‘Soda jerker flipping ice cream into malted milk shakes. Corpus Christi, Texas (LOC)’
courtesy of ‘The Library of Congress’

News came in overnight that David Shott, the owner of yet-to-open Du Vin Osteria at 14th & Florida, had threatened two local bloggers – Prince of Petworth and U-Street Girl – with legal action unless they removed comments from their blog entries concerning his new establishment.  The strong-arming appears related to comments made by a former Union Row Resident, who was reminding readers of a 2008 interaction with the Union Row community by Mr. Shott. Mr. Shott’s threat of legal action is an empty one, as comment forums provide the blog owner, but not the commenter, safe harbor under the Communications Decency Act.

We have requested comment from Mr. Shott by email, but have not received one.

Generally, we consider it in poor form to strong-arm bloggers concerning the comments that are posted on their site, as it stifles an open community.  This is a place to engage your customers, not threaten them.

As a precaution, I would point everyone to our comment policy before they decide to write in below. We will also note that the comments are the property of their author, and not of We Love DC.

‘Kwame Brown’
courtesy of ‘tbridge’

That this needs to be said out loud, or written into law, is one of those moments where you shake your head, laugh, and then quietly cry to yourself inside. Yesterday emergency legislation was sponsored by At-Large councilman Kwame Brown to make sexual contact with a student a fire-able offense at DCPS. While the council has yet to take action, swift passage is expected.

If you’re asking who on God’s green earth would think it was okay to have sex with a student, you need but point to the myriad cases that make it to the rolls of Fark.com every month. But, given the wake of the layoffs scandal at DCPS this past Fall, and Michelle Rhee’s controversial remarks concerning the sexual proclivities of at least one teacher who was RIFfed, I suppose it needs to be done. In the meanwhile, we all weep for DCPS at large.

‘Georgetown University’
courtesy of ‘Kevin H.’

The rumor mill is a dangerous thing. While we don’t require multi-sourcing for this site, we tend to require some demonstration of validity. Yesterday, a Georgetown professor in his 1L class told students shortly after the start of the class that he knew that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts was retiring for health reasons. You can guess what happened next.

At least one media outlet ran with it without verifying the statement, and things snowballed from there. Not long after, it was on Drudge, then Fox News, and suddenly conservatives everywhere were having heart attacks at the thought of President Obama replacing the Chief Justice.

Professor Tague was making a point about trust and unverified: do you trust the news right now? Why?

Folks, the world is changing fast. The barriers to entry in news have been drastically lowered, and as a result, we get some scrambling moments like these. Journalists will use this as ammunition against bloggers like us, who they feel threatened by. “These kids today,” they say, “they’ll run with anything!” Yes, some people will run with stuff like that. They’re revealed to be unreliable by the coverage they produce. Good sites have reputations to protect, and will do what they need to do in order to protect theirs, including handle a level of fact-checking that some sites chose to avoid yesterday.

Definitely a cautionary tale.

‘Misc – Post Partisan Apology – 10-11-08’
courtesy of ‘mosley.brian’

Count this one as a victory for civilization. Councilman Marion Barry today was unanimously censured by the City Council for his role in a kickbacks scandal, unanimously referred to prosecutors for misconduct related to the kickbacks scandal, and unanimously removed as chair of the housing committee.

Councilman Barry was loathe to admit his own responsibility in these matters, instead pushing off blame on the Council for the Bennett Report, on Bennett and his staff, and on Council Chair Vince Gray. Barry was looking for someone, anyone, to drag down with him, trying to drag Councilman Jack Evans and Jim Graham and Council Chair Gray down for what Barry felt were similar ethical lapses, no matter what the reality of the situation was.

As Geoffrey Hatchard pointed out on twitter, it was if Barry was saying “you do this, and you try to run for mayor, i’ll make sure no one votes for you,” to Chairman Vince Gray, which is no small threat given Barry’s clout in distressed Ward 8. Given that the Democratic Party is still afraid of Barry, this is no small measure of revenge for Barry, to attempt to frighten and impose upon the council in retribution for censure.

Barry continued to defend his innocence, to defend his record as “clean”, and then went on to challenge the very censure process that he’d just underwent. Barry said that he was “not dismayed” by the process, which largely means to me that we need to give these censure proceedings further teeth.