For the past couple years, there’s been a dichotomy in the DC online news world.  You have, on one side, a couple serious journalistic outfits in the Washington Post, the Washington Times, WTOP and some culture specialists like the City Paper, and on the others, the wild west of cityblogging with us, DCist, and a ton of other awesome folks that we love and respect. And the rule was: ne’er the twain shall meet.

No longer.  This morning at 4:26am, they flipped the switch over at the ABC-7 building and TBD.com came to life.  The site will feature not just staff-written content that focuses on the Greater Washington Metropolitan Area, but also the work of a large community network of sites like ours.  You will see stories from We Love DC on TBD over the next few weeks, along side those of other sites in the TBD Community Network.  We got our first look late yesterday, but Aaron from DCist and Jeff Jarvis of Buzz Machine have great roundups from their Friday previews.

We look forward to working with them in the future. Now get some sleep, TBDers, or at a bare minimum, some more coffee.

’01-29-08′
courtesy of ‘Fort Worth Squatch’

Individual school test results are now out for DC Public Schools and Charter Schools, so if you want to go check your neighborhood school’s results, you can. Just a warning, they’re not all rosy. The elementary school two blocks up from my house (Burroughs) was static in reading proficiency and saw an 18 percentage point drop in math proficiency, which kinda scares the crap out of me.

How’d your elementary or middle school do this year?

‘derailed traffic’
courtesy of ‘philliefan99’

A horrific line of storms has done significant damage to trees and power lines along the GW Parkway in Alexandria, and a coal train derailing on the CSX tracks near Quantico have brought two major avenues out of DC to a screeching halt. Downed trees and crushed cars on the GW Parkway have closed the thoroughfare, in both directions, from 395 down past Slaters Lane. The area near there has no power, though, and most of the traffic lights are out throughout Old Town Alexandria. Just a PSA: A traffic signal with no power is a four way stop. Dominion reports that almost 20,000 customers are without power in that immediate area, and that they are working on the situation.

More serious is the overturned coal train on the CSX tracks near Quantico, VA. VRE has suspended all southbound trains at Crystal City and will be busing customers from there to their final destinations. There will not be recovery equipment available until after 10pm tonight, so if you’re planning to come in on the train tomorrow morning, you’re going to want to spend time on VRE’s website to check to see what the current situation is.

Be careful out there, as there’s still one more line of storms due to hit the area before nightfall.

‘District Door’
courtesy of ‘M.V. Jantzen’

The Office of Campaign Finance has declared that Marion Barry violated no city law when he gave his girlfriend Donna Watts-Brighthaupt a $5,000-a-month contract with the city.  The Post broke the story this afternoon that the OCF has declared Barry’s actions to be within the bounds of the law, in a ruling that boggled my mind pretty hard.  The PDF can be downloaded from the OCF Website.  Their conclusions consist of the fact that Marion Barry, as a member of the City Council, may award personal services, contracts or a trust deed with the knowledge & consent of the Secretary of the Council, who did not know about Barry’s relationship with Donna Watts-Brighthaupt (DWB). Despite the fact that DWB was in debt to Barry, they conclude, “it cannot be reasonably concluded that the Councilmember hired Ms. Watts-Brighthaupt under a $10,000 personal services contract to repay him for the loan of one mortgage payment in the amount of $700.00.”

In addition, the report concluded, “Simply put, the Councilmember’s behavior did not meet the standard established by the [District of Columbia Campaign Finance Reform and Conflict of Interest] Act. The Councilmember hired Ms. Watts-Brighthaupt for a job and she produced a product. It may have been imprudent for him to hire a person with whom he had a close relationship; but, the overriding principles of disclosure do not govern such a relationship.”

The censure will stand, though, as while Marion Barry did not break any laws, his acts were in violation of the Council’s ethics guidelines and he was subject to discipline from his peers. The question remains: what will it take to finally get Barry gone from city politics? I mean, it’s bad enough that there are appearances of impropriety between Mayor Fenty and Sinclair Skinner and others, but no direct evidence, but when we have a councilman steering not insignificant amounts of money to his girlfriend, well, we just end up the butt of jokes.

‘Because This Motorist’s Car Had Failed the Carbon Monoxide and Hydrocarbon Emissions Test a Second Time…09/1975’
courtesy of ‘The U.S. National Archives’

There’s nothing I hate like a contrived nickname. It’s only barely better than a nickname you’ve given yourself, which as we all know is verboten. But Paul Farhi has a piece in today’s Post about “The DMV” which refers to “The District, Maryland and Virginia.” I don’t know about you, but what I think of when I hear that awful acronym is the Department of Motor Vehicles. You know, the place you have to go once every couple of years, to fill out lengthy forms with obscure automotive references and detailed personal information, and to be reminded of the soul-crushing bureaucracy required to do anything related to the government. That’s not what I want to associate my home with, really, and I just don’t understand it.

Paul Farhi says that it dates back to Channel 9’s original name: “Actually, long before then, Washington’s Channel 9 was known as WDMV-TV, which stood for “the District, Maryland and Virginia.” But WDMV died long before the current vogue for “the DMV” (the call letters live on at a small AM radio station in Walkersville, Md.).” But, as William Yurasko points out, that’s just not the case: “Actually, Channel 9 was known as WDVM.”

That kinda guts Farhi’s whole “historical angle,” doesn’t it? I really think this nickname should die a horrific death. We’re “the Washington DC area,” or, for those who live inside the bounds, “The District.” We’re also The Nation’s Capital, if you want to get fancy, or the Greater Washington Metropolitan Area. But The DMV? No thank you. Sorry, Paul Farhi.

‘Wegman’s without Jessie’
courtesy of ‘ceejayoz’

Via the Washington Business Journal comes the news that there’s a Wegmans scheduled to open in Largo on October 24th in the Woodmore Towne Center development near Fedex Field. All I have to say is: bring on the proliferation of the Wegmans. These places are about the most awesome grocery store you will ever find, but due to their size, they run into a lot of the anti-Big Box store regulations, and the general problem of finding that much contiguous properly-zoned and reasonably-affordable land.

Color me super excited to see another one, and one close to me in Brookland. We’d been stopping in Leesburg when we head to the farm, or when I visit my clients there, but now to have one a bit closer is fantastic.

‘Stormfront’
courtesy of ‘Amberture’

It’s finally a beautiful morning in DC again.  There’s sunshine expected most of today, but it’s not the sort that comes with heat advisories, and right now it’s a balmy 77°F as I type this.  First time I’ve felt comfortable in a week.  The storm that pounded the area has left some problems behind, though, and cleanup is a big part of that. More than 70 trees were down and blocking roadways last night, according to DDOT. If you lost a branch or two in your yard, or worse blocking a sidewalk, do try to clean it up and set it in the grassy area between the sidewalk and street, or near a tree box, and DDOT will swing through and pick it up. For large limbs, please call 311.

If you don’t have power, you’re not alone. Pepco has 240,000+ without power this morning in DC and Maryland, with approximately 25,000 households in DC affected. Check their storm map and you can see where the worst of it is. In addition, WSSC has enacted water restrictions after the damage, as power was cut to their primary treatment facility for Montgomery and Prince George’s County. Power was restored at 6am, but the WSSC is still far behind where they should be in treatment for the time being, and are keeping the restrictions against watering lawns, filling pools, and running partial dishwasher and clothes washer loads in place.

How’d your neighborhood fare in all this?