The political wisdom of today declares that the middle class must be rescued, but it's the lower class that is the most endangered segment of America. The working poor are squeezed between pressure from illegal labor and a stagnant economy. The health of this segment of our citizenry is essential to the restoration and maintenance of our national health.
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Can most men share deep feelings in true fellowship? Can they maintain their manliness in the process?
Biography isn't policy. President Barack Obama's choice for secretary of defense, Chuck Hagel, former Nebraska Republican senator, has a resume most politicians can envy: a clean senatorial record, no ethical lapses and two Purple Hearts from a war many opposed and many more tried to avoid.
As the son of a woman, the husband of a woman and the father of daughters and granddaughters, I celebrate the record number of females who are now United States senators. However, I do see some differences in the way these and other women are treated, depending on their party, policies and beliefs.
No political party enjoys losing an election, but a healthy party reacts to defeat — after a suitable period of grieving — by trying to figure out what went wrong.
The civil rights movement was full of dynamic and evocative images. Today, even many of us born after its iconic moments were captured on film can describe Martin Luther King Jr.'s outstretched arm pointing a sea of people toward a future decades beyond the short span of his life, or German...
An old reporter often begins his daily routine by turning to the newspaper's obituary page with mild trepidation, fearing another friend has gone to that great newsroom in the sky. So it was this week in reading of the death in Baltimore, at only 62, of Richard Ben Cramer, arguably the best writer...
Before superstorm Sandy pounded the shores of the East Coast, it had already claimed its first American victims. With the storm still a day from landfall, the U.S. Coast Guard received a distress signal from the tall ship Bounty located approximately 90 miles off the cost of North Carolina.
America has a remarkably close relationship with its previous owner. It seems we no sooner threw off the yoke of George III than we started collecting mugs decorated with the images of royal wedding partners.
With Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his top advisers visiting Washington this week, huge questions about the future of the NATO mission there consume Afghan and American minds. How fast can we draw down our current total of 68,000 U.S. troops (and another 30,000 or so from other outside...
Last night, I presented a $1.3 billion operating budget proposal for Baltimore County Public Schools for fiscal 2014. Due to financial limitations, the proposed budget does not meet all of our needs, but it provides a good foundation related to our three budget priorities: managing continued...
It has become accepted economic wisdom that the only way to get control over America's looming budget deficits is to "reform entitlements."
As Washington politicians search for budget solutions, imagine if there were a magical revenue source that operated not unlike a national consumption tax that many conservatives prefer and would mitigate global warming to please liberals, all while helping repair America's infrastructure and...
At a historic meeting in Baltimore recently, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), the fisheries management body representing 15 states along the Eastern Seaboard, resolved to cap the harvest of menhaden at 20 percent less than the average landings of 2009-2011. On hand at the...
With all the moaning coming from the Tea Party Express and their loyalists in the House Republican Caucus, you would think conservatives had lost everything, including their virtue, in the fiscal cliff parlay with President Barack Obama because taxes are going up on the wealthy. However, if they...
The world of academia — the world of ivory towers, learned scholars, and ivy-covered walls — is a fraud. And I am a living fraud.
Education policy wasn't a significant issue in the 2012 presidential election, but it needs to be one in 2013. Americans are increasingly dissatisfied with public education, and no small wonder: studies continue to show that our schools, once the envy of the world, have fallen to the middle of the...
Only a few days into the new year, the Grand Old Party has a huge political hangover from the events that rang in the tidings of 2013.
By all accounts, President Barack Obama won the fiscal cliff showdown. Why anyone would take much pride in this kind of "win" is beyond me. It's a bit like being the least filthy toddler in the mud pit.
The news that the Central Intelligence Agency had been running a fake vaccination program in Pakistan first surfaced in 2011 and quickly ignited fears that the covert operation could compromise the global campaign to eradicate polio. Late last month, a handful of vaccine workers, including a teenage...
It wasn't a surprise to learn that famous-for-being-famous Kim Kardashian was pregnant by boyfriend of five months Kanye West. Celebs regularly put the baby carriage before marriage, and she is just the latest.
This just in: Maryland civil legal service programs not only benefit the poor but also save the state millions per year. Legal assistance to low-income Marylanders is a significant economic boost to the state and benefits more than just those receiving aid, according to a report just released by the...
When I heard the news that Ray Lewis was retiring at the end of this season, I cried. Ray Lewis has an emotional hold on this community, state, and fan base — and on my family. He has been, for 17 years, a leader, an inspiration, a sign of hope. A constant.
Author's disclaimer: Today's piece may cause my center/right readers severe irritability, sleeplessness, and a strong desire to limit your cable television options to Fox. The antidote may not arrive until the midterm elections of 2014.
"Everybody got a pistol. This must really please the NRA" -- from "Gun" by Gil Scott-Heron
Ever wonder what life in the United States would be like without a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency? The people of China have gotten a whiff of what happens when there are minimal pollution controls, and they are choking on it.
State and federal politicians have been scrambling for the last few weeks to react to the school shootings in Newtown, Conn., with governors, congressmen and the president exploring new laws that might have prevented that tragic massacre. But today, Gov. Martin O'Malley announced the outlines of a...
In generations past, the world's oldest profession was a tawdry trade practiced mostly in the shadows of unlit street corners and darkened alleys. Today, vulnerable young women and girls are still being tricked or forced into selling their bodies to strangers by predatory and amoral pimps who...
Whether it's the indelible horror of the massacre at Newtown, Conn., or the tone-deaf response of the National Rifle Association and its allies who have shown themselves so hysterical and paranoid on the subject of gun rights, the public's hunger for action on gun violence shows little sign of...
Baltimore City health officials are right to view the over-concentration of liquor stores in poor and predominantly African-American neighborhoods as a threat to public well-being. They point to academic research showing statistically significant increases in violent crime in communities with an...
Dallas Dance has been superintendent of Baltimore County Public Schools for less than half an academic year, but he is proving himself a quick study. The $1.3 billion budget he has proposed for the next fiscal year strikes the kind of balance that county leaders generally love best: progress with...
Thousands of military jobs have opened up to women in recent years, but not those in the front-line combat units. That may soon change, however, as a result of a lawsuit brought late last year by four women veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, including Staff Sgt. Jennifer Hunt of...
The General Assembly returned to Annapolis today, and the biggest idea floating around comes from across the Potomac. With the details of Gov. Martin O'Malley's agenda a mystery for the time being, lawmakers in Maryland's capital find themselves confronted by a bold, if not altogether sound, idea...
Baltimore City Solicitor George Nilson appears to have shot down a proposal to require businesses that receive large city contracts or tax breaks from City Hall to hire local residents for 51 percent of new jobs they create. Last week, Mr. Nilson said the bill could violate a section of the U.S....
Periodically, one comes across a jaw-dropping example of lawsuit abuse. The Good Samaritan gets sued for preventing a suicide, the robber takes the store clerk to court for fighting back, the B-list starlet sues because nobody watched her sex tape (apocryphal perhaps, but bound to happen someday).
The replacement of all of Baltimore's speed cameras and the police department's decision to beef up the review process for the tickets they generate are welcome signs that Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's administration is taking seriously the need to correct problems with the system. Those steps...
State officials were right last week to postpone approval of a Department of Juvenile Services contract to increase the capacity of the privately owned Silver Oak Academy juvenile residential treatment facility in Carroll County. The department wants to double the number of beds there, from 48 to...
Whether Chuck Hagel and John Brennan are the ideal men to lead the Pentagon and CIA remains to be seen. We need the exercise of a through vetting in Senate confirmation hearings, and certainly an examination of the nominees' past statements and actions is warranted. But the objections raised about...
