Wonkette

• D.C. BLOGGER SHOT: Media Consortium reporter Brian Beutler was gunned down in Adams Morgan “pretty much directly in front of Andrew Sullivan’s apartment.” Beutler and a buddy were walking from the Black Cat to The Diner late Tuesday night when two teen-age gangsters tried to mug them, and Beutler was shot at least once. He’s in the hospital, his spleen was removed, and he’s supposed to make a full recovery. Beutler’s been reporting on U.S. torture and the ongoing FISA outrage. [DCist/Reason/Gawker]

DOES THIS MEAN THAT IT HAS TO STOP?: “WASHINGTON - A Metro station manager and a Metro custodian were arrested on prostitution charges after an undercover transit police investigation found they arranged sexual trysts for money from inside the Dupont Circle Metro station.” Oh boy! Apparently the station manager was the contact on a flier advertising “sex trips” to Brazil. Are those still on, or do we get refunds? [Examiner]

They’ve been talking about it for a while, but the ACTIVIST judges of the Supreme Court today struck down Washington, D.C.’s ban on handgun ownership, voting along Ideological Lines. Hooray! Because we all have guns, and now we don’t have to hide them under our pillows with the safety off anymore, which was not safe in the first place. Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion went along the lines of: “If a bunch of blacks in Anacostia shoot each other, how the hell does that affect me, Tony Scalez?” [Washington Post]

Our last, best hope for Washington — that it would be destroyed by the horrible emergence of subterranean monstrosities — came tantalizingly close to reality on Tuesday, when a magnitude 2.0 earthquake shook the D.C. area. What was it, and why is the government claiming and then denying responsibility for the loud booms from Beneath the Earth? MORE »

The most widespread form of “life” in Washington is the common Norway Rat, which completely owns the miserable District. Like most stunned bumpkins forced by bad luck or weird morals to the nation’s foul capital, the new editor of Reason magazine is horrified to find that dog-sized vermin live in every home, even the White House. MORE »

And a sad story becomes sadder still: Deborah Jeane Palfrey was found hanging dead in a storage shed behind her mother’s Florida mobile home. Many pages of “handwritten suicide notes” were reportedly found in the shed by the Tarpon Springs police. Read the weird transcript, after the jump. MORE »

Forty years ago tonight, Washington burned, baby, burned — just as so many other cities burned after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. And it only took about 40 years to fix up some of the destroyed neighborhoods along H Street NE, 14th and U, and various other chunks of the District that ended up looking like Hiroshima after the Bomb. And now Wonkette’s own Liz Glover says the National Guard actually burnt D.C. to the ground, not the freaked-out rioters. MORE »

This week, George Will is sure going to be bummed when Borders shuts down for good, and one of you recognized a fireman or something. You people are not really being very good spies and operatives, are you? We realize nobody cares about anything but Barack Obama these days and all the famous-for-D.C. people are either recuperating at home or out on somebody’s campaign trail, but Jesus Christ, how about a few sightings? MORE »

Fears of a massive rat & roach spring swarm have crippled much of the District this evening as horrified office workers and other war profiteers watch major thoroughfares blocked off by mounted police while 20-foot-tall “rat proofing” concrete barriers are raised from Georgetown to Foggy Bottom. Law enforcement officials are keeping quiet about the real reasons for the horror stampede, and many locals fear for their lives. What the living hell is going on? MORE »

HELP D.C. KIDS FIGHT EVIL NATIONALS BASEBALL PARK: Positive Nature over at 1017 New Jersey Avenue SE is a place for the poor troubled DC kids to hang out and not be shot and to have Hope. But the baseball industry hate kids with problems, so Positive Nature is being forced out of its nice place because of the crazy new property taxes around the new Nationals Park. You could maybe do something good for a change and help ‘em out. [Positive Nature]