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KLMNO THE RELIABLE SOURCE Roxanne Roberts and Amy Argetsinger
THIS JUST IN . . . Attention, L.A. drivers! Lindsay Lohan is back behind the wheel. Fresh from her 23-day stint in rehab, the actress/singer/insurance risk dropped into the Santa Monica DMV to get her driver’s license reinstated, reports People. Later that afternoon, she was spotted picking up pals in a Maserati, sipping a can of Red Bull. Nathan Lee Parada, who was arrested Tuesday while trying to break into Paris Hilton’s L.A. home, has been charged with attempted residential burglary. Parada, 31, was picked up by police after he woke the famous-for-being-famous heiress by banging on her windows with
DANNY MOLOSHOK/REUTERS
Lindsay Lohan had her driver’s license reinstated after a trip to the Santa Monica DMV.
two large knives. If convicted, Parada faces up to six years in prison, according to the District Attorney’s office.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 27, 2010
Kevin Johnson will marry Michelle Rhee, but not in Sacramento.
MELINA MARA/THE WASHINGTON POST
Statuary Hall features 2 notable people per state. Dwight Eisenhower and Amelia Earhart are now Kansas’s representatives.
Wilder than Ingalls?
to be featured in the historic Statuary Hall.
A
Each state is allowed two statues of famous citizens to be honored in the halls of Congress. In 1999, the Kansas state legislature voted to replace the existing statues of 19th-century statesmen with aviation pioneer Earhart and 34th president Dwight D. Eisenhower. Ike’s statue was commissioned and placed in 2003, but Earhart’s home town of Atchison had trouble raising money, and the plans were shelved. Last fall, Lynette Long was touring the Capitol with her son and his girlfriend and noticed just how few women were depicted. Long, a psychologist with a private practice in Chevy Chase, was already upset about how few women are on stamps, coins and currency — and unhappy to see a mere nine women in Statuary Hall. “I said to the tour guide, ‘We’re going to
fter 11 years, Amelia Earhart is finally coming to the Capitol — making her only the 10th woman
and icons. “We send subliminal messages to young girls that say, you don’t matter,” she said. “Everybody cries about sexism that is blatant, but the sins of omission no one notices.” Long contacted the Atchison
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Earhart vanished over the South Pacific in 1937; she’ll be enshrined in the hall, replacing John James Ingalls, a 19th-century senator.
change this,’ ” Long told us. That fateful tour led to the
formation of Equal Visibility Everywhere (EVE), a nonpartisan organization dedicated to featuring more women on our nation’s symbols
Chamber of Commerce and discovered that the proper documents for Earhart’s statue had never been submitted to the Architect of the Capitol. After some lobbying, Kansas governor Mark Parkinson signed papers this month authorizing EVE to commission the design for Earhart’s statue and raise the $300,000 needed to complete the design. The statue — which must be made of bronze or marble — will stand 16 feet high, including the pedestal, and replace John James Ingalls, a Kansas senator in the 1870s and ’80s. Long estimated it will take three to four years to select a design and complete the statue; in the meanwhile, she’s also raising money for a 40-foot Earhart balloon for parades: “I think she’ll be popular.”
ROBERT DURELL FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
SURREAL ESTATE Buyer: Paradise Point Estates
LLC Price: $6.9 million Details: The “Winter White
House,” a cushy, five-bedroom, 4,900-square-foot beachfront Hawaiian estate rented by the Obama family for the past two
Christmas vacations, has been sold to a company managed by Glenn and Debra Weinberg of Owings Mills, Md. According to a Kailua Beach real estate agent, the Weinbergs, who’ve contributed plenty to Democratic candidates, have never met the first family but hope they continue the holiday visits.
GOT A TIP ? E-MAIL U S A T RELIABLESOURCE@WASHP OST . COM. FOR THE LA TEST SCOOPS, VISIT WA SHINGTONP OST . COM/RELIABLESOUR CE GOP veteran Ken Mehlman’s carefully planned outing ambinder from C1
who intuitively understands the nuts and bolts of the game. Having honed his art at ABC and the Hotline, the Harvard graduate has been raising his profile with his daily posts on Atlantic’s Web site and with a constant Twitter feed. “He is a complete newshound,” says Bob Cohn, editorial director for Atlantic Digital, noting that Ambinder keeps a police scanner in his office. “He’s a one- man band, out there breaking stories and then doing the analysis and commentary. . . . When I send an e-mail at midnight, a response comes back at 12:05.” Ambinder has also gone public with a sensitive subject, his long-running battle with obesity. “When I was fat, I avoided meeting people’s eyes. I didn’t want to subject them to my ugliness,” he wrote in the Atlantic last spring. With the help of stomach-shrinking bariatric surgery, he dropped from 235 pounds to 150. Ambinder freely admits that he identi-
fied with Mehlman’s struggle. “I’m a re- porter who happens to be gay, and I’ve been out for 14 years,” he says. “Ken has known that I’m gay. He may have felt I would be, if not sympathetic, that I would give him a fair airing, which I think I did.”
Ambinder also mentioned what he de- scribed as sheer coincidence, that he himself got married in the District last weekend to his longtime partner, a busi- ness consultant.
During the interview, Ambinder pressed Mehlman on the timing of his disclosure. The former party chairman conceded that had he come out earlier he could have tried to stop the Republicans
from pushing an anti-gay agenda. Asked about Mehlman’s contention
that he came to a conclusion about his sexuality fairly recently, Ambinder says others have been skeptical: “That is the question — do you believe him? He sim- ply was not ready to come to terms with his sexual identity. Or has he known he was gay for a long time and just wanted to wait until the price for him coming out wouldn’t be punitive? . . . That’s not an excuse for not manning up and expedit- ing the process.” In his piece, Ambinder said Mehlman told him in off-the-record discussions over the years of his efforts to defuse GOP attempts to attack same-sex mar- riage. In 2004, Bush’s campaign pushed a constitutional amendment to ban such marriages.
But Ambinder insists that while he
“had the same suspicions as everyone else,” the unmarried Mehlman never told Ambinder he was gay, even after a 2006 attempt by gay-rights activist Mike Rog- ers to out him. The people around Mehl- man, now an executive with the private- equity firm KKR, didn’t know either, says Ambinder. Mehlman now admits to hav- ing misled people about the subject. Had Ambinder tried to report on his own that Mehlman was gay, Cohn says, “that might have been a harder decision, but that wasn’t the question we were faced with. We didn’t out Ken Mehlman. Ken Mehlman was ready to talk about his sexuality.”
kurtzh@washpost.com
Mehlman and the same-sex marriage debate. A4
DOONESBURY by Garry Trudeau COURTESY OF ATLANTIC ED ANDRIESKI/ASSOCIATED PRESS
GETTING THE STORY:Marc Ambinder, left, says he identifies with Ken Mehlman, the former Republican Party chairman. “Ken has known that I’m gay. He may have felt I would . . . give him a fair airing, which I think I did.”
CUL DE SAC by Richard Thompson
UPDATE The undisclosed location for
the revamped Michelle Rhee-Kevin Johnson wedding won’t be in his home town. “It won’t happen in Sacramento,” Johnson said in a radio interview Wednesday. “We haven’t decided when and where.” An editorial in the Sacramento Bee gave Johnson thumbs-up for canceling the wedding dinner at the estate of wealthy developer Angelo Tsakopoulos: “No matter how careful the mayor was, he would almost certainly face decisions that could affect the business interests and bottom line of Tsakopoulos. . . . Johnson promised a new politics, but the reception looked a lot like business as usual at City Hall.”
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