The Washington Times has a piece today (which had better be a column and not a straight news story) called "Stadium will rob neighborhood of its history", detailing what it says is all of the history that will be lost in "Southwest" because of the stadium and other development. I must say I would give the article a bit more credence if it realized that the stadium, St. Paul's church, the Navy Yard, Ken Wyban's house, and Capper Seniors #1 are all in fact in SouthEAST, not Southwest. And it's wrong about Capper/Carrollsburg residents needing $80,000 incomes to return to the new public housing to be built. (It's rather stunning that this level of misinformation and outright error can get into a paper.) It does mention that a lecture will be given by Carroll R. Gibbs called "Vanished Past, Hidden Present: The Black History the New Stadium Will Hide" at the MLK Library on Feb. 21 at 7 pm and again at the Lamond-Riggs branch on Feb. 23 at 7 pm.

In case your weekly appointment to have bamboo shoots stuffed under your fingernails has been cancelled, you can get the same result by watching Tuesday's DC Council stadium proceedings live, either online or on DC Cable 13.

An alert from the Associated Press: "D.C. Council Chair Linda W. Cropp will introduce emergency legislation on Tuesday that would cap the city's contribution to a Nationals baseball stadium at $300 million." The question is if this is just on the construction agreement, or the stadium lease agreement. If it's the lease agreement, there will probably be trouble with MLB; if it's the construction agreement, then there's probably room for maneuvering. Will post more as it comes along. UPDATE: Here is the Post's article, "D.C. Council Insists on Own Stadium Cost Cap." From the article: "The legislation, Cropp said, would cap the city's payments for labor and materials for the ballpark at $300 million, along with an additional $20 million that MLB promised in December. Williams (D) offered the same cap last week, but council members said the mayor's cap has loopholes. The council is also considering capping the project's entire cost at between $589 million and $630 million, council members said. Emergency legislation would require nine votes among the council's 13 members for approval." And: "If the council does not approve the lease today, baseball officials might choose to pursue full arbitration, which could take up to six months to resolve." And, my own personal favorite: "During the council's closed-door meeting, which grew louder as it progressed, Cropp could be heard admonishing her colleagues. 'I'm sick of this,' she told them. 'Every time we move somewhere, you keep adding something else. I'm sick of it. I want you people to either vote it up or vote it down.' " UPDATE: Here is the WashTimes story, covering most of the same bases.

A quick note that the Post has started a blog on DC politics called "DC Wire", and one of the first entries today was from David Nakamura about the baseball stadium (although the entry itself has been somewhat scooped by the events of this evening).

The FY2007 Federal Budget, released today, includes $20 million for upgrading the Navy Yard Metro station, one of the many sticking points for council members as they fought to make sure that no money from the city's general fund will go toward any of the costs of the new baseball stadium. Here is the mayor's press release.

David Nakamura, who covers the Nationals/Metro beat for the Post (meaning the stadium, how the city government interacts with the team, etc.), is doing a Live Online Chat about the stadium.

The Washington Blade has posted on its blog "Last weekend for D.C.'s legendary O Street bars?", which discusses the Feb. 7 move-out date that the city is hoping to enforce, awaiting a judge's decision. From the article: "Should the judge rule in favor of the mayor's court motion, Williams could still postpone the evictions until it becomes certain that the stadium deal take place. Among other impacts, nearly a hundred people employed by the six clubs face the immediate loss of their jobs if the clubs are forced to close. A postponement of the evictions would also give patrons and employees time to prepare of a grand finale befitting the clubs' history and impact on the community they have served for so long." The entry also gives a brief history of the clubs.

"Williams Revises Stadium Cost Plan" is on Saturday's front page of the Post, an updated and expanded version of the article posted this afternoon. Linda Cropp is "cautiously optimistic," Vincent Gray and Kwame Brown say they want to review the documents before making a decision, and Jim Graham says that if the $55 million coming from developers for the rights to build on the stadium footprint weren't being used for that, it'd be used for other purposes, so "We're still taking out of our own pockets for baseball." (Uh, except that if there were no stadium, those lots wouldn't be worth $70 million, and it wouldn't be a cinch for the developers to buy them, and they wouldn't be buying them from the city.) Note the lack of comment (in the Post, anyway) from David Catania or Marion Barry. UPDATE: Marion Barry and Kwame Brown appear unmoved, according to the WashTimes in "Council Receives Lease Documents." Tuesday will indeed be D-Day.

The Mayor's Newsletter has just been released, with the first page being about the stadium. It gives bullet points about the lease agreement, which I think are worth emphasizing.

More posts: Nationals Park