Africa tries to shed long-held stereotypes of corruption, graft

tax. The regular rate is about $250, a slightly embarrassed clerk said. That didn’t include Internet service, an extra $20, but did include shabby 1970s décor, a crumbling balcony with two bent, rusted aluminum arms chairs and a sign in the bathroom helpfully instructing patrons to put the curtain inside the tub before showering. Americans journalists traveling with Secretary of State John F. Kerry were charged roughly twice what others checking out of the Hilton on Sunday were paying. Kerry, who stayed at the plusher Sheraton nearby, spent two days at the AU summit. The entire traveling party was instructed to avoid all produce and fruit and take other precautions against intestinal difficulties best left vague. It was Kerry’s first trip to sub-Saharan Africa as secretary and was planned as a way to see several African leaders at once while also affording meetings with Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Kerry also was supposed to address the gathering early Saturday evening-- the closing speaker on a roster of heads of state and diplomats who regularly overran their allotted three minutes. Running more than two hours late, and after a brief power outage, Kerry’s public speech was canceled. Kerry spoke at a separate, closed-door dinner instead. The State Department tried to get reporters a copy of Kerry’s remarks, but spotty e-mail and text-messaging service in the Ethiopian capital made the effort almost moot. “The future is being defined by countries like Ethiopia, the future of Africa, which we are celebrating in this 50th anniversary meeting, Kerry said earlier Saturday, as he stood with the country’s foreign minister. “There’s been an enormous transition in the last 50 years. There are many more democracies and many more transitions to democracy, and many more peaceful places than there are violent ones and dictators,” Kerry said. The apparent price-gouging, massive traffic snarls and poor communications surrounding the AU meeting are not necessarily a mark of corruption, although businesses regularly complain of the hidden or upfront costs associated with doing business in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia’s director general of customs and 11 other people were arrested earlier this month on corruption charges. Reuters reported that it was Ethiopia’s largest move against graft for more than a decade. Transparency International ranked Ethiopia 113 out of 176 nations worldwide in its 2012 perception of corruption index. No. 1 is considered the least corrupt.


Japanese ownership of Sprint probably isn’t a security risk

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is the latest policymaker to express concern about the Japanese telecommunication firm Softbank's bid to acquire Sprint. "The transfer of Sprint’s substantial U.S. telecommunications infrastructure to a foreign company raises national security questions," Schumer wrote in a letter to two Obama administration officials who will review the merger. (Photo by Yumi Kimura) Sprint operates key parts of America's networks and also does significant contracting work for the American government. Softbank's critics contend that the Japanese firm is too closely tied to the Chinese government, and could give the Chinese an opening to install telecommunications equipment in the United States that is vulnerable to Chinese attacks. But so far, the evidence that the Chinese government has undue influence over Softbank has been thin. At least one vocal critic, Dish Networks, is a rival suitor for Sprint that has a vested interest in sinking Softbank's bid. Legitimate security concerns can likely be addressed by attaching conditions to the merger rather than blocking it outright. There's good reason for concern about foreign companies controlling U.S. telecommunications infrastructure. If malicious equipment were installed in U.S. networks, it could allow hostile powers to intercept or disrupt American communications—a serious threat to national security. And compromised equipment can be extremely difficult to identify because it can be programmed to behave normally until it receives a specific signal. So using a company's IT equipment or services necessarily means trusting the firm's engineers and executives. And some firms are so close to foreign governments that we can't afford to give them control over U.S. infrastructure. For example, an October Congressional report found that close ties between the Chinese government and two Chinese firms, Huawei and ZTE, made it dangerous to use their equipment in U.S. networks. But Softbank seems to be in a different category. Japan is a liberal democracy and a U.S. ally. Its government is not known for launching attacks on U.S. networks. And while critics claim that Softbank is tied to the Chinese government, they haven't produced very much evidence for that claim. There's particular reason to be skeptical of arguments made by Dish Networks, which is also seeking to acquire Sprint. The U.S. firm has launched a PR offensive to portray Softbank's acquisition of Sprint as a security threat. But Dish's interests are obvious: raising national security concerns makes it more likely that Sprint will choose to accept Dish's


Sequester’s toll on summer tourism

Millions of Americans visit those sites during their summer vacations, but their trips could be affected in small and large ways this year by the government-wide spending cuts known as the sequester, which took effect in March. Impacts of the cuts (National Park Service) – Brandon Torres of the National Park Service. The U.S. Park Police, the only federal law enforcement agency to be furloughed under the sequester, received some positive news last week when it was revealed that its furloughs would end on June 1. The National Park Service announced that the agency had found alternative ways to meet its savings targets. Nonetheless, that decision did not stave off staffing shortages through the Memorial Day holiday weekend as tourists flooded Washington to visit the nation’s capital and watch the Rolling Thunder motorcycle rally. The U.S. Park Police patrols national park land in the urban parks of the Washington region, New York and San Francisco. About 350 officers are based in the Capitol region, with enforcement responsibility for tens of thousands of acres in the Washington region and 144 miles of roadway. For those of our readers who are still making plans for summer vacation, the following graphic details cuts at large national parks, as well as D.C. monuments and museums. (A more extensive graphic with sequester-impact summaries is available here.)


88 percent of Chinese say the economy is doing well

A pedestrian walks through the Mong Kok shopping district in Hong Kong. (Lam Yik Fei/Bloomberg) Analysts have braced for an unprecedented slowdown in China's economy, warning that the country could see its slowest growth rate in more than 20 years. But if ordinary Chinese are worried, they aren't showing it: The Pew Center's latest survey of economic sentiment found that 88 percent of Chinese feel good about the economy -- the highest percentage in any of the 39 countries surveyed. The poll also found that Chinese were more like to rate their personal financial situations as good, versus people in other emerging markets. More surprisingly, perhaps, eight in 10 Chinese believe the economy will improve in the next year, and seven in 10 believe their personal fortunes will improve with it. (Pew) Wherefore the unbounded economic optimism? It's definitely not justified by any of the business news coming out of China these days, which has focused largely on stock market jitters, manufacturing declines and iffy growth policies. A recent Reuters headline is indicative: "Rosy China growth forecasts fade on further signs of slowdown," it reads, before concluding that China may be cooling down for good. In fact, that point -- that China seems to have exited its high-growth phase -- is increasingly uncontroversial among China-watchers. It's akin to graduating early, economist Barry Naughton wrote at ChinaFile: After years of breakneck growth, China is becoming less of an "emerging" market and more of an established one, with the slower, steadier growth rate and structural changes that entails. Of course, for many in China's burgeoning urban middle class, their country's economic "arrival" has also meant increased prosperity. Take this example from Helen Wang, an expert on China's middle class: she says that 15 years ago, no one had a car; now, "some people have more than one car." So while the economic news out of China might worry investors, within the country, things look pretty good. (There are huge exceptions, obviously -- Max Fisher has written on China's growing income inequality, as well.) Most emerging markets follow China's optimistic example, likely for similar reasons. According to Pew, more than half of people in Malaysia, Brazil, Chile, Turkey and South Africa think their economy is doing well; most of those countries also responded overwhelmingly that their children would be better off than they were. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the view from the advanced economies is


D.C. lands two spots on ‘America’s best ribs’ list, topping Memphis and Kansas City

In case you missed it last week while actually preparing to have a life during the long Memorial Day weekend, the Daily Meal released its list of America's best ribs, and it includes a pair of Washington smokehouses: Mr. P's Ribs & Fish and Hill Country. A slab to the heart: Oklahoma Joe's ribs were No. 1 on the Daily Meal's list of America's best ribs. (Tim Carman/The Washington Post) For those keeping score at home, Washington outpaced such 'cue meccas as Memphis (one joint on the list), Kansas City (one, though it was the overall winner) and Lockhart, the self-proclaimed barbecue capital of Texas, which had a total of zero smokehouses on the list. Despite the District's surprising performance among national food writers and critics, I'm not ready to crown Washington "the Lockhart on the Potomac." Why? Because the polling sample was tiny — five writers, total, responded to the Daily Meal survey, including yours truly, who almost single-handedly wedged Mr. P's on the list. (Daily Meal Eat/Dine Editor Dan Myers says the site researched our recommendations to confirm that other diners had given the places high marks and, I'd guess, to make sure we weren't toying with them.) Still, you should probably consider the sample sample size when clicking through the 20 restaurants that landed on the list. Some other food writers around the country had their own opinions on the winners. Take a look. • Leslie Brenner, restaurant critic and dining editor for the Dallas Morning News, noted that it's "not clear exactly how the ribs were chosen. The press release says the ranked list of 20 was chosen by a panel that included John T. Edge, John Mariani, Tim Carman, Alan Richman, Jonathan Gold, and Gael Greene. But the story says those writers 'submitted some of those favorites.'” • Joe Bonwich, restaurant critic for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, crowed, "St. Louis was the only city with three entries, while better-rep BBQ towns Memphis and Kansas City have two (Corky's and Rendezvous) and one (Oklahoma Joe's), respectively." It's worth waiting in line at the original Oklahoma Joe's for a taste of its smoky ribs. (Tim Carman/The Washington Post) • Sarah Gish, enterprise reporter for the Kansas City Star, catalogs all the love that the top winner has received: "The list of accolades that Oklahoma Joe’s has racked up in recent years is almost as long as the


Sex and the cicada (plus updated coverage map)

Cicada sex: Face the opposite direction and use the wings for a little privacy. Cicadas will reproduce during the next several weeks in the eastern United States and produce billions of nymphs. This photo was taken May 26, 2013 in Manassas, Virginia. (Kevin Ambrose) If there are cicadas where you live, then the legions of bugs are buzzing around with one purpose: to reproduce. The ground temperature officially reached 64 degrees last week and Brood II of the 17-year periodical cicadas have emerged in large pockets from Virginia to New York. The cicadas will have four-to-six weeks to mate and lay eggs before they die. For the next several weeks, their mating calls will be quite loud. In July, however, it gets quite bleak for the bugs. They all die. I asked entomologist, Russ Horton, from HomeTeam Pest Defense, a few questions about cicada reproduction: 1) How do cicadas find a mate? Horton: “The sound organ in cicadas are tymbals, drum-like structures on the abdomen of the insect. In most species only males have these organs. They are used to “call” females or warn of nearby predators. Females can make sounds but they “flick” their wings to answer the mating calls.” 2) How do cicadas reproduce? Horton: “After the male and female cicada have mated (3-5 days) the female will lay fertilized eggs 24+ in slits cut with her ovipositor on small live twigs. It takes roughly 6 weeks for the eggs to hatch and the nymphs to emerge.” 3) How do cicadas lay their eggs? Horton: “The female uses her ovipositor like a saw to cut into living twigs and branches. There are groves within the slits and she lays the fertile eggs in these grooves. Picture a two dozen chicken egg carton purchased at the grocery store but obviously much smaller in size.” 4) How long do cicadas live after they mate? Horton: “They live 2 to 6 weeks.” 5) After mating, do cicadas die of starvation? Horton: “Adult cicadas have piercing sucking mouth parts and they feed on xylem of plants for their nutritional value. I would say they die simply because their life cycle has expired.” Mating cicadas in Manassas, Virginia. (Kevin Ambrose) Competing cidadas: Left – a pair of cicadas come together; Middle – the mating cicadas are attacked by another cicada; Right – the cicada couple is left alone to reproduce nymphs. (Kevin Ambrose)


Consumer Confidence Hits Five-Year High

A waitress serves customers at the Bouchon Bakery at The Shops At Columbus Circle shopping center in New York, NY, Monday, May 27, 2013.


More and more Americans are feeling the effects of the sequester

to deny aid. My colleague Michael Laris recently followed a man in Fairfax, Va., whose housing voucher was rescinded in April. He added this: "Assistance for up to 150 homeless individuals or families, and others who had reached the top of Fairfax’s years-long waiting list to get a voucher, will be blocked in 2013, officials said." Some smaller programs also are getting pinched. Michigan has just seen the elimination of a federal program that provided 21,000 schoolchildren across the state with a $137 clothing allowance each August. Now with slightly dirtier bathrooms. (The Washington Post) --National parks are scaling back their services. Grand Canyon National Park will be cleaning its restrooms only once a day, rather than twice, while Olympic National Park in Washington "will not open flush-toilet areas and will not service restrooms and pick up trash as frequently." Cape Cod National Seashore is canceling its guided walks and education talks, George Washington Birthplace National Monument in Virginia will be able to provide educational programming to only half as many school groups, and Glacier National Park is reducing the number of days and hours that its visitor centers operate. The National Park Service has also put a freeze on hiring, leaving about 900 positions unfilled. (The service has some 15,000 employees in all.) (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) The military is starting to see cuts materialize. Time's Alison Buckholtz reported on a few of the smaller changes that military members have encountered. "Some military families," she noted, "have to maintain two homes they can’t afford, because a work transfer was delayed after the next house was already bought." Also: "A carrier deployment was called off, and with it the planned for “at-sea” pay subsidies that some families depend on." (Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post) Some federal agencies have begun to furlough their employees. For instance, the IRS has already announced five specific dates that it will close its offices and send employees home without pay. The first occurred on May 24. The Labor Department has sent 4,700 employees furlough notices back on March 5. By contrast, other agencies like the State Department and Justice Department have said they'll be able to avoid furloughs. A few outside experts are worried that blunt furloughs could prove counterproductive. Linda Blimes of Harvard's Kennedy School told Marketplace that "if a taxpayer makes a mistake during one of the IRS’s furloughed days, it means more work for


Mount Everest region glaciers retreating as climate warms

This undated photograph shows unidentified mountaineers as they walk past the Hillary Step whilst pushing for the summit of Mount Everest as they climb the south face from Nepal. (TSHERING SHERPA , AFP/GETTY IMAGES) Even the world’s tallest mountain – first conquered by man 60 years ago today – cannot escape climate change. A recent study led by a graduate student at the University of Milan in Italy reveals declining snow amounts and retreating glaciers in the Mount Everest region, reaffirming fears that many scientists hold – increasing global temperatures could cause irreversible damage. The research presented at an American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference in Mexico earlier this month, shows that the glaciers in the Everest region have shrunk by 13 percent over the last 50 years. The snowline has also moved uphill nearly 580 feet. In this photograph taken on May 23, 2013 unidentified mountaineers look out from the summit of Mount Everest. (TSHERING SHERPA, AFP/GETTY IMAGES) Lead researcher Sudeep Thakuri and his team used satellite imagery and topography maps to examine changes in the region’s mountain structure. They also evaluated temperature changes and rainfall amounts using hydro-meteorological data from various Nepal Climate Observatory stations and data from Nepal’s Department of Hydrology and Meteorology. “Human-generated greenhouse gases” are suspected to have played a large factor in the extreme melting of the world’s tallest summit, Thakuri said in a statement released by the AGU. But, he plans to do more research before making a direct-link. The data showed that since 1992, the mountain region had a 1.08 degree-Fahrenheit increase in temperature, in addition to a 3.9 inch decrease in precipitation. Glaciers smaller than 1 square kilometer in size are shrinking at the fastest rate. Since the 1960s, they have experienced a 43 percent decrease in surface area. The glaciers provide a water source for nearly 1.5 billion people, according to NBC News. “The Himalayan glaciers and ice caps are considered a water tower for Asia since they store and supply water downstream during the dry season,” said Thakuri. “Downstream populations are dependent on the melt water for agriculture, drinking, and power production.” Thakuri’s study isn’t the first to identify climate change on Mount Everest. In 2012, a study at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing provided the most comprehensive study of glacial structure in the region at the time. The study was led by Yao Tandong, director of the


Imperial China signs off with a final show tonight at the Black Cat

Since 2007, Imperial China has been one of D.C.'s most exciting and aggressive live bands, but Wednesday night will be the band's last show: "After three albums and 94 shows, Imperial China has decided to call it quits so we can focus on our jobs and new music projects," reads a message on the band's Web site. (The City Paper spoke to the band's Brian Porter about the decision.) Patrick Gough, Brian Porter and Matt Johnson of Imperial China. (Photo by Sean Peoples) Abrupt tempo changes, full-body grooves and prolific use of samples and loops (which made the band seem much larger than a trio) gave their performances a hyperkinetic, theatrical feel. "We all have short attention spans . . . so it keeps us all happy and not bored," the band's drummer Patrick Gough told the Post in 2009. "I get kind of bored when I go see a show and everybody's playing the same instrument and standing in the same place for 40 minutes," he added. Doors at the Black Cat open at 8 p.m. tonight, and you can still get tickets for $12. Here's Imperial China in action:


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The dramatically changing politics of marijuana

(Reuters/Anthony Bolante) Over less than a decade, public opinion has shifted dramatically toward support for the legalization of marijuana. For many years, opinion on the issue was quite stable, but the turn of the millennium unsettled this long-standing consensus: Sentiment in favor of legalization has increased by 20 points in just over a decade. The proportion of Americans who view marijuana use as immoral has fallen from 50 percent to 32 percent in just seven years. A recent national survey showed a narrow national majority in favor of legalization, and its supporters translated this sentiment into ballot initiative victories in Colorado and Washington State in 2012. These are among the main findings of a paper my Brookings Institution colleague Bill Galston and I published today on the new politics of marijuana. It’s based on a close study of an excellent survey released earlier this year by the Pew Research Center on the People and the Press and also work by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research on behalf of groups supporting the legalization of marijuana. You can read the whole paper here. As we wrote, the structure of public opinion regarding marijuana legalization is distinctive in a number of ways. Among today’s divisive issues, support for marijuana legalization is unusual in cutting across party lines. Generally, broad shifts in cultural attitudes-notably the rise of the 1960s and 1970s counterculture, and then the backlash against it in the 1980s-can trump the influence of party. Gender plays a role, but not necessarily the role one might expect: women are to the “right” of men, more likely to oppose legalization. Attitudes toward legalization are marked by ambivalence. Many of those who favor legalization do so despite believing that marijuana is harmful or reporting that they feel uncomfortable with its use. Among conservatives, many who believe marijuana should be illegal nonetheless support states’ right to legalize it and take a dim view of government’s ability to enforce a ban. Among the findings we reported from the Pew survey: - Republicans are nearly as likely as Democrats to say they have used marijuana: 43 percent of Republicans reported past use, as did 47 percent of Democrats. - Opinion is divided into three age clusters. Americans under 30 are the most strongly supportive of legalization: 64 percent in favor, according to the Pew survey, and 34 percent opposed. Views in the oldest age cohort are, very nearly, exactly


Six things to do in the D.C. area on the weekend of May 31-June 2

The weekend’s best in nightlife, music and art. For even more, check out Nightlife Agenda. Grab your bike, and er, your fat suit and join the Washington Area Bicyclist Association on Saturday at Yards Park. (Washington Area Bicyclist Association) Saturday: Saturday: Saturday: Saturday-Sunday: Saturday-Sunday: Sunday:


Michel Richard on New York, his D.C. roots and the future of Citronelle

names for the restaurant and bakery being developed by Michel Richard, the acclaimed Washington chef is sharing a taste of what visitors to the luxury hotel can expect — and addressing gossip about the fate of his shuttered Michel Richard Citronelle and even himself. Expected to open in September, the 48-seat dining room in Manhattan is described by its visionary as “Citronelle, but lighter.” Cream and butter will be used with restraint, although Richard still wants “magic on the plate.” His goal: “I want to get people excited, and I want them to come all the time,” not just for special occasions. The pastry shop, poised for an earlier August debut, will be a “grab and go” operation selling desserts and sandwiches and offering minimal seating. The bakery will also make its own chocolate. Currently in New York to finesse his menus, Richard was selected last fall by David Chase, the general manager of the Palace, after the hotelier interviewed a dozen contenders. Chase called the chef “unique in his ability to deliver.” The restaurant and bakery are part of the Midtown property’s $120 million makeover begun in January. Richard considers Manhattan a hospitable place to do business. “The French are doing well in New York. The rest of the country,” Los Angeles and San Francisco in particular, “they don’t like us anymore,” he said. (The chef has opened and closed restaurants in both markets over the years.) The missing piece of the puzzle for the restaurant remains a chef. “I’m still looking,” says Richard, who is only considering applicants who already live in the Big Apple. Despite rumors to the contrary, Richard says he is not permanently relocating to New York. Yes, he’ll be spending time there as the food concepts get closer to opening, but no, there aren’t plans to secure anything other than a bed at the Palace when he’s off duty. His wife and children, he adds, will remain in “my lovely town of D.C.” While we had him on the phone, we had to ask about the status of the shuttered Michel Richard Citronelle in Georgetown. Were the rumors true that the four-star destination wouldn’t reopen? “You’re right,” replied the chef. Certainly not in its original underground location in the Latham hotel, he added. Ever the tease, Richard offered slim hope for the restaurant’s reappearance as he bid adieu on the phone. “Maybe next year?”


U-Va. astronomer wins $1 million ‘Nobel of the East’ Prize

Astronomer John Hawley
(By Cole Geddy) University of Virginia astronomer John Hawley, and Steven Balbus, a former U-Va. colleague who is now at the University of Oxford, are co-winners of the Shaw Prize, which is commonly known as the “Nobels of the East.” Hawley and Balbus will share the $1 million award that comes with the Shaw Prize for Astronomy, which they won for their seminal discover in the 1980s of magnetorotational instability. That, according to UVA Today, is a process that accounts for the process of accretion, a widespread phenomenon in astrophysics. It plays a key role in star formation, mass transfer between binary stars, and black hole X-ray binaries, and contributes to the growth of supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies. Astrophysical systems powered by accretion are some of the most energetic phenomena in the universe, including quasars, active galactic nuclei and gamma ray bursts. Matter that falls toward a compact star or black hole has too much angular momentum (“spin”) to fall directly in, and instead settles into a disk orbiting the central body. Subsequent infall, or accretion, requires a mechanism, such as turbulence, to transfer angular momentum outward through the disk. Prior to the discovery, astronomers were certain that gases orbiting black holes were turbulent, but could not say why, as all hydrodynamic analysis showed the orbits to be stable. Balbus and Hawley’s discovery was that magnetic fields make the crucial difference; magnetorotational instability makes the orbits unstable… (To view a computer simulation of a black hole accretion disk, click here.) The Shaw Prizes were started in 2002 by Hong Kong film producer and philanthropist Run Run Shaw. They are given in astronomy, life science and medicine, and mathematical sciences to people who are “furthering societal progress, enhancing quality of life, and enriching humanity’s spiritual civilization.” Hawley is associate Dean for the Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences, a professor and former chair of the Astronomy Department. According to UVA Today, Hawley learned he had won while he was looking through his e-mail and saw a message he thought was a joke. I showed the message to my wife and she said, ‘It must be a scam.’ I started looking for the Nigerian return address and a request for my bank account number. But that e-mail was actually a message of congratulations from Reinhard Genzel, the 2008 Shaw Prize winner who


Update: Arlington’s Frank Fumich, Matt Nelson approach Boston, some bumps along the way

At sunrise on Tuesday, in front of the Pentagon, the D.C. to Boston marathon crew poses before the start. From left, Dennis Mondoro, Bradford Lombardi, Frank Fumich, Matt Nelson and Todd Jubeck. (courtesy Frank Fumich) You will recall that ultra-marathoner Frank Fumich of Arlington and fellow endurance runner Matt Nelson of Lake Worth, Fla., set out on Tuesday morning to run 450 miles, from the Pentagon to the Boston Marathon finish line, to raise even more money for bombing victim Jeffrey Bauman and the family of eight-year-old victim Martin Richard. They had already raised $52,000, and now are going for $78,600, or $1,000 for every mile of three marathons. Fumich has been chronicling the trip on Facebook with brutal honesty and morbid humor. As of 6:30 a.m. Friday, their continuous trading of 26.2-mile marathons — nine marathons apiece — had taken them to Milford, Conn. They hope to run the Boston Marathon course as a finale on Saturday. And they have now raised more than $65,000, or another $13,000 during three days of running on highways, scenic roads, crowded city streets and every other type of knee-pounding, foot-battering pavement between Northern Virginia and eastern Massachusetts. Here are some of the milestones — I don’t think he’d call some of them highlights: • Before the run even started, there was a great moment at a local Staples. Fumich said they had stopped at the office supply store to pick up some banners for the run, at a cost of $198. The clerk asked what they were doing. And then, after Fumich explained the run, the clerk took out his personal credit card, swiped it and said, “It’s on me, guys.” Fumich wrote, “Our mouths fell open!! He says, ‘Thanks for what you’re doing guys!’ AMAZING!! That might just be a good omen for us today on how this is gonna go!!!!” Nelson and Fumich lined up police escorts for their run all along the East Coast. In the District, Fumich told an officer he didn’t want to hold up traffic and the officer told him, “This is an honor sir. You just keep running in the road and don’t worry about anything else!” They also got great treatment from the Baltimore City police, but in Pennsylvania they had no police help, Fumich wrote, and they had to drive through two stretches where it was simply too dangerous to run. • At


Wonkbook: Americans haven’t rebuilt 91 percent of their wealth. They’ve rebuilt less than 45 percent.

of the wealth we've recovered has come in the form of higher stock prices. But about 80 percent of stock wealth is owned by families in the top 10 percent of the income distribution. The families that lost homes are not the families making money off stocks. The bottom line, according to the Fed? "Most families have recovered much less than the average amount." So let's back it up. We've recovered 91 percent of the wealth lost since 2007. After adjusting for inflation and population growth, that falls to 45 percent. And after adjusting for the unequal nature of the recovery, that falls even lower for the average household. Did I forget to say "happy Friday"? Wonkbook's Number of the Day: 45 percent. Wonkbook's Quotation of the Day: Wonkblog's Graphs of the Day: Wonkbook's Top 5 Stories: 1) Top story: Is economic growth really about to accelerate? Revisions show moderated first-quarter growth. ...It's consumption keeping the recovery alive. ...But are we accelerating? @grossdm Swoon in bonds puts eye on Fed. Mortgage rates jump to highest in a year. Interview: Americans have rebuilt less than half the wealth lost in recession, study finds. @jimtankersley Is the economy doing better as measured by income than by production? MOORE: The economic recovery is not real. Music recommendations interlude: Top op-eds DELONG: Inequality on the horizon of need. KRUGMAN: From the mouths of babes. SOLTAS: To reduce health care's costs, destroy its jobs. SAMUELSON: Is Stein's law real? CROOK: American attitudes are changing towards marijuana. Cultural TV interlude: 2) Now what on the IRS? Poll: Americans want special prosecutor for IRS scandal. ...But the White House isn't on board. House panel will interview Cincinnati IRS employees. And you thought you had seen it all interlude: 3) Competition in the health care marketplace Will Obamacare force insurers to compete? ...And are the exchanges actually competitive? States: We'll be ready on time with exchanges. Study: Immigrants put billions more into Medicare than they use. ...And one more study: Premiums could rise by 40 percent. Employers get leeway on health incentives. Journalism interlude: 4) How to make climate policy How Obama wants to make climate policy. Should the government had made more money off Tesla? Your world interlude: 5) Where the tax breaks go Who gets the biggest tax breaks? Only a third of charitable contributions go to the poor. "[W]hat share of charitable giving actually goes


This SARS-like virus has killed 30 of the 50 people who contracted it

The World Health Organization has announced three new deaths from a new virus that has alarmed health officials in the Middle East and Europe since it was first discovered last year. The organization has now confirmed 50 cases of what it calls Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS. Thirty of those patients have died. Those numbers are cause for concern. The MERS virus is a coronavirus, which is the same type of virus responsible for the common cold as well as SARS, but less than a tenth of the people who fell ill in the SARS epidemic of 2002 and 2003 died. The new avian influenza virus spreading in China, known as H7N9, has resulted in death in a quarter of known cases, while the more well-known bird flu strain, H5N1, kills about half of those who are infected, according to The New York Times. It's still too early to say whether the MERS virus is more dangerous than these other viruses, since many more people could have been infected without developing severe symptoms. Yet MERS is worrisome for other reasons. A study published online Thursday in The Lancet described how one patient in a French hospital caught the disease from another who had recently traveled to Dubai and did not survive. The two shared a room together for three days, but it wasn't until more than a week afterward that symptoms appeared in the other patient. The authors of the study estimated the incubation period at 9-12 days, a long time in which infected people could spread the disease without realizing that they are ill. It still isn't certain at what stage people carrying the virus are most contagious, the Los Angeles Times reports. Another concern is that the virus is difficult to identify. An article published in The New England Journal of Medicine this week described how the disease apparently spread through three generations of a family in Riyadh. A boy and his uncle survived the illness, while the boy's father and grandfather did not. Yet doctors could not confirm the presence of the MERS virus in the youngest of the patients, and were not able to confirm it in the two who died until after they passed away. The World Health Organization is not advising restrictions or special screening for travelers, but it has issued recommendations for surveillance that describe what respiratory illnesses hospital personnel should regard


ill in the SARS epidemic of 2002 and 2003 died. The new avian influenza virus spreading in China, known as H7N9, has resulted in death in a quarter of known cases, while the more well-known bird flu strain, H5N1, kills about half of those who are infected, according to The New York Times. It's still too early to say whether the MERS virus is more dangerous than these other viruses, since many more people could have been infected without developing severe symptoms. Yet MERS is worrisome for other reasons. A study published online Thursday in The Lancet described how one patient in a French hospital caught the disease from another who had recently traveled to Dubai and did not survive. The two shared a room together for three days, but it wasn't until more than a week afterward that symptoms appeared in the other patient. The authors of the study estimated the incubation period at 9-12 days, a long time in which infected people could spread the disease without realizing that they are ill. It still isn't certain at what stage people carrying the virus are most contagious, the Los Angeles Times reports. Another concern is that the virus is difficult to identify. An article published in The New England Journal of Medicine this week described how the disease apparently spread through three generations of a family in Riyadh. A boy and his uncle survived the illness, while the boy's father and grandfather did not. Yet doctors could not confirm the presence of the MERS virus in the youngest of the patients, and were not able to confirm it in the two who died until after they passed away. The World Health Organization is not advising restrictions or special screening for travelers, but it has issued recommendations for surveillance that describe what respiratory illnesses hospital personnel should regard as suspicious. Still, the agency has to rely on doctors to find cases, who in many countries have other problems to worry about, as Foreign Policy reports. For example, the virologist who first identified the MERS pathogen at a Saudi hospital told the Guardian that he was fired for making his discovery public. We do not know yet how dangerous the virus is, but we can hope health care systems around the world are up to the task of monitoring and preventing infections, in which case we won't have to find out.


More bad news from the Middle East

develop a special relationship with the Chinese government) it is probably a very bad idea, and when he is adamantly opposed to something (e.g. the Magnitsky human rights legislation, more sanctions on Iran, restoring defense spending), it is in all likelihood essential to do. He is, not unlike Jimmy Carter, the perfect embodiment of rotten judgment. Abed Omar Qusini/Reuters – Rami Hamdallah, then-president of al-Najah National University, in June 2011. So when he commences to fawn over the newly named Palestinian Authority prime minister, Rami Hamdallah, you know he’s a bad replacement for Salam Fayyad. Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies concurs. He tells me, “Hamdallah is an obscure academic with no experience in governing. His appointment marks a consolidation of power for Mahmoud Abbas. He is expected to be a ‘yes man’ — the opposite of Salam Fayyad, who openly disagreed with the Palestinian president on core issues, including transparency and institution building.” What is really going on here is the consolidation of corrupt Fatah’s authority. (Fayyad was never a Fatah member, which in large part accounted for his independence and the antipathy he generated.) Schanzer observes, “Unfortunately, Abbas is not only getting a weak prime minister. He is also weakening the institution of the position. This means less checks and balances in the Palestinian political system. Abbas, who is already four years past the end of his legal presidential term, has taken the institution of the presidency back to the future.” It is noteworthy that the most significant accomplishment regarding the PA in the past few years was the ejection of Yasser Arafat and the division of authority between the president and prime minister. Now, as Schanzer notes, Abbas’s “ironclad grip on Palestinian politics rivals that of Yasser Arafat in his prime.” Like so many aspects of Middle East policy, we have gone from strength to weakness in the Obama administration. Gone is Fayyad. Gone are any ongoing discussions between the PA and the Israeli government. Gone is the isolation of Hamas. Gone is respect for American influence in the region. Gone is any coherent human rights policy. And gone is a U.S. stabilizing presence in Iraq. I can think of no other five-year period in which events have uniformly moved in the wrong direction as they have under President Obama. One suspects with that Kerry running the State Department, things will only get worse.


They did it: Arlington’s Frank Fumich and Matt Nelson ran to Boston, raised $81,100 for victims

Frank Fumich, left, Erin Hurley and Matt Nelson run down Boylston Street toward the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Saturday morning. Hurley had not finished the race because of the bombings, in which her boyfriend Jeffrey Bauman lost both of his legs. Fumich and Nelson ran to raise money for Bauman and the family of Martin Richard, the eight-year-old killed in the bombings. (Courtesy Frank Fumich) The trauma and triumph of running from the Pentagon to the Boston Marathon finish line ended Saturday afternoon. Frank Fumich of Arlington and fellow ultra-marathoner Matt Nelson of Lake Worth, Fla., ran the final 26.2 miles together on the Boston Marathon course, joined for the last 19 miles by Erin Hurley, one of many runners who didn’t get to finish when the bombs exploded. Waiting for her at the finish line that April day was her boyfriend Jeffrey Bauman, who lost both legs and was photographed minutes later in an image that circled the globe and visually summarized the day’s tragedy. After they finished Saturday, Hurley gave her Boston Marathon medal to Fumich, one of many emotional moments for him over the four-day odyssey. Fumich and Nelson set out to raise $78,600 for the bombing victims — a thousand dollars for every mile of three marathons — after having raised more than $52,000 during a three-marathon run last month. They finally broke the $78,600 barrier on Saturday morning, about halfway through the last of the eight marathons apiece that Fumich and Nelson ran, alternating duties as they slogged up the East Coast in crushing heat, heavy traffic, difficult navigation and darkness. Matt Nelson, left, and Frank Fumich, right, are joined by two Maryland State Troopers as they run toward Boston on the first day of their journey. (Courtesy Frank Fumich) Fumich returned to Arlington Sunday night, and said today that he had not suffered any injuries, but had extensive soreness, lasting fatigue and some mental haziness. Though he has run marathons through deserts and once ran 135 miles nonstop, this was the longest distance and number of days he has completed. “I’ve had feelings I haven’t had before,” Fumich said of his physical reaction to running six or seven hours, climbing in an RV for some water and sleep, then getting back out for six or seven more hours of running. “Bad headaches. Scary stuff. There were times when I was totally


The innovator’s 2013 summer reading list: Eight books to make you smarter

there are still eight cultural conflicts that divide us all. These are hot-button topics such as race, gender and income equality. Any book that gets props from Amy Chua of “Tiger Mother” fame (see the reviews on Amazon) is worth reading to understand the deep cultural conflicts that determine how we raise our kids and who we choose to govern us. This might just be the perfect summer book to read before a family vacation to visit the in-laws. F. Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking by Daniel Dennett If you’re in search of new tools to make you a better thinker, Dennett’s latest work is the place to go. Filled with intellectual thought experiments (like Trapped in the Robot Control Room) “Intuition Pumps” offers unique thinking on everything from how the mind works to what free will really means. Not only is Daniel Dennett one of the most outspoken atheists of our era, he’s also a staggering intellect who has written widely about Darwin, evolution, science and humanity’s place within the universe. The cover of “Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking” by Daniel C. Dennett. G. Time Reborn by Lee Smolin Now that the Higgs-Boson “God Particle” is cocktail party conversation material and scientists at Google and NASA are working on a quantum computer, it’s finally time to wrap your head around the basics of theoretical physics and quantum mechanics. Smolin first made a name for himself by turning his back on the physics community with his book The Trouble With Physics. Now, he’s back with a controversial new question: Is time real? It’s sure to have you challenging your notions of how the universe really works. H. March: Book One by Congressman John Lewis The cover of “March: Book One” by Congressman John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell. Ever thought you’d see the Civil Rights Movement turned into a comic book authored by an American Congressman who marched with Martin Luther King, Jr.? Neither did we. The book, due out in mid-August, has already picked up an endorsement from President Clinton. It’s not so much the content of the book that’s innovative—it’s the creative way of packaging a cultural and historical issue for a wider audience (like your comic book-reading kids). The next time you’re in a boring meeting this summer, stir up the pot a bit by asking, “Is there any way we could


The intern’s guide to D.C. happy hours: Cheap drinks and affordable food

Miller Lite and Yuengling pints. Wednesday is $2 16-ounce PBR pounders and $4 cheesesteaks. And on Thursday, the bartender flips a coin after you order. Call it right, and your drink is free. Duffy’s Irish Pub If you can sneak out of the office a little early, it pays to head to the east end of U Street. From 4 to 5 p.m., Duffy’s Irish Pub offers $1 Miller Lite drafts, Tecate cans and 16-ounce pounders, including PBR and Natty Boh. Pints of Sam Adams and Yuengling sell for $2. Prices increase by $1 at 5 p.m., and $1 more at 6 p.m., with the deals ending at 7. At Nellie’s Sports Bar, the deals start an hour later, with $2 vodka drinks and beers from 5 to 6 p.m. Prices go up by $1 at 6 and 7 p.m., with deals ending at 8. Around Capitol Hill Though Capitol Hill is packed with interns, it isn’t the happy hour hunting ground it once was. There are still deals to be had: A bucket of Bud or Bud Light bottles will set you back $10 on Wednesdays at Union Pub. Tortilla Coast’s discounts include $3.50 draft and bottled beers and $6 margaritas on weekdays from 3:30 to 7 p.m. And the cheapest way to kick off your weekend? $1 PBR and Miller High Life cans all day on Friday at Hamilton’s. Outside of happy hour No matter what time of day you show up, you’ll be able to find cheap cans of beer at the Red Derby, Solly’s and the Pug. The Hungry Intern Some intern-friendly bars offer free Old El Paso-quality tacos after work. But if you want to feel satisfied, try one of these inexpensive but tasty bars: Smoke and Barrel The Adams Morgan barbecue joint offers a number of specials throughout the week. Monday is a giant plate of smoked wings (chicken or vegan) for $5. Tuesday brings a $5 plate of three tacos (brisket, chicken, pork or tofu) and a side (anything from collard greens to cole slaw). All veggie and vegan appetizers and entrees are half-price on Thursday. It can be easy to blow your savings with the great microbrews, so go during happy hour (5 to 8 p.m.) when local beers are $4 each. Pete’s New Haven Style Apizza The popular local chain, which has outposts in Columbia Heights, Friendship Heights and Clarendon (with


Tecates and $4 house margaritas. Chef Geoff’s A staple of intern meals for years, the downtown Chef Geoff’s offers happy hour all day Monday and Tuesday and from 3 to 7 p.m. on other weekdays. The $5.95 burgers, from cheddar-bacon to black bean and pepper, are filling. Sixteen-ounce cans of PBR go for $3.50; the liter-sized “supermugs” are $7.95. Piola The daily “Aperitivo Italiano” means $3 Peroni and $4 house wine from 5 to 8 p.m., while staff pass out free mini-pieces of pizza. You probably won’t fill up, but it’s a nice after-work snack. Classier happy hour options Of course, interns aren’t the only ones who want to enjoy discounted food and drink after work. These happy hours are a little classier than your $1 beerfests, but they can be enjoyed by interns and us older folks alike. Vidalia This three-star Southern restaurant quietly has one of the better happy hours around, with $3.50 local microbrews, $7.50 mixed drinks and a solid list of small plates in the $3 to $5 range from 5 to 7 p.m. on weekdays. Pizzeria Paradiso Want a quick and inexpensive introduction to the city’s burgeoning craft beer scene? Visit Pizzeria Paradiso in Georgetown or Dupont Circle on Tuesday and Wednesday between 5 and 7 p.m., when two of the city’s top beer bars sells all draft beers for half-price. Appetizers are $5 and personal pizzas are $10. Vinoteca The wine bar’s popular happy hour, which runs from 5 to 7 p.m. daily, means $5 glasses of wine and Peroni. But for a great date, take your sauvignon blanc to the back patio and play a game of bocce on the full-size court. (Just don’t go on Monday or Tuesday, which are league nights.) Scion For less than $10 on Tuesday, you can get a Scion burger (a rich burger topped with smoked mozzarella, sauteed onions and peach ketchup) and a pint of craft beer, including Fullsteam, Sixpoint or Great Lakes. Burgers are half-price all night; beers are half-price from 4 to 7 p.m. Happy hours in the sun It’s summer. You want to be outside. So go to DC Reynolds’ large back patio, where all drinks — even the good stuff — are two-for-one from 5 to 9 p.m. Or hit the rooftop at El Centro D.F. for $4 margaritas (regular or frozen), Mexican beers or house wines from 5 to 7 p.m.


Why teachers should present new material as stories

look through this telescope, we can see deep valleys and great mountain ranges. Through the telescope, we can now see all the different marks on the moon’s surface. The corresponding passage in the narrative version read this way: When Galileo looked through his new telescope, he could see the surface of the moon, and so he began his first close look into space. He slept during the day in order to work and see the moon at night. Many people thought that the moon was a smooth ball with a light of its own. Now that Galileo had a closer look through his telescope, he realized that the moon’s surface had mountains and valleys. Students comprehension and memory for the information in the text was measured immediately after reading it, and again one week later. The difference in recall between the narrative and non-narrative versions are shown as difference scores below. These are difference scores, so taller bars reflect a greater advantage for the narrative version. The advantage of the story over expository was significant in all conditions except the Curie passage at the short delay. Science lends itself naturally to narrative structure–authors can tell the stories of individual scientists, their struggles, their discoveries, and so on.There’s a case to be made that it also lends itself to a triumphalist view of science that is not accurate; scientists as heroes in an ever-progressing march towards Truth. Since Kuhn, that more or less Popperian view of science has been viewed as at least too simple, and more likely inaccurate. But if it helps middle schoolers understand science, I’m inclined not worry too much about that point. Instead, I’d like to broaden the view of “narrative.” (I made this point in my book, “Why Don’t Students Like School.”) You don’t have to think of narrative just as the story of an individual or group of people; you can think more abstractly conflict, complications, and the eventual resolution of conflict as the core of narrative structure. I prefer to think of narrative in this broader sense because it is more flexible, and gives teachers more options, and also better captures the aspects of narrative structure that I suspect are behind the advantage conferred. — Reference Arya, D. J. & Maul, A. (2012). The role of the scientific discovery narrative in middle school science education: An experimental study. Journal of Educational Psychology, 104, 1022-1032.


The White House takes on patent trolls and a look at a large coronal hole

Office would begin the process of improving and expanding education, outreach and data analysis to empower those who find themselves on the other end of a patent troll demand letter or infringement suit. The U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator has also been charged with launching an interagency review of the procedures undertaken by Customs and Border Protection and the International Trade Commission in preventing patent-infringing goods from entering the country to make sure they are “are transparent, effective, and efficient.” An extensive coronal hole rotated towards Earth over several days this week (May 28-31, 2013). (NASA) 2) It’s not the Eye of Sauron, but it’s pretty close. “An extensive coronal hole” can be seen in this image of the sun composed of three different wavelengths of ultraviolet light. According to NASA, this coronal hole — the largest the agency has seen in “a year or more” — rotated toward the earth during the last four days of March. The hole appears darker because there is less matter present at the temperatures observed. Writes NASA: “Coronal holes are the source of strong solar wind gusts that carry solar particles out to our magnetosphere and beyond. … Solar wind streams take 2-3 days to travel from the Sun to Earth, and the coronal holes in which they originate are more likely to affect Earth after they have rotated more than halfway around the visible hemisphere of the Sun, which is the case here. They may generate some aurora here on Earth.” (NASA via Gizmodo) 3) Have you ever dreamed of popping open a bottle of champagne and partying with Richard Branson? Well, you can now bid on the opportunity. The Virgin Group founder and chairman is pledging an invitation to an exclusive party for a fundraising effort for DoSomething.org. And, yes, pitching is not only allowed but, based on the title, encouraged. 4) How is it that celebrities can suddenly wear the mantle of the nerd? Think of those Justins (Timberlake and Beiber) who wear nerdy glasses, or Scrabble lover Anne Hathaway. Victor Hwang asks the question for Forbes and concludes that the rise of the “fake nerd” (or, as he comes around to it, the “new nerd”) is actually a good thing: “…The good news is that the growth of nerddom is happening because more and more people are recognizing that real value comes from quirky places. Strange ideas come from


‘Fool’s errand’: Why China censors rubber duckies on Tiananmen anniversary

(Sina Weibo) On May 1, 1989, one month before Chinese troops killed hundreds of protesters in and around Tiananmen Square in Beijing, the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Zhao Zhiyang, made his case for compromise in a private session of the Politburo. "Democracy is a worldwide trend," he said, according to former Washington Post reporter Philip Pan's excellent book "Out of Mao's Shadow." Zhao went on: "If the party does not hold up the banner of democracy in our country, someone else will, and we will lose out. I think we should grab the lead on this and not be pushed along grudgingly." Zhao lost out, as did the protesters. But Chinese leaders were not content to simply shut down the protesters and fire Zhao. They, and the movement for political liberalization they represented, were considered so dangerous that they had to be forgotten completely. Zhao was banished to house arrest, where he lived out his years in forced isolation. As for the protests and massacre in Beijing, they never happened. Discussion of the events on June 4 remain so taboo and so heavily censored that, when people do dare to discuss them, they often refer to "May 35th." This year, the censorship around Tiananmen's anniversary is reaching new heights. The Wall Street Journal's Josh Chin reports that Chinese social media sites are not just blocking Tiananmen-related search terms but even oblique, tertiary references. Chinese Web users can't search for the phrase "black shirt," for example, presumably because a Chinese activist named Hu Jia had called on people to wear black T-shirts in a subtle nod to the anniversary. Even mentions of yellow rubber duckies are blocked on the Chinese Web. Not because they're a potent or politically charged symbol of the anniversary but because some anonymous person in China, referencing the giant rubber duck currently floating in Hong Kong's Victoria Harbor, posted an image on social media of the famous "tank man" photo with giant rubber ducks replacing the tanks. It probably took about 20 minutes in Photoshop, but it was enough to get not just the image deleted from Weibo but searches for all things yellow rubber duck-related blocked. You could be forgiven for seeing the extent of the censorship as a bit absurd; are rubber duckies really so dangerous to one of the most entrenched single-party states on Earth? But the censorship isn't just about


A slice of Suburbia at Union Market with frozen drinks and lawn games

are also less than most cocktails in this city, frozen or not.) There's a non-alcoholic slushee for kids, which tastes like a Coca-Cola Slurpee from 7-11, and sells for $4. Adults can add rum to make a Cuba Libre, or bourbon to make a whiskey and Coke, for an extra $4. Beers are available too, mostly domestic beers in tallboy 16-ounce cans, for $4 to $7, which includes a tall Suburbia koozie. Every weekend, a different local brewery will take over the taps inside the Airstream. Flying Dog had four ales last week for $7 a pop; DC Brau takes over this Friday. The bar is cash-only, but there's a caveat: If you withdraw money from the ATM inside Union Market and show the bartender your receipt, you get a free shot of your choice. Chersevani plans to have different events running every weekend. This Saturday, former PS 7's chef Peter Smith will be manning a three-foot outdoor grill, cooking Red Apron burgers and hot dogs and other food from Union Market. In honor of Sunday's Israel@65 Festival, the Airstream will have a special frozen drink: A variation of the old-school Sangaree cocktail, with gin, brandy, fresh concord grapes, lime juice and Manischewitz wine. ("I want to call it the Oy Vey," Chersevani jokes.) Friday nights will feature "industry night" in the Airstream, with guest bartenders making cocktails and serving beer; Patrick Owens and Ashley May, who created the Spirits in Black night at American Ice Company, are set for this week. Amateur photographers, take note: Suburbia is running a daily Instragram contest. Every day that Suburbia is open, its staff will pick their favorite customer-submitted Instagram photo and give the photographer a $20 gift certificate to be used on their next visit. Photos must be tagged @suburbiadc to be eligible to win. After July 11, Chersevani and her bartenders are hitching the Airstream to a truck and hitting the road. "We're going to go down to New Orleans for [the annual cocktail convention] Tales of the Cocktail, and then we'll come back and hopefully have a new space for it in August." An earlier version of this post referred to plans for a farmers market outside Union Market, but details haven't been finalized. Suburbia, the temporary stretch of grass outside Union Market has seats, games and grills. (Photo by Fritz Hahn/The Post) Among the frozen drink choices at Suburbia:


On sexual assault in the military, the service chiefs look oblivious

U.S. military leaders, including all six members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee (Win McNamee/Getty Images). This should come as little surprise: The most powerful leaders in the military are apparently worried about giving up power for military commanders. On Tuesday, the service chiefs testified before Congress about the disturbing number of sexual assault cases that are occurring in the military. Yet they expressed strong reservations, reports the Post's Craig Whitlock, about one reform lawmakers seek: a change to the military justice system. The proposed change, which is included in a bill introduced by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), would give uniformed prosecutors—rather than commanders—the authority to handle criminal investigations into sexual-assault cases and other crimes. (The latest updates from sex assault hearing) In their resistance to the proposal, the service chiefs come off as more concerned about preserving military command structures than assuring victims of sexual assault that every measure will be taken to correct the problem. Gen. James F. Amos, who leads the Marine Corps, writes that "victims need to know that their commander holds offenders accountable, not some unknown third-party prosecutor.” The problem, of course, is that commanders have not always held offenders accountable. The number of active-duty military personnel who have experienced "unwanted sexual contact" has grown by 35 percent over the past two years, on top of already disturbingly high numbers. And some commanders have chosen to overturn convictions in high-profile cases. Is a victim really supposed to think "some unknown third-party prosecutor" might not be more impartial? Isn't it possible (if not probable, given the gender and power imbalance of military leadership and sexual assault) that commanders could have closer allegiances to the perpetrators than to the victims? Isn't the potential for bias here really obvious? Meanwhile, Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army chief of staff, wrote in a letter in advance of the hearing that "sexual assault remains an unacceptable problem for our military and society," but that the military cannot "simply ‘prosecute’ our way out of this problem. At its heart, sexual assault is a discipline issue that requires a culture change.” No, it is not. At its heart, sexual assault is a crime, one that should involve impartial prosecutors. Legal changes are not a silver bullet, as President Obama has said, and culture change is also critically needed to help prevent sexual assault from happening in


Why does a trade court get to decide if Apple infringed patents?

engaged in "unfair trade practices," it can issue an "exclusion order" banning its products from the market. That law has been on the books since 1922, but more recently the phrase "unfair trade practices" has increasingly been construed to include patent infringement. And because modern consumer electronics products are manufactured overseas, virtually all of those products are vulnerable to ITC exclusion orders. The result has been two parallel systems of patent law. Patent holders can ask a district court to issue an injunction against the sale of a product. Or they can ask the ITC to issue an exclusion order. While the lingo is different, the basic result is the same: If the product is found to be infringing, it gets banned from the market. Watson believes this two-track system tilts the playing field in favor of patent holders. They can make a strategic decision about which forum is likely to be more favorable, or they can even file cases in both venues (using different patents) simultaneously. The need to litigate in two different venues can drive up the costs of defending against an infringement accusation. Moreover, the ITC operates with a slightly different, and often more patent-friendly, set of rules than the district courts. Not only does that make patent law more complicated, but Watson says that makes patent law difficult to reform. Changes to the legal principles applied by the ordinary court system don't necessarily translate into change in the ITC's rules, and vice versa. For example, a 2006 Supreme Court decision made it more difficult for a patent holder to get an injunction against a convicted infringer. But while an ITC exclusion order has the same practical effect as an injunction issued by an ordinary court, the Supreme Court's ruling didn't apply to the ITC. So today a patent holder has a better chance of getting an infringer's product banned from the market if he complains to the ITC. Cato's Watson also argues that the ITC process is inconsistent with U.S. trade obligations. International treaties require the United States to give equal treatment to domestic products and those manufactured overseas. Yet only goods made overseas are subject to ITC exclusion orders for patent infringement. In effect, the law applies different legal standards to domestic and foreign products. Watson made the case for getting the ITC out of the patent business in a paper he published last year.


Home maintenance can keep those pests away

are merely pesky, but others can cause real damage so it’s best to know the signs and make the necessary changes to repel or eradicate them. Here are some tips to help keep yourself, your pet and your home safe this summer: Mosquitoes: Check your property. Clean out your gutters and make sure downspouts drain away from your home. Clogged gutters create standing water and are the perfect place for mosquitoes and other pests to breed. Clogged gutters will also encourage other pests that can damage your home. Throw away old tires, buckets and other yard rubbish that allow mosquitoes to breed. Ticks and rodents: Be sure to use a pooper scooper after letting your dogs out. Not only is dog poop a potential health hazard, but it may attract unwanted rodents. Termites and carpenter ants: Termites, especially, and carpenter ants are attracted to unprotected or decaying wood. Store firewood away from your home and protect it from the elements. Watch for insect damage and remove old wood before it’s a problem. Termites seek out moist wood for food. Wood decay fungus growing on wood may be a sign of subterranean termite activity. This fungus as well as the moisture in the wood will attract termites. Wood decay fungus will begin with a white mycelia growing on the wood. The easiest way to identify termites is from the mud tubes they leave behind. Another way to identify a problem with subterranean termites and carpenter ants is from the waste they expel. As termites chew through wood they create channels. Workers will continually bring up dirt, creating the mud channels or piles of dirt. Drywood termites can be identified by their fecal matter — small, hard egg-shaped pellets with grooves pressed in the sides. These termites expel the pellets from the infested areas by chewing a hole in the wood and shoving the poop through the hole. Pellets on horizontal surfaces are a sign of an infestation. Carpenter ants don’t actually eat wood. They chew off bits and expel it as sawdust, a sign of a problem. We are seeing a lot of carpenter ant problems around homes as well as in live trees. It is important to catch and treat a carpenter ant problem early to save the tree. Sugar ants: Brett Lieberman is owner of Mosquito Terminators of Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia. He can be reached at brett@mosquitoterminators.com.


Why Congress likely will move quickly to curb sex assaults in the military

Anyone doubtful that Congress will move quickly this year to address the rise of sexual violence in the military need only review what Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) had to say on the topic Tuesday. The night before, McCain recalled, a woman told him that her daughter wants to join the military and asked whether McCain could give his unqualified support for doing so. "I could not," McCain said. "I cannot overstate my disgust and disappointment over continued reports of sexual misconduct in our military. We've been talking about the issue for years, and talk is insufficient." For McCain -- a decorated Vietnam War veteran and former prisoner of war from whom Senate Republicans usually take cues on national security -- to so publicly rebuke military leaders for mishandling the issue is the best indicator of growing congressional resolve to quickly overhaul how the Pentagon handles sex crimes. From left to right, Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) listen during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. (REUTERS/Larry Downing) A recent Pentagon survey estimated that 26,000 troops experienced “unwanted sexual contact” last year, an increase of 35 percent over two years. But only a fraction of those troops — 3,374 — filed sexual-assault reports with military police or prosecutors. Observers will cite several reasons why the issue is likely to earn outsized attention and support this year: An eagerness among lawmakers to do anything to help military troops, the involvement of a record number of female legislators in the issue, or the concern and criticisms from senior lawmakers such as McCain. But let's first focus on the two most practical political and procedural reasons. First, top House and Senate leaders wholeheartedly support finding a way to curb the rise of sexual assaults in the ranks -- and if leadership is on board, that almost always guarantees something will happen. "The present program within the military is not working," Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters Tuesday. "Women are being exploited and I’m sorry to report that even men are being exploited sexually, and that’s wrong.” “It’s a national disgrace,” House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) added recently. Reid and Boehner have said they want to address the problem by making changes through the annual defense authorization bill. It makes sense to enact a significant change in military policy in the bill that sets military policy,


The marijuana arrest capital of the U.S.

Blacks are eight times more likely than whites to get arrested for marijuana possession in D.C. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post) In very few places are more people arrested for possessing marijuana than in the District of Columbia. And of the thousands arrested each year, African Americans are more than eight times more likely to be arrested than whites — a disparity exceeded by only one state. Those are the findings of an American Civil Liberties Union survey of FBI crime data, highlighting the high number of weed arrests in America and the racial disparities that play out nationally and especially so in the District. About nine in 10 marijuana arrestees here are black, Annys Shin reports in The Washington Post. In a statement responding to the findings, Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said her “priority has been combating violent crime,” not locking up low-level drug offenders, and she said her goal is to reduce arrests, period: “Isn’t it better for a community if arrests drop because there are fewer crimes?” In other news: Taxi driver is shot to death in blacked out Adams Morgan; police shoot it out with assailants (Post, WAMU-FM, WUSA-TV) Susan G. Komen Foundation cancels D.C.’s “Race for the Cure” (Post) Community meeting on Barry Farm redevelopment melts down, thanks to Empower D.C. protesters (Housing Complex) West End medical practice is among first in city to embrace medical marijuana (HuffPo) D.C. Water takes the stink out of the Potomac riverbank (WRC-TV) Council gives temporary okay to health insurance exchange, including small-business mandate (Post, WBJ) And decides it will deal with the most controversial food truck regulations another day (DCist, Examiner) And okays anti-truancy, anti-test-cheating bills (Post) David Catania’s education bills get indifferent response from Gray administration (Post, Loose Lips, WRC-TV, WUSA-TV, WJLA-TV) Anita Bonds bill would exempt longtime-resident, low-income seniors from property taxes (WAMU-FM, DCist) Muriel Bowser bill would offer schoolkids free Metro rides (Examiner) Tommy Wells bill would legitimize residential parking bans for new developments (Housing Complex) Former PERB director goes on camera with discrimination allegations (WUSA-TV) What’s good for CareFirst is not necessarily good for the rest of the health insurance industry (WBJ) Yeah, the current mayoral field promises to split up the white vote (WRC-TV) “Jack Evans is concerned about getting his kids back and forth to school, and he doesn’t give a damn about people who live, work and play in Glover Park.


Daniel Ellsberg: ‘I’m sure that President Obama would have sought a life sentence in my case’

[the motives for] his revelations. Those were entirely conscientious and political. It had nothing to do with his [personal] difficulties. The idea that he did this because he was "troubled" is defamatory. TL: What do you think is the correct legal framework for handling classified information? Some information needs to be kept secret, right? DE: William Florence, who drafted most of the regulations [on classified information] in the Pentagon in the 1950s, said at my trial that in his estimation, some 5 percent of what is classified is properly classified at the time. After a few years, about 0.5 percent remains worthy of classification. Anybody who knows the system knows that Florence is not wrong. Very little meets the requirements of classification within two to three years. So as I say, something between 95 and 99 percent should not be classified at all. Yet it stays classified essentially forever. So much is classified because it might turn out to be embarrassing. You can't tell at the moment what prediction or recommendation will be a great embarrassment. So classify everything. Some of it is criminal at the time. A lot of it is lying and deception of the public. Some of it is breaking of treaties. So you need a much stronger Freedom of Information Act. You need more people to declassify information. Money spent on more people declassifying is money very well spent for our democracy. There should not be a secrets act which criminalizes all release of all classified information. President Obama is using the Espionage Act [as a de facto secrets act] which should have been regarded as unconstitutional. TL: But there needs to be some penalty for disclosing secret information, right? DE: It shouldn't be criminalized. The administrative sanctions against putting out information that your boss doesn't want out, such as taking away clearance, removing access, firing, lost careers, those have kept far too many secrets over the last 50 years. We don't need to have criminal sanctions at all. There are already sanctions for putting out a narrow class of information: intelligence information, nuclear weapons data, identity of covert operations. Putting sanctions there doesn't offend me, though there are some exceptions where that information should come out. In the military, violating any order can put you in prison. But for civilian life, you do not want criminal sanctions for putting out information to the American public.


Rebuttal: Cheating isn’t networking, it’s cheating

(www.psu.edu) Elaine J. Power, a biology and biotechnology teacher at James Hubert Blake High School in Silver Spring, Md., took strong issue with a post by Penelope Trunk that said schools should loosen up about cheating and encourage students to network to find answers. You can read the original post here, and following is Power’s response: By Elaine J. Power Penelope Trunk says What schools call cheating is more akin to the workplace behavior in which somebody gets a promotion by taking credit for someone else’s work. When the boss condones that kind of behavior, you get a lot of disgruntled, back-stabbing employees, and a dysfunctional workplace. If schools condone cheating, it’s not collaboration that students learn. They learn that you don’t need to work or think for yourself to succeed. You need only hang around until someone else puts in the effort, and then call it yours. Imagine the lucky student who spent 12 years coasting through school with nary a single teacher to tell him that it wasn’t okay to copy all his answers from the paper of the student next to him: As an entry-level worker, he keeps asking people for contacts so he can network for information he needs for his project. Several people give him their time and information leads. But he calls them again, and again, every time he needs something else until finally they stop taking his calls. The report he cobbles together is terrible, with not an original thought in it. And since he never has any information to reciprocate, even his most tolerant peers soon learn to stop wasting their time with him. He then gets assigned to a team project. Finally, a chance for shared credit on a higher-quality product! But to his shock, each person on the team is responsible for one piece of the project, and everybody’s looking to him to do his piece. Since he can’t do it, his only hope is that everyone else will do such a great job that the overall report is good, and at least he’ll get his name on it. It is and he does. The problem is, now nobody wants to be on a team with him, either. Still, he can at least leverage technology. He’ll redeem himself by finding out what he needs for his third work assignment online. No matter how many times he Googles the topic of


DC Brau brews with D.C. United and Red Hen

release a new beer on Saturday, and then another the following Tuesday. (Photo by Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post) The D.C. United beer came about after the brewery created logo T-shirts that replaced the team's name with the brewery's. The team's merchandising office loved the shirts, Skall says, and they discussed other ways to work together. The result was this limited-edition beer, which will be served in D.C. United partner bars where fans gather to watch games. (Skall hopes it will eventually be served inside RFK Stadium.) Skall describes the new brew as a golden ale that's "not over the top with hops, and not over the top with malt." The beer should be "more accessible to a variety of beer drinkers" than DC Brau's usual hop-forward craft beers, Skall says, and perfect for drinking at summer tailgate parties in Lot 8. DC Brau and D.C. United also agreed to let fans choose the name of the new beer, which will be announced Thursday. The United beer has two release parties on Saturday: You'll be able to get a growler at the brewery during the day -- anyone wearing United gear gets $1 off on a growler fill -- and then sample it on tap during a D.C. United viewing party at the Pug during the 7:30 match against the New England Revolution. Then, on Tuesday, the Red Hen hosts a release party for "Sailing the Seas of Lees," a farmhouse saison aged in barrels from Linden Vineyards in Linden, Va. Red Hen co-owner Sebastian Zutant says it was a natural collaboration between friends. "Jeff [Hancock, DC Brau's brewer] and I grew up together, and I live in the same neighborhood as Brandon [Skall]," Zutant explains. They brewed the saison before putting it on Sauvignon Blanc lees, or yeast from the bottom of wine barrels. "I wanted to give it a nice, citric, mineral-laden taste," Zutant says. "It's like nothing I've ever tasted." Zutant says this is the first of a series of experiments with DC Brau beer and local wine. The next, which involves aging DC Brau porter in claret barrels, should be available in a few weeks. "It's like doing a weird art project with a bunch of friends," Zutant says. "You don't know how it's going to turn out." The beer will be tapped at the Red Hen on Tuesday night, and will sell for $7 per glass.


States want drug tests for welfare recipients. That’s a terrible idea.

and food stamps allows Illinois families to reach 60 percent of the federal poverty line. Given such realities, legislators across the country should be exploring how to address serious unmet needs among millions of families in a tough economy. Instead, in many state capitals, precisely the opposite conversation is going on. A surprising number of states are pondering one extremely bad idea: suspicionless, population-based screening of welfare recipients for illicit drug use. Such proposals periodically reappear, despite an almost complete lack of evidence that they accomplish very much. This month, the Michigan House approved such a measure. The news story from the Associated Press explains: Legislation requiring some form of drug testing or screening for welfare recipients has been proposed in at least 29 states this year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Measures have passed in eight states. It’s especially ironic that Michigan is pondering that legislation, since that state was the site of a previous, spectacularly unsuccessful drug testing effort 13 years ago. Between 1999 and 2005, I and my co-authors published a series of papers that explored drug use among welfare recipients. We examined Michigan-specific longitudinal data from the Women’s Employment Study (WES). We also examined nationally representative trend data from the hilariously misnamed National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (NHSDA) and the National Survey of Drug Use and Health (NSDUH). The latter two surveys are not ideal. Surveys that properly explore substance use disorders are poor at capturing socioeconomic variables such as welfare receipt. Meanwhile, well-designed economic surveys tend to be poor at capturing data related to substance use. I wish the NSDUH and NHSDA included better methodologies to verify respondents' self-reports. President Bill Clinton signed welfare reform into law in August 1996. (The Washington Post) Despite survey limitations, the data conveyed the basic story. Drug and alcohol disorders were genuine issues in the welfare population, but these disorders were not widespread. Moreover, screening in the absence of specific suspicion was not an operationally wise strategy for identifying or serving women who have a drug-related problem. Roughly one-fifth of TANF recipients reported using some illicit substance, typically marijuana, over the past year. Use was more common among welfare recipients than within the general population, but it was still a bounded problem. Even among women who reported recent illicit substance use, depression, physical health problems and limited education were actually more common barriers to self-sufficiency


PM Update: Increasing clouds tonight, with humidity edging up on Thursday

- Temperature Map - Temperatures:Latest D.C. area temperature map. See interactive map on our Weather Wall. It was another delightful day across the area as temperatures rose up to around 80 most spots. Some increase in clouds might tell the tale of what’s ahead, but we don’t expect conditions to deteriorate quickly from a tropical disturbance with plans to dampen the region in the future. Through Tonight: Tomorrow (Thursday): See Dan Stillman’s forecast through the weekend. And if you haven’t already, join us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter Marine One lands under gloriously blue skies on June 4, 2013. (John Sonderman via flickr) GOES-13: Pollen update:


The next big national intelligence debate

monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters—all connected to the next-generation Internet using abundant, low cost, and high-power computing—the latter now going to cloud computing, in many areas greater and greater supercomputing, and, ultimately, heading to quantum computing. In practice, these technologies could lead to rapid integration of data from closed societies and provide near-continuous, persistent monitoring of virtually anywhere we choose. In other words, there will be nowhere to hide. There will be all sorts of data collected about us from many sources. The real debate we need to have centers around what is being done with these data. We will readily allow Google to track our searches, learn our likes and dislikes, and incorporate the advice of our friends so that it can recommend where we travel or what restaurants we choose. But should these data also be used to market to us? Should Google be allowed to share our data with third parties—and governments? And then the bigger question: how do we reign in government? We can’t stop the gathering of data, but we can surely limit its use. We can also put limits on the time that tech companies and governments are allowed to keep these data. That is the real battle that needs to be fought. I personally worry less about data that I know is being collected than what is being collected surreptitiously. Hackers, for example, who have the ability to turn on the camera and microphone on our computers without our knowing it. The Chinese government is hacking into government and corporate networks to download every piece of information that it can. The data that the U.S. government is gathering is likely being used to protect the public and many tragedies may have been prevented. But the Chinese are using our data to give their companies a competitive edge and find ways to disable the U.S. infrastructure. Organized crime is reaping billions by hacking banks and robbing from individuals. That is what terrifies me more than U.S. government snooping. Vivek Wadhwa is Vice President of Innovation and Research at Singularity University and Arthur Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University. His other academic appointments include Harvard, Duke and Emory Universities as well as the University of California Berkeley. READ: Files show U.S. mining Internet data; firms deny giving access


The Weekend and Beyond: Prepare for long Metro waits and street closures

Clockwise around Dupont Circle - North on New Hampshire Avenue NW - East on R Street NW - South on 17th Street NW - East on P Street NW - North on 14th Street NW to N Street NW to the disbanding area just past R Street NWf Also, a related dance festival on Saturday from noon to midnight will close Church Street NW between 16th and 18th streets. Lawyers Have a Heart 5K/10K This is the actual name of an event, apparently? Okay, moving on. It’s scheduled for Saturday morning (the 5K begins at 7 a.m., the 10K at 7:30 a.m. and a fun walk at 7:45 a.m.). The following streets will close from 5:30 a.m. until 11 a.m.: For staging: - K Street NW from 30th Street to Wisconsin Avenue NW The race begins at K and 31st streets NW (in Georgetown). Here’s the route: - East on K Street NW to the Whitehurst Freeway Ramp - Left onto the Whitehurst Freeway westbound lanes to M Street NW - West on M Street NW to Canal Road NW - Westbound on Canal Road NW to Reservoir Road NW - U-Turn prior to Reservoir Road NW - Eastbound Canal Road NW to M Street NW - East on M Street NW (westbound lanes) to the Whitehurst Freeway - East on the Whitehurst Freeway to K Street NW - West on K Street NW to finish line Celebrate Fairfax This event In addition, the event will create some detours for three Fairfax Connector routes. Northbound trips on Route 605 will not serve stops along Government Center Parkway or Monument Drive from Friday at 4 p.m. through Sunday. (Travelers should head to the other side of the road and board a southbound 605 bus, which will turn into a northbound, according to the county.) Route 623 will not enter the Government Center Complex after Friday at 4:36 p.m., while route 621 won’t enter the complex after Friday at 7:01 p.m. Capital Beltway lane closures Bridge inspections on the Capital Beltway over Stoneybrook Drive and Rock Creek (near Connecticut Avenue) will lead to right lane closures on the outer loop on Saturday between 4:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. Annapolis Road resurfacing Beginning on Sunday night, crews will begin work on the final phase of resurfacing Annapolis Road/MD 450 between the Beltway off-ramp and 85th Avenue in New Carrollton. This work, which the


Committee examines Amtrak’s NE Corridor

Shuster (R-Penn.), chairman of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, and members of the Subcommittee on Railroads, Pipelines and Hazardous Materials, chaired by Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.), were in New York on Friday morning for a field hearing on the future of the Northeast Corridor. Witnesses included Amtrak CEO Joseph Boardman, Bob Yaro, executive director of the Regional Plan Association, Joan McDonald, commissioner of the New York State Department of Transportation and John Fry, president of Drexel University. In their written testimony, the two chairmen continued to make a case for more private involvement in train service along the corridor — a familiar Republic theme. And while there has been much talk about high-speed rail along the corridor, Shuster said that, given the capital improvements needed, it would be wiser to invest in fixing the current infrastructure. Some interesting tidbits offered by Shuster in his remarks: — The Northeast Corridor is home to four of the most populous metro regions in the U.S.: New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. If it feels a bit crowded, that’s because in total that means approximately 18 percent of the population is living in just 2 percent of the country’s land area. — How popular has Amtrak service been on the corridor? The rail system captures about 76 percent of the rail/air traffic on that corridor. Just over a decade ago, in 2001, Amtrak captured less than half — 45 percent of that traffic. In March, Amtrak set a ridership record. In his remarks, Denham, who last month held a subcommittee hearing in California examining high-speed rail, said he thought the $6 billion in state and federal funding given to the California High Speed Rail Authority might be better spent elsewhere — like on upgrades along the Northeast Corridor. He, too, pushed for private investment along the corridor. Fry’s testimony touched on the need for officials at Amtrak and in the communities that it serves to consider ways to better integrate train stations with surrounding communities as a strategy for fueling smart urban development. Drexel, for example, has acquired land near the 30th Street Station in Philadelphia with an eye toward replacing parking lots with new mixed-use developments. “Imagine the impact for Philadelphia when visitors arrive at the city’s most convenient transportation hub and disembark right into a brand-new neighborhood dedicated to learning, to innovation and to entrepreneurship,” Fry said in written testimony.


The Insiders: The GOP should continue to oppose marijuana legalization

(Nick Adams/Reuters) Doug Fine’s recent piece, “Five myths about legalizing marijuana,” which promotes the legalization of the drug, received a lot of attention. In his column, Fine states five common-sensical assertions regarding marijuana use in our country that he wishes weren’t true, labels them as myths, and presto, concludes that legalizing weed will actually help solve a lot of problems. Oh, really? Call me old-fashioned, but also call me realistic. Advocates of legalizing marijuana are making this debate harder than it has to be. Simply put: What current problems of ours might be solved if we had more inebriated people wandering among us? The first thing pot promoters want us to do is deny the obvious, as if we are all stoned. They want us to believe that the known consequences associated with being on the loose with degraded senses in an open society would simply not occur — or at the very least, would not increase — if marijuana use were to become more widespread. In Fine’s case, “myth” number one is that, “If pot is legal, more people will use it.” To rebut that statement, Fine cites something or another about drug use in Portugal between the years 2002 and 2006. I’m not kidding, this is the best they’ve got. I don’t know what it is about modern life in Portugal that we should seek to emulate or why Portuguese drug use should serve as a model for drug use in the United States. But, you get my point. Read Fine’s piece. Anyway, this is an issue where Republicans should be clear and speak with one voice. At a base level, our politics should seek to promote a more sober, safe and virtuous society, and nothing about making pot use more widespread than it already is serves the common interest. I can hear the left rolling their eyes at this quaint notion. We should not think we can appeal to a segment of voters — particularly young voters — by embracing destructive misbehavior as desirable public policy.


Chef changes at Brabo in Alexandria, plus a new restaurant headed for Dunn Loring

Harper McClure. (Photo by Chad Smith) When chef de cuisine Chris Watson gave his boss notice that he intended to leave Brabo and the Butcher’s Block in Alexandria to open an Italian restaurant, Robert Wiedmaier didn’t have to look far for a replacement. He tapped Harper McClure, his sous chef of several months at the French-themed Marcel’s in Washington. “It’s hard to find good, talented cooks,” says Wiedmaier, echoing the sentiment of his peers in the market. “I’m lucky to get him back.” The two chefs have some history: McClure briefly worked for Wiedmaier before he struck out on his own in 2011 to helm the Federalist in downtown’s Madison hotel. McClure left when the hotel changed owners last year. In announcing the appointment, Wiedmaier praised the “young, energetic” McClure and noted his enhanced resume: “There’s a big difference between an independent restaurant and a hotel” kitchen. Watson is leaving and McClure is officially taking over the multiple concepts in Old Town June 15. A fresh menu is expected to roll out within two months. Watson hopes to introduce his 100-seat restaurant near the Dunn Loring Metro station in August. He’s calling it Ovvio, which is Italian for “obvious” and, the chef says, “exactly the kind of food I’ll be serving": straightforward Italian. Wiedmaier says he and Watson, who has worked for him in different capacities for a decade, are parting on good terms. “After 10 years, he gave me plenty of notice — and I don’t have an Italian restaurant.”


Report: Negative equity falls in first quarter

well above the national average. More than 45 percent of homes were underwater in Nevada in the first quarter, the highest in the country. The market also improved in the Washington area where home prices are rising at a fast pace. About 22 percent of borrowers were still underwater during the first quarter, compared with 23.5 percent last quarter and 26.6 percent a year ago. The percentage of underwater borrowers fell the most in Virginia. Only 17 percent of borrowers there are underwater, compared with 22.3 percent during the same period last year. It was highest in Maryland where 22.6 percent of borrowers were underwater, a slight improvement from 24.7 percent last year. In the District, the percent of underwater borrowers fell to 9.7 percent in the first quarter, compared with 12.7 percent during the same period last year. The housing market has been experiencing a significant rebound, held back only by a lack of housing inventory. Low mortgage rates and a healthier economy have drawn out more buyers and helped home prices rise 10.9 percent nationally in March, the fastest rate in seven years, according to the Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller index. That has allowed underwater borrowers to regain ground. But not all those who are above water are in a position to sell — and that is keeping the housing inventory below normal levels. More than 11 million homeowners have less than 20 percent equity on their homes, and at least 2 million of them have less than 5 percent, according to CoreLogic. Some of those borrowers could find themselves underwater again if the housing market stumbles. That also makes those borrowers reluctant to sell. When prices rise further, these homeowners should be more confident about selling, which will help ease some of the pressure on the housing inventory, said Mark Fleming, chief economist at CoreLogic. “You can’t sell if you don’t have the equity in your home to pay the down payment for the next one,” Fleming said. The report found that homes priced above $200,000 are more likely to have equity. Nearly 90 percent of homes priced above $200,000 have equity while only 73 percent of homes below that price do. View Photo Gallery —Home prices rose 10.9 percent in March, making it the largest annual gain since 2006. Twelve out of the 20 cities tracked by the Standard Poor’s/Case-Shiller home prices index saw double-digit gains.


Global warming is a mess. It’s high time we innovate our way out of it.

little or nothing to dent our carbon use on a global scale. In Japan, for example, long-term efforts to shift into nuclear power from carbon power were undone in the wake of the Fukushima accident. In fact, most of the gains in reducing carbon emissions, according to the IEA, have simply come from shifting away from dirty coal into energy sources such as shale gas. We’re essentially replacing one form of carbon power with a slightly cleaner (or not, depending on how you look at it) form of carbon power. So, now what’s the plan? One of the more radical ideas out there involves a plan to capture all the carbon dioxide that we’re spewing into the atmosphere and either store it underground or transform it into another substance such as sulfuric acid before it becomes a greenhouse gas. Carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) technologies are still incredibly expensive. But they represent one way we may (emphasis on the “may”) be able to reduce our global carbon footprint without completely dismantling our existing energy infrastructure. In some cases, the captured carbon dioxide could be sold to oil producers immediately, who can use it for other oil extraction processes, rather than storing it underground. While the concept for carbon dioxide capture and storage has picked up some strong supporters at the U.S. Department of Energy, which sees it as a potential way to transform the Department into a “center of innovation”, one of the early full-scale carbon capture and storage projects is actually going into action in Saskatchewan, Canada. If successful, it could create momentum for other carbon capture projects around the world. Another idea to win the war on carbon is to place a tax on carbon. Around the world, more than 40 different national governments and 20 sub-national governments (including the state of California) are experimenting with carbon pricing plans, with varying degrees of success. Within the U.S., however, any attempt to tax carbon has been a political nightmare. Other versions of carbon pricing, such as cap-and-trade plans, have been met with stiff resistance. In a best case scenario, of course, scientists will discover a clean, cheap source of energy that can be massively implemented across the world. In an interview with The Fold, scientist George Crabtree of the Argonne National Laboratory suggested three possible technologies to win the war against global warming: a new type of battery