I was renewing some domain names earlier in the month and noticed that FreeOurStreets.org was coming due soon, and I pondered for a minute whether to spend the money to get another year. After all, we’d gotten what we wanted with it. After our 4th of July photo walk the city attorney made a written statement to the management company indicating that they did not have the right to restrict people’s freedom of expression on public land, even if it was managed by a private corporation under contract with the city.

Silly me, thinking we wouldn’t need it again someday.

Now the foolishness has some to DC proper. Andy Carvin writes here about his experience with being bothered by security guards in Union Station. Now, Chip Py managed to make Downtown Silver Spring look beautiful, but one of the challenges in talking about that incident was always how to respond to “why would you want to take pictures of a strip mall?” Union Station, on the other hand, is obviously beautiful architecture and photographed painlessly by a multitude of people every day. Yet for some reason the management company there has decided to harass some photographers.

She informed us that we would have to cease taking pictures immediately and leave. I asked what the problem was, and she said that this is a private space, and we didn’t have permission from management to take pictures.

Here’s hoping it stops with a single misunderstanding and this gets cleared up promptly.

The above photo of the ghost of security-ruined photos is a snipet from Carvin’s aborted 360 degree panorama. Check it out in full here or a non-aborted pano elsewhere in Union Station here. The gigapan technology is pretty neat.

Don’s mention of Loving vs. Virginia reminded me to point out that Mrs. Loving, the remaining partner of the couple who ended anti-miscegenation laws, died on Friday at her home in Virginia.

Mildred Jeter and Richard Loving drove 90 miles from their home in rural Virginia to get married in Washington, DC. Mildred was pregnant, and the couple wanted to avoid the stigma and ostracism associated with out of wedlock pregnancy. It didn’t occur to her that interracial marriage was not only stigmatized but criminalized in Virginia.

It must have been terrifying to be awoken at 2AM by sheriff’s deputies, and then to be sentenced to prison- prison!- for marrying the person you loved, to have to move to a strange city in order to avoid prison, only to be arrested again for daring to travel with your husband to visit your mother. It was 9 years after their arrest that the Supreme Court issued the decision that allowed them to return home from DC to the quiet life they wanted together.

If there’s an afterlife, I hope Mr. and Mrs. Loving are enjoying a reunion.

The Washington Post has indicated that the Tarpon Springs authorities have ruled her death a suicide and released her suicide note. The Smoking Gun has included actual images of her suicide notes, and they’re heartbreaking. Particularly sad is a part WaPo didn’t comment on, a paragraph in the letter to her mother that says “There is a little surprise waiting for you in the BOA account. Please use the monies for final arrangement & various account settlement.” Before some cursory Googling I’d have wagered good money that there’s no way the people who prosecuted her for racketeering and money laundering will fail to seize those assets. Over at Justice League, however, blogger SP Biloxi has posted that the defense and has already filed motions to abate and the prosecution had no objection. After all that’s gone on, including the death of Brandy Britton, everything has just been wiped away like it never happened.

Unless you’re Randall L. Tobias, former AIDS czar, Senator David Vitter or think-tank guru Harlan K. Ullman, named as clients. Or Lt. Commander Rebecca C. Dickinson, identified as an employee of Palfrey’s and compelled to testify… and suspended by the Navy, despite the immunity the prosecution granted all the women called to the stand, preventing them from exercising their 5th amendment rights and staying silent. Or Rhona Reiss, 63, also publicly identified as a former escort. Or any of the other 11 women called to testify by the prosecution. The other 119 women identified in Palfrey’s records may be safe, since the judge ordered those portions of the records sealed, and thankfully we all know that information mandated as private never leaks out.

What a waste of money and life, all to prosecute a woman who paid all her taxes on the money she made connecting two consenting adults with each other.

If she’d been running a ItsJustLunch franchise and collecting thousands of dollars from both parties she was connecting up, she’d still be alive and doing business.

If she’d been Craigslist, connecting people who want to have sex. then the shitbags at rightwingpundits.com, who I will not dignify with a link and the search engine credibility that conveys, wouldn’t have a page up about one of the case’s identified escorts, along with a picture of her and details about her academic history and family life. Oh, and a swipe at how attractive she is.

But hey, she had it all coming and nobody to blame but herself, right? After all, if it’s illegal then it must be wrong, right Mrs. Loving?

Barely a year after she forced a Deputy Secretary of State out of his job by selling her phone records to the media, authorities believe the DC Madam, Deborah Jeanne Palfrey, has committed suicide at her mother’s Florida home.

As DC Metblog alumnus brownpau points out, Palfrey’s Wikipedia page is already seeing a spike in edits.

Two people were shot this afternoon at the Excel Institute, a vocational school associated with the DC Public School system, this afternoon around 2pm. The gunman, identified by one witness as a student of the school, then carjacked a series of cars before he was caught by police. The victims were identified as a student, and the director of the school.

Neither of the victims received life-threatening injuries, but both were taken to the hospital. Apparently, the suspect was caught when his stolen car was involved in accident that injured a police officer and a pregnant woman.

Here’s hoping he gets a speedy trial and a lengthy sentence.

13 people were shot in a weekend-long crime spree, four of whom succumbed to their wounds. Seriously, people, what the hell is going on? Did everyone just get up on Friday wanting to kill somebody? The Post has a quote from Assistant Chief that lays the blame on the warm weather, and the increased availability of guns: “Police saw no links between them but that the availability of guns and warmer weather might have played a role.”

I’m not quite sure what factors lead to the increase of firearms on the street, as they’re still just as illegal as they were in January, and it’s not as if the Supreme Court waved their judicial magic wands just yet to make guns legal and prevalent in stores across the District.

What the hell, man?

I started reading the Current newspapers recently. Their coverage of local issues is pretty great, but one thing in particular that shocks and intrigues me is the police blotter. I live in Adams Morgan and already knew that my block isn’t the safest—there’s drug dealing going on across the street, and our house was burglarized during the day a couple years ago. But, man, it turns out that crimes occur here all the time! Last week my block was mentioned in the police report twice (robbery [knife]; burglary), and the week before, it was in there four times (robbery [force and violence]; burglary (twice); theft from auto [below $250]).

What’s most shocking is that I haven’t heard about any of these recent crimes. One of my roommates has a nose for crime and always seems to be around during driveby shootings, car breakins, etc., but I’ve missed them all. It almost feels like I live on a parallel planet. Is Adams Morgan really that dangerous?

Warning. This video contains some coarse language.

But they’re right, this is total bullshit. A bunch of Libertarians got together, with their iPods, and headed over to the Jefferson Memorial to have a silent dance party for Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, as it was his birthday this weekend. One of the dancers was then arrested by the Park Police for dancing in the monument amongst a bunch of other dancers around midnight, as not to disturb tourists.

I’m still not clear on what she was arrested for, or exactly what the whole deal was with the Police who decided she needed to get hauled off because she wanted to get her groove on with Thomas Jefferson. You can read a personal account of the event, or another personal response about the event, and as Mike Licht points out, Jefferson himself said “Dancing is a healthy and elegant exercise, a specific against social awkwardness…”

But apparently, it will get you a bullshit arrest by a bunch of rentacops gone rogue. I understand that The Jefferson 1 was released, but I am not sure if charges are pending or not.

So much for Life, Liberty & The Pursuit of Happiness…

Not cool.

Theft in and of itself isn’t cool at all, obviously. It just sucks moreso when it happens to organizations like ALIVE who are out to help the less fortunate.

Hopefully they’ll be able to replace everything they lost, and then some. If you’re interested in donating, you can go here for more information.

I got a speeding ticket in February in Arlington. It sucked, but I was definitely going what he said I was going, but there’s no way that George Mason near Columbia Pike is a 30mph zone. 4 lanes, divided, it’s just not meant for that speed. But anyhow, I got caught in a speed trap. DC’s full of speed traps, some of them electronic-and-camera, some of them flesh-blood-and-lidar.

Good thing that Trapster’s here to show us where they are. You can add traps, look for traps, even have traps sent to your cellphone via Text Message. Bad. Ass.