C A P I C O S T I A

Pompeii knew you couldn't keep a good weiner down. (Yahoo! News) "After days of denials, a choked-up New York Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner confessed Monday that he tweeted a bulging-underpants photo of himself to a young woman and admitted to "inappropriate" exchanges with six women before and after getting married. He apologized for lying but said he would not resign. A conservative website that last week started a furor over a lewd photo sent from Weiner's Twitter account posted new photos..." A difficult, but, all too typical story of political intrigue about a complex and driven man! Read more of the Yahoo! News article here

(NYTimes.com) As the four of us headed toward the eastern gate of Ajdabiya, the front line of a desperate rebel stand against the advancing forces of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, a car pulled up alongside. “They’re in the city!” the driver shouted at us. “They’re in the city!” Lynsey and Steve had worried that government soldiers might encircle the town, trapping us, but Tyler and Anthony discounted it. We had covered the fall of two other rebel-held towns — Ras Lanuf and Brega — and each time, the government had bombed and shelled the towns for days before making a frontal, methodical assault. When they did, rebels and journalists fled in a headlong retreat. If Ajdabiya fell, Colonel Qaddafi’s forces would be on the doorstep of Benghazi, the opposition capital, and perched on a highway to the Egyptian border, from... Read full story here

(Biblical Evidence for Catholicism) "...It is commonly believed that clergy sexual abuse is an exclusively Catholic problem that does not happen in other churches. In a 1983 doctoral thesis by Richard Blackmon, 12% of the 300 Protestant clergy surveyed admitted to sexual intercourse with a parishioner and 38% admitted to other sexualized contact with a parishioner. [When Mentor Becomes Molester, by Alexa Smith. Reprinted with permission from Presbyterians Today, Magazine Of The Presbyterian Church, USA]. The Office of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) estimates that there are about 50 clergy sexual misconduct cases every year. Although cases in the PCUSA tend to involve adult women and male pastors, there are sometimes cases reported that involve children and other..." from Dave Armstrong's It Ain't Just Catholic Priests: Resources on Shocking Statistics of Clergy Sexual Abuse Read more

(Politics Daily) "Democrats and Republicans in Congress will battle over proposed cuts in federal programs in President Obama's proposed FY2012 budget, unveiled on Monday. But the administration, seeking to put its own house in order, is looking for savings in many corners of the U.S. government. The Obama administration is looking to squeeze a few million in savings from reducing federal travel costs, to eliminating printing expenses to painting the roofs of embassies white. Some samples of savings the Obama administration is proposing that do not need Congressional approval..." Full story here

(The Santiago Times) "Seismic activity continues to alarm Chileans Nearly one year since a devastating 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck southern Chile last Feb. 27, the earth shook once again on Friday afternoon, and in almost the exact spot. Friday’s earthquake measured a magnitude 6.9 on the Richter scale according to ONEMI, Chile’s National Emergency Office. U.S. seismologists measured the tremor at 6.8-magnitude on the Richter scale. The tremor began at 5:05 p.m. Friday evening and was centered 30 miles outside of Concepción. Still, the quake was felt from Valparaíso to the Los Ríos Region. As the Earth continued to shake, people from buildings throughout the city of Concepción evacuated into..." Full story here.

Penn Branch Center, charming as ever! (Clockwise from top right) Penn Branch Liquors, CVS Pharmacy, Beltway Beauty and Star Pizzeria, below it. (Originally published, July 15th, 2009) She sits at the corner of Pennsylvania and Branch Avenues, this brick and concrete goddess. Our Penn Branch. She sits there, with a mouthful of meatball subs, twinkies and Cool Ranch Doritos and washes it all down with a Colt 45. She sits there, fixing the one good eye she’s got left on you, as your car makes a mad rush for the John Philip Sousa Bridge. For Capitol Hill. National Harbor. Adams Morgan. Cool places. Exotic places. Faraway places, where cafes litter the sidewalk. Where laughter, foreign accents and live jazz tease the imported air. Where people linger. Celebrate. Hook up. I cannot honestly say that I remember the last time I wanted to visit Penn Branch Center, the prehistoric strip mall at the corner of Pennsylvania and Branch Avenues, for anything, ..and I don’t know anyone else, who does, ...

This Ilyushin Il-96 (above) isn't the alleged jumbo jet, but looked very much like this one. At about 4:13 pm EST, I saw a white jumbo jetliner, with red markings, pull in low enough over Penn Branch to clip the treetops and dive toward Alabama Avenue in Fairfax Village! It looked like it was going to land at the strip mall, down the hill, on Pennsylvania Avenue! I can also say, with some measure of certainty, that its design identified it as a Boeing 747 . Military helicopters--Navy-commissioned, if I'm not mistaken--were seen in the air, shortly afterwards. Though I only saw one, it was admittedly hard to tell how many because of the trees, and it sounded like more than one. This might have been perfectly inconsequential, considering some kind of helicopter are seen speeding over Penn Branch, almost every half an hour and especially during rush hour. I heard police and emergency sirens following all of that, and there is a difference. Trust me--River East hears enough pol...

*He-Man knows how to handle a few barbarians at the gate, and so does Penn Branch. I hope. The delay in development at our delightfully decrepit Penn Branch Center, at the corner of Pennsylvania and Branch Avenues, is very frustrating to me. Though, in mere days, it will have been an entire year since construction was to begin on our shopping center, nothing resembling upgrades and infusions of new, dynamic retail has been initiated. Check the websites of the Penn Branch Civic Association website (on your left) and of ICG Properties , and you will not find news of any significant developments for PBC. We have THREE gateway areas developing in the River East area, each fully-loaded with upscale condos and retail, and I worry Penn Branch, virtually unchanged since the 80s, will soon fall behind in how efficiently the city delivers vital services. With the explosion of commercial and residential development on Martin Luther King Avenue, Howard Road and coming soon to Barry Farm,...

"Joe (Smokin' Aces) Carnahan's The A-Team picks up the TV series' original setup; the A-Team is a U. S. Army special forces unit, who go on a covert mission in Iraq to steal something important for the government, but, get sent to prison, when their commanding officer dies, taking the truth about their mission with him. Now, upgrade all that with inter-agency government conspiracies, huge explosions, aerial dogfights with F-22 Raptors, high-speed car-chases, a crazy attempt to fly a TANK that's been dropped out of an exploding airplane, kicking back with the guys, more explosions and Jessica Biel in tight outfits, ..and you're scratching the surface. It gets WAY better..." I pity the fool, who doesn't read my review of The A-Team! I pity the fool! Mel Dyer

It really bugs me that I missed Blogging While Brown , and, if you missed it, you are probably as bummed as I am. The time to start preparing for the next one is right now, and the following link will tell you what to expect... Ping. That's the sound of relevance hitting your brain. Mel Dyer

Problems facing the penitentiary system of Costa Rica will be very familiar to us...a link . President Laura Chinchilla is making the prosecution of drug-related crimes, even non-violent ones, a top priority of her administration, and the country's prisons are finding it all difficult to manage. Mel Dyer

Above: President Felipe Calderon of Mexico, looking a little like my late papa here. I was one of the people, who was not at all surprised, when Mexican president, Felipe Calderon , told a joint session of Congress that eighty percent of the seventy-five thousand guns seized by Mexican law enforcement, over the last three years, have been traced right here to the United States of America. According to the Associated Press , Calderon, after urging U.S. legislators to strengthen gun laws, warned that over ninety percent of the guns used by [Mexican] drug traffickers come from north of Mexico's border. I was not surprised because I know what "guns used by drug traffickers" means, and you probably do, too. Even if you think you don't. Don't get caught up in the political crap-storm brewing over the ninety percent part. The guns being used by the drug traffickers President Calderon spoke of are small arms-- handguns --the same our local papers tell us are being...