News Bullets, back at it Monday;

It's a short week for most people out there, so enjoy it. As we know, Thursday is Thanksgiving, where we mark how thankful we are by stuffing our faces with enough food to feed a family of eight for a week.

Another rash of suicides on the Metro. Over the weekend a woman was killed at the Brookland station when she jumped in front of a train. This follows a death a week earlier at McPhereson Square. This year has seen a record number of suicides by Metro, and the transit agency had been in talks to help train front-line employees to intervene. The Examiner had the big scare headline this morning, but the article does have some interesting information.

*gasp* a new Michelle Rhee controversy! This time we've also got a sex scandal and the Obama Administration. It's a gross sex scandal, to be fair. I haven't even begun to research all of this, but it looks like Rhee went to bat for her (now) fiance when he was accused of sexual misconduct. DCist had a good round-up of the hubub this weekend, and Loose Lips had some details as well.

Student seriously wounded in fight at charter school in Northeast. A 17-year-old student was stabbed and seriously wounded Friday afternoon at the Young America Works Public Charter School in Northeast. MPD has a suspect in custody, who is also a student at the charter school near the D.C.-Maryland line, in the Riggs Park neighborhood.

Another safety problem for Metro, this time on the Silver Line. As construction on Metro's Silver Line continues, questions have been raised about safety. A 32-year-old pylon is at the focus of a Federal Transit Administration investigation. The foundation for a future bridge was laid decades ago, and the contractor working on the Dulles rail extension has resisted conducting structural testing.

At issue is whether enough testing has been done on the pilings within the pier foundations. Until federal officials intervened, Dulles Transit Partners, the contractor building the first 11.7 miles of the $5.2 billion, 23-mile Silver Line, resisted testing most of the foundations, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post through Freedom of Information Act requests and interviews.

We've got a lot of buck passing between the FTA, the construction firm, DOT and the airport authority, so it'll be interesting to see how this all plays out.

Who will evaluate the evaluators? The Post has an interesting look at Michelle Rhee's new teacher evaluation program, dubbed IMPACT. An experienced teacher gives his thoughts on the system, and why it seems inappropriate for those teaching middle or high school. Reading this piece does make it seem as though Rhee's new system is a bit absurd. If anything, it goes to demonstrate that any sort of rigid "points" system will generally fail to properly evaluate anything in the real world.

Get ready for Fenty's birthday bash. Mike DeBonis has some of the details of the ridiculous affair that will play out on December 5. Fenty is turning 39, and coincidentally also running for re-election for Mayor of the District of Columbia. The party will be held in a giant empty mansion built on land intended to house a mayoral mansion. I, for one, am glad that there is not a mayoral mansion.