White House reopens and D.C. adjusts after attacks

The Boston Marathon bombings and subsequent manhunt for suspected brothers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev created heightened security throughout the Northeast. Police removed the trashcans on Capitol Hill and DPS even upped security on campus. In a move described as “an abundance of caution” the White House was closed, but reopened yesterday.

Closing down the White House to all visitors may have been an over-precaution as a response to a bombing in Boston, but that was not the only attack last week. Letters containing the incredibly deadly toxin ricin were mailed to President Barack Obama and Senator Roger Wicker (R-Miss.).

Both letters were successfully stopped by screening procedures, which have been in place since the anthrax attacks on Congress in 2001. The success of these safety measures has Capitol security brimming with confidence. “I have confidence in our procedures, our personnel, the United States Capitol Police response personnel, the strength and weaknesses of field testing and the need for laboratory confirmation,” said head of Senate security Terrance Gainer, according to the Post.

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Charter school home field advantage

Massive school closures in D.C. have ignited fierce discussion about what should be done for students’ best interest. For many families, charter schools are an attractive option, but how these charter schools should admit their students remains a contentious issue. A bill introduced Tuesday by At-Large D.C. Council Member David Grosso would change charter schools’ basis of admission to prefer local applicants.

D.C. charter schools, which enroll 43 percent of the District’s students, currently give no preference to students on the basis of location and hold lotteries to select students for admission, if more students apply than the school can handle. In many cities, however, students living nearby charter schools have preferential selection when entering these lotteries. Grosso’s bill identifies 39 “neighborhood clusters,” within which local charter school applicants would a better chance of being selected.

The bill goes against a D.C. task force’s recommendation not to give preference to local students. The task force’s report ignored arguments in support of local preference on the basis that the admission of local students engenders a stronger sense of community in the school, promoting better attendance and more learning. Instead, the report focused on the fact that an unbiased lottery allows the city’s neediest students access to charter schools away from their neighborhoods.

Adrift body identified

The excitement of this year’s Cherry Blossom Festival was marred by the discovery of a man’s body floating in the water near the FDR Memorial on Thursday. The body was found near the last known location of a Chicago tourist, who disappeared on Easter Sunday.

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More anti-Muslim subway ads

Infamous, anti-Muslim blogger Pamela Geller plans to purchase a new set of subway ads, with the intention of further proselytizing her views against “Jihad.”

Geller’s ads, which read “This is Islamic apartheid … Stop U.S. aid to Islamic states” and picture gay men being hanged, are a response to pro-Palestinian ads in New York’s subway system. The pro-Palestinian ads described an “Israeli apartheid” and called for an end to U.S. aid to Israel. While New York has seen most of the controversy, D.C. isn’t forgotten. “If we take this campaign nationwide, D.C. will be next,” Geller writes.

Last October, Geller, along with the financial backing of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, did the same sort of thing, and took out ads calling Muslims “savage.” Georgetown’s Interfaith Council protested these ads.

What both sides don’t seem to realize is that the typical metro rider couldn’t be bothered to care about anything more than shuffling on and off the train during their commute, let alone take the time to read an entire ad.

Fancy schmancy Georgetown hotel opens

Over-the-top luxury hotel chain Capella Hotels and Resorts finally opened its new Georgetown hotel at the end of March. The hotel claims to be breaking new ground with its unusual way of doing business and treating its customers.

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D.C. Board of Elections tells people they can only vote in one place

Early voting begins next week for a special election to fill the at-large D.C. Council seat vacated by Phil Mendelson after he was elected the Council’s chairman. Also on the ballot is D.C.’s budget autonomy referendum. In a mailer to voters, the D.C. Board of Elections wrote that “One Judiciary Square is the only vote center open for this election,” prompting confusion among city residents and D.C. government officials alike.

Contrary to what the mailer seems to purport, there won’t be one, solitary polling place open for the election. Rather, there will be only one early voting location open for early voting. According to the executive director of the D.C. Board of Elections Clifford Tatum, clearer postcards will be sent out to D.C. households for a price of $30,000 to the District government.

Tatum, who signed off on the faulty postcards, said he didn’t think it would be a problem because he thought average citizens would be able to read into his jargon. “I didn’t think there would be confusion between vote centers and polling places,” he told the Washington Post. “On Election Day, we open polling places, not vote centers. I didn’t think that our voters would read it that way.”

Thank God the cherry blossoms are all right

The region’s most recent cold snap has pushed the expected peak-bloom date for D.C.’s iconic cherry blossoms back for a few days. The Washington Post is now predicting that peak blooming will center around Apr. 7 to 10, instead of its previously forecasted Apr. 3 to 7 window.

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Alleged Georgetown murderer starves himself

Albrecht Muth, who allegedly murdered his wife Viola Drath, will not stand trial until this December. Muth has subjected himself to starvation and is in dire medical condition. Muth, who now weighs only 104 lbs., is being held at United Medical Center and is at risk of heart failure.

Muth was originally arrested in early August, 2011, shortly after Drath’s strangled and beaten body was discovered in the bathroom of the couple’s home. He first stated that his wife died after accidentally falling down the stairs, but, when it became obvious that Drath’s death was the result of a homicide, Muth changed his story. Muth blamed the real cause of his wife’s death on Iranian assassins.

Muth is an incredibly eccentric German national, known for regularly impersonating an Iraqi general, an international spy, and a European noble. During initial court proceedings, Muth chose to present himself in his Iraqi general uniform. Muth’s first psychiatric evaluation found him unable to stand trial, but, upon further examination, a judge ruled that Muth would go to court.

Since that day, Muth has eaten as little as possible, leaving prosecutors extremely frustrated with his attempt to control the course of court proceedings. “He’s trying to manipulate the court system,”Assistant U.S. Attorney Glenn L. Kirschner told the Post.

Muth and Drath were married for 22 years and lived in Georgetown. Some members of the Georgetown community even took notice of the strange man walking the streets, who apparently thought he was an Iraqi general.

The two were an odd couple, and close friends attested to the strangeness that Muth’s and Drath’s marriage took on in recent years.

Muriel Bowser will run in the 2014 mayoral election

On Saturday morning, Muriel Bowser, a Democrat and Ward 4 Councilmember, announced her intention to run in the next D.C. mayoral election. Should Bowser win the Democratic primary, which will be held on Apr. 1, 2014, she would virtually be guaranteed a victory in the election, as no Republican candidate has ever won a popular election for mayor in the District’s history.

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We don’t like Ike’s memorial

At a Tuesday Congressional hearing on the planned Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial, it quickly became clear that congressmen hate the chosen design. So unsightly is the design, say some congressmen, that the entire design should be scrapped and the project restarted with another design contest. ”I want to know how we came up with this monstrosity,” said Representative Tom McClintock (R-Calif).

Renowned architect Frank Gehry, known best for his museum renovations, won the design competition for the Eisenhower memorial in 2010. The memorial was originally intended to be built during 2012, but complaints about Gehry’s design delayed the project.

In particular, members of Eisenhower’s family felt that Gehry’s original focus on Eisenhower’s childhood and Kansas upbringing would undermine his important accomplishments. Even now, after Gehry updated his portrayal of Eisenhower, the family takes issue for it being “too extravagant.”

“Continuation of the status quo … will doom the prospect of building a memorial,” said Susan Eisenhower, the president’s granddaughter, according to ABC News. “It is time to go back to the drawing board, with an open process for the redesign of the memorial.”

Representative Rob Bishop (R-Utah) has introduced legislation towards just such an end. If passed, the bill will begin a new design competition for the memorial and eliminate the remaining $100 million of funding for Gehry’s project.

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Mandatory Preschool

Many lawmakers have taken to heart President Obama’s proposal for mandatory preschool for all children and are enacting legislation along those lines. D.C. Council member Marion Barry put forward just such a plan for the District.

Barry’s bill would change the minimum age at which children are required to attend school from five to three. The district government already guarantees a public preschool education to all 3 year-olds: Barry would require parents to take advantage of this education or send their kids to a private or parochial school equivalent. Some experts find the proposed change unnecessary, given that 13,000 out of 15,000 of the city’s three year-olds already go to preschool.

Many other education experts believe mandatory preschool attendance would go a long way towards bridging the achievement gap between disadvantaged students and their better-off counterparts. Many programs already demonstrate the effects preschool can have on a student’s education. The AppleTree Institute, a D.C. charter preschool, for example, teaches three and four year-old at-risk and otherwise disadvantaged students. The average AppleTree Institute student improved from the 35th to the 75th percentile in his or her two years there, according to Governing.

The surplus goes fast

At the end of January, the D.C. government announced a 2012 budget surplus of over $400 million. The following weeks were spent predicting what Mayor Vincent Gray would use the surplus for. D.C.’s financial future, at least for the next year, seemed secure. A pre-budget-season briefing, held by the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, however, suggested that D.C.’s money will not go as far as the government had once hoped.

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Mayor Gray is on everyone’s payroll, even the U.N.’s

Mayor Vincent Gray’s new plan for a greener D.C., revealed last week, has drawn significant criticism from a variety of sources.

The plan’s most ambitious ideas include requiring every new building in the city to create as much energy as it uses and shifting a quarter of all commuter traffic to foot, bicycle, or public transportation by 2032. Gray maintains a certain level of realism when it comes to such goals. “Not every proposal will work out just as envisioned,” he told the Post. “Some details will be refined over time, and some actions may fail, but with this implementation plan, we will move forward with clear goals in sight.”

Regardless of whether these policies could possibly be implemented, Gray’s critics are questioning spending so much money on green issues when the city has so many other problems. “Gardens on roofs are fine, but if you are hungry, it’s not enough,” said D.C. Council member Marion Barry, according to the Post. ”You might have clean air to breathe, but it doesn’t matter if you are also broke.”

The most unique criticism of the plan, however, questions Gray’s motive in implementing the green changes. The Canadian Free Press seems to believe that Gray is really working for the U.N., as part of their Agenda 21 initiative.

Coincidence or corruption?

With the FBI on its way out of the J. Edgar Hoover Building and seeking a new location for its headquarters, Mayor Gray suggested last week that the bureau move to Poplar Point SE.

Such a suggestion would be just fine, if adjacent property weren’t owned by Jeff Thompson, a city contractor who allegedly ran an illegal shadow campaign in support of Gray during the 2010 mayoral election.

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D.C. childcare in need of financial backing

Childcare professionals have been hard-hit by dwindling funding during the past five years. This funding has not only harmed the salaries of child-care professionals, but has a hurt families who rely on subsides in order to afford childcare.

The District has not changed its childcare funding policies since 2004. However, according to a 2010 survey by the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, 30 percent of family home providers and 17 percent of community-based centers serving low-income families closed between 2008 and 2010.

The decline of childcare centers is largely due to a 30 million dollar cut in federal subsidies over the past 5 years. This lapse in availability has put the primary education of thousands of children from low-income families at risk. In a statement to the Post, child-care organizer for Empower D.C. Sequenely Gray said that approximately 48,000 children in the District are eligible to receive support from the subsidy.  However, only about 21,000 children are actually receiving aid. Nearly 10,000 children, most of them infants and toddlers, remain on waiting lists.

Jeff Credit, who runs the Community Child Development Center emphasized the importance of early education to the Post, “We are giving children the kind of services they wouldn’t be able to get anywhere else, and we give these parents who have such hard lives the peace of mind to know that at least their child is being well taken care of and educated.”

Exonerations force police to reconsider investigation practices

In response to a number of recent overturned convictions in the District, a task force created by D.C. Superior Court Chief Judge Lee F. Satterfield, has recommended that the District change its methodology for investigating and prosecuting crime.

The task force recommended that computers or staff with no connection to the case administer suspect lineups in order to prevent the bias of the investigator from influencing witness decisions. Eyewitness misidentifications have played a role in more than 70 percent of 301 DNA exonerations since 1989, showing that, although effective in persuading a jury, witness accounts should not be assumed to be accurate or entirely truthful.

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Homeless shelters at full capacity

This winter has been especially tough on Washington, D.C.’s homeless population. The Washington Post reports that the homeless families’ shelter at D.C. General Hospital is at full capacity, with nearly 1,000 people.

Most officials disagree over who or what is to blame for the 18 percent increase  in homeless families seeking shelter over the past year.

While Mayor Vincent Gray’s commitment to spend $100 million on affordable housing is laudable, many of his critics feel he has not done enough to help the current homeless families and has actually made it too difficult to enter the shelter system.

“It’s like paperwork on top of paperwork—they have to prove they absolutely don’t have a safe place to stay,” said Marta Beresin, a staff attorney for the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless.

A report released by the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless faults Mayor Vincent Gray for not living up to promises to house all homeless families.

“In the current system, it is exceedingly more difficult for families who are homeless to access shelter during the winter than it is for unaccompanied adults,” the report reads. “The system’s front door has been blocked by unlawful procedures that have created almost insurmountable obstacles for far too many families trying to access emergency shelter this winter.”

The center argues that it is unlawful for homeless families to need the assistance of a lawyer to gain access to their rightful shelter. Families have been let into shelters on an inconsistent basis, and even those families who do receive shelter encounter broken facilities and vermin infestations, according to the Post.

One man’s trash could be the city’s fuel

Last December, Mayor Gray announced a $300,000 research proposal to examine the feasibility of building a trash incinerator in the District, according to the Post. The incinerator would burn trash and convert the energy into electricity for the city. Gray submitted the research proposal as part of his “Sustainable D.C.” initiative—his plan for a greener D.C.

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