ABCDE METRO saturday, july 31, 2010 POSTLOCAL.com 74, 9 a.m. 83, noon 85, 5 p.m. 77, 9 p.m.


Obituaries Robert C. Tucker, 92, a Princeton professor for more than 20 years, had a distinguished career as a scholar of Soviet-era politics and history. B4


Law journal can publish court file


information D.C. judge lifts order that attorneys, media outlets said violated First Amendment


by Keith L. Alexander A D.C. Superior Court judge abruptly


lifted a temporary restraining order on Friday that had barred a legal journal from printing information it obtained from a court file, ending a dispute that legal observers said was destined to be- come one of the biggest First Amend- ment cases in years. The battle began when a reporter from the National Law Journal was in- vestigating a story about money owed to a District law firm by POM Wonderful, a health juice manufacturer. According to court papers filed in the case, the law journal also discovered that the Los Angeles-based pomegranate juicer was being investigated by a feder- al agency. POM’s attorneys sought an in- junction to block the law journal from publishing the name of the agency or de- tails about the investigation, and D.C. Superior Court Judge Judith Bartnoff is- sued the injunction. The judge ordered sealed “any portion of the record that discusses the pending regulatory investigations.” But a court clerk took several days to identify and seal the proper documents. During the lag, the reporter from the


law journal read the open court files, learned of the investigation and sought to publish the information. POM offi- cials learned of the intent to write a story and asked the court for the tempo- rary restraining order to block the jour- nal from publishing the identity of the federal agency or information about its investigations. After a heated hearing last week, Bart-


noff issued the temporary restraining or- der barring publication. Bartnoff sparred with the law jour-


nal’s attorney, who argued that barring publication was a violation of the First Amendment. “In 80 years, the Supreme Court has never upheld the kind of prior restraint that’s being sought here,” the attorney, Bruce Brown, said at the hear- ing. The judge was unmoved. “Look — if


I’m throwing 80 years of First Amend- ment jurisprudence on its head, so be it,” she said. “But none of that First Amend- ment jurisprudence, to my knowledge, is


order continued on B4


Venting can pay off On the Daily Gripe, we look into restoring a welcome sign to its former glory and ask you to report anything in your neighborhood that needs to be fixed. Go to PostLocal.com.


THE DISTRICT


Fit for trial? Two mental health physicians at St. Elizabeths Hospital declare a D.C. man competent to stand trial in the fatal stabbing of his mother. The man’s attorney disagrees. B6


RELIGION Counselor in chief


In devotionals-via-BlackBerry, Joshua DuBois grabs President Obama’s attention every morning at 6:30. The coordinator of the White House’s Office of Faith-Based and Neighbor- hood Partnerships finds his calling: working with people, one on one. B2


For days, trains were invisible to Metro ALARMS IGNORED


AS ‘MINOR’ ISSUE


Test could have detected problem before crash


by Ann Scott Tyson


National Transportation Safety Board investigators this week provided the most detailed, blow-by-blow expla- nation yet for the June 22, 2009, Metro Red Line crash — an account of how aged, faulty equipment left trains in- visible for days on a stretch of track near the Fort Totten Station, making the crash an accident waiting to happen. Metro’s failure to use an existing test


PHOTOS BY XIAOMEI CHEN/THE WASHINGTON POST


In quest of a gown gleaming with matrimonial magic


Katy Kinch, above left, and Amanda Cook laugh atop a pile of wedding gowns they grabbed at Filene’s Basement in the District. They were just two of hundreds who attended the annual Running of the Brides, which offered designer gowns at discount prices. The store’s Web site says that despite all the commotion, most brides-to-be manage to find a dress. For photos and video of shoppers in their quest to find the right gown at the right price amid a throng of fellow bargain hunters, visit PostLocal.com.


that could have identified the problem and prevented the crash, in which one train slammed into another, killing nine people and injuring scores of oth- ers, underscored what the NTSB called the transit agency’s weak commitment to safety and spurred calls in Congress for aggressive reforms. “Congress has to take ownership as


well,” Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) said after a briefing on the NTSB report for local congressional delegations Fri- day. She said Congress should pass leg- islation to grant the Transportation De- partment regulatory authority over public transit systems and, in the long run, reform Metro’s governance struc- ture. Mikulski also supported continuing the dedicated federal funding of Metro, such as the $150 million the House and Senate approved this month. At Tuesday’s NTSB meeting, investi-


gators outlined how the crash was caused by a problem with a track circuit module built by General Railway Signal (which was bought by Alstom Signal- ing) and Metro’s failure to detect it. The track circuit modules, stacked in


metal racks in concrete “train control rooms,” are part of Metro’s automatic train control system. Metro has about 3,000 such modules, which work by emitting a signal that


metro continued on B3


 A diagram shows how Train 214 went undetected. B3


Lost wages, worried minds at Aspen Hill retail strip


No power means no work as outage drags on by Kevin Sieff


On Day Five of a power outage that put much of Montgomery County in the dark, the parking lot of an Aspen Hill shopping center remains mostly empty. A few employees have arrived — at res- taurants, grocery stores and the beauty parlor — only to find more of the same: no electricity, no customers, no work. “I’ve already lost three days of wages,” Casto Comacho, a Pizza Hut delivery man, said Thursday. “What about my rent? What about buying food for my family? I can’t do it without working nor- mal hours.”


Comacho spent the day sitting on the


curb, hoping the electricity would return to Pizza Hut. He’s one of many hourly employees in the area whose sole source of income dried up when the juice stopped flowing. Marianne Wysong, a waitress at Out- back Steakhouse on Georgia Avenue, has called her boss at least once a day to check on the restaurant’s electricity. Since Sunday, the answer has been, “Sorry, still no power.”


For some, missing three days of work might be a minor inconvenience. For Wy- song, it presents a serious problem. “The fact is, I can’t afford to miss more than a day,” she said. “With things the way they are, there’s basically no way I can make my car payment. I’ll be feeling the ripple effects for weeks.” During last winter’s record snow-


outage continued on B6


Where bridges, and careers, are built Summer engineering


program fosters genuine interest for some students


by Rick Rojas SARAH L. VOISIN/THE WASHINGTON POST


Pizza Hut deliveryman Casto Comacho frets: “What about my rent? What about buying food for my family?”


High school students Aszurtoine Gunter-Fields and Terrell Ford built a bridge that just wouldn’t break. Using only spaghetti, epoxy resin and glue, the rising seniors at Washington Mathematics Science Technology Public Charter High School engineered a bridge Friday that withstood nearly 58 pounds before collapsing. The project was the culmination of a four-week Johns Hopkins University program for high school students held at the University of the District of Co- lumbia. Aszurtoine and Terrell were among 10 District students who partici- pated in the program, in which profes- sors compact a semester-long freshman engineering course into four weeks for college credit. Engineering Innovation, which Johns


Hopkins has taken nationwide since 2006, is designed to encourage students to pursue careers in engineering and science. According to the university, 90 percent of students who participate in the summer program continue on


B DC MD VA S


JAHI CHIKWENDIU/THE WASHINGTON POST


Shiesha McNeil, left, 16, and Janay Harrison, 16, prepare to test the strength of their bridge during the Engineering Innovation summer course at UDC.


that path. On Friday, the D.C. students put their


bridges, and their knowledge, to the test. Each team of students built a bridge using the same materials. Then, two tables were placed 50 centimeters apart, creating a gaping gorge for the


bridges to stretch. A bucket was hung from each bridge, and students filled it with 16.9-ounce bottles of water, one at a time. The best bridge would be the one that could hold the most bottles.


bridge continued on B3


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