages.

c) Actually, NOBODY CARES ABOUT THE WAR ON PORN ANYMORE, except for the "experts" who blog for the Examiner's peanuts and write long, ranting blog posts thoroughly shaming anyone who watches it, making them, actually, yes, the sole brave warriors left in the moral crusade against pornography.

d) People who actually buy porn on the Internet are total Internet n00bs: Of course they voted for John McCain. While these red staters are busy plunking credit card numbers into pay-for porn sites, tech-saavy Obama voters are downloading teh pron free of charge because they've been navigating this series of tubes long enough to know that you don't pay for this shit.

Photo by bella731.

Local government, though, appears more than ready to introduce the legislation. The D.C. Council moved on Tuesday to strengthen the retirement benefits in the domestic partnerships of District police and firefighters. And the only current Councilmember who opposes gay marriage, Marion Barry, says he would support the measure anyway, "despite his personal feelings on the issue."