How is it that D.C., notoriously the most “liberal” city in the country, can be so unliberal when it comes to personal freedoms?

What if courageous (or “cocky,” as her arresting officer said) Debra Bolton hadn’t fought back? And won?

The one-glass-of-wine attorney, 45, deserves every second of her prescribed 15 minutes of fame, even though it took her five months and who knows how many thousands of dollars to beat her ludicrous, outrageous drunk-driving arrest, meted out under “no tolerance” policies now termed “absurd.”

Driving under the influence — it’s one of those unfair life-wreckers. Is there a worse charge? Perhaps molestation or wife beating. But is there a charge that a full 80 percent of the urban population is guilty of that bears a greater social and financial cost?

A DUI can certainly wreck a political career. It can utterly change a divorce situation. It can ruin a job application, destroy an insurance record. Derail an athletic career. It is a permanent blot, a brand, a shaming. All for taking a couple of drinks and then sliding behind the wheel.

But in this city, the city that always goes too far, Bolton had the nerve to stand up. She fought against a law that says any alcohol in the bloodstream is too much, in spite of the legal limit, which she did not exceed.

The city that always goes too far is littered with absurd laws. Too far is a law that prevents citizens from owning guns, when every hoodlum in Southeast owns and uses one. Too far when it is a violation to build a fence, install a vinyl window, even burn leaves without a permit. Too far when D.C. requires a regulation to be translated into any foreign language that 500 or more here speak. Too far when the manufacturers are held liable for the damage their semiautomatic weapons do in the hands of criminals. And so on, through anti-smoking regulations, photo speeding traps, the endless paperwork required to start a business, license a car, buy a house, go to a public-health clinic.

Bolton had the nerve. The City Council scurried to undo “zero tolerance” with emergency legislation.

But what about those thousands of others who simply knuckled under? Like me? I was threatened with DUI while taking a son to a Union Station train a few years back during the holiday season. I was, admittedly, drunk as a hoot owl. But after being stuffed and cuffed, I was told that by going to traffic school I could avoid the DUI on my driving record. Of course I paid the $400; of course I went. How many others, far soberer than I, did the same to avoid the scarlet letters DUI on their driving records.

And what are City Council and Linda Cropp (D), the leading mayoral candidate, going to do about the past DUI absurdities?

But it wasn’t hot last week at junior high school — he was getting the heat from upset questioners and panelists and Washington Post deputy managing editor and moderator Milton Coleman as Bobb tried valiantly to prove that the new National Capital Medical Center should be built at the site of defunct D.C. General Hospital.

At the heart of the fire and the rancor are a couple of issues: First, the five-and-a-half-year, $400 million project sounds way too expensive and politically too far off. Second, the 50-50 partner, Howard University, already subsidized by the U.S. Treasury at close to $40 million annually, seems not up to the job.

Bobb revealed that Howard doesn’t have a final financial plan. That the Howard board of trustees hasn’t yet made decisions. That it is already known that the new hospital will lose money from the start. That it is very probable that D.C. taxpayers will be left holding the bag. That Howard will essentially gut its present university hospital at Georgia Avenue and shift important resources to the new one.

Bobb also admitted that the new complex would crush financially troubled Greater Southeast Medical Center.

Bobb’s lone ally during last Wednesday’s forum, held by Ward 6 Democrats at Hine Junior High School, was former D.C. General Hospital medical director Dr. Robin Newton, a young woman who clearly sees an important post waiting for her at the new facility.

The other panelists — Sharon Baskerville, executive director of the D.C. Primary Care Association, and Bob Malson, president of the D.C. Hospital Association — said a giant new hospital was not the best use of city funds, if improving healthcare for the average citizen is the aim.

Said forum hostess Councilwoman Sharon Ambrose (D-Ward 6) as Bobb sweltered, “It’s his baby.” And silently watching in the front row, Council Health Committee Chairman David Catania (I-At large) refused to delay a council hearing on the hospital plan to give Howard officials more time to make decisions. “It’s time to put up or shut up,” he said.

DRESS UP RFK
Keeping the fans coming to the Nats

City Council Chairwoman Linda Cropp (D) may flip and flop on the baseball-finance issue, but Tom Boswell, The Washington Post’s bard of baseball, has a point: Why not dress up RFK?

The arguments for the new $400 million stadium are clear and compelling: everybody but the taxpayers will make a lot of money. The backers state this axiom in the rawest terms, such as “there is less development potential around RFK.” Than the development potential of Buzzard Point?

Ms. Cropp wanted a council review of money and baseball, but it’s clear that important telephone calls at the end of last week stiffened her resolve to let the new stadium happen. Perhaps there were gentle threats to her mayoral hopes; she has never been a strong backer of the new stadium. Now, apparently, she is. Perhaps.

Boswell laid out, in his Oct. 14 column, a simple, cheap plan to turn RFK into a baseball fan’s dream (except for the “obscene modern luxury boxes” he and others think are necessary.) But the bard didn’t take the next logical step: Why not just build the obscene boxes above, around or over the present structure? Why not build another ring of structure around RFK’s oval and hang the ornaments from it?

Why not morph RFK into a modern stadium and save the $200 million?

Refitting RFK — which as Boswell points out is simply creating visual theater there — is essential to keep the fans coming at over 30,000 per game, necessary to make Nationals baseball financially viable.

There are plenty of reasons to do this — such as the cost of land (the city already controls RFK and all the parking lots around), the need for caution about more borrowing at the end of a big building boom when the city is near its credit limit, the possibility that inflation from doubled gas prices will keep those suburbanites and their big SUVs watching television. Not to mention the near certainty of many months if not years of litigation once the lawyers square off on “eminent domain” and fight over the land.

Keeping the fans by giving them more visual excitement is Boswell’s main point, and it’s a good one. It will take two years to build the new stadium, and during that time a lot can and will happen. One thing that will happen is a new mayor will be elected. If it’s Adrian Fenty (D-Ward 4), it will be a man who thinks the money is better spent on schools. If it’s Cropp (D), it will be a woman who is unconvinced that the financing plan is good for the city.

• Turn down that heat. D.C.’s Public Service Commission predicts the price of gas heat — 65 cents per therm last March — will go above $1.10 per therm this month, and suggests residents lower water-heater settings to 120 degrees, install setback thermostats, add storm windows, keep house temperature at 68, lower at night etc. ...

• Bright idea: Washington Business Journal, soliciting ideas for the moribund D.C. City Museum at lovely Carnegie Library, 6th Street and Massachusetts Ave. N.W. My pick: Shane Green (CEO of the Map Network) suggests turning it into a Tavern on the Green-style pub and meeting place for D.C. Convention Center goers. Both unusual and logical. ...

• Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) were the headliners (see picture) at gloriously restored Thurgood Marshall Academy at 2427 Martin Luther King Ave. S.E. last Wednesday. The two lawmakers got a $1 million federal grant and then helped raise $13.5 million more to redo old Nichols Avenue School’s 1901 building and make it into the law- and politics-oriented school for 226 students who celebrated their new home. ...

• Barry/Evans Watch: Marion Barry (D), the former mayor and current councilman for Ward 8, can be excused for smiling as scandal envelops squeaky-clean council colleague Jack Evans (D-Ward 2), who apparently masked travel favors given to toothsome blonde Georgetown art-gallery owner (and good friend) Marsha Ralls. It couldn’t happen at a better time for Barry, who seems to have forgotten to pay D.C. income taxes for six years. ...

• Huge player Ron Cohen plunked down $55 million for an entire city block east of the proposed baseball stadium site at Half and K streets S.E. this month. The Maryland developer sees a $300 million, four-building project there — whether or not the baseball deal goes through as planned.