Below The Beltway

We really appreciate that $ 1.5 billion you just gave us:
The U.S. Senate voted last night to authorize long-sought federal funding for Washington’s cash-strapped and aging Metro system, clearing a major hurdle toward providing $1.5 billion over 10 years to help maintain the nation’s second-busiest rail system.
The Senate passage is the furthest the measure has [...]

Just over a month after the United States Supreme Court struck down the District of Columbia’s handgun ban, the man who brought that case is suing the District again over it’s response to the Supreme Court’s ruling:
The man who successfully challenged the D.C. handgun ban before the U.S. Supreme Court filed a second federal lawsuit [...]

There was some wild weather in the Northern Virginia area last night:
Two major local school systems are closed today because of power outages from last night’s swift-moving and violent thunderstorms, which left a Fairfax County man dead, scores of trees and power lines toppled and more than 200,000 homes and businesses without electricity.
The Annandale-area man [...]

Instead of actually fighting crime, Washington, D.C.’s Police Department is going to turn into a 21st Century version of the guys who manned the checkpoints along the Berlin Wall:
D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier announced a military-style checkpoint yesterday to stop cars this weekend in a Northeast Washington neighborhood inundated by gun violence, saying it [...]

Come on guys, you know we can do better than this:
As traffic in the Washington region continues to worsen — disrupting dinner plans, ruining Little League games and raising the blood pressure of millions every day — a survey released this week offered some (small) consolation: At least we’re not getting any ruder.
According to the [...]

This weekend’s Washington Post Magazine tells the story of an ill-conceived, and fortunately failed, monument to mothers:
ON A WARM SPRING DAY IN 1929, dozens of Washington dignitaries gathered in a forest near Chevy Chase to think about their mothers. It was, after all, Mother’s Day, just the 15th since the holiday had been made official, [...]

Roy Pearson — he of the $ 54 million lawsuit over a pair of pants — is back in Court:
WASHINGTON (Map, News) - The former D.C. judge who was fired after becoming a symbol of runaway litigation for suing over lost pants has claimed he suffered “humiliation” and “physical illness” in a new lawsuit seeking [...]

From Megan McArdle:
For this, we have law enforcement? Are there no more rapists roaming our streets? Have murders ceased to be a problem in this fair land, this shining city on a hill? Did all the burglars join Criminals Anonymous? Have the drunk drivers decided to binge only in the comfort of their own living [...]

Deborah Jeane Palfrey, best known as the woman at the center of the juiciest sex scandal to hit D.C. in a decade, is apparently dead from an apparent suicide:
(CNN) — A woman who police believe to be Deborah Jeane Palfrey, known as the “D.C. Madam,” was found dead in Florida Thursday, according to Tarpon Springs [...]

After several months when it seemed dead as a doornail, it looks like the Silver Line is a go-forward:
Federal transportation officials today told Congress and Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) that they have approved the proposed 23-mile extension of Metrorail to Dulles International Airport, reversing their announcement in January that the project was unfit [...]