By Rand Paul
Obama acts as though we no longer have a Constitution
President Obama's second inauguration was marked by pomp and grandeur, lofty rhetoric and large reviewing stands for VIPs, but many in the nation's capital were fixated on three words about 1 inch tall.
Abortion, drone strikes, guns, military spending, unemployment — demonstrators highlighting these issues and more are expected for President Obama's inaugural parade, though perhaps the most visible of the planned protests will be made by D.C. government officials outside city hall.
A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced former D.C. Council Chairman Kwame R. Brown to an afternoon in custody for lying on loan documents, making him the second city lawmaker to lose his liberty in front of the public he was elected to serve.
Stacks of pizza sat untouched, the salad bowls kept their plastic lids and roughly a dozen red-shirted volunteers sat in a circle Tuesday night, gazing at a lone television in search of pleasant news inside their small campaign office on Florida Avenue Northwest.
Voters in the District will decide Tuesday whether to reshape the D.C. Council in election contests that serve as a referendum on the makeup of a body that has faced a steady trickle of ethical problems in the past two years.
The view from the Southwest Waterfront has seen better days.
Last winter, the man largely credited with morphing the Washington Nationals from perennial losers to the talk of the town left D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray a voice-mail message.
A D.C. Council member will introduce a bill Tuesday that reserves more than 10 percent of the District's on-street parking spaces for disabled motorists, a "red-top" meter program designed to comply with federal law despite cutting into an already thin supply of curbside spots in the nation's capital.
Federal prosecutors on Thursday signaled the investigation into former D.C. Council member Harry Thomas Jr.'s scheme to bilk $350,000 in city funds is alive and well, even if the ousted lawmaker is already serving time at a prison in Alabama.
D.C. Council member Vincent B. Orange is set to host a small-business summit downtown on Friday -- a who's who event at which Mayor Vincent C. Gray and top officials discuss business opportunities in the city -- but a mailing that advertises the event tests the delicate boundary between an incumbent's duties and the fight for name recognition on the path to Election Day.
D.C. officials are turning to the community for ideas to transform the historic Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library building into a showpiece of modern design and environmental sustainability.
D.C. officials are gearing up for Inauguration Day festivities that will stretch from the U.S. Capitol to the White House, a logistical tightrope walk that costs millions, requires onlookers to deal with street-level checkpoints and puts city hall in the hands of the Secret Service.
Move aside, you burgundy-and-gold fans — D.C. city hall is showing some Natitude for the foreseeable future.
The D.C. Council on Wednesday delivered a blow to Mayor Vincent C. Gray's vision of a thriving tech sector in the District, hours after he strenuously defended investor-friendly tax cuts as a compelling way to diversify the District's economy in the face of potentially steep federal spending cuts.
D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson said he wants to effectively and efficiently restore public support for the city's legislative body, even as lawmakers gird for a fight Wednesday over the best ways to mitigate the effects of potentially steep federal spending cuts next year.
