“No taxation without representation!” You heard them cheering it at protests in the 60s and 70s – 1760s and 70s that is. You’ve read the slogan on D.C. license plates. Today, you get to shout it out in solidarity with a bunch of voting rights advocates.

Since I walk to work, I rarely get a chance to read the Washington Examiner which I imagine I would if I took the Metro. But I got a chance to see yesterday’s paper, which reported that the D.C. Council took a major step in preventing “payday lenders” from exploiting the desperation of low-income workers. The Council passed a bill restricting payday lenders from charging absurdly high interest rates that often trap consumers in an endless cycle of debt.

Remember "Washingtonienne"? She was the low-level Capitol Hill staffer who was fired from her gig as a mail opener for a Republican Senator when her confessional sex-for-rent-money-and-luxury-gifts blog exploded all over the Internets. Then she got a book deal.

Well now Jessica Cutler (her real name) has filed for bankruptcy. I'm not ashamed to say I've read the book (Madhu made me do it!). Cutler's ex-boyfriend and colleague, who featured in the book as a spanking fetishist, is suing her for defamation. That's rather foolish. Now everybody (who didn't already) knows his real name: Robert Steinbuch. He's a former Judiciary Committee lawyer and now a law professor at the University of Arkansas-Little Rock. Anyhow, Cutler claims she can't even pay her bills and student loans, let alone reimburse Steinbuch for the embarrassment of having several thousand obsessive blog readers and political junkies know he's into S&M. 

Okay this is all really an excuse to expose my pet peeve about Washingtonienne. In the book, she "slums it" when she hooks up with a bike messenger who lives in Adams Morgan. You know, the neighborhood I'm priced out of on my non-profit salary.