Category: DC Life

Last Stand in Texas and Ohio?

“Several Clinton superdelegates, whose votes could help decide the nomination, also said Monday that they were wavering in the face of Mr. Obama’s momentum after victories in Washington, Nebraska, Louisiana and Maine last weekend. Some of them said that they, like the hundreds of uncommitted superdelegates still at stake, may ultimately ‘go with the flow,’ in the words of one, and support the candidate who appears to show the most strength in the primaries to come.” The NYT reports on the general shakiness in the Clinton campaign at the moment, and reemphasizes the importance of Ohio and Texas on March 4. (Jon Chait disagrees.)”‘She has to win both Ohio and Texas comfortably, or she’s out,’ said one Democratic superdelegate who has endorsed Mrs. Clinton, and who spoke on condition of anonymity to share a candid assessment. ‘The campaign is starting to come to terms with that.’ Campaign advisers, also speaking privately in order to speak plainly, confirmed this view.“

All well and good, but really: Let’s not put the cart before the horse here. We have the Chesapeake primaries tomorrow, and while the polls clearly favor Sen. Obama, they favored him before New Hampshire as well. Let’s see how those critical primaries shake out first before presuming the Clinton campaign is in full rout. As we should all know by now, there’s nothing more politically dangerous than a Clinton with his or her back to the wall. (And, being as oblique as possible for Wire fans behind the curve, Norman Wilson‘s recent advice to Tommy Carcetti about Clay Davis also comes to mind.)

Firth’s Legion | Woody’s Walker.

Among today’s trailers: Mr. Darcy goes sword-and-sandal to protect King Arthur’s ancestor (I think) in the new teaser for Doug Lefler’s The Last Legion, with Colin Firth, Aishwarya Rai, and Sir Ben Kingsley. (Looks like Dungeons & Dragons…the chances of me seeing this are slim.) And Woody Harrelson’s high-society Washington life (paging Ward Just) is disrupted by a murder in the trailer for Paul Schrader’s The Walker (click on “Watch”), also starring Kristin Scott Thomas, Lauren Bacall, Lily Tomlin, Ned Beatty, and Willem DeFoe.

DC-9 (to 1).

The people of Washington D.C. take another step toward full citizenship after the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee votes 9-1 in favor of voting rights for the District. “Virginia’s Sen. John Warner (R), cast the dissenting vote, but in an encouraging sign for advocates, three Republicans voted in favor of giving the District a full voting member in the House: Susan Collins of Maine, George Voinovich of Ohio and Norm Coleman of Minnesota.”

Taxation With Representation?

By a vote of 241 to 177, the House votes to give DC a full (voting) seat in Congress. But, Eleanor Holmes Norton shouldn’t practice her ayes and nays just yet — the bill still has to make it through a recalcitrant Senate, where a Republican filibuster is likely, as well as past a White House inclined to veto the bill. Nevertheless, said DC mayor Adrian Fenty, “This was a statement about our country’s principles, values and morals. That we would no longer be the only democratic-represented country in the world where the citizens of the nation’s capital did not have a vote in the national legislature.”

A Kingly Tribute.

“This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning.” Ground is broken on the new MLK memorial, to be “built along the edge of the Tidal Basin, midway between monuments to Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. It will be the first on the Mall honoring an African American and the first that does not memorialize a president or a war hero.” Great! As I’ve said before in this space, I’m all in favor of adding more historically-themed monuments to the Mall, and a tribute to Dr. King seems a particularly worthy addition to our nation’s central gathering place.

Imposing Firepower.

So much for local control. GOP gun-nuts — led by Senator Larry Craig of Idaho — try to force the District of Columbia to rescind its gun ban and “roll back registration requirements.” Republicans, argues DC Mayor Anthony Williams, are ‘using our District as a pawn. It’s an incredible assault on home rule.’”

Buried, but not Dead.

New York prepares for a mass re-burial of over 400 Colonial-era slaves in the spot where they were found 12 years ago. Perhaps this ceremony will help to encourage more formal and historic recognition of the city’s relationship to slavery. (As the article notes, Gotham once held more slaves than any other city but Charleston.) And as New York, so too the nation — While the Holocaust Museum serves as an important and necessary reminder of how nations ostensibly grounded in Enlightenment ideals can go terribly, terribly wrong, it’s a bit glaring that we have such a fine museum in Washington dedicated to Germany’s most grievous sin, without any comparable historic institution focusing on our own. A National Museum of Slavery is well past due, and, Civil War importance aside, it should really be on the National Mall, not in Fredericksburg.