POST Local

Sloooow down. (jahi chikwendiu - THE WASHINGTON POST) Get used to it: Speeding cameras are in D.C. to stay. But is the city rigging the game by setting unusually low speed limits in their vicinity? Veteran Mount Pleasant activist Jack McKay says yes, at least in one case. In a Greater Greater Washington item, he makes a convincing case that the 30 mph speed limit on the portion of Porter Street/Klingle Road that passes through Rock Creek Park is at least 5 mph too low.

In other news:

Pictures of Marion Barry in a hospital gown (@marionbarryjr, @marionbarryjr)

School bus catches fire in Third Street Tunnel (Dr. Gridlock, WTOP)

An ode to Reno Road (HuffPo)

Provider of D.C. abortions on what banning late-term abortions would mean (Post)

Where the murders have been (Burgersub.org via DCist)

Brown’s rule: If it doesn’t go to a nonprofit, it’s not an earmark. (Matt McClain - FOR THE WASHINGTON POST) “Earmark” has been a dirty word around the John A. Wilson Building for a few years now, dating back to 2009, when D.C. Council Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) was revealed to have used budget earmarks to send city funds to nonprofit groups he had created and controlled. Two year later, we learned that earmarking played a role in former member Harry Thomas Jr.’s theft of city funds.

So Council Chairman Kwame R. Brown (D) was somewhat perturbed when I used the E-word in my Saturday story with Jonathan O’Connell on how the council’s latest budget gets the gravy train flowing to Brown’s home Ward 7.

In the interest of clarity, Brown has a point: This year’s budget language doesn’t contain earmarks of the type abused by Barry and Thomas. Those widely used earmarks set aside city funds for certain nonprofit groups, including arts organizations and social service providers. Often the groups were named specifically, sometimes they were specified more generally; in any case, then-Chairman Vincent C. Gray (D) put an end to the practice in 2009.

Mayor Vincent Gray at February’s One City Citizen Summit. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post) The weather might still be mild, but Mayor Vincent C. Gray’s long, hot summer started today.

Federal prosecutors have charged a top aide to Gray’s 2010 mayoral campaign, Thomas W. Gore, with destroying evidence and giving campaign contributions under false pretenses. The charges — filed by criminal information, a likely prelude to a guilty plea — are the first filed in an investigation touched off more than a year ago by the explosive allegations of minor mayoral candidate Sulaimon Brown.

And unless U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. stands up in the coming days to say otherwise, it is safe to assume the federal investigation will continue, and news and speculation on its course is certain to consume the District political scene in the coming weeks and months.

I also thank outstanding medical staff, incl. kind professional Filipino staff. I stand corrected; I truly didn't mean 2 hurt or offend.

— Marion S. Barry, Jr. (@marionbarryjr) May 21, 2012

UPDATED 11:10 A.M.

D.C. Council member Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) suffered a blood clot while traveling to Las Vegas for an annual retail convention, according to tweets on his official account Sunday night.

”Got a blood clot while waiting on plane in Memphis,” said a tweet posted shortly before 8 p.m. Eastern time. “Taking blood thiner. I thank God it was caught.”

Neither Barry, 76, nor his chief of staff immediately returned calls or e-mails Monday morning. WRC-TV reported Monday morning that Barry was taken to Summerlin Hospital Medical Center; it is unclear whether he remains admitted.

A subsequent tweet referenced a recent Barry controversy, when in a council hearing last month, he lamented a high number of immigrant nurses, particularly from the Philippines. But the tweet singled out the “kind professional Filipino staff” who treated him Sunday.

“I stand corrected; I truly didn’t mean 2 hurt or offend,” it read.

Thomas eases out of the political scene. (Bill O'Leary - WASHINGTON POST) Former D.C. Council member Harry Thomas Jr., soon to enter the federal pokey, grants his first post-prosecution interview to Deborah Simmons of The Washington Times — scroll down past Simmons’s screed against foes of abstinence-only sex education to see her report. Thomas spoke highly of Kenyan McDuffie, who was victorious in the race to replace him: “Ward 5 selected an honest broker with no baggage who can move the ward forward. ... He has a clean slate, and we moved in a good direction.”

In other news:

Who attacked Svetlana Guggenheim? (Post)

Bringing the bacon home to Ward 7 (Post)

Vincent Gray’s top Las Vegas priority: Restaurants for St. E’s campus redevelopment (WaTimes)

D.C. scammers highlight national unemployment fraud problem (Fiscal Times)

White-shoe firm will probe Jim Graham’s involvement in Metro land deal (Dr. Gridlock, Post editorial)