Potomac Confidential

Washington's Hour of Talk Power

Post Metro columnist Marc Fisher was online Thursday, Feb. 22, at Noon ET.

Check out Marc's blog, Raw Fisher.

This week, Potomac Confidential looks at the fate of the death penalty in Maryland, Abe Pollin's quest for $50 million for his sports arena, and the proposed merger between XM and Sirius satellite radio.

Archives: Discussion Transcripts

A transcript follows.

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Marc Fisher: Welcome aboard, folks.

Will Maryland repeal the death penalty? Will that make any difference? Legislators yesterday seemed particularly hung up on the longstanding question of whether the existence of the death penalty creates any sort of deterrent effect.

And why is Martin O'Malley, who opposes capital punishment but said he didn't want to spend time and energy on divisive issues, pushing for repeal, while across the Potomac, Tim Kaine, who also opposes the death penalty for religious reasons, has said he has no intention of seeking any rollback of Virginia's love affair with capital punishment?

In other matters, should the District give Wizards owner Abe Pollin $50 million for a facelift at the not-exactly-old Pollin Arena? Pollin's argument is that hey, you're giving boatloads of cash to baseball and are looking at doing all sorts of favors for soccer and maybe even football, so why not help spruce up a place that was paid for primarily with private money?

Are listeners the big losers in the proposed XM-Sirius satellite radio merger?

And would the ban on teen cell phone use while driving that's about to become law in Virginia really make any difference in road safety or teen behavior? I don't think those kids should be driving in the first place, so just taking away their cell phones, while a nice little step, doesn't especially impress me.

On to your many comments and questions, but first, the Yay and Nay of the Day:

Yay to Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley for breaking with the caution that has been is watchword in his early days on the job. O'Malley's passionate plea yesterday for an end to the state's death penalty may not produce an immediate result from the lawmakers in Annapolis, but it's an important and bold step in what now feels like an inevitability. If states such as Colorado, New Mexico and Nebraska are moving to repeal or suspend the death penalty, then Maryland politicians have plenty of room to maneuver without facing much blowback from voters.

Nay to Prince George's Police Chief Melvin High for his defensive and incomplete statement yesterday defending his department's handling of the Cpl. Keith Washington shooting case. High came out of hiding to issue a statement saying that this investigation will be done just as all others are, without favor for the department's own man. Washington, who shot two furniture deliverymen last month, killing one of them, has not commented on the incident, and while County Executive Jack Johnson moved to distance himself from his aide and supporter, the county has made no effort to reach out for the kind of outside, independent investigation that would seem to be called for when a high county official's actions are called into question.

Your turn starts right now....

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Washington, D.C.: Hello Mark --

Why am I not reassured by the statement offered by the PG Police Chief concerning the investigation of Mr. Washington? If the victim's statement is to be believed, the first officers that responded put handcuffs on Clark, an unarmed shooting victim who ultimately died, before any medical care was administered. Maybe that's standard procedure, but it sure seems grossly insensitive.

Thanks to you and The Post reporting staff for keeping this story in the news.

Marc Fisher: This week's story by The Post's Eric Rich revealing details of the surviving deliveryman's account of the incident certainly raises more questions about the apparently reflexive decision by county police to announce that they were going to charge the deliverymen in the incident--a statement the county police quickly withdrew.

I have more on this on the blog right now at blog.washingtonpost.com/rawfisher

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Columbia Heights: Marc, I criticized you last week for jumping to conclusions on the Kieth Washington case. Now, with the deliveryman's statement finally issued, it appears I was on the wrong side of the fence. If true, what happened to those two deliverymen is unspeakable. It isn't just Washington who should be singled out here, but also the PG police department for their treatment of the victims. Jeez, I have a lot to say on this, but frankly am too angry about the whole episode to so do civilly.

Marc Fisher: Everything we say on this case should be measured against the fact that we have not heard Cpl. Washington's side of the story -- he and lawyers who have represented him have consistently failed to respond to reporters seeking his version of the incident. But there does seem to be increasing evidence that the deliverymen were not the aggressors in this case.

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Rockville, Md.: Saw a woman Maryland legislator on television explaining how she supports the death penalty because she had attended an execution with a family member of a victim. What difference does that make if they have the wrong person? Mistakes do happen. If they are in jail you can free them. So far we don't have much skill in returning people from the dead.

Marc Fisher: Right, and there was moving testimony yesterday from the mother of a young Chevy Chase woman who was brutally attacked and killed while in graduate school -- the mother said that she and other relatives of victims in capital murder cases have come to believe that the death penalty only exacerbates their pain and suffering, subjecting families for literally decades of uncertainty and emotional ups and downs as the capital punishment process moves through all its many phases.

The families of victims who spoke at yesterday's hearing in Annapolis argued for the certainty and relative legal simplicity of a life without parole sentence. That, they said, gives families the opportunity to move ahead with the knowledge that the thug is gone forever.

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Owings Mills, Md.: Marc,

I am a supporter of the death penalty, and find O'Malley's objection on the basis of cost and time specious at best. The high cost of execution has a lot to do with the length of time a prisoner sits on death row and appeals, so the logical thing to do is not abolish the death penalty but streamline the appeals process. Two years is plenty of time to assemble all the facts in any case.

And as to all the wrongly convicted set free due to DNA evidence: Isn't this proof positive that eventually we get it right? To date there is no proof that an innocent person has been executed by the state in the modern era. Require all capital cases where DNA is available to run DNA analysis and remove all doubt.

There are instances where the guilt and brutality of a killer/rapist/kidnapper are not in doubt. In those cases, society has nothing to gain and much to lose from those perpetrators being alive. Abolishing the death penalty gives those vile people a level of comfort they don't deserve.

Marc Fisher: Interestingly, much of the testimony yesterday focused on exactly the opposite idea -- that capital punishment lets the worst criminals off with only a tiny fraction of the retribution and opportunity for reflection that life without parole would provide. I don't think it's terribly constructive for this debate to devolve into a competition over which punishment is more onerous, but most of the former inmates who spoke were passionate about how much worse it is to be in the big house for life than it is to be on Death Row and then dead.

Efforts to streamline the death penalty process have been bandied about for many years, but the trend is very much in the opposite direction -- capital punishment was only restored in 1977 on the condition that the precautions against killing an innocent person be greatly strengthened, which has led to the multiple trials and endless appeals that we see today.

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13th St SE: Now that Abe is holding up the city for $50 million in return for a luxury suite and ownership of a (by then) worthless arena in 2047, have you changed your mind about the Poplar Point D.C. United project? You always use him as a shining example of a model owner but now he is doing what you rail against. The Poplar point stadium project is good for the city, so stop comparing it to the $700 million baseball giveaway.

Thank you.

Marc Fisher: Lots of different fruits are getting mixed into the same basket as the District, oddly enough, potentially becomes a national capital of sports facilities.

The District got held up by baseball for megabucks because baseball had all the cards and D.C. was desperate. But the development upside from the new ballpark is so huge that it made sense to accept the greed of Major League Baseball.

The soccer stadium also could produce some much-needed development along the Anacostia River, so I favor building that stadium and I'd even favor some, though much smaller, city contribution toward that effort. But a giveaway of riverfront land to the soccer stadium developer is going way too far; that land should be put up for bids and competing development schemes just as the land around the baseball stadium has been acquired by several different developers.

As for Pollin and his arena, I still praise the old man for having paid for his facility largely out of his own pocket. The fact that he's now coming to the city with his hand out is disappointing, especially since the upgrades he seeks are not exactly necessities. It looks like the District will give him the $50 million he wants, which is a shame.

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Rockville, Md.: Marc, just finished reading "Something in the Air," and as someone who grew up in NY in the 1960s and '70s, I have fond memories of listening to Jean Shepherd on WOR on a cheap transistor radio when I should have been sleeping, under the covers with an earphone jammed into my head. Wanted to mention that the Jean Shepherd Project has put more than 400 of his shows online as podcasts, (complete with actual commercials for D'Agostino's and Miller High Life, "the champagne of bottled beer"). Search for The Brass Figlagee (appropriately enough) on iTunes or http://www.archive.org/index.php. I listened last night to a broadcast of him reciting Robert Service's "The Cremation of Sam McGee," which I remember listening to live as an 11-year old in 1970. What a talent he was. Excelsior!

Marc Fisher: Thanks very much -- if I can use the book to connect more people to the extraordinary storytelling of Jean Shepherd, it will have been a valuable experience. The best link to the vast and amazing archive of free Shepherd radio shows is shep-archives.com --There you can listen to literally hundreds of hours of original broadcasts from the 1950s through the 1970s, and they really do stand the test of time. The Shepherd people know from the movie "A Christmas Story" is a very warm and fuzzy version of a guy whose real medium was the radio and whose stories can be biting, subversive, revelatory and always remarkably in the moment.

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Eastern Market, Washington, D.C.: Marc,

On the death penalty: As the noose was placed around the neck of the proverbial hanging victim, he said, "This will sure be a lesson to me."

Marc Fisher: On the other hand -- and this was the best point the pro-death penalty folks came up with in Annapolis yesterday -- would these innocent men who've been freed from Death Row by DNA and other evidence have had the chance to win reconsideration of their cases if they had not been sentenced to death? Those who are sentenced to life in prison do not get nearly the same legal attention; is it any morally better for however few innocent men there are serving life terms to sit and rot in prison than it is to put an innocent man on Death Row?

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Atlanta: Marc,

Here in Georgia, the state legislature is considering a bill that would allow executions to go forward even if three members of the sentencing jury voted against the death penalty.... and they call this part of the country the "Bible belt".

Sigh...I really miss living in Maryland.

Marc Fisher: Wow -- that really flies in the face of the large number of states that have moved toward a moratorium on executions and are considering even more drastic rollbacks of capital punishment.

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Houston: The death penalty can only be justified -- if at all -- in a completely perfect and fool-proof system. There are no sane arguments that ours even comes close to approaching that standard. So, therefore......

Marc Fisher: I'm with you there. As Kirk Bloodsworth said, that argument really does trump all others.

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Washington, D.C.: What do you make of the news that D.C. Council Member Mary Cheh accepted a campaign contribution from Merck just two days before introducing a bill to require 11-year old District residents to get the new HPV vaccine. The best pediatricians in this city are recommending a wait-and-see approach on this vaccine, especially for younger girls, and our city council members are basically doing the bidding of the drug companies without any due diligence.

Cheh is a very smart woman, but this behavior really makes me question her judgment.

Marc Fisher: Interestingly, as The Post's Amy Gardner reported yesterday, the drug company that was lobbying so heavily for state legislatures to make the cervical cancer vaccine mandatory has now backed off, announcing that it will no longer seek such policies.

My sense of Cheh is that she's hardly one to allow herself to be influenced by a pharmaceutical lobbyist, but you're right about the docs in town, and around the country, urging a more cautious approach to this vaccine, and state lawmakers ought to be taking this one very slowly.

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washingtonpost.com: Merck to Stop Pushing to Require Shots (Post, Feb. 21)

Marc Fisher: See above.

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Washington, D.C.: Hey Marc,

Re: The pending XM/Sirius merger... I say this as a current (happy) Sirius subscriber -- how can this possibly be a good thing, like so many people out there are suggesting? When has a monopoly -- and, yes, it most certainly would be one -- EVER been a good thing?

Anyway, hope everyone has a nice weekend.

Marc Fisher: It's hard to see any upside. Rob Pegoraro has a compelling column on this in today's Business section. Even if a combined XM and Sirius figure out a way to expand the selection of channels they offer, they're not about to have, say, two heavy metal channels or two '60s pop channels, and the XM and Sirius approaches to music and to radio generally are really quite different. More important, though, the history of media mergers teaches us that creativity and innovation are very much dampened by combination; I don't know of any case of the opposite happening -- do you?

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McLean, Va.: Marc,

If the XM-Sirius merger gets approved, approximately how much do you think that the average monthly subscription rate will increase?

Marc Fisher: The companies would likely commit to keeping the subscription rate steady for a fairly long time as a condition to winning government approval of the merger. So the issue is not how high rates would go, but how much less programming would be offered, and how much worse service would become, and how much the new entity would forsake its radio subscribers to concentrate on selling programming in other platforms.

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Lake Ridge, Va.: I heard that 11 of the 12 jurors in the Libby trial showed up with the same T-shirt on. Obviously strange, doesn't this impart an air of inappropriate frivolity in a serious judicial proceeding?

If I were facing (or prosecuting) a serious charge, I wouldn't want to see the jury stroll into the courtroom in matching T-shirts.

Marc Fisher: Lawyers and judges often seem charmed and amused by such displays of amity and bonding among juries. It's almost as if such displays show that maybe the lawyers aren't really wasting the jurors' time with their self-indulgent, obsessive presentations of material that could easily be edited down to manageable size.

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Re: Keith Washington: I just knew that when the one survivor spoke, it was going to be damning. Now let me ask something. I am not being flip, but for real. Why isn't Washington either in jail or out on bail? He shot two people, and killed one of them. They happened to be expected and paid by him to deliver furniture into his home. I'm sorry, but I suspect that if the same thing had happened within my little house, I'd be sitting in a jail cell right now. Am I off on this?

Marc Fisher: Certainly based on what is publicly available, I'd agree that many a suspect would be held. But the basis for holding such a person is generally either that he poses a harm to others or presents a likelihood of fleeing the jurisdiction. In this case, first and foremost, Washington has not been charged with anything. But even if he were, I don't know that it would be a slam dunk that he'd be held -- after all, he held a highly responsible position until this.

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Fairfax, Va.: Marc,

Regarding the shooting of the two movers, I think the odor is getting worse. Why hasn't that policeman been suspended ?

I also think he should be closely scrutinized. Something about his story smells really bad.

Marc Fisher: Well, he has been removed for the time being from his county homeland security job. As for why he hasn't been suspended from the county police, he is not working, so that's something. Any further move would likely depend on whether charges are filed.

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Virginia: In today's Raw Fisher your wrote:

"Robert White can only tell the story as he experienced it."

Not true - there are many options. He can lie, embellish, tell a faithful but incomplete account, etc. Not a logical statement. I'll take your answer off the air.

Marc Fisher: Sure, he could make up a story, though as I report on the blog right now, there are at least some other voices backing up important elements of his version. But what I meant is that with the death of the other deliveryman, there is now no other eyewitness beyond White and Washington.

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Chevy Chase, D.C.: Kudos to The Post for the series about Walter Reed. Notice how nothing was changing until the articles appeared? If this isn't living proof of the necessity for a free press I don't know what is.

For whatever it's worth, I served at Walter Reed as a house officer in the late 1980s. Housing for outpatient soldiers was a disgrace then, so much so that as a lowly intern I complained about it up the chain of command. Not surprisingly, nothing happened, and clearly didn't for another 20 years. Any army doc who has ever served at WRAMC could tell you that the bureaucracy and administrative support there is and has been atrocious, and it is one of most hostile work environments, civilian or military, that I ever experienced!

Marc Fisher: The reporters on that story, Dana Priest and Anne Hull, did a splendid job -- this is classic on the scene reporting. Nothing terribly complicated: Just go someplace and see what's happening and present it to the readers. Sadly, we live in an era when that basic but most important form of journalism is devalued, replaced by all manner of bloviating and ideological masturbation. But for changing the world, nothing beats direct observation and the power of words.

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Silver Spring, Md.: I fully support the ban on cell phone driving....I kind of see it like the early attempts to legislate against drunk driving. Maybe at first people didn't take it too seriously, but now it's a serious social taboo and if you cause an accident while drunk, you can be charged with homicide. As a frequent pedestrian who has witnessed a couple of really scary near-misses, I'd like to see the same mentality applied to cell phone use.

I'm a very good driver, but I wouldn't use my cell phone driving through downtown Silver Spring at rush hour (there's way too much going on), and no one else should either. If a driver hits someone while using a cell phone, it should be treated just like it would be if they were drunk -- they should be charged with a criminal act and convicted.

Marc Fisher: Sounds right to me -- sadly, the measures taken against cell phone use while driving tend to be halfhearted, largely because the people writing the laws love to yammer on the phone while they drive, just like the rest of us. I've been talking to cops this week for a piece on pedestrian safety and the stories these guys tell about the stuff they see on the road are just chilling. But we don't need the cops to tell us: We all see it on the road every day. Even my 11-year-old knows enough by now -- when he sees someone weaving wildly in and out of a lane, he automatically says, "She's gotta be on the cell." And she (or he) always is.

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Burke, Va.: I hear some parents opposed the ban on teens talking on their cell phones and driving because they can't stay in touch with their kids! Excuse me, what sort of idiot parent wants to talk to their kid while he or she is driving? Do they want their child involved in an accident? Last thing a young inexperienced driver needs is distractions. Shame these morons reached breeding age!

Marc Fisher: Parents roll out the same ridiculous excuse when schools try to crack down on cell phones ringing during classes. If there were really something that had to be communicated by the child, the kid could pull over to the side of the road. Almost all cell conversations are just a way of filling time.

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Washington, D.C.: According to the book "Seriously Funny," a study of comedians from the '50s and '60s, Jean Shepherd came to loathe the film version of "A Christmas Story," even though he did supply the voice over. He hated the fact that the general public only knew him for the movie -- and radio was his medium.

Marc Fisher: Absolutely right. Of course, Shepherd was a big time self-loather in every way, so you have to take that with a few grains of salt -- he especially loathed his radio work, which was by far his best. His novels are very good, but not the top of his game, as he thought they were. The "Christmas Story" movie is really wonderful, but it's a very well scrubbed version of Shepherd. The radio shows give you the full range.

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Philadelphia: RE: Owings Mill, Md.

True, there is no evidence that an innocent person has been put to death, but that may be because once someone has been killed, there's little impetus to dig deeper in the case. In addition, Owings Mill wants to streamline the appeals process so that people are killed quicker, while simultaneously stating that DNA evidence will keep innocents from being killed. But in almost all the cases where someone's death sentence has been overturned due to DNA, it's taken 4, 5, 10 years for this evidence to be discovered. If we had always had a "streamline" appeals process, we'd have a lot (more) innocent deaths on our hands.

Marc Fisher: True nuff -- the fact that so many exonerations take place so many years after conviction tells us something about human nature. Once we've made a decision, it's so much harder for anyone, let alone an entire system, to admit error and turn things around. That's why I do worry that a life without parole system would make it even harder for such exonerations to occur. Still, at least the innocent would still be alive.

More important, since there really are not many innocent folks in such a position, the focus should be on the true merits and deficits -- moral, political and practical -- of capital punishment.

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Richmond, Va.: Hi Marc --The death penalty is not perfect, but for the most heinous of crimes, I think it is more than appropriate. Gov. O'Malley has a right to speak out against the death penalty, but Maryland (fair or unfair) seems to have a growing share of violent and random crime. Baltimore has had over 40 murders this year, including the brazen murder of a police officer -- and the murderers roam free while children and families live in pain. In Virginia, the citizens (black, white, and everything in between) simply will not put up with the large amounts of violent crime, and the state has strict laws on murder, rape, etc. I think there can be reform with the death penalty, such as mandatory DNA testing, a REAL examination of racial disparities in sentencing, and a more thorough appeals process, but elimination of the procedure is not a good decision. Critics have said that the death penalty is inhumane, but what about the murdered victims (who cannot speak for themselves) who were often violently murdered without any regard to their humanity? Just a thought.

Marc Fisher: Well, if your thesis were correct, that there's less crime in death penalty states, then that would be worth considering. But as O'Malley pointed out yesterday, it's just not the case: In 2005, the murder rate was 46 percent higher in states with the death penalty than in states without it. And while the murder rate has gone down overall in the US since 1990, it dropped by 56 percent in states with no death penalty but only by 38 percent in states that have capital punishment.

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Germantown, Md.: Marc, are you Anna Nicole's baby daddy?

Marc Fisher: I am, but I think it would be wrong to mar my demure image with such a sordid claim, so I am keeping this to myself.

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Oakton, Va.: Marc,

Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't the $50M for the Pollin Center coming out of increased taxes on tickets, foods, and goods? If so, doesn't this make it a low-, it not no-, cost issue since it won't be money coming out of the general revenues?

Marc Fisher: Right, the plan is to raise the ticket tax so that it's the suburban fans who end up paying for the improvements to the arena. This is similar to the structure of the baseball stadium deal, where the city borrows the money and the debt is paid by the users of the facility. Two problems, however: One, there's a limit to how much the District can borrow without endangering its bond rating, so the question is whether it's necessary or good to use up those millions on a somewhat spiffier arena instead of on, say, rebuilding a park. The other problem occurs if there's an NBA or NHL strike and the revenue to pay off the bonds dries up -- then the city is left holding the bag.

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Arlington, Va.: I can't quite understand your bias toward supporting the enormous D.C. giveaway to MLB for the Nationals, versus your opposition to $50 million for Abe Pollin and the DC United project.

A couple of things: MLB would have never gotten an offer anywhere near what D.C. put on the table from any kind of viable baseball market. The Nats could have been had with patience and far less money. And spare the junk about the money coming voluntarily from businesses. Money is money -- it sure could have been spent better in this case.

And lastly, every indicator is that a new baseball stadium is no longer the economic engine it once was. If the Nats' ownership persists in putting the garbage product on the field we're going to get this year, they could play in the Taj Mahal and no one is going to show up.

Marc Fisher: Economic development engine -- you bet. Just drive on over to the new ballpark site and look at what's happening on every side of the stadium. That's the payoff for taxpayers.

The Pollin thing is not that huge an issue -- the cost to the city is fairly minimal; I just think it's wrong for the city to waste any of its borrowing capacity on such an unnecessary project. If Abe really needs a new scoreboard, he can go out and buy one.

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Kingstowne, Va.:[space for rent] arena: Of what value will the be in 2047, or does the city get the property back? I didn't quite understand what benefit the city gains by the deal?

Death penalty: Deterrent? I thought the primary benefit was to save money on room and board at prison by eliminating occupants.

Marc Fisher: The arena is leased by Pollin from the city. Obviously, by 2047, if the arena is even still standing, it will be of limited or negligible value. That's just an accounting game to allow the city to work out 40-year financing for the $50 million for Pollin.

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Baseball: Marc, on a scale of 1 to 10, how excited should I get about the upcoming Nats season?

Marc Fisher: Six. The team will be lousy, but probably in interesting and fun ways. The hitting is decent, the bullpen might even be good, the starting pitching will either be laughably awful or mediocre with perhaps a surprise bright spot or two. But you'll get to see the beginnings of what should shape up to be a contender in a few years -- you'll see the Stan Kasten system at work, and that's exciting for any fan.

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Speaking of Cheh: What was up with the Post Metro section and Woodlee yesterday? They reported Cheh was being investigated for campaign finance issues, which is technically true. However, investigations are pro-forma when a complaint is filed, and this complaint was filed by noted crank and looney Jonathan Rees.

Worse yet, they heavily quoted Rees without comment. If you're going to hang your reporting hat primarily on one source, you should probably note he's a looney at some point.

Marc Fisher: I'm with you there -- I don't know the backstory on the story, but I do know that any reference to Rees should be accompanied by screaming warnings to readers about who and what he is.

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Death Penalty: I realize folks like an all-or-nothing approach.

However, I felt that the death penalty is a punishment only and that all recourse to ensure that a clearly innocent person is not executed has been exhausted. If the purpose of having a death penalty is to have one reconsider their course of action, it is inherently flawed since many murders happen in the heat of the moment.

Marc Fisher: Right -- ex-Attorney General Joe Curran told the committee yesterday that in his half century of lawyering, he had never once come across a crook who believed he was going to be caught. The deterrent effect of any potential punishment is not the key factor in reining in human behavior -- moral values, shame, community dismay, family expectations are all much stronger factors.

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No Proof Innocents Have Been Executed?: I'd like to know what hallucinogens Owings Mill is taking. Twenty fiver percent of the inmates on Illinois's death row were found to be innocent through DNA testing, prompting a conservative governor to halt all further executions. What more proof does one need? Twenty five percent is a damning statistic, and it doesn't take a rocket science to understand that such a high percentage guarantees that innocents have been executed. Whether or not DNA was available at the scene of the crime or if DNA testing wasn't available when the prisoner was executed, a 25 percent innocence rate is proof that the death penalty, through time, has claimed hundreds of people erroneously convicted.

By Owings Mills reasoning, cigarettes don't cause cancer. The evidence is overwhelming, but you cannot say with 100 percent certainty because there are so many other environmental factors. 99.99 percent, sure, but not 100.

Marc Fisher: The Illinois numbers are indeed dramatic, and Maryland's are compelling as well. Since 1978, ten Death Row inmates in Maryland were removed from the threat of death because their sentences were overturned, their innocence was proven, or their sentence was commuted to life. During those same years, Maryland only killed five inmates.

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washingtonpost.com: Maryland Death Penalty Debate

Marc Fisher: Coming up at 1 -- in just a few minutes here on the big site -- Post Maryland state house reporter John Wagner will be along to take further questions and comments on the death penalty.

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That's the payoff for taxpayers.: Wanna bet we don't pull in revenue that matches this development (much of which was already happening, albeit at a slower pace, due to development pressures)?

Can't you just own it? You're a fanboy. You wanted to watch dumb jocks hit a ball with a stick and run in a diamond, and no amount of everyone else's money should stand in the way of it.

Marc Fisher: Hmmm -- so if I'm for the baseball and soccer projects, but opposed to the basketball one, it would follow that I'm a fan of baseball and soccer but not of hoops, right? Except that I am a well-documented soccer hater and hoops lover. Sorry, there goes your theory.

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Downtown D.C.: "I'm with you there--I don't know the backstory on the story, but I do know that any reference to Rees should be accompanied by screaming warnings to readers about who and what he is."

Well, who and what IS he?

Marc Fisher: A mysterious figure who ran for D.C. Council in Ward 3 last year and made the lives of many candidates, political activists and media types miserable with his multiple online identities, spamming of comment boards and other odd behaviors.

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Alexandria, Va.: As a brother of a wounded Iraq vet I really appreciated The Post series. It turns out that Salon.com reported on a lot of the same issues two years ago. I can't help but wonder what the recent reaction says about the abiding power of "old media" over the new.

Marc Fisher: I've not seen the Salon piece, but in journalism as in politics and so many other fields, timing, luck and just being there often play as important a role as content and conviction.

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Clifton, Va.: You cant be pro life and for the sanctity of human life and also support the death penalty. Sorry. It doesn't work that way. The death penalty does not stop or prevent any murders, please get real. Criminals think "I ain't going to get caught." Not "I am going to face the death penalty." And they live longer and better on death row than they do on the street!

Marc Fisher: Well, I don't know about better and longer, but I'm with you for the rest of it.

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Cell phones in class: Uh -- emergencies can be dealt with the old fashioned way, phoning the school office number to relay message/pull your child out lessons. What the ?

Marc Fisher: Right. With the possible exception of reporting an ongoing emergency from the middle of a highway, there is never a time when a cell phone is actually "essential."

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Burke, Va.: So by your own logic, it's better to quickly and humanely execute a wrongly convicted person than to force them to suffer through life in prison.

Marc Fisher: No, I was just posing that as a question because it was the most compelling argument brought up by the pro-death penalty side in yesterday's hearing.

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Falls Church, Va.: Commenter: "The death penalty can only be justified -- if at all -- in a completely perfect and fool-proof system."

Okay, but you're willing to use a system that is not completely perfect and fool-proof to take away 10 years, 20 years, all the years of a person's life through imprisonment? Is that really a more moral position? How do you give the wrongfully imprisoned man back his 20 years?

Marc Fisher: You can't give someone back their years, but it's a whole lot easier to try to compensate them in some way if they're actually alive.

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D.C.: I'm kinda curious, though, it's wrong of me: What happened to Officer Washington's new furniture? Is it all set up in his family room? Or did he send it back? I can't imagine him keeping it, but I can't imagine that the money back guarantee applies if you shoot the delivery man. Plus, the furniture store isn't going to pick it up, I don't think.

Dispatch a metro reporter!

Marc Fisher: Good question -- I don't know, but my sense is that the furniture must be at Washington's house where the deliverymen left it that day.

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Falls Church, Va.: I don't understand all the outrage at Merck. I mean -- they are in a catch 22, no? They want everyone to take the shot because it will really help people, but it will also win them profits. So how does one get out of that circle? Other than offer up the drug for free. I am just really disappointed at the negativity this drug has already faced. It's such a good drug.

Marc Fisher: Maybe it's good, maybe not. What the docs say is that it's too soon to know, at least too soon to mandate it for such a large population. Most conservative doctors prefer to wait and see how a new vaccine plays out before recommending it for a broad population, rather than a more narrowly defined group that may be particularly at risk.

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Alexandria, Va.: What's the real issue/problem with the XM - Sirius merger? I have XM at present and am happy with it. I get NCAA basketball and football games and have all my presets filled with music I grew up with. If the merger means more selection (i.e. getting Sirius's selections as options too, plus getting NFL), and if it means having the security of a backup satellite, then it's all good. Only downside I see is if the price shoots up due to no competition. This reminds me of the old VHS - Beta dual of years back.

Marc Fisher: But this isn't just a matter of dueling technologies. This is competition more over content than technology, and one potential loss to customers is the distinctive content that each of the two services now offers.

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Massachusetts, Vermont and now N.J.: Okay, so same sex marriages/unions (whatever you want to call them) have been occurring for several months now and guess what -- New England hasn't fallen into the ocean under the wrath of some God (think Sodom/Gomorrah).

I'm sure people are studying the impact of this every which way, but I think the argument that gays marrying will cause the world to devolve into utter chaos and that "the family" will basically spontaneously combust -- I guess because it is so fragile? -- is now found to be untrue.

Living in Massachusetts, I have to say, I see absolutely no difference at all save one -- I an now invited to more weddings.

Marc Fisher: More cake -- always a good outcome.

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Washington, D.C.: Marc, I have always wondered who would have standing to challenge a statute giving D.C. citizens voting rights in the House. It doesn't seem to meet current standards if my voting rights would be diminished by something like .00000001 percent.

On the other hand, I have worked on the Hill for many years and have great respect for CRS. I can only recall a couple instances in nearly 30 years that their analysis has not been upheld by the courts.

Marc Fisher: Good question, and yes, the CRS reports do carry great weight because of their nonpartisan reputation. I think we can kiss D.C. voting rights goodbye in this go-round.

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Marc Fisher: That kicks things in the head for today, folks. Coming up Sunday -- the column in Metro looks at pedestrian woes and The Listener in Sunday Arts checks in on radio stunts and the death of a California woman by water intoxication.

On the blog today, more on the Prince George's shooting case.

Thanks for coming along.

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