Blog updates

Home maintenance [The Real Estate Wonk]

2009-07-09T18:43:49-07:00

One of the joys of being a homeowner is replacing appliances when they break. Thus I spent last night researching my buying options after coming home to discover that my dryer was -- technically speaking -- no longer a dryer but rather a sort of amusement-park ride for clothes. (In wet, out wet, despite great tumbling action in between.)

It seemed the right time to replace the washer as well -- both washer and dryer are 17 years old, so they're elderly as appliances go. Total bill: $931.

This got me musing about the difficulty deciding when to replace and/or upgrade things. Get a new carpet, for instance, and you might have to repeat the purchase when it's time to sell (can you tell I own cats?). But if you hold off getting new things with the idea that you'll do it when you're leaving, you'll never get to enjoy them. And if you wait until things break, well -- you could end up with a pile of wet laundry.

How have you homeowners out there dealt with this now vs. later dilemma? What sorts of things have you replaced and why?

And you buyers out there: What deferred maintenance issues really bug you in homes for sale?

Local condo law blog launched [The Real Estate Wonk]

2009-07-09T18:37:41-07:00

Here's something to check out if you're a condo owner: Raymond D. Burke, a Baltimore attorney with law firm Ober Kaler, has started blogging about condo issues at Maryland Condo Law Blog. So far he's weighed in on mold, warranties and maintenance.

Burke specializes in construction defect cases.

Other condo-law attorneys see their field as a ripe one for blogging, too. There's a Northwest Condo & HOA Law Blog, for instance, and an Ontario Condo Law Blog.

Snowballs: A hot topic 'round here [Random Rodricks]

2009-07-09T18:21:47-07:00

Well, the second hour of Midday on Thursday was all about snowballs, the Baltimore-area summertime treat. Our guest, Henry Hong, the Food Nerd, wrote a piece about snowballs in the City Paper, and he came into WYPR's Studio A to compare notes with our listeners. We were flooded with calls and e-mails on the subject. I didn't have time to read all of them on the air, so here's a sampling:

I am a die-hard snowball fan–especially when it's hot. (I've been known to skip dinner and just have the snowball). My favorite is a "humdinger" - a scoop of vanilla ice cream in the bottom, chocolate snowball, topped off with extra marshmallow. The only place I have found near me that even sells sort of traditional snowballs is the Chinese take-out on Route 13. I haven't had the guts to try them - instead I have a mini-snowball maker I bought from Target and I make my own...not quite the same but still pretty good!
-- Liz in Salisbury
It's great to know the history of our own snowballs in Baltimore. When I was a child, my mother used an ice crusher to try to make her own and put marshmallow creme on top of it. Then she would go to the restaurant supply stores and buy the snowball syrups. My favorite was always egg custard with marshmallow in that Styrofoam cup!
-- John in Baltimore
Sorry. From Hagerstown (Washington County) -- No Snowball stands or lemon sticks. Or Smith Island Cake for that matter.
-- Joseph
I used have a small corner store in Fells Point/Canton. One of the bestsellers for me was marshmallow on the bottom, egg custard flavor, marshmallow on top and sometimes a shot of chocolate. In Indonesia, one of their favorite deserts is a bowl of ice, with sugared, chopped tomatoes.
-- Linda
I had the best snow cones ever in Tampico, Mexico in the summer of 1969. Guys would ride around on bicycles with aluminum coolers tied to the handlebars. They carried a wood plane to shave the ice and would put crushed fruit with syrup on top. They cost pennies and were terrific!
-- Mike in Shepherdstown, W.Va.
Although I'm not from here, when I was a kid we visited Baltimore grandparents and loved to get snowballs. I am sure that in my childhood there was no such thing as Styrofoam cups.
-- June
We go to Waldo's Snowballs in the Harford Mall parking lot. I always get "Rainbow." Kids always get chocolate with peanut butter sauce (we call that flavor "the loaded diaper"). As far as I know, peanut butter is new. Bad thing about peanut butter is that it actually adds some nutritional value to otherwise totally empty calories.
-- Fritz
Hi Dan and Henry,
I have to jump in and tell you that the real chunkier snowballs are true Baltimore, not shaved ice! FYI...the Chestnut Ridge Volunteer Fire company runs a unique snowball stand all summer in that it is staffed completely by volunteers with 100% of the profits going to the station and protecting the community. The stand is a meeting place for the neighborhood and we have customers that come especially for our old fashioned snowballs year after year, which we sell with marshmallow and ice cream if you want...the best! The prices are incredibly reasonable with a small at only $1.25 (I think). Many folks are interested in the firehouse when they come up for a snowball, so we are always happy to have a firefighter/member give you a tour of our equipment and firehouse if you'd like. The kids love it. So snowballs are helping our community!
-- Hillary
Forty years ago when I was a kid, you could only get a snowball from a truck ringing a bell. You got a paper cup, flat wooden spoon, and crushed ice–not shaved. Shaved ice was, and is, a snow cone. Shaved ice was usually at a festival.
-- John

We also got into lemon sticks, like the ones sold at the Flowermart each year. I wondered where you get those porous peppermint sticks used to make them. (I made them once a few years ago for visiting relatives, who loved them, but I could not quite remember where I got the sticks.)

Jeppi Nut carries the Piedmont Candy Company Peppermint sticks in large tubs. They are a little more porous than the original lemon peppermint sticks, but will do in a pinch.
-- Tom in Timonium-
Looking at the website for Piedmont Candy in NC that your earlier caller mentioned, they are selling the same sticks that Jeppi carries in Timonium, MD. We've had some success with them, though they don't seem to be quite the same as what I used to get at the Hopkins Fair and other summer festivals.
-- Ben
Sometimes you can find the King Leo brand peppermint sticks at Williams-Sonoma in Cross Keys.
-- Meg
Eddie's usually has little baggies of the right peppermint sticks by the cash registers.
-- Jill in Roland Park--
I'm pretty sure they have lemon sticks in Lexington Market, in the back, just inside from the peanut guy. As far as international ice treat, Malaysia as an amazing treat called chendol, and another one called ice chachang. And the best of all is found in the Philippines in a truly amazing dish called halo-halo.
-- Ellen
When I was a student at Roland Park Country School from 1960 to 1973, lemon sticks were a very popular item at our annual Christmas Fair. And i think McDonogh had them at their Christmas Bazaar too.
-- Debbie
I have been able to get peppermint sticks at the Amish Market in Annapolis Harbor Center on Solomons Island Rd. They are suitably porous, but only about 3" long apiece. Just be advised that the Amish Market is only open on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. Regarding marshmallow–not on my snowball!
-- Barb
I'm almost positive that you can get the halved lemon with a peppermint stick at SNOASIS (or OASIS maybe?) lemonade stands. there is one in the Harborplace shopping center at the Inner Harbor. When i was a little kid i ran a snowball stand outside of my house in Little Italy for several summers, until some anonymous jerk called the cops on me for not having a permit. Anyhow, as far as crushed ice vs. shaved ice goes... when we're talking Baltimore sno-balls, you are enjoying CRUSHED ice. Shaved ice is what you would get at the Boardwalk in Ocean City. The Boardwalk stands use an actual block of ice and a planer to shave it. the snowball stand that i operated used a tall metal machine, that you would top-load cubed ice into. the ice would drop into a tunnel which had rotating grinders and blades which would crush the ice and shoot it into a cup. . . . My rule of thumb is this: if it's crunchy, it's crushed ice. If it melts in your mouth, it's shaved ice. Oh, and best snowball flavor ever: egg custard with vanilla ice cream on the bottom and marshmallow on the top.
-- Justin in Little Italy
Graul's Market sets up a display at the start of each summer with lemons and King Leo peppermint sticks. Good, but they dissolve a little too readily. Still looking for the perfect stick. Will try Piedmont.
-- Christy in Annapolis
I was lucky to have inherited a commercial Sno-master machine. I make snowballs lots during the summer for kids and adults alike. One of our favorites is ice, vanilla ice cream and then more ice topped with chocolate syrup. Drop by any time for one.
-- Stephie
After visiting in Costa Rica a number of years ago, we brought home one of the beautifully decorated carts that were pushed through the streets by young men hawking the snow cones. Mine is a bright blue background with multicolored flower designs special to Costa Rica. There were slots for the bottles of flavoring and the main part of the cart held the ice. It came with a small table, not unlike our TV tables, where the cones were placed ready for purchase. It is a beautiful piece of artwork in my home.
-- Patricia in Annapolis
Ice cream on the bottom, vanilla flavor, marshmallow on top!
-- John
My experience in snowball-eating goes back to early '50's in East Baltimore. People would make the snowballs in their homes 5 cents made with a hand-held shaver ran across a block of ice. The shavings were not as fine as the ice in a snow cone. The snowball was served in a paper boat shaped container. The handheld shaver was shaped like a computer mouse.
-- Inexplicably anonymous
Dear Dan and Henry:
My blog writes about all things sweet in Baltimore, from cakes and pies to cookies, ice cream, and...SNOWBALLS! And by coincidence today I have a posting about Baltimore snowballs. I've also started a photo-sharing group on Flickr where people can post their photos relating to the Baltimore snowball; if any of your listeners would like to join, just go to Flickr.com and enter the search term "Baltimore snowball" under "groups," and they'll be directed to the spot. To see today's posting about the Baltimore snowball on my blog, go to: www.bmoresweet.blogspot.com. I welcome everyone's comments and shared experiences about this great summertime Baltimore tradition!
www.bmoresweet.blogspot.com
B More Sweet, all things sweet in Baltimore

What do you think of this? [B'More Green]

2009-07-09T14:24:13-07:00

Last night, with the help of a high-pressure water sprayer, Domino’s and GreenGraffiti went on an overnight mission, "blasting" 220 Domino's Pizza logos onto sidewalks in Los Angeles, Philadelphia and New York City. GreenGraffiti cleans part of the sidewalk and leaves the ads behind. Domino’s is one of the first companies to launch this kind of ad campaign – even though it is technically environmentally-friendly, it could also prove to be a little controversial. (The company says that for each liter it uses for ads it invests in a water harvesting project that provides one liter of clean drinking water in the semi-arid region of northeastern Brazil.) In an effort to entice consumers, Domino’s is offering a $15 gift card to the first 250 people to email pr@dominos.com and submit a photo of them with a GreenGraffiti sidewalk Domino’s logo. Of course, this does not yet apply to us Baltimoreans, but it could at some point in the future. Would you be OK with Domino’s logos on Charm City sidewalks? Read more here. (Image courtesy of Domino's and Green Graffiti)

Baltimore drivers rank 2nd from worst -- out of 193 [Getting There]

2009-07-09T13:44:01-07:00

Allstate's ranking of drivers in 193 metropolitan areas puts Baltimore motorists as second from worst -- behind only Washington.

The insurance giant found that Baltimore drivers had an 80 percent greater likelihood of ending up in a collision than the typical American driver in the study. Washington's drivers had an 95 percent greater likelihood.

In No. 1 Sioux Falls, S.D., drivers were 26 percent less likely to be in an accident than the the typical driver.

In Sioux Falls, drivers went an average of 13.5 years between collisions. In Baltimore, the average was 5.6 years; in Washington, 5.1 years. For Baltimore, that represents a significantly worse performance than in 2005, when the typical Baltimore driver could expect to go 6.5 years between collisions.

Pondering Lyme disease [Random Rodricks]

2009-07-09T13:33:14-07:00

A reader/listener from East Hampton, Long Island, who says he (or she) had Lyme disease in the mid-1980s, sent along these thoughts:

Four somewhat interrelated factors may have coalesced to make Lyme increase in the past two decades:
1. The expansion of second homes into formerly isolated rural areas.
2. A large spike in the deer population as food from gardening has increased, while hunting has diminished.
3. A concomitant increase in field mice populations, which, like deer, are an essential vector for the deer tick.
4. The compassionate removal of feral "house cats" from the wild. These cats are capable of catching and eating 100 field mice per day, which ordinarily would keep the mouse and tick populations down.
Each one of these human-centered actions was considered benign in itself; but taken together they may have caused an epidemic.
I don't know whether scientists have studied this possibility, but the outbreak of hysteria culminating in the Salem witch trials may well have been modulated by the Lyme spirochete, with its many attendant mysterious physical and mental symptoms, as settlers began clearing land in New England in the 1600s.

No one is headed to Hollywood, but maybe someone will get paid [Maryland Politics]

2009-07-09T13:16:33-07:00

No one’s acting career will be launched by Comptroller Peter Franchot’s latest YouTube ad, but it might reconnect some Marylanders with their long-lost property. The ad is a parody of the GEICO insurance adds featuring a wad of cash and Groucho Marx glasses. Franchot’s version is intended to promote the agency’s unclaimed property program. Franchot’s latest video ad on the much-trafficked Web site debuted Thursday before a group of residents at Charlestown Retirement Community in Catonsville. Just some captive elderly viewers and no red carpet or paparazzi — in keeping with the low-budget, viral nature of the ads. According to the comptroller’s office, Maryland Public Television produced the 3-minute, 42-second spot at no charge. The actors include state Sen. John C. Astle, an Anne Arundel County Democrat; the official Annapolis Town Crier, Squire Frederick; and Franchot aide Joseph Shapiro. And, of course, Franchot himself makes an appearance. Franchot comes on screen at the end (like a candidate in a political ad) to lay out the stakes: “Every year my office gets unclaimed property from bank accounts and from safety deposit boxes. When property isn’t claimed for three years, it’s turned over to the state of Maryland. And we try to reunite it with its rightful owners.” A government official trying to reunite residents with their money? Novel concept. The agency has records on about 787,000 accounts worth more than $795 million. To see if any of its is yours, go to www.marylandtaxes.com or www.missingmoney.com. Oh, and to see the ad, click here. NOTE: Michael D. Golden of Maryland Public Television called to say that his outfit produced the spot for Franchot's office in exchange for graphic design services.

Senator, you had your turn; now the E-ZPass facts [Getting There]

2009-07-09T12:27:29-07:00

Last week Getting There published a letter from Sen. E. J. Pipkin on the subject of the Maryland Transportation Authority's recently imposed E-ZPass fees and other revenue-raising measures. We gave the senator a few days to air his views unmolested while we checked some facts. The grace period is now over. Here's his letter, with our take in italics:

FATTENING THE CASH COW – MAKING BAY BRIDGE E-Z PASS USERS PAY MORE

Senator, I hate to break it to you, but a large part of your district hardly ever uses the Bay Bridge. But your constituents in Cecil County, for instance, are very much affected by what happens on the Hatem Bridge and Kennedy Highway, both also operated by the Maryland Transportation Authority. You shouldn't make them feel left out.

Dear Sir,

In January, when the MdTA announced that it would impose higher fees and new costs on Bay Bridge commuters who use E-ZPass customers, I voiced my objections. Starved as the State is for revenue, I did not really expect the State to retreat from grabbing $60 million from Marylanders. In this instance, it would be Marylanders who use the Bay Bridge and other state toll facilities.

The Bay Bridge has always been a cash cow for the MdTA’s highway projects. The Bridge raises over $30 million in toll revenue each year and costs less than $8 to operate.

Ahem. I'm going to assume you meant $8 million. Even if you did, you're passing along bad information. I checked with MdTA spokeswoman Cheryl Sparks and got the accurate figures. Here's what she had to say:

"The state senator’s statement asserts that the Bay Bridge is fully paid for and generates annual net operating income. The policy of the Maryland Transportation Authority is to pool revenues from all facilities, to assure that every facility is properly maintained. The Authority staff has analyzed all costs for financing the Bay Bridge, including bridge maintenance, operations, and capital expenditures, as well as interest on debt service, for both spans since their construction. This analysis required certain estimates and some assumptions. When all these costs are considered, the Bay Bridge is not completely paid for. Additionally, the Authority issued debt in 2004 and 2008, a portion of which helps finance $200 million Bay Bridge preservation projects. Interest on this debt service will be paid until at least the year 2042.

The annual revenue and expenses indicated by the state senator are not accurate. For example, in FY 2008 revenues were $33.5 million, operating & maintenance expenses were approximately $14.0 million, capital expenditures were $20.2 million, and debt service interest was $2.3 million.

On July 1, the new fees and costs became effective. E-ZPass users will now have to pay for transponders, more for toll violations and a new charge of $1.50 a month to

cover some of the costs of processing the program. According to then-Secretary of Transportation, John Porcari, the new charges would help recover costs and maintenance of the state’s toll facilities. Pocari said that he was taking this action “reluctantly” and called it a “last resort.”

As I see it, the State of Maryland has never shied away from bleeding its citizens with new and inventive taxes and fees. That it does so, in this faltering economy, is unconscionable.

The cost of a Bay Bridge round trip hasn't changed since the 1970s. The state's gas tax hasn't gone up since the early 1990s. Some tolls on passenger vehicles went up under the previous governor -- largely to help pay for projects such as the Inter-county Connector and express toll lanes on Interstate 95. The current administration stuck it to truckers because it was too shy to impose a more broad-based toll increase.

Maryland, like all other states, has been pushing people to use electronic toll collections, which expedite the flow of traffic. Making the cost of using electronic toll collections higher and adding fees makes no sense. It is counter-productive. Those higher costs and that additional monthly $1.50 fee could push people and commercial users away from electronic toll collections. Let’s face it, toll facility users could very well decide to not to use E-ZPass.

They could. And if they're among the 72,000 subscribers who didn't use the passes once during the course of a year, they darn well should. How does it help the flow of traffic to subsidize drivers who aren't even on the roads you want to de-congest? And how exactly has Maryland "pushed" people to use E-ZPass? By taking money out of the pockets of cash toll-payers and handing them free transponders. By setting up accounts for them and shouldering the costs whether they pay tolls or not. Senator, that's socialism.

It is the worst type of folly for government to grab the money and run without giving significant weight to negative unintended consequences. In its eagerness to grab the $60 million, the State could be stymieing or sabotaging Maryland’s transportation progress. The purpose of E-ZPass is to alleviate traffic congestion. Bay Bridge traffic increases between 2% and 3% each year. If the higher cost of using E-ZPass reduces the number of users, Maryland will have taken an unfortunate step backward from transportation progress.

So you think the authority should make do without $60 million in revenue? Where do you want them to start deferring maintenance? The Bay Bridge? The Cecil County part of the Kennedy Highway? How about keeping the old deck on the Hatem Bridge? Wouldn't any of those options sabotage a little progress? And really, senator, how many frequent E-ZPass users are going to give up that convenience over a matter of $1.50 a month? Maybe enough to cause a traffic jam at the Bellevue-Oxford ferry.

Sincerely,
E.J. Pipkin

Your sincerity, senator, is never in doubt.

Sincerely,

Michael Dresser

Recycle your shoes at Holabird Sports, Comfort One [B'More Green]

2009-07-09T12:01:09-07:00

I did a post a little while back about donating your shoes for a good cause, instead of throwing them away. From the response, I thought it was worth letting everyone know that there's a drive going on now.

Holibird Sports, Comfort One Shoes and Finish Line are all participating in a Souls4Souls event to collect gently used shoes and donations. The shoes will go to victims of natural disasters and those living in extreme poverty.

The group estimates that some 1.5 billion unused shoes are just sitting in people's closets.

So, dig them out and get to Holabird at 9220 Pulaski Highway, or at the area Comfort One Shoes or Finish Line shops. Here's a list of all area places to drop off shoes.

Smith as Ehrlich blocker [Maryland Politics]

2009-07-09T11:54:16-07:00

Democratic Baltimore County Executive James T. Smith Jr. said he changed his mind about running for comptroller because he didn’t think the statewide job would be a good fit for him. The sudden nature of announcement has political types guessing about his future, and about how he might spend his more than $1 million bankroll. Among those who should keep an eye on the money: former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., a Baltimore County native who is waiting on the sidelines, possibly contemplating his best route for a return to politics. Speculation is building about what position Ehrlich will run for, if any, in 2010. While he'd instantly be the most viable Republican in any race he decides to enter, the former congressman and Arbutus native is nothing if not a pragmatist. He doesn't get into races he doesn't think he can win. Some believe Ehrlich is pondering a run for comptroller, a job that would put him back in Annapolis and allow him to serve as a thorn in the side of his arch-rival, Gov. Martin O'Malley. That's a role that was perfected by Ehrlich's ally and role model, former Gov. William Donald Schaefer, who ended his career as the irascible comptroller and all-around gadfly. Political columnist Blair Lee IV recently wrote that Ehrlich's chances of getting into the comptroller's race are 50-50. Others wonder whether Ehrlich might be interested in becoming Baltimore County executive, the job Smith now holds but is leaving because of term limits. A clear front-runner has not yet emerged, and Ehrlich, with his name recognition and broad base in the county, would be a more-than-viable contender. But in both scenarios, Smith's recent decision comes into play. Smith and Ehrlich don't get along. The county executive was miffed that Ehrlich never returned phone calls when he was governor and didn't include him in decisions. It was no surprise that when the 2006 election rolled around, Smith threw all his support -- as well as money and his campaign apparatus -- behind O'Malley, a longtime ally. In 2002, Ehrlich carried Baltimore County by 65,000 votes en route to a victory over Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, basically his margin of victory statewide. In 2006, Smith helped keep the margin down to about 8,400 votes. Ehrlich still carried the county, but by nowhere near enough to carry the state. Smith is now poised to deny Ehrlich more victories. By bowing out of the comptroller race, Smith helps clear the way for incumbent Peter Franchot, a fellow Democrat, to retain the seat. A Democratic primary between Smith and Franchot would have been a bruising affair, leaving the victor (the incumbent, most likely) battered by negative advertisements and a lot poorer. If Ehrlich enters the race, he'll now face a stronger, better-funded incumbent -- and he knows how unlikely it is that incumbents lose, especially in such a Democratic state. If Ehrlich decides to make a play for the Baltimore County executive seat (a job he has never really indicated he wants), Smith could deploy his formidable war chest -- he has raised over $1 million in donations that he now doesn’t seem to need -- to help the strongest Democrat vying for the county executive job. There's no doubt he would take great pleasure in once again helping orchestrate an Ehrlich defeat. So as Ehrlich ponders his next move, he needs to ask himself not just, "Can I win?" There's another question that's nearly as important: "What will Jim do?" -- with David Nitkin

MTA chief does the right thing [Getting There]

2009-07-09T11:49:47-07:00

Paul J. Wiedefeld had a difficult decision to make Wednesday. The Maryland Transit Administration chief took about a half hour to think it over and then he did the right thing.

Confronted with the reality that the family of the two boys killed in Sunday's accident had lost confidence in the the MTA Police, he decided to turn over control of the investigation to the Baltimore County police. It was a good call -- and one many government officials would have resisted out of a reflexive urge to protect their turf and defend their agency.

My take is that Wiedefeld understood that no investigation could be successful without the cooperation of the dead boys' parents. The MTA police, for whatever reason, got off on the wrong foot with them. It was a no-win situation for the MTA, and Wiedefeld recognized that. There was no need for a prolonged public struggle with the bereaved parents, and Wiedefeld headed off a problem that could have ended up on the desk of the acting transportation secretary or the governor.

That's called earning your pay.

I'm sure this is a disappointment for the MTA police. Most folks haven't heard about it, but it is a real police department with sworn officers who carry guns and go through training much like that the state police have to pass. But many in the public, when they learn the MTA has a police force, see a conflict of interest. It may not be real, but the perception is that they will act to protect the MTA first and worry about the facts later. In a hot-potato case like this, a pragmatic, professional MTA head who recognizes the problem serves the state well.

In a high-profile case such as this, it's also good to have the experienced, professional public affairs team at the Baltimore County Police Department on the job. The MTA public affairs staff does a fine job with transit issues, but it has become clear there was a disconnect between the MTA police and the people at the MTA whose job is to keep the public informed.

Wiedefeld, an experienced public administrator with a strong track record from his time as BWI chief, clearly has a challenge on his plate getting these two parts of his organization working in tandem.

Long term, it would seem to make sense to re-examine whether it makes sense to have separate police departments for the Maryland Transportation Authority and the MTA. And the legislature should ask whether these forces should report to the secretary of transportation or the superintendent of state police.

I'm not making a judgment here, but it's a debate worth having.

Private schools and the economy [InsideEd]

2009-07-09T11:39:11-07:00

I'm working on a story looking at how private schools - and their families - are faring during these tough economic times. I am on the lookout for parents - in the city and the suburbs - who've decided not to continue sending their kids to an independent school because of the cost, or who've had to pull together additional resources to send them back another year.

Please send me an email if you'd like to share your experience. Thanks.

MTA falls in line with WMATA cell/text policy [Getting There]

2009-07-09T11:33:51-07:00

SUN EXCLUSIVE:

The Maryland Transit Administration has adopted a zero-tolerance policy under which any operator found to have been using a cell phone or text-messaging device on the job will be fired even if it is a first offense.
The MTA took the action shortly after the Washington Metro system announced a similar change Thursday morning in which it scrapped a three-strikes-and-you’re-out policy and said it would fire violators outright.
The decision by Administrator Paul J. Wiedefeld came about an hour after The Sun inquired about the MTA’s policy in light of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Administration’s announcement. At first, the MTA said it was sticking by its policy that it “can” fire violators. Under the new policy, the MTA says it “will”fire operators who text or use cell phones while at the controls.

MTA spokeswoman Jawauna Greene said the agency will inform its operators’ union of the change but will not bargain over it.
“There is no negotiation when it comes to public safety,” she said.
Greene said that because MTA and WMATA serve many of the same customers, it is important to maintain a consistency in the agencies’ safety policies.
Both transit agencies are currently dealing with the aftermath of fatal accidents in which operator performance is a subject of investigation.
Nine people were killed June 22 in the collision of two trains on the Washington Metro’s Red Line. According to WMATA, preliminary results of the investigation indicate the operator of the train that stuck the other was not using her cell phone at the time of the crash. That operator was killed.
On Sunday, two 17-year-old boys were killed when they were struck by an MTA light rail train near Lutherville. That crash is currently under investigation.

Solar energy classes offered for free [B'More Green]

2009-07-09T09:11:10-07:00

Thinking about installing solar panels on your house or business? Maryland Solar Solutions and bluehouse are offering a free seminar called "How to fire the electric company and produce my own clean energy needs -- and get the government to pay for up to half of it!"

They will talk about how the panels work, how much they cost and much in federal and state tax breaks you can get. Maryland Solar Solutions, in Reisterstown, sells panels and does energy audits. Bluehouse, in Towson, sells environmentally friendly housewares.

The classes will be held at bluehouse. They're located in the Shops at Kenilworth in Towson, 872 Kenilworth Dr. Colette Hayward, the owner of Maryland Solar Solutions will give the talks beginning this Saturday, July 11 from 3 p.m.-4 p.m. and Tuesday, July 14 from 6:30 p.m.-7:30 p.m.

Additional seminars will be held 3 p.m.-4 p.m. Aug. 8; 6:30 p.m.-7:30 p.m. Aug. 11; 3 p.m.-4 p.m. Sept. 19; 6:30 p.m.-7:30 p.m. Sept. 21; 3 p.m.-4 p.m. Oct. 10; 6:30 p.m.-7:30 p.m. Oct. 12.

For going, you'll get info, light refreshments and a 10 percent discount on stuff at bluehouse.

RSVP at 443-218-2620 or mssicontact@marylandsolarsolutions.com with the date of the seminar you'd like to attend. You can also go to marylandsolarsolitions.com or bluehouselife.com for more info.

Baltimore Sun file photo of solar panels on a house in Columbia/Gene Sweeney Jr.

Infants and medication errors [Picture of Health]

2009-07-09T09:05:21-07:00

Medication errors happen. They can and do occur at every step of the way from calculating dosages to prescribing, dispensing and giving drugs not only to adults but to children. Take one of the more famous cases: Actor Dennis Quaid's newborn twins who somehow survived being given a blood-thinner at 1,000 times the proper dose.

A study published this week in the journal Pediatrics looked at medication errors specifically involving heart drugs dispensed to children. What they found was, er, heart-stopping. They found that in a single year, half of the errors made were in children under the age of 1 and 90 percent of those were in children younger than six months. The littlest seem to be most vulnerable because health care providers may miscalculate and give them more medication than someone of their weight can handle or they may prescribe a drug not meant for someone so young. ...

Johns Hopkins researchers, who led the study of data from 2003-2004, pointed out that 96 percent of the 821 errors never caused harm, but 4 percent did. No one was killed. But in one instance, the patient's weight in pounds was mistaken for weight in kilograms, resulting in an overdose of three different heart drugs, which sent the child into cardiac arrest, researchers said.

One thing that's missing from the study: A calculation of how often medication errors actually occur. Previous studies have estimated that 1.5 million people a year (adults and children) may be impacted.

These heart drugs are used more often in children than you might think. Four in 1,000 U.S babies are born with congenital heart disease. According to the study, most of the harmful errors involved diuretics, used to treat heart failure and lower blood pressure by ridding the body of excess water, and drugs for lowering blood pressure. Not only are these medications used in those infants but they are being given more often to older children and teens with high blood pressure.

"Medication errors are inevitable," the study says, "given the human factor in patient care."

But how can these errors be reduced? Double- and triple-checking doses, labels and safety warnings can be a start. Hospitals are encouraged to put any mechanisms in place that will reduce the chance that mistakes will happen.

Towson, home to caviar and champagne set? [Second Opinion]

2009-07-09T08:53:50-07:00

Remember when upscale shopping in Towson meant a trip to Hutzler's? Towson Town Center started life as an open-air mall. Even relatively recently, Towson might have a Hecht's, but if shoppers wanted something ritzier they had to go elsewhere to find a Saks Fifth Avenue or a Lord & Taylor.

Well, you can forget those days. On Wednesday, Louis Vuitton opened in what can only be described as the luxury wing of Towson Town Center. The French designer is to leather handbags and accessories what Taittinger is to champagne and beluga sturgeon are to caviar.

Think women's wallets for $535 or more and a man's billfold for $315 - and that's the cheap stuff. When relatively simple handbags cost more than $2,000, you know you're not in Wal-Mart country anymore.

But what's notable about this is not only that Vuitton is willing to make such an investment at the height of an economic recession (although that's plenty amazing, too), but that Towson shoppers are perceived as willing and financially able to support such a venture. You can bet that the company has done plenty of surveys and studies to back up the decision, too.

Vuitton joins Lacoste and Burberry at Towson, and more designers may be on the way. Clearly, Towson isn't just for the Talbot's and Hess Shoes crowd anymore.

How much longer before Dulaney Valley Road becomes the next Rodeo Drive or Fifth Avenue? Well, maybe not. But there's a certain peculiar pride in knowing that rich people are coming over to humble Towson to score some trendiness - as long as they are willing to behave appropriately, that is.

Tomorrow's editorials: Delaware tax increases and a second stimulus [Second Opinion]

2009-07-09T08:49:51-07:00

Here are previews of editorials we're working on. Let us know what you think. The best comments will run alongside the editorials in the print edition.

--Looks like Marylanders threatening to leave the state over tax increases have one less place to go. Delaware, long the darling of anti-tax types in the Free State, just wrapped up work on closing an $800 million hole in its budget – no mean feat considering the whole thing is about $3.3 billion. Gov. Jack Markell pushed for steep budget cuts but also about $200 million a year in tax increases. He increased the state’s value added tax to 8 percent and the income tax on top earners to 6.95 percent. (And when Delaware says “top earners,” it means anybody making over $60,000 a year.) Taxes on cigarettes, alcohol and slot machine proceeds are going up, too. The state is increasing corporate franchise taxes and the public utility tax and is resurrecting the estate tax.

OK, no to Delaware, then. How about Pennsylvania? The governor and legislature are at an impasse over closing that state’s budget gap, but Gov. Ed Rendell is pushing for an increase in the income and cigarette taxes, plus new taxes on smokeless tobacco and natural gas extraction.

Marylanders may still be smarting over the tax increases Gov. Martin O’Malley and the Democrat-controlled legislature approved in 2007, but they can take some comfort in the fact that as the state grapples with new fiscal problems, more tax increases are politically off the table. Maryland may have raised taxes earlier than its neighbors, but in the end, it won’t be alone.

--With the economy still lagging and unemployment growing, talk in Washington has turned to the idea of a second stimulus program. This is hogwash. Most of the money from the first stimulus hasn’t even gotten out the door yet, in some cases by design and in others by typical delays in implementing such a vast program. The nation needs to give the first stimulus time to work before borrowing more money to fund a second round.

WMATA stiffens cell-text ban for operators [Getting There]

2009-07-09T08:37:57-07:00

WMATA general manager John Catoe has just announced a strict no-tolerance policy for operators using cell phones and text messaging devices on the job. One strike and you're out -- as in fired. The new policy replaces a three-strikes-and-you're out approach that prevailed before.

WMATA says the preliminary indication is that cell phones use was not involved in the June 22 Red Line crash that killed 9, but a You Tube video has emerged purporting to show a WMATA operator texting.

D.. Metro operators have become unwitting stars at You Tube lately. Another video (shown above) making the rounds appears to show a Green Line driver sleeping on the job.

Now playing on YouTube: loan-modification advice [The Real Estate Wonk]

2009-07-09T08:32:36-07:00

The variety on YouTube is pretty amazing, when you stop to think about it. Old music videos. Clips of random people making silly faces for your amusement. Whatever hot new visual meme is making the Internet rounds. And -- now up this week -- a Freddie Mac video for borrowers who are behind on their payments and want to request a loan modification.

Foreclosure prevention amid the pop culture.

Freddie Mac says in a press release that homeowners will have an easier time of it if they gather these documents before calling:

* Most recent monthly mortgage statement;

* Pay stubs or other documents showing their household's monthly pre-tax income;

* Most recent tax return;

* Second loan or home equity line of credit statements;

* Account balances and minimum monthly payments on credit cards, car loans, student loans or other debt;

* A short, concise description of the financial hardship that is causing – or leading to – a mortgage delinquency.

Fair warning: There's no guarantee it won't still be a difficult process.

And be wary of consultant-type firms promising to get you a loan modification if you'll pay an upfront fee. The New York Times notes in this story that you can end up closer to foreclosure and several thousand dollars poorer, even if you got a "money back" guarantee. The Federal Trade Commission is going after some companies for "marketing potentially deceptive relief programs," the newspaper reported.

For advice on avoiding foreclosure-prevention scams, check out the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation's foreclosure-help page.

Spate of city shootings and on scene tweets [Baltimore Crime Beat]

2009-07-09T08:30:49-07:00

A man was fatally shot in the head Wednesday in Northwest Baltimore (picture at left by The Sun's Barbara Haddock Taylor), another man was shot and killed on Divison Street Wednesday nigth and a third person was killed in a shooting on McElderry Street in East Baltimore early today.

The East Baltimore shooting is where Operation Safe Streets works. That's a group of street mediators who meet regularly with gangs and other violent groups in order to stop violence before it happens. They've been successful in keeping shooting down.

Then, just after 11 a.m., an adult male was shot in the shoulder on Park Heights Avenue, in front of the I Can't We Can drug rahab building. Activist and radio show host Anthony McCarthy, live live tweets as the police investigated:

Man just shot in the back by thugs outside our office door at ICWC on Park Heights Ave, police here in a flash! (They are always around!)

Wow! Police everywhere! They are handcuffing a lot of guys who were standing around watching! I guess they are trying to get witnesses!

There are at least three blue light cameras in this blocks of this shooting! Seems to me CCTV will help in giving cops info!

More Google Voice accounts starting to roll-out? [BaltTech]

2009-07-09T08:08:08-07:00

If you just look at Twitter, dozens and dozens of people today are tweeting about recently receiving an invitation to launch their new Google Voice accounts.

Google Voice, as you may know, is Google's revamping of the Grand Central phone app that the company bought a few years back. Google lets you use one phone number to manage multiple phone numbers. Some think it'll be revolutionary. Check out the list of goodies it promises to offer us, such as free voicemail transcription and answering any of your multiple phone lines (home, work, cell) on one phone.

I'm wondering if the big roll-out wave has finally begun. Can anybody help confirm? I know Google started sending out invites to some in late June. Is this just another big batch of invites, or the whole enchilada?

Baltimorean Patrick Knight sent me a copy of his invite. Here it is below:

You are invited to open a free Google Voice account.

To accept this invitation and create your account, visit https://www.google.com/voice/

If you haven't already heard about it, Google Voice is a service that makes using your current phones much better!

Here's what it offers:

• A personal phone number that rings all of your existing phones when people call

• All of your voicemail in one inbox with unlimited online storage and free voicemail transcripts sent to your phone and email • Low-priced international calling to over 200 countries and free SMS

• Other powerful features like the first phone spam filter to protect you from unwanted callers, the ability to ListenInTM on your voicemail messages while they are being left, conference calling and more

To learn more about Google Voice before registering, visit: http://www.google.com/voice/about Please note that Google Voice is only available for sign up in the US.

We hope you enjoy Google Voice,

The Google Voice Team

MTA: 'Can' fire texting operators, not 'will fire' [Getting There]

2009-07-09T08:05:18-07:00

In response to Washington Metro announcement noted below, I asked Maryland Transit Administration Jawauna Greene what is the MTA's policy on cell phone use or texting by operators.

According to Greene, while the MTA forbids cell phone use or text-messaging while operating one of its vehicles, it does not have a "zero-tolerance" policy. Noting that the MTA has a union contract to consider, Greene said the MTA's policy is that if an investigation shows an operator did use a cell phone or text-messaging device while in charge of a vehicle, management "can" terminate that employee.

There's a world of difference between "can fire" and "will fire," and if texting or cell phone use is found to have any connection with Sunday's fatal light rail accident, I suspect that will change in a hurry.

It's official: El Nino has begun [Maryland Weather]

2009-07-09T08:03:09-07:00

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has made it official: Another El Nino has begun, with sea surface temperatures in the eastern and central tropical Pacific Ocean now more than 1 degree Celsius above the average.

Red and orange colors on the map at left show where sea surface temperatures in the Pacific are 1 to 2 degrees above average.

The phenomenon, which occurs every two to five years, on average, typically triggers changes in weather trends around the globe. It is expected to last at least a year, and is the first El Nino since 2006. Here's more from NOAA.

For Maryland, El Nino's effects are not as cut and dried as they are for some parts of the world, such as the Pacific coast and Indonesia. But studies have found a trend toward stormier winters. That can mean a lot of snow, or very little - a sort of all-or-nothing deal, depending on temperatures. The most notable storm in an El Nino year may have been the Feb. 11, 1983 storm that dropped 22.8 inches on Baltimore (photo, right).

The general conclusion the experts have reached about El Nino Winters in Baltimore is summed up this way:

"El Niño winters in the Baltimore Region mean a milder than normal December. They also tend to be all or nothing when it comes to snowfall. Either there are no significant snow storms and season snow totals average less than 5 inches or there is a tendency toward multiple snow storms with seasonal totals above 30 inches. These storms usually occur in January and February. November, December, and March often see little or no snow."

You can read more about this here.

(SUN PHOTO by Weyman Swagger 1983)

Looking for a Baltimore charter school? [InsideEd]

2009-07-09T07:57:38-07:00

I was talking yesterday to Carl Stokes, one of the leaders of Bluford Drew Jemison Science Technology Engineering Mathematics Academy. They are opening a new school in Southwest Baltimore this school year and are still looking for students. While the school received its charter some time ago, the city school board didn't approve a facility for it to operate out of until early April, by the time most charter schools have already signed students up.

As a result, the school has plenty of space for new sixth-graders. They have 60 students now but would like to sign up another 40 at least. They have room for 120.

The new school, which will be operated out of Diggs Johnson Middle School near Carroll Park, will begin with sixth grade this year and add on a grade each year until it becomes a middle and high school.

Their first school on Caroline Street in East Baltimore is an all-boys academy where students dress in white shirts and ties. The school goes until 6:30 p.m., offering after-school activities and dinner.

Stokes said parents of sixth-graders who are interested can go to bdjacademy.org or call 410-276-3270.

Tracking that seal [Random Rodricks]

2009-07-09T07:39:24-07:00

Hamilton, the rescued seal released to the Atlantic at the Delaware Shore about 15 minutes ago by his keepers and healers at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, has a tracking device. You can see where Hamilton goes from here: Click here for the tracking map. Hamilton is an adult male harbor seal originally stranded on the beaches of Bermuda in February, a long way from where such animals are usually found. Here's Frank Roylance's story on him from the other day. Good luck, Hammy.

Baltimore hackerspace formed. First project: Use Twitter to change your lamp's color. [BaltTech]

2009-07-09T07:05:57-07:00

Some fellas have gotten together to form Baltimore Node, a self-described hackerspace where computer/techy-minded people can get together to work on interesting little projects.

(A hacker, by the way, is not necessarily a bad, evil person. Hackers can be good, as I'm sure the folks involved with Baltimore Node are.)

Hackerspaces have been popping up all over the world. Members use the Web to connect with each other and other spaces -- just check out the Hackerspaces.org site for the big picture.

Baltimore Node's first group project will take place tonight, from 7-10 p.m. (Event details.)

They'll be building lamps whose color can be changed by simply Tweeting a hexadecimal color value to it.

Now, hackers, why would you want to do that? Short answer (I think): Because you can.

But, more importantly, it's an excuse to dip your toes into Arduino, a nifty open-source hardware/software programming platform that enables people to create interactive gadgets.

Learn more about Arduino here. Anybody going to build an Arduino lamp tonight? If so, take a few pics or video of your creation and share with us.

Farm pollution help for Bay on chopping block [B'More Green]

2009-07-09T06:53:01-07:00

While the federal government is busily trying to shovel economic stimulus money out of Washington, it seems there's a countermove that could put a crimp in efforts to reduce farm-related pollution of the Chesapeake Bay.

Environmentalists say a Senate subcommittee cut $250 million from a federal farm conservation program that offers farmers technical and financial help to do a better job of keeping poultry and other farm animal manure from washing into nearby streams.

The spending cut was among a batch sought by the Obama administration. If the cut to the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) stands, it could reduce payments to Maryland farmers by $2 million, according to an analysis by the Environmental Working Group. The neighboring bay states of Pennsylvania and Virginia, with even more farms, stand to lose more than $3 million each.

The cuts are potentially significant because until recently, at least, federal and state officials had relied on such financial incentives rather than regulations to get farmers to reduce polluted runoff from their fields and feedlots. The EQIP program pays up to 75 percent of the cost of some conservation improvements.

Congress last year authorized a major boost in farm conservation spending nationwide, with $188 million earmarked for bay states over the next five years in the 2008 farm bill and tens of millions more available to bay region farmers through national farm conservation programs like EQIP. Even with the increase, officials had said it would not be enough to pay for all the conservation improvements needed to curb nutrient pollution and sediment runoff from bay region farms.

Environmentalists fought the Bush administration to keep it from blocking the increase in farm conservation funds, only to find the Obama administration now also seeking to trim them.

"We understand the administration's goal is to cut the deficit, but programs that help drive private investment in public benefits – like cleaner water, cleaner air and improved habitat for wildlife – are a great deal for taxpayers,” Sara Hopper, director of agricultural policy for the Environmental Defense Fund said in a press release.

The Senate panel did refuse to go along with the rest of the $600 million in farm conservation spending cuts that had bene sought by the Obama administration. But a House appropriations panel has made a similar $270 million cut in EQIP funding, and the full House is expected to vote soon on a spending bill including that cut, according to EDF.

Brrrr .. Morning low close to record [Maryland Weather]

2009-07-09T06:34:31-07:00

That was one chill breeze coming in the bedroom window this morning. Reminds me of summer in New England. It was only 54 degrees at daybreak on the WeatherDeck in Cockeysville. And there were some colder readings than that across the region. York, Pa. reported a low of 50 at the airport.

It was 56 early this morning at BWI-Marshall Airport. That was within 2 degrees of the record low for a July 9 at BWI. The 54-degree reading there was set on this date a quarter-century ago - in 1984.

There was a low of 64 degrees at Washington Reagan. Dulles Airport, out in northern Virginia, reached 58 degrees. It was 58 in Hagerstown, too.

All this as we approach what is, on average at least, the hottest two weeks of the year.

Here are some other low readings from across the region. (Check the date on the map; the 7/9 data had not been loaded at the time of this writing.)

The forecast continues to look just fine. The seasonable weather is expected to continue, with some heating-up, and a chance of showers and thunderstorms over the weekend. But the first half of next week looks a lot like this week - mild temperatures and dry weather.

Closing Catholic schools [Random Rodricks]

2009-07-09T06:16:46-07:00

Add Towson Catholic to the list of school closings in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, and this one six weeks before the new school year.

Meanwhile, the Arch is also closing the school at St. Mary's of the Assumption in Govans -- a school that has served a lot of low-income city families for years. They are closing another Catholic school on the south side of the city, continuing the retreat from inner-city parochial education because of money issues. (St. Alphonsus-Basilica School went a few years ago, too, because the Arch didn't have the money for a renovation that involved asbestos removal. That school served more than 200 students, almost all African-American from the the city and counties.)

But, of course, the Arch came up with at least $34 million for the Basilica restoration -- I heard the final price tag was much higher -- and more for the adjoining (unimpressive) prayer garden on Charles Street. Reasonable people have a right to question these priorities.

All that effort -- all that fundraising -- might have saved schools, might have gone toward endowments. Thirty-four million could keep a lot of schools open until other sources of funding (or new administrations to run them) could be found.

Unsolicited advice for the MTA [Getting There]

2009-07-09T06:07:02-07:00

Here's a little unsolicited advice for the Maryland Transit Administration: Ban the word "minor" from your web site and communications with customers.

No "minor" delays. No "minor" disruptions. No "minor" trouble. To the customers affected by delays, disruptions and other troubles, noting is more infuriating than to hear their problems dismissed as minor.

The word also often turns out to be wrong, as it did on the MARC Penn Line Wednesday morning. It was bad enough that one of the trains took 3 1/2 hours to get from Baltimore to Washington. Riders found it especially galling to see that the MTA was characterizing the delays as "minor."

So let the edict go out: The MTA may have delays, disruptions and troubles, but the minors are in Salisbury, Bowie and Frederick.

Ripped from the bomb-astic tech headlines: Torpedo firings, frontal attacks and nuclear death blows [BaltTech]

2009-07-09T05:54:00-07:00

I continue to giggle at all the online news and blog-post headlines that we see thrown at us whenever "big tech news" breaks.

If something truly major (at least for the geekarati) happens, we inevitability see headlines tinged with violence and military analogies. Sometimes, they're just ridiculous and fun.

A supposedly game-changing product is usually called an "X slayer" or "Y Killer" -- something that will put down an aggressive competitor with a "death blow." Other verbs and analogies are tossed, like "rocked," "bomb," and "nuke."

Let's take yesterday's news about Google readying a new operating system, based on its Chrome browser, that will supposedly compete with Microsoft.

Here are some fun headlines:

* Five ways Microsoft Will Bring the Hurt to Google Chrome (PCWorld)

* Google drops a nuclear bomb on Microsoft. And it's made of Chrome. (TechCrunch)

* Google Chrome: Microsoft Killer? (CNN)

* Ten reasons why Google Chrome OS is no 'Windows Killer.'(Datamation)

* Google launches frontal attack on Microsoft. (Financial Times)

* Why Google's Chrome OS bomb has minimal fallout on Apple (TechCrunch via WashPost)

* Google to Microsoft: It's on (CNET)

* Google launching Chrome OS, firing torpedo into Microsoft (Silicon Alley Insider) -- My personal fave, btw. I mean, they got "torpedo" into a tech headline!

* Chrome OS: A nuclear death blow to smash Windows? (The Raw Feed)

Can you come up with an attention-grabbing headline for the Google Chrome OS vs. Microsoft story? Leave it in the comments below. I'll tweet my favorite ones later today.

Expect D.C. Metro delays this weekend [Getting There]

2009-07-09T05:51:07-07:00

Travelers to the Washington area this weekend could encounter delays on the Metro as a result of track maintenance work Friday through Sunday on four of its lines.

The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Administration urged riders to allow an extra 30 minutes into their travel plans if they will be using the Red, Orange Blue of Yellow lines.

Community walks for Raven Wyatt [Baltimore Crime Beat]

2009-07-09T05:41:36-07:00

It was a show of force and another wake up call.

A routine community cop walk (pictures here by the Baltimore Sun's Gene Sweeney Jr.), scheduled a year ago, attracted more than a 100 participants from several city neighborhoods Wednesday night. The place: Carrollton Ridge in Southwest Baltimore. The reason: the shooting last week of Raven Wyatt, a 5-year-old girl caught in the crossfire of a dispute and the latest symbol of Baltimore's violence.

Here's what a tragedy brings: the mayor, the police commissioner, the fire chief, the heads of public works, recreation and health. The NAACP and the Guardian Angels showed. When the chief trash enforcer spotted three abandoned trash bags, he immediately called it in and got someone to take them away. When a 5-year-old boy expressed interest in a summer rec program, the director was there to sign him up. When a woman complained about police response, the commissioner was there to listen.

The head of the Carrollton Ridge association, Connie Fowler, repeated to everyone who would listen that this was a scheduled walk, planned before the little girl was shot and remains clinging to life at Johns Hopkins, and that while she was grateful for the outpouring, she would like to see this showing on every excursion. A walk without a tragedy as a backdrop draws perhaps seven people from her community and a smattering of others from beyond.

I thinks it's great that so many people showed for the walk and managed to shut down streets as they paraded through, talking to residents and kids who spilled from cramped rowhouses to snap pictures of the mayor. City officials signed up dozens of people to go to rec centers or help at the community association meetings, but it remains to be seen whether the people follow through.

The community walks are great and the mayor and her department heads can't be at each one, and I don't begrudge them for coming out after a little girl is shot. And to be fair, the mayor and police commissioner go on a lot of walks that don't draw media attention. The groundwork invested, now it's time for residents to stand up and take their community back.

Just 20 minutes before Mayor Sheila Dixon pulled up to the rec center at Pulaski and Ashton streets, city cops boxed in a car just up the street and searched it and its occupants for drugs. The idea is to get people involved, and as Jack Baker, a community leader from South Baltimore told the crowd, "We want this community to heal."

At a table, children from the rec center displayed get-well cards to Raven. "Get well soon," one said. "Feel better Raven," said another. "Everyone is praying for your total healing," said a third.

Away from the neighborhood, questions are still being asked about how the suspect, a 17-year-old with a long juvenile record who officials say cut off his home monitoring bracelet to join a gun fight, was allowed to serve his sentence at home instead of behind bars.

"No one wants to accept responsibility," said the city NAACP's vice president, Josephy Armstead. "That boy should never have been on the street."

The Sabbath was Michael's oasis [In Good Faith]

2009-07-09T03:09:24-07:00

In the days since the death of Michael Jackson, commentators have attempted to make sense of his apparently peripatetic faith journey. We know that he was raised a Jehovah’s Witness, and was associated as an adult with Scientology and Islam.

Beyond that, details become hazy. In a typical assessment, Kathryn Lofton, an assistant professor of American studies and religious studies at Yale, reviewed the record last week and concluded: “Michael Jackson was not, in the end, a terribly thick subject for religious consideration: he dallied and discoed on the smooth tip of substance. Someone named ‘God’ did, as he testified, inspire nearly every lyric. Pressed on the point, he mostly repeated himself, or offered vague dismissals of patriarchic doctrine.”

Enter beliefnet, which has unearthed a 2000 essay by Jackson himself. In it, the former child star describes the obviously powerful experience of his church as the one oasis of normality in his young life.

More than anything, I wished to be a normal little boy. I wanted to build tree houses and go to roller-skating parties. But very early on, this became impossible. I had to accept that my childhood would be different than most others. …
There was one day a week, however, that I was able to escape the stages of Hollywood and the crowds of the concert hall. That day was the Sabbath. …
Church was a treat in its own right. … The church elders treated me the same as they treated everyone else. And they never became annoyed on the days that the back of the church filled with reporters who had discovered my whereabouts. They tried to welcome them in. After all, even reporters are the children of God.

Even reporters, Michael? But I digress. Jackson wrote fondly of “pioneering,” the term used by Jehovah’s Witnesses to describe the missionary work of knocking on doors and distributing literature about the faith.

(Photo by Kevin Mazur/AEG via Getty Images)

“Up to 1991, the time of my Dangerous tour, I would don my disguise of fat suit, wig, beard, and glasses and head off to live in the land of everyday America, visiting shopping plazas and tract homes in the suburbs," he wrote. "I loved to set foot in all those houses and catch sight of the shag rugs and La-Z-Boy armchairs with kids playing Monopoly and grandmas baby-sitting and all those wonderfully ordinary and, to me, magical scenes of life. Many, I know, would argue that these things seem like no big deal. But to me they were positively fascinating."

Jackson described his childhood Sundays as sacred not only because it was the day when he attended church, but also because it was the day he “spent rehearsing the hardest.”

“This may seem against the idea of 'rest on the Sabbath,' " he wrote, "but it was the most sacred way I could spend my time: developing the talents that God gave me. The best way I can imagine to show my thanks is to make the very most of the gift that God gave me.

A polemic on Lyme Disease [Random Rodricks]

2009-07-08T20:52:51-07:00

Before Wednesday's radio show, I watched on DVD Under Our Skin, the film about Lyme disease by Andy Abrahams Wilson, the brother of a woman who has the disease. Wilson was a guest on Midday today by telephone from California. (You can listen to a podcast of the show by visiting the WYPR web site.)

Wilson's film will be screened at The Senator Theater in Baltimore, starting Friday. You can get information about screenings on the film's web site.

Wilson has made a compelling and disturbing film, and it is beautifully shot, with a strong musical score -- and no narration, and the lack of narration is not a plus. Without the voice of a story-teller, Wilson moves the camera from Lyme sufferer to Lyme sufferer, from doctor to doctor (including one researching Lyme in the basement of his house) to the occasional (dismissively quoted in brief) expert at Yale or UConn -- no one from Johns Hopkins -- back to the sufferers, and then there are collages of people -- never identified -- who claim they suffer from "chronic Lyme disease" and that their doctors either refused to treat them for it or told them they needed to see a psychiatrist.

This is not a documentary. A documentary suggests journalism. There's not much in the way of journalism here, nothing you might call objective, detached, skeptical inquisition. The New York Times refered to Under Our Skin as a polemic, and that's exactly it. Wilson's targets are the doctors and research scientists who say there is no evidence that Lyme disease is chronic and who believe that long-course antibiotic treatments have not been proven effective in arresting the disease and making its victims healthy again. The film sets out to discredit the Infectious Diseases Society of America, which has declared that chronic Lyme disease does not exist. Wilson's claim that the doctors who wrote the IDSA's treatment guidelines for Lyme have conflicts of interest is just that -- a claim, and the charge is not effectively supported. Under Our Skin is full of suspicions, assertions and anecdotes; it's low on science and objectivity. That doesn't work -- in fact, borders on irresponsible -- when you're telling a medical story.

This is the kind of media "coverage" of Lyme disease that the New England Journal of Medicine criticized in a 2008 article: "The media frequently disregard complex scientific data in favor of testimonials about patients suffering from purported chronic Lyme disease and may even question the competence of clinicians who are reluctant to diagnose chronic Lyme disease. All these factors have contributed to a great deal of public confusion with little appreciation of the serious harm caused to many patients who have received a misdiagnosis and have been inappropriately treated."

Had Wilson presented the controversy over whether Lyme is chronic and whether long-term use of antibiotics is effective -- had he explored that and presented both sides -- then I would call his film a public service. In that it draws attention to Lyme disease, the most common vector-borne disease in the nation and spreading each year as ticks bite into humans, Under Our Skin deserves props. But it takes a long detour to defend what current credible science dismisses and in the process pretty much goes off a cliff.

If you see the film, make sure you read the following excerpts of letters I received early today in preparation for the radio show. The first is from Dr. Paul G. Auwaerter, clinical director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and the second is from Diana Olson, vice president of communications for the IDSA.

Dr. Auwaerter, of Hopkins:
"I see the effects of misdiagnosed Lyme disease frequently (as patients actually have conditions such as fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's Disease, and many others) who are not well served by taking antibiotics for months and years for fears of persistent infection that are not substantiated by any good evidence. Well-controlled scientific studies have not shown any durable benefit from long-term antibiotics compared to placebo, and importantly these studies show rates of improvement in the placebo arm of 30 percent or higher. therefore, ask for proof from these people that they are doing better than 30 percent with their treatments. They may say so from a testimonial basis, but they have no evidence published in quality medical journals."
Ms. Olson, quoting from a recent letter on Lyme disease from IDSA:
"The concept of Lyme disease as a chronic condition requiring long-term antibiotic therapy is not shared by the vast majority of the medical community and relies on questionable scientific evidence. Furthermore, long-term antibiotic therapy poses substantial risks to the community and the patient and can even be fatal.
Lyme disease is a real and growing public health threat. Patients with Lyme disease are frequently misdiagnosed. However, IDSA’s concern is with the concept of chronic Lyme disease.
Self-described “Lyme-literate” clinicians believe that the Lyme disease bacteria, Borrelia burgdorferi, can survive conventional antibiotic therapy (usually 10 to 28 days of oral antibiotics) and become a chronic infection. Therefore, they claim, patients must take antibiotics for months or even years in order to fully eradicate the infection.
The vast majority of scientific evidence does not support this view. Not a single well designed, reproducible study to date has found B. burgdorferi in human patients following conventional antibiotic therapy. This casts doubt on the basic premise of long-term antibiotic therapy. (The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has a review of several studies on its web site: http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/topics/lymeDisease/research/antibiotic.htm.)
Some patients do improve while taking long-term antibiotics. But in studies sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, patients receiving placebo improved at about the same rate as those receiving antibiotics. Also, some antibiotics have anti-inflammatory or neuroprotective “feel-good” side effects. These properties are likely responsible for the improvements some patients experienced in some studies.
In addition to providing no proven benefit, the risks of exposing patients to long courses of antibiotics are substantial. Patients often experience adverse reactions to the drugs. In fact, some of the symptoms that the “Lyme-literate” community attributes to chronic Lyme disease, such as fatigue and mood swings, may be adverse reactions to the antibiotics. In addition, infections in the catheter used to deliver intravenous antibiotics are common and have led to life-threatening bloodstream infections. There are many anecdotal accounts of serious adverse reactions. In addition, according to one report published in the peer-reviewed literature, a 30-year-old woman died from an infected catheter after undergoing inappropriate intravenous antibiotic therapy for more than two years.
The risks of inappropriate antibiotic therapy go beyond the individual patient. Antibiotic-resistant “superbugs” such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) are on the rise in part because of the inappropriate use of antibiotics. Long-term antibiotic therapy for Lyme disease only makes the problem worse, without any evidence of benefit.
Many patients credit long-term antibiotic therapy for their miraculous recoveries from debilitating fatigue, pain, headaches, concentration problems, and other symptoms. There is no doubt these patients were suffering. But the question is whether Lyme disease was responsible for their suffering. Several studies from Lyme disease clinics at major universities have found that most patients who came to these clinics with a previous diagnosis of chronic Lyme disease did not have Lyme disease at all, but actually had something else, such as rheumatoid arthritis or other autoimmune disorders, fibromyalgia, or depression—conditions that need treatment with something other than antibiotics.
Diagnosing patients with subjective, nonspecific symptoms such as fatigue, pain, and difficulty concentrating can be a difficult and frustrating experience for both the patient and the clinician. Most frustrating are the cases that don’t have a clear cause after a thorough examination and an exhaustive battery of tests. IDSA does not have all the answers for why some patients are suffering. Even in the 21st century, medicine is sometimes an inexact and imperfect science.
When patients are left seeking answers, a window of opportunity opens for unscrupulous clinicians. These clinicians can earn substantial amounts of money administering long-term antibiotic therapy. Many “Lyme-literate” clinicians back up their diagnosis with tests that are unproven or have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for that purpose—a practice that has drawn a warning from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (See http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5405a6.htm.)
For vulnerable patients, the diagnosis feels like deliverance from their suffering. For far too many patients, the diagnosis is false.
If sound evidence emerges that Lyme disease is a chronic condition that can be successfully treated with long-term antibiotics, IDSA would gladly accept it, if it would help physicians treat their patients. The burden of proof rests with those who make this claim. Until more reliable evidence emerges, IDSA regards the theory of chronic Lyme disease infection as speculative at best, and we consider long-term antibiotic therapy to be more harmful than beneficial. Lyme and other tick-borne diseases are a serious and growing public health threat, and we support efforts to improve prevention and education and foster appropriate research. However, news coverage that support the theory of chronic Lyme disease and long-term antibiotic therapy is not in the best interest of patients or public health.

Waiting for E.J. [Maryland Politics]

2009-07-08T19:44:48-07:00

The First District congressional seat in Maryland is on everyone's radar screen for 2010. A pair of powerful Marylanders, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen and House Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer, will be going all out to protect one of their most vulnerable colleagues. And Republican National Chairman Michael Steele, a former Maryland lieutenant governor, just might want to help his party capture one of the juiciest pickup targets in the country. The district covers mainly Republican portions of Baltimore, Anne Arundel and Harford counties, then jumps the Bay and takes in the entire Eastern Shore, one of the most conservative parts of the state. The current congressman, Democratic freshman Frank Kratovil, holds one of several dozen House seats nationwide from districts that voted for the Republican ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin in 2008. Republican state Sen. Andy Harris of Baltimore County, who lost to Kratovil by fewer than 3,000 votes in a district that McCain carried by 20 percentage points, is already on the rematch trail. He's raising campaign funds and hoping for a clear shot at the incumbent in a year when Barack Obama's name won't be on the ballot to pump up the district's anemic Democratic vote. Of course, Harris's primary triumph over Republican Rep. Wayne Gilchrest--unseating a veteran congressman in a classic conservative-moderate intraparty fight--was among the factors that helped Kratovil win. Gilchrest crossed party lines to endorse the Democrat, and in a race that close, it's easy to imagine that a divided Republican Party contributed to Kratovil's victory. Next time around, for many reasons, Harris wants a straight path to the general election, allowing him to focus all of his time, money and effort on Kratovil. Whether he gets it will depend, most likely, on what state Sen. E.J. Pipkin decides to do. Pipkin was the odd man out in the 2008 Republican primary, finishing a fairly distant third behind Harris and Gilchrest. But with Gilchrest no longer a candidate, the odds will improve for Pipkin. How far they'll tilt in his direction is part of what makes Pipkin's decision a tricky one. The former Wall Street bond trader has deeper pockets than Harris, an obstetric anesthesiologist, and he's not afraid to spend it, even on lost causes like a 2004 challenge to Democratic Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (there went $2 million of the Pipkin fortune). But to run in 2010, he'd have to give up his state Senate seat (so will Harris). A new analysis of the First District race by Nathan L. Gonzales of the respected, non-partisan Rothenberg Political Report repeats what state Republicans have been saying for some time: Pipkin "may seek to avenge his loss to Harris." Rothenberg also reports that former Del. Al Redmer of Baltimore County could decide to run. Eastern Shore Del. Jeannie Haddaway-Riccio, "viewed as a rising star," is less likely to jump into a contested primary. But it is Pipkin who is grabbing most of the attention, as Republicans--and Democrats--wait to see if he'll get in. The Eastern Shore state senator, whose deep pockets mean that he can afford to take his time, has not been returning phone calls from the Maryland Politics blog seeking first-hand information about his thinking. According to the Rothenberg Report, Pipkin "is not happy about the way the primary played out last cycle." In particular, he didn't like the fact that Harris tried to tag him with the same liberal label he hung on Gilchrest, or that the Harris forces tried to tie Pipkin, a populist conservative, to Gov. Martin O'Malley, a liberal Democrat. "If Harris and Pipkin face off, it's unclear who would have the upper hand," concludes the Rothenberg Report. It points out that the Club for Growth, which helped fund Harris' challenge against Gilchrest, has less interest in the First District race now that Gilchrest has been removed. Democrat Kratovil "has the opportunity to solidify his position by using incumbency to demonstrate 'independence,' providing good constituent service, and raising a lot of money," the Rothenberg Report concludes. But he "doesn't have much room for error and will need to maintain an independent image to get re-elected." Of course, Kratovil probably won't mind if the Republicans beat each other bloody in a September primary for the privilege of opposing him in November. Rothenberg doesn't express an opinion about which Republican would stand a better chance of unseating Kratovil, but it does say that if Harris is the nominee "he'll have to do a much better job connecting with voters on the Eastern Shore."

Monster Ball [Random Rodricks]

2009-07-08T18:47:20-07:00

As I suspected, the spontaneous game -- pickup baseball, makeup something -- that kids used to invent in the days before PlayStation et. al, is a rare occurrence in American life. Sports for kids are either very organized or not organized at all. It's the in-between that's missing -- kids making it up as they go along, hunting up friends to make use of an empty baseball field in summer. I wrote about the 'joy of unorganized sports' in May, and asked readers to let me know what they do and when and where they do it -- anything at all spun out of the imagination or the spur of the moment.

Very little feedback on this. A trickle. Most people don't seem to know what I'm talking about.

I've just about given up the idea of posting neighborhood games in this space, or sending alerts about them on Twitter for readers who want to get up a game of Wiffle Ball. It just doesn't happen much anymore.

Then Bradley Kolodner, a college sophomore from North Baltimore, sent me a note about what he calls Monster Ball. The Baltimore Messenger's Louisa Peartree wrote about it a year ago, when Bradley was a senior in high school, and here's a link to her story.

Below are photos Bradley sent along. Here's the Monsterball Facebook Group.

"Originally, the field was made up of paper plates as bases and we only had a few regular players," Bradley says. "The field and game have evolved over the years. We pick teams once everyone arrives and play for a couple hours or until the neighbors tell us to be quiet. Quite often, my friends who play bring their younger siblings. I just thought I'd share with you my effort to keep up that 'simple joy of unorganized sports.'

Thanks, BK. Monster on . . . !

Rockin' out for science [Picture of Health]

2009-07-08T15:46:15-07:00

See the guy on the far right? The one decked out in aviator shades rocking out next to Aerosmith’s Joe Perry? President Barack Obama just picked him to lead the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Francis S. Collins, who led the government’s successful effort to decode the human genome (he also happens to play the guitar) is among a handful of preeminent researchers featured in a slick six-page photo spread in the June issue of GQ. The photos are part of a larger ad campaign called “Rock Stars of Science” designed to celebrate scientists, highlight the importance of their research and draw attention to the funding needed to make their work possible.

Collins did his groundbreaking work while as director of the National Human Genome Institute in Bethesda. He’s featured with such other notables as Dr. Harold Varmus, the former director of NIH, who won the Nobel Prize for his discovery of cancer genes, and Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

By featuring some of the nation’s renowned researchers alongside the likes of rockers Sheryl Crow and Seal, the hope is to make these science gurus more accessible and dare we say, cool, to the average American.

As Collins says in an interview on the Rock Stars of Science site, “I think it's a great idea to show that scientists are not all a bunch of oddball nerds.”

His fellow scientists couldn’t agree more.

“As hokey as this might be, it’s very important to portray scientists as something other than the white haired old man sitting in the lab,” said Dr. Claire Fraser-Liggett, director of the University of Maryland’s Institute of Genome Sciences and a pioneering genetic researcher in her own right.

She shared a copy of the photo spread with me yesterday while I was in her office interviewing her about some of her latest work. (Stay tuned. I’ll be writing here soon about the work she did to map the genome of the deadly anthrax microbe).

Fraser-Liggett, however, noted the spread lacked some diversity. Being GQ, a men’s magazine, that was understandable, she reasoned. But a female colleague of hers wondered, could a women in science magazine spread be next? We'll see.

Photo courtesy of GQ

Towson Catholic closes its doors [InsideEd]

2009-07-08T15:43:51-07:00

Today, about 100 students and parents gathered at Towson Catholic High School to protest the sudden announcement yesterday that the school is closing after 86 years.

The school had lost about 80 students over the summer and could no longer afford the loss of revenue. Today, on our Web site, parents and alums have been talking about what might have happened if they had known about the financial trouble. Some argue that the school might have been able to get enough donations to keep the school open another year.

I wonder why so many parents pulled their children out over the summer? Was it the downturn in the economy that made paying for a Catholic school education too much for some parents or did they have concerns about the school?

And if some of the exodus was caused by the economy, are there other private and parochial schools in the Baltimore losing students?

Towson Catholic is the latest in a series of Catholic school closings this year and the archdiocese said it must find a new plan to sustain the existing schools as enrollments drop and the cost of supporting those schools goes up. One of the options is to provide some state taxpayer support to the parochial schools. We wonder what readers think of the idea?

Where in the world is Martin O’Malley, Kathy Griffin asks [Maryland Politics]

2009-07-08T14:58:44-07:00

Kathy Griffin, the trash-talking comedienne, took the stage at Merriweather Post Pavilion Thursday night and had a scintillating question for the audience: “Do you know where your governor is tonight?” As it turns out, the attendees might not have known, the governor isn't in Annapolis but on vacation. And no, he’s not in Argentina or hiking the Appalachian Trail — he’s in the Adirondacks. O’Malley has been on a fishing trip with his 12-year-old son Will since Father’s Day, according to his press office. The duo has been throwing lines into Cranberry Lake in New York's Adirondacks State Park for their annual bonding retreat, spokesman Shaun Adamec said. O’Malley’s press office has fielded several calls from the media in recent days about the governor’s exact whereabouts in light of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford’s disappearing act that sparked a national scandal. Adamec said most inquiries about O’Malley have been “tongue-in-cheek.” Maryland's governor returns Saturday — just in time for another trip to a vacation spot, Ocean City. This time, O’Malley will be traveling for work to attend the Maryland Municipal League conference, an annual gathering of local leaders from around the state. Though, aides say, he also will get some beach time with this family. Ahhh, summer.

DIY Dishwasher/Scouring Powder [B'More Green]

2009-07-08T14:55:11-07:00

If commercial dish detergents that contain phosphates do indeed end up being banned, it may be worth making your own natural cleaning product, especially considering that current eco-friendly brands like EcoVer and Seventh Generation are so costly. I pulled the following recipe for natural dishwasher/scouring powder from The New Homemaker. The ingredients are simple and pretty affordable – according to the author you’ll end up saving around 14 cents a load (when compared to a brand like Cascade). On the subject of whether or this detergent cleans as well as commercial brands, opinions are varied. Though the recipe recommends using citrus essential oils, some folks swear by tea tree and peppermint oils. Either way, this may require a little experimentation but it seems worth a try. In a plastic container with a firmly fitting lid, mix: 1 cup borax (20-Mule-Team Borax, available in any supermarket) 1 cup baking soda 1/4 cup salt 1/4 cup citric acid (available in brewing stores among other places--if you haven't tracked it down yet but must try this formula, use two packets of Lemonade-Flavored Kool-Aid, ONLY lemon, or you'll dye your dishwasher! and ONLY unsweetened Kool-Aid!) 30 drops citrus essential oil--lemon, grapefruit, orange, tangerine, or a mixture Put all of it in the container, shake it up.

O'Brien statement on Towson Catholic closure [In Good Faith]

2009-07-08T14:41:58-07:00

Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien has issued a statement on the decision to close Towson Catholic High School. At least 100 students and parents rallied at the school Wednesday, a day after they were notified of the closure.

O'Brien's statement:

I am deeply saddened by the closure of Towson Catholic and troubled by the circumstances that seemed to have left the parish and school board with no other choice. The closing of this beloved institution is a source of pain for students, teachers, alumni and the parish. Every effort is being made to ensure the smoothest transition possible for our students and faculty and several representatives of the Archdiocese are working day and night with the parish and school toward that end. My heart goes out especially to those seniors who were preparing to begin their final year at TC and we are exploring every available option to provide for their unique and special circumstance.
Equally deserving of our support is the pastor, [Monsignor F. Dennis] Tinder, as well as the board and administration of the school. They expended great energy and countless hours to save the school from this fate. I am grateful for their commitment to Towson Catholic and to the students and faculty.
Unfortunately, their best efforts, among them the hiring of a strategic consultant earlier this year to help reposition the school in an effort to increase enrollment, were not enough to avoid the impact of the financial crisis which forced so many of our families to make the painful decision not to enroll their children for the coming school year.
My prayers are with the Towson Catholic family today and will be for the days ahead, and I offer my assurance that everything possible will be done to meet the needs of every student, teacher and staff member impacted by this painful but necessary decision.

Martin O'Malley's big D.C. adventure [Maryland Politics]

2009-07-08T14:37:22-07:00

It would probably be easy to make fun of Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley's field trip to Washington today. So, let's give it a try. This was supposed to be one of those times when the guv could make a splash in D.C. He was all lined up to testify before Congress this morning, along with two other bigtime Democratic governors, Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania and Deval Patrick of Massachusetts. Their assigned topic: a state's eye view of the implementation of President Barack Obama's stimulus package. Not a very heavy lift, especially since all three are huge Obama supporters. But sometimes things don't come as easily as they might on Capitol Hill--the kind of place where, if you're not a senator or a congressman, you might as well be just another tourist from Pocomoke City, even if your title is governor. (Of course, the exact reverse might well be true at the Statehouse in Annapolis, but that's another story.) The first clue that things might not be going O'Malley's way on this fine July day came during a chance encounter with Rep. Carolyn Maloney. The New York congresswoman happened upon O'Malley in a hallway outside the House hearing room, where the governor was obliging a local TV reporter with an interview. "Mr. Governor! Mr. Mayor! What do we call you now?" Maloney said, by way of greeting. Whatever. "Call me anything you want," the governor replied, graciously. Maloney is a senior member of the very committee that O'Malley was about to address, but that was as close to the hearing as she got. In fact most of the panel's members, Republicans and Democrats, steered clear of the meeting. In her defense, Maloney probably can't be bothered with details like job titles or committee hearings these days. She's quite busily engaged in a far more exciting venture: sticking it to the leaders of her party by threatening to challenge appointed New York Sen. Kirstin Gillibrand in next year's Democratic primary (Maryland-based consultant Joe Trippi is among Maloney's advisers and can probably straighten her out on O'Malley's job). One of the reasons O'Malley was out in the hallway at that moment, instead of at the witness table, was that his scheduled appearance had repeatedly gotten postponed. Members of the committee who did bother to show up managed to take longer than expected to question a pair of officials from the Office of Management and Budget and the Government Accountability Office. Finally, just when it seemed as if the governors would get their turn, the congressmen had votes to cast over at the Capitol, so the governors' appearance was pushed back another hour. O'Malley, politely declining an offer to cool his heels outside the House floor while the votes were being cast, said he might grab a sandwich with his mother, who works in Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski's office, instead. By the time O'Malley finally got sworn in as a witness, it was the dreaded lunch hour for members of Congress. No offense, governors, but a lunch appointment is a lunch appointment and a hearing, well, is just another hearing. Gov. Patrick gave the event about what it was worth at that point: 10 minutes of his time. Then he begged off with a "prior commitment" of his own. That left Rendell and O'Malley to deal with the handful (literally) of congressmen who bothered to stick around. Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Montgomery County showed up just long enough to introduce O'Malley and catch the governor's seven-minute opening presentation. Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, the other Marylander on the panel, slipped into his seat only a few minutes before the hearing ended (he'd been there in the morning, then had some prior commitments). As a result, the Baltimore congressman missed O'Malley's high-tech presentation of his StateStat web site that allows Marylanders to enter their address and zoom in on stimulus project spending in their neighborhood (or any place else around the state). Sadly, for O'Malley, most of the five committee members present for that portion of the hearing weren't interested enough to even glance at the TV screens as he narrated the demonstration. But Pennsylvania's governor was watching intently. And in a playful jab at O'Malley, Rendell claimed a few minutes later that, because his Commonwealth is "much more fiscally conservative than the State of Maryland, I don't have a fancy Power Point presentation about what we're doing." That produced a rare chuckle during the hourlong Rendell-O'Malley Show, which played to a grand total of two congressmen (Cummings and Chairman Edolphus Towns of New York) and 37 empty seats for the other members of the committee when the curtain mercifully came down at about 2 in the afternoon. Afterward, O'Malley patiently stuck around to answer reporters' questions. Then he headed back to a place where he gets the respect he deserves, or more, at any rate, than in D.C. At least he managed to eat lunch with his Mom.

Gas leak cuts Penn Line service north of city [Getting There]

2009-07-08T14:28:28-07:00

A natural gas leak at North Point has forced the Maryland Transit Administration to halt northbound Penn Line service at Penn Station during this evening's commute,

MTA spokeswoman Jawauna Greene said. Greene said a bus bridge would be set up to deliver passengers to Perryville and to stops in between there and Baltimore. She said the gas leaki was not on MTA property.

Mason-Dixon meteor turns up on security cam [Maryland Weather]

2009-07-08T14:25:34-07:00

The big fireball meteor that startled residents in Central Maryland and southern Pennsylvania early Monday morning was captured on a security camera video in York Pa. It's about 18 seconds into the 70-second video. Meteorite hunters hope this will be a first clue to guide them to the spot where surviving bits of the meteor - if there are any - may have landed.

The camera was one of about 50 that protect the various facilities of the York Water Company. The president and CEO, Jeffrey R. Hines, said he and his wife live in York and heard the sonic boom touched off by the meteor as it entered the atmosphere at about 1:10 a.m. Monday. But they didn't see anything.

It wasn't until late on Monday that he decided to check the security video to see what the cameras might have seen.

"It didn't take long," he said. The quality isn't great. "It's a security camera, at night."

But the meteor is unmistakable, he said. "You can see the fireball, and see it all ready to burn out, and a number of pieces of meteorite. Probably four or five frames is all it captures."

Even so, Hines said, "It's pretty cool." With two or three more images like this, meteorite hunters hope to be able to triangulate on the meteor's trajectory, and its final seconds before any surviving pieces fell to Earth.

MTA explains MARC woes [Getting There]

2009-07-08T14:00:56-07:00

The Maryland Transit Administration, still tied up with the aftermath of Sunday's fatal light rail accident in Lutherville, finally got back to me about its troubles on the MARC Penn Line the past two days.

The MTA's assistant deputy administrator, Simon Taylor, confirmed that passengers aboard Train 509, which was scheduled to get to Washington's Union Station at 7:25, limped into D.C. about 10 a.m. So it was actually 2 1/2 hours late, not three, but that's small consolation for the hundreds aboard.

Train 509 was one of three Penn Lines delayed when a compressor blew out aboard Train 407 on the southbound Penn Line between Halethorpe and BWI. Train 509 was brought up behind it to push it into Washington, Taylor said, but that required the use of a cable that was supposed to be on board. For some reason, Taylor said, neither train had that cable so the two trains were stuck there until a cable could be brought there.

Having the cable, Taylor said, is Amtrak's responsibilitty.

Before it was known that 407 and 509 were missing the cable, Taylor said, Train 411 whizzed by -- no doubt perturbing the stranded passengers, In any case, Taylor said, it was packed.

A little later, with the cable problem known, Train 513 came alongside the stalled trains. Taylor said all of the Train 407 passengers who wanted to were transferred to 513, along with some of those on 509.

Taylor said priority was given to those on 407 because they had been waiting longer and the air conditioning was not functioning on that train. He said that not all passengers who wanted to transfer from 509 could be accommodated.

Finally, a cable was brought to the scene and train 509 was able to push the 14 cars of it and 407 into Washington at a maximum speed of about 40 mph, Taylor said.

So by the time the drama ended, passengers on 509 had enjoyed a 3 1/2-hour trip to Washington. Passengers who transferred from 407 to 513 were delayed about an hour and a half, and those on 513 were about a half hour late.

And that's what can happen when once compressor blows. Taylor said the troubled locomotive was not one of the three much-ballyhooed new ones tha MTA recently acquired. Those, he said, are still undergoing additional safety testing. He said the one that broke doen was an electric locomotive, about seven years old.

There is some good news: Because there have been so few really hot days this summer, there have been few heat alerts on the Camden and Brunswick lines. When you ride MMARC, you have to take your good news where you can find it.

The meaning of Michael [Second Opinion]

2009-07-08T13:57:57-07:00

What is the meaning of Michael Jackson?

Since the pop singer's death on June 25, and especially after his memorial service Tuesday, this question has become inescapable. The answer seems to depend less on who Michael Jackson was than on who we are, and it apparently varies greatly by age and race, as well as musical taste.

Many of the reactions to Jackson's controversial life and untimely death have been extreme. The outpouring of grief and love has been an extraordinary sight; on the other side, some of the criticism has been fierce.

But I suspect that the reaction of the great majority of Americans is somewhat like mine: a mix of appreciation for his achievements, sadness for a troubled life cut short, and puzzlement over the adulation for a man who lived a less than heroic life.

[Associated Press photo]

To those of us who were not Michael Jackson fans, the past two weeks have been a revelation -- and strongly reminiscent of the death of Princess Diana in 1997. (The managing editor of the paper I worked for then was reluctant to put the news of Diana's death on the front page, an indication of how oblivious many of us were to the worldwide tsunami of interest her death would unleash.) Jackson had not made a hit record in almost a decade. Twice, he faced serious accusations of sexual misdeeds with children. His increasingly strange behavior made him a favorite of the tabloid press for much of his adult life.

And yet, literally millions of people who never met him are now in mourning. A great many of those people (although not nearly all of them) are African-Americans. Some are inclined to the victim mentality given voice by the Rev. Al Sharpton and others: that Jackson was hounded and persecuted in ways that a white celebrity would not have been. Some simply loved his music or appreciated his generous charitable giving. Many others, it is clear, are motivated by feelings of pride and hope: that a black man could grow up poor and yet rise, through talent and hard work, to the top of his field. There is a tradition among black Americans of forgiving the sins and shortcomings of black heroes and leaders -- a tradition grounded in part on the fact that white-dominated society has often been quick to ignore, belittle or outright stymie black achievement.

Regardless of race, sex, religion or other societal dividing lines, Americans tend to cherish -- even worship -- their entertainers. But what nags at me is this: Is the world so short of heroes that a person as grossly flawed as Michael Jackson qualifies?

TED conference coming to the Mid-Atlantic [BaltTech]

2009-07-08T13:29:33-07:00

::Updated at 4:25, with embedded video below of Clay Shirky giving a TED talk on how "social media can make history."

::@TEDxMidAtlantic news breaking on Twitter now....

The TED conference has been licensed to some independent organizers who want to bring a version of it to the Mid-Atlantic in November 2009. And by "Mid-Atlantic," they mean Baltimore, hon.

Here's the Website: http://tedxmidatlantic.com/

Admission will be free but limited to about 250 people. No word on location yet. The theme of the conference, according to @TEDxMidAtlantic's Twitter feed: "The Power of Stories" - Humans organize the world in stories; it's how we perceive design and art. Every design tells a story.

So what's TED? From its website:

TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with the annual TED Conference in Long Beach, California, and the TEDGlobal conference in Oxford UK, TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Program, the new TEDx community program, this year's TEDIndia Conference and the annual TED Prize.

The event is being pulled together by Dave Troy, a Baltimore-based entrepreneur who helped organize the recent Barcamp Baltimore event. Troy has also started the Beehive Baltimore, a coworking space, and the Baltimore Angels, an investor group focused on funding promising Baltimore-area startups.

It's the latest event we've seen in the Baltimore area that's targeting the region's creative and entrepreneurial classes, to pull them together to bounce big ideas off each other. (We've had SocDevCampEast, Ignite Baltimore, Barcamp Baltimore, WordCamp Mid-Atlantic -- all in the span of about 18 months.)

How badly does Baltimore need stuff like this? What do you think?

Meantime, you can watch Clay Shirky talk about how social media is transforming our society.

Bethel A.M.E. to worship at Oheb Shalom [In Good Faith]

2009-07-08T12:17:17-07:00

Members of Bethel A.M.E. Church, forced out of their landmark Baltimore building, will take temporary refuge at Temple Oheb Shalom, the spiritual leaders of the two congregations said Wednesday.

A week after lightning struck the steeple of the church on Druid Hill Avenue, the Rev. Frank M. Reid III and Rabbi Steven M. Fink announced that the Christian congregation would hold Sunday services at the Reform Jewish synagogue in Park Heights through Labor Day.

Fink called Reid after learning of the July 1 fire to offer Oheb Shalom’s 900-seat sanctuary to the church. The two congregations have long worked together, holding joint services in honor of Martin Luther King Jr., maintaining a community garden and engaging in the Black and Jewish Forum of Baltimore.

“We thought, in light of the hate crime that took place recently over in Washington at the Holocaust museum, with the ethnic violence going on in China at this time, that this partnership between the Jewish faith community and the Christian faith community, this partnership between the Jewish community and the black community, reestablishes a bridge that has existed between our two communities for hundreds of years,” Reid said.

“Our congregation and Bethel A.M.E. are family,” Fink said. “Our officers and board of directors decided immediately upon learning of this event to offer our facility to Bethel A.M.E.”

(Photo by Tasha Treadwell/The Baltimore Sun)

While the church has a membership of 17,500, Reid said Oheb Shalom will be large enough to accommodate the number likely to attend Sunday worship. At Oheb Shalom, the church is planning to hold a single service at 9:30 a.m. beginning this Sunday.

Oheb Shalom is located at 7310 Park Heights Avenue.

The synagogue offered similar assistance to members of First Mount Olive Freewill Baptist Church two years ago after their building was destroyed by a lightning strike and fire. That congregation now worships across Park Heights Avenue from Oheb Shalom at Baltimore Hebrew Congregation.

One reason Christian and Jewish congregations can share worship space is because their schedules don’t generally conflict. The Jewish sabbath runs from sundown Friday through sundown Saturday. Most Christians observe their sabbath on Sunday.

Another reason Bethel and Oheb Shalom make a good fit: the synagogue is part of a group of Reform Jewish congregations that hold joint services during the summer. This summer, those services are being held at Har Sinai, so the Oheb Shalom sanctuary is going unused.

Bethel A.M.E. held its first service after the fire last Sunday at Pier Six Pavilion in the Inner Harbor. Members will participate in an ecumenical prayer service at Union Baptist Church on Wednesday “to strengthen our faith in the face of the fire.” That event begins at 7 p.m. at the church at 1219 Druid Hill Avenue.

Reid said it was not yet clear how long it would take to repair the fire damage at Bethel or how much it would cost.

State still hiding details on teen charged in shooting [Baltimore Crime Beat]

2009-07-08T11:47:51-07:00

In an earlier post, I called for state juvenile officials to be more forthcoming about how a 17-year-old who was home detention despite a lengthy criminal record, cut off his electronic home monitoring device and was charged with shooting a 5-year-old girl in Carrollton Ridge last week.

Today at the monthly Criminal Justice Coordinating Council meeting, the Baltimore Sun's Justin Fenton reports that Mayor Sheila Dixon pressed Juvenile Services Secretary Donald DeVore for an explanation as to how the agency determines when a juvenile offender should be detained or placed on home monitoring. She said many juveniles have lengthy records, including gun violations, but are freed.

The question is particularly troublesome for city police and prosecutors who routinely get criticized for failing to quell violence and then bring those who are caught to proper justice. Now, both police and the State's Attorney's Office can grill someone else, and it appears they too want public accountability from the juvenile wards.

DeVore punted the question, saying he couldn’t talk about specific cases and would gladly brief the mayor in private on Lamont Davis case. Dixon responded that she hadn’t asked specifically about Davis, but wanted to know generally how the process works. Again, DeVore dodged, giving a broad response that didn’t address the crux of Dixon’s question.

“We are continuing to identify those youths we consider the most dangerous to wrap them with the tightest forms of supervision,” DeVore said.

Later, DeVore and his chief of staff Tammy Brown stepped into a sideroom to talk privately with Dixon and aides Sheryl Goldstein and Demaune Millard.

A cabaret in Little Italy [Random Rodricks]

2009-07-08T11:41:25-07:00

Here's the July lineup for cabaret performers (and the blurbs for each) at Germano's in Little Italy. All shows begin at 7:30 pm. Cover is $10, if you don't go for dinner first. Seating is limited and reservations are recommended. www.germanostrattoria.com

John Oliver Sings "Songs of the American Musical Theater"
July 9
Accompanying himself on piano, John Oliver sings the songs of George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers and others, introducing the songs with historical anecdotes and humor.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
L'Tanya Mari' Sings "A Teardrop of the Sun"
July 10
"There are many fine female jazz singers on the scene today but, with the
release of A Teardrop Of Sun, L'Tanya Mari' immediately emerges as one of
the top contenders. It is not just that she has an inspired repertoire (from
Chick Corea's "Crystal Silence" and "This Is New" to "That Old Black
Magic"), impeccable intonation and a pretty voice. Most impressive are her
choice of notes, her use of space and silence, and her intelligent way of
improvising melodically. She pays tribute to each composer's intent while
uplifting each tune through her phrasing, subtle emotions, and solid sense
of swing." -Scott Yanow, Jazz Critic
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jazz Vocalist Amanda Bloom Debuts
July 17 Twenty-year-old jazz sensation, Amanda Bloom, in her debut appearance at the Cabaret at Germano's.

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Leneida Crawford in ”Come Ready and See Me”
July 23
In "Come Ready and See Me," Leneida Crawford, mezzo soprano, and Susan Ricci, piano, explore the universal themes of love, hope, belonging and forgiveness in their selection of clever, quirky and beautiful American Art songs. Traditional torch numbers, along with the more contemporary stylings of composers such as Richard Hundley, Jake Heggie, Ricky Ian Gordon and William Bolcom, as well as the popular Broadway sounds of Sondheim and Schwartz are presented within this multi-faceted cabaret experience.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Meredith Seidel and "Soul Fusion"
July 24 at 7:30 pm
Meredith Seidel and Soul Fusion perform music from all eras and genres. As they effortlessly fuse their authentic talent and organic style, they will captivate and send you with the originality of their soulful sounds.
Performers:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Heather Lockhard-Wheeler and Friends in "Champagne Hour"
July 30 and 31 at 7:30 pm
Please join us on July 30 and 31 for "Champagne Hour". It will be an homage to Lawrence Welk and the Lennon sisters with a lot of Baltimore Hon tossed in for good measure. Performers are Shaina Vatz, Vikki Jones, Catrin Davis, Heather Lockard-Wheeler and James Harp on the piano and accordion. Bubble machine will be present. Have fun like they used to with big hair, four part harmony, great food, accordions and bubbles.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gilligan's train? MARC commute is '3 hour tour' [Getting There]

2009-07-08T11:36:37-07:00

Penn Line commuters are reporting Train 509 is running hours late. We're checking on what's happening and why the MTA web site is calling it a "minor" problem.

10:55: Still haven't heard back from the MTA, but a reader sends the following account of this morning's Penn Line commute:

This was no "minor" disruption. Train 407 (Penn Station 6:17am departure) lost power to the motor between Halethorpe and BWI. Train 509 behind it (Penn Station 6:25am departure) came behind and linked up with train 407.
The trains sat there on the tracks for 2 hours. A few passengers were able to transfer to another passing train before it had to clear the tracks.

The remaining passengers sat on the tracks until about 8:45am, when the two attached trains reached BWI. The 407/509 combined train then proceeded forward slowly and made all local stops, before arriving at Union Station at 9:59am, almost 3 hours behind schedule.

Don't call it a comeback; Miller's been here for years [Maryland Politics]

2009-07-08T11:19:56-07:00

It’s Miller time again. In Annapolis, of course, that’s a reference to Maryland Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller. But it also could refer to Ron Miller, an information technology consultant and conservative Republican who tried unsuccessfully to unseat the other Miller in 2006 when then-Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich recruited him. Now Ron is back, announcing this week that he plans to run again next year. Winning against Mike would be no easy feat. He sailed to re-election with 70 percent of the vote three years ago. And he ranks as the longest-serving president of that chamber in history, after first being elected to the House of Delegates in 1970 and moving to the Senate in 1975. So why does Ron think he has a shot in 2010? In a press release, he highlighted what’s sure to be a recurring theme in GOP campaign camps — that Democrats raised taxes during the 2007 special session and have mismanaged the state’s budget. But Ron also has another arrow to aim at the Senate president — that the powerful politician is talking about raising the gas tax. (Mike Miller has long said a gas tax increase may be needed to meet transportation priorities, though in a recent interview he said he would only support such a proposal when the economy improves.) Of course, there’s also the issue of the Miller surname. Some politicos theorize that voters may be confused by two Millers, especially if Ron Miller appears first on the ballot, allowing the Republican to siphon some votes intended for Mike. It should be noted that in 2002, Mike faced a primary challenge from Juanita Miller. But if such a voter phenomenon didn’t steer a victory Ron’s way last time, there’s no reason to think it would this time. Nonetheless, the Ron v. Mike race for the district that includes Prince George’s and Calvert counties could become a proxy for how well the Republican message resonates among recession-weary voters in the heavily Democratic state. P.S. Still no word on whether Ehrlich also will stage a comeback.

Students, parents protest Towson Catholic closing [In Good Faith]

2009-07-08T10:51:53-07:00

At least 100 parents and students of Towson Catholic High School attended a rally Wednesday morning protesting the closure of the 86-year-old school in the fall.

Mary Gail Hare has the story for The Baltimore Sun.

Faced with rapidly declining enrollment and mounting debt, the co-educational school notified parents and its 20-member faculty by letter and e-mail on Tuesday that it will not open for classes in September. It becomes the archdiocese's first high school to close in many years.

Judy Messina, vice president of the PTA and the mother of a rising senior who attended the rally, said, "We're still in shock. If they knew this was coming, why did they wait until six weeks before the new school year [to announce the closure]?"

Many families have already given their deposits and started making their tuition payments.

Messina said she is very disappointed in the pastor, Monsignor F. Dennis Tinder. "He has never been available to any of us. Not the faculty, not the children. We just never see him."

The rally was attended by students who were wearing their uniforms and carrying signs. Alumni returned to their alma mater wearing their senior year T-shirts.

(Photograph by The Baltimore Sun)

Read the rest of the story at baltimoresun.com.

A quick round-up from the local blogs [BaltTech]

2009-07-08T10:00:40-07:00

I've been a little busy the last week putting together some print stories, but finally today got a chance to do some catching up on my blogroll. With a cup of coffee and a cup of instant oatmeal in hand (one at a time) I took a quick cruise through the Baltimore/Maryland/DC tech blogosphere. Here's a snapshot of what people are writing about: * DCTechEvents. Scads of events and meet-ups all week, except for Friday, when apparently all the DC Techies just drink alone. * UMBC's Ebiquity blog takes a look at the "high impact factor" of the Journal of Web Semantics. * Entrepreneur Dave Troy takes a look at Baltimore from the train in his simply-titled post: "From the train, Baltimore looks like hell." * Beltway Startups covers some local tech-company news, such as Merkle (of Columbia, Md.) buying Cognitive Data, and Cognitive Data buying CMS Direct. Is this a case of big fish eating smaller fish, which ate an even smaller fish? * In one of the more pleasantly insightful Michael Jackson-inspired blog posts, local tech guru Mario Armstrong writes about the recently deceased pop singer's patent on special shoes that would help give you the illusion you're leaning forward at a 45-degree angle. * One Fine Jay gave himself a new blog look, and he's got a post about how Twitter hashtag contests are hurting the free service. Amen, brother. Oh, and he thinks the phenomenon of bloggers generating mindless lists also stinks. Double amen to that. (I haven't done any lists for this blog, I think, though I'll concede you might see me generating an occasional list or two here; I will try, try, try to make them absolutely useful, One Fine Jay. I promise.) * Want to learn more about Wolfram Alpha (that new computational search engine)? Somewhat Frank sat down with one of its co-founders for an interview, with video. See below. * Technosailor, taking a cue from the Steve McNair death coverage, urges the mainstream media to report important breaking news even if it's a rumor, to hedge your bets. * Things are looking up for Technotheory, who is off to Barcelona for the summer. Good luck! Have fun! Eat lots of tapas for me. * EastCoastBlogging writes about Tweetdeck and Evernote as a match made in heaven. I haven't gotten into using either app yet. Should I?

Would alumni have saved Towson Catholic? [Second Opinion]

2009-07-08T09:09:40-07:00

The archdiocese has been warning for months that the finances of Catholic schools in Baltimore are perilous and that some will close. But the abrupt announcement this week that Towson Catholic High School will shut its doors after this year is still something of a shock. Alumni report that they had no idea that the school was in trouble, though it seems the situation must not have been a total secret given the exodous of a third of the school's students in the last few weeks.

Closing elementary schools is one thing, but Baltimoreans are famously attached to their high schools. It's hard to imagine that Towson Catholic's alumni -- including NBA superstar Carmelo Anthony, among others who have achieved great success -- wouldn't have been willing to help. Maybe they couldn't have raised enough to secure the finances of a relatively small school, but surely it would have been worth a shot.

Here's to 12:34:56 7.8.09 [Maryland Weather]

2009-07-08T09:03:05-07:00

So you'll be sitting around the lunch table at work today, and you'll raise your cup of diet soda and call for a toast: "Here's to the magic of numbers, and to this magic moment in time: 12:34:56 p.m. on 7/8/09."

Your friends and co-workers will be amazed at your mathematical acumen, and your acute awareness of your place in the space-time continuum.

Either that, or you will be greeted with blank stares, and people will begin to leave the table, claiming to have pressing work to attend to.

Just remember, you heard it here first.

Unlike diamonds, kidneys don't last forever [Picture of Health]

2009-07-08T09:00:43-07:00

With all of the talk about kidney transplants in recent days, one thing has been left unsaid: Many kidney transplants don't last forever.

About 50 percent of kidney transplants from live donors are still working at 20 years, which means many people will need repeat transplants. With more transplants being done than ever before, and being done so successfully, the number of repeat transplants has been on the rise in recent years.

I wrote this story last year. In talking with some pediatric nephrologists (kidney docs), they mentioned something I never knew, that kidney transplants, especially in younger people, are a wonderful long-term fix but not necessarily a permanent one. And that's not always because patients may reject a new kidney or get some other severe illness.

"We can't get the grafts to last forever," Dr. Alicia M. Neu, a pediatric nephrologist at Johns Hopkins Children's Center, told me at the time. "We've kind of hit a wall. People live with one kidney all the time. They donate one, and they're fine. ...

"Why is it that we transplant, and it's not fine?"

The most interesting factoid (one of the best I have come across since I started covering medicine): When patients need a new kidney, surgeons typically don't remove the malfunctioning ones. They stay where they are and just shrivel up. One women quoted in the story had 6 kidneys, several of them implanted in her pelvic region. There is a limit: Doctors had told her there wouldn't be room for anymore if this last kidney stopped working.

Photo courtesy of ABC

Blues for Marion Barry [Second Opinion]

2009-07-08T08:39:43-07:00

Marion Barry, Washington's embattled former mayor and current city councilman representing one of the District's poorest neighborhoods, is back in the news again, this time for allegedly stalking a former girlfriend over the July 4th weekend. Mr. Barry, 73, and Donna Watts-Brighthaupt, a 40-year-old campaign worker he began dating last summer, reportedly quarreled over lunch on Saturday at a restaurant near Annapolis while on their way to Rehoboth Beach, Del. The spat led Watts-Brighthaupt to cancel the planned trip and return home; where she apparently had left her ex-husband baby-sitting the family dog. Mr. Barry reportedly followed her there and refused to leave. Later that evening, when the Brighthaupt's went out to watch the fireworks, Mr. Barry followed them. Police say he was arrested shortly afterwards Watts-Brighthaupt complained to an officer that someone was "bothering" her. In the comedy of political errors this month that included South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's skipping off to Argentina to see his mistress, Nevada Sen. John Ensign's confession of marital infidelity and Alaska Gov. Sarrah Palin's odd announcement that she was stepping down for the good of her state, Mr. Barry's antics would seem almost unremarkable except for the depressing regularity with which he manages to get himself into such jams. He seems to have a self-destructive streak that compells him to commit acts of unfathomable folly just to stay in the public eye, fame and infamy being all the same to him. Still, one can readily predict how this latest episode will play out. Mr. Barry will claim police are harassing him, as he did in 2002 when park police claimed to have found traces of marijuana and crack cocaine in his car, and in 2006, when he was pulled over and cited for driving on a suspended license. (That's on top of Mr. Barry's most famous run-in with the law: his arrest in 1990, when he was still mayor, after being videotaped smoking crack in a hotel room with a woman who was not his wife. A Washington jury acquitted him of all but a misdemeanor drug charge, for which he served six months in prison. On release, he was promptly re-elected, first to a council seat, then to a fourth term as mayor.) All of which suggests the people of Washington, or at least Mr. Barry's legions of ardent supporters, are willing to forgive him almost anything. He's currently on probation for failing to file income taxes, and technically his arrest last weekend constitutes a violation that could return him to prison. But virtually nobody believes that's likely. As has happened so often in the past, the charges will be dropped, Mr. Barry will claim vindication and his career as a once esteemed leader now sadly reduced to cartoonish bufoonery will continue apace toward its predictably calamitous end.

Tomorrow's editorials: The light rail accident and Jim Smith's war chest [Second Opinion]

2009-07-08T08:39:33-07:00

Here are previews of editorials we're working on for Thrusday's paper. Let us know what you think. The best comments will run alongside the editorials in the print edition.

--Much is still unknown about the light rail accident that killed two teenage boys in Lutherville Sunday, but the details that have emerged are disturbing. Surveillance video shows that the two were walking north on the southbound tracks, evidently unaware that the northbound track was closed and that a train could be coming up behind them. They weren’t lying down on the tracks, as initially suspected, or jumping across them at the last minute or any of a number of other ways that they might not have been visible to the operator of the oncoming train. Unlike subway cars, which sometimes are run by computers, light rail cars are entirely human-operated. Driving one is like driving a bus on rails. It’s hard to imagine that an alert, focused driver could have not seen two young men walking on the tracks in broad daylight and, moreover, how the driver could have not noticed that the boys had been hit.

--Call it the mother of all campaign finance loopholes. Baltimore County Executive James T. Smith Jr. is poised to leave office with more than $1 million in his campaign account and the ability to transfer all of it to any candidate he likes through his Baltimore County Victory Slate. He doesn’t have to be on the ballot to do so, and he can add any candidates he likes to the slate at any time. With that kind of money, he can be a kingmaker, giving him the potential for outsized influence over who gets into office – and influence over them once they’re sworn in.

In Mr. Smith’s case, this is not an abstract concern. In 2006, with no serious opposition of his own, he funneled nearly $400,000 into the campaign of a relatively unknown lawyer, Scott Shellenberger, leading to his election as Baltimore County state’s attorney.

There are plenty of easy ways to solve this problem, but none of them has much chance in Annapolis, where incumbents have little incentive to monkey with a system that affords them a huge advantage. Eliminating the unlimited transfers between members of a slate would make good sense, but it has little chance, given that Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller has amassed much of his political power by using that trick. And as long as we’re dreaming, this loophole offers another good reason to adopt public financing of election campaigns, an idea that failed again this year despite Mr. Miller’s unexpected backing. But dealing in the realm of the possible, perhaps we could at least require that members of a slate actually be running for something.

Slated for cash [Maryland Politics]

2009-07-08T07:13:17-07:00

This morning, we reported that out-going Baltimore County Executive James T. Smith has a nice chunk of political change to donate to other candidates, about $1.2 million, sources close to him report. And we explain a way he could circumvent the $6,000 candidate-to-candidate limit. He could transfer an unlimited amount to his Baltimore County Victory Slate, established for the 2006 gubernatorial election. The slate could then transfer virtually any amount to any other candidate on the slate. Right now, Smith is one of 21 members, though other candidates, even if they have nothing to do with Baltimore County, can be added at any time. Common Cause, a Maryland group that favors campaign finance reform, says such intra-slate transfers are tantamount to a “slush fund.” Here are the current Baltimore County Victory Slate members, all Democrats: Andrew Belt, sought Baltimore County delegate seat Jon Cardin, Baltimore County delegate Patricia Foerster, former president of Maryland State Teachers Union Linda Hart, Baltimore County Democratic State Central Committee elected member Delores Kelley, Baltimore County senator Katherine Klausmeier, Baltimore County senator Stephen Lafferty, Baltimore County delegate seat Tracy Miller, sought Baltimore County delegate seat Joseph Minnick, Baltimore County delegate Dan Morhaim, Baltimore County delegate Martin O’Malley, governor Kenneth Oliver, Baltimore County councilman John Olszewski, Baltimore County delegate (Johnny O’s son) John “Johnny O” Olszewski, Baltimore County councilman Todd Schuler, Baltimore County delegate * Scott Shellenberger, Baltimore County state’s attorney James T. Smith, Baltimore County executive Norman Stone, Baltimore County senator Jack Sturgill, sought Baltimore County delegate seat Michael Weir, Baltimore County delegate Bobby Zirkin, Baltimore County senator Note that neither Kevin Kamenetz nor Joe Bartenfelder, considered the leading candidates to replace Smith as county executive, is on the list. * Shellenberger, as we reported this morning, has already greatly benefited from this slate. In 2006, Smith transferred $585,000 to the slate, and Shellenberger, a first-time candidate in a tight race, received $435,000 from it.

Mortgage fraud in Maryland [The Real Estate Wonk]

2009-07-08T06:27:31-07:00

Sure, it wasn't hard to get a mortgage under false pretenses when the rules were so loose that anyone qualified. But shouldn't mortgage fraud be easing now that we're several years into a lending clamp-down?

Nope. Mortgage fraudsters will always find a way.

That's the lesson of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's newest Mortgage Fraud Report, which notes that the crime "continued to be an escalating problem in the United States during 2008." The FBI lists Maryland as one of the "top 10 mortgage fraud states" last year.

The problem ranges from people fudging numbers so they can buy a home -- the "crime? what crime?" folks -- to sophisticated thieves using faked documents to grab loan money and run.

The FBI warns that FHA loans, used to devastating effect in Baltimore flipping scams about 10 years ago, offer opportunities for today's crooks. And the housing slump is hardly a deterrent:

Multiple fraud schemes are being conducted by industry professionals who are in a position to exploit the current depressed housing market. Market conditions are also fueling the use of traditional and emerging schemes which have the potential to multiply across jurisdictions as foreclosures increase, the market contracts, access to credit diminishes, and more homeowners are unable to sell or refinance their homes. Properties affected by these schemes negatively impact neighborhoods; federally insured loan programs; the mortgage, banking, and securities industries; secondary market investors; tax payers; homeowners; and the overall US economy.

Google operating system to take on Microsoft Windows? [BaltTech]

2009-07-08T05:53:18-07:00

And now, faithful readers, we receive news that Google is planning its own operating system, in a direct challenge to Microsoft and its Windows hegemony. The New York Times and tech-news site Ars Technica, broke the news on their respective websites. Inquiries from the press forced Google to disclose the news a day earlier, last night, on their official blog, which gives a light rundown on why they're doing what they're doing.

In a nutshell, Google is looking to expand its Chrome web browser as an operating system for the cheap netbooks that have proliferated in the marketplace. Some initially believed we'd see a version of Android, Google's mobile computing platform, transmogrified into some type of operating system. But Google went with the Chrome platform instead. In the company's own words:

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

So what does this all really mean? From a competitive standpoint, some folks, like the guys at TechCrunch, see it as Google dropping "a nuclear bomb" on Microsoft, which dominates the personal computer OS market.

Most netbooks run slimmed down versions of Windows, running the XP platform, or Linux. Some tech watchers seem to think the netbook market is a race to the bottom -- in terms of price point and profitability, which is why many think Apple has shied away from putting one out -- and companies may eventually give them away for free in exchange for a commitment to a wireless Internet provider.

Do you think a Google Chrome OS can really compete against Microsoft Windows?

It appears that Google, at least for now, is mainly targeting the cheap netbook market with some good instincts: on ultra portable computers, people just want them to fire up quickly and get them on the Internet.

Having a fairly small, light Dell laptop running XP myself, it usually takes several minutes -- about 5, really -- to boot up from a cold start and get online. If Google's new OS can chop that time down to a minute or so -- without sacrificing security and functionality -- I think we'd have a contender. And maybe that's the sweet spot for Google -- getting your little laptop/netbook fired up quickly, without hassle. Does the thought of that get you going?

Want to read up on the Google Chrome OS news? Check out these stories.

Operation Sail: The Spirit of '76 [A Century in The Sun]

2009-07-08T05:52:15-07:00

The July 4th holiday reminded me of our country's Bicentennial Year celebration back in 1976 and of the tall ships that visited to Baltimore. The visit by these seven tall sailing ships and several smaller craft proved to be the biggest tourist attraction in Baltimore's history. Between July 10 and July 18 the harbor area was a sea of timbers and humanity. Operation Sail, or OpSail for short, inaugurated public use of the new promenade and athletic field on southern side of the Inner Harbor and helped reawken Baltimore to its potential. This drew many people not just from the Baltimore metropolitan area but from Washington, DC, Virgina and states to the north. The tall ships were very majestic and brought you back to an earlier time in our history when Baltimore's harbor was filled with all kinds of masted ships. OpSail also brought crews from all over the world who mixed well with Baltimore's many different ethnic groups and who also could spread the word about Baltimore after they left. We are lucky to have the USS Constellation, The Pride of Baltimore II, Lady Maryland and other nautical treasures. Tall ships and other vessels still visit our city each year thanks to Sail Baltimore. The Suns' photographers chronicled this event with many shots of the ships, crews and crowds they attracted. I hope you enjoy the photos and feel free to send me comments and ideas for future posts.

Officials shouldn't hide when children are shot [Baltimore Crime Beat]

2009-07-08T05:12:08-07:00

As little Raven Wyatt (left) remains on life support at Johns Hopkins Hospital, clinging to life as her family and city prays for her to recover, community leaders in Southwest Baltimore's Carrollton Ridge plan for a community walk this evening.

The event had been long scheduled, but a 5-year-old getting shot in the head brings new urgency. The Baltimore branch of the NAACP plans to come and is pleading with men to make a stand. The mayor has put it on her weekly schedule, which will no doubt attract politicians, police commanders, housing officials and code enforcers -- all of whom should've been walking these streets long before Raven ended up in a hospital.

We need answers. We need to know why a 17-year-old with a long juvenile record was placed on home monitoring (he cut off his bracelet and joined a fight with another youth that ended in gunfire and a stray bullet in Raven's head. We know more about his record today and now hear from the governor's office demanding ansewrs from the Department of Juvenile Services.

But still, officials hide behind a cloak of secrecy. We know a bit about the suspect's record but not enough. His attorney tried to prevent his client from standing up in court (he was charged as an adult in Raven's shooting) and didn't bother to argue for bail, which meant no one read his juvenile history into the adult record. The juvenile court proceedings from the past are sealed and the state can't say much about why he was put on home monitoring in the first place.

Such secrecy should end once a juvenile graduates to the adult system. His background will come out eventually -- adult court shields little from public view -- but officials shouldn't be allowed to hide their actions in this case.

Raven deserves a full accounting. The walk kicks off at 6:30 tonight in Carrollton Ridge.

Keepings teens safe from HIV [Picture of Health]

2009-07-08T05:01:24-07:00

When it comes to HIV/AIDS the mantra has always been: get tested.

But some doctors warn that not all tests are created equal. Sometimes a negative test can give a false sense of security to both doctors and patients, particularly for risk-taking teenagers, said Dr. Allison Agwu, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.

Rapid HIV tests are designed to pick up antibodies to the virus, not the virus itself. It can take weeks or months for someone to produce antibodies. So a rapid test can come up negative the first time, but positive some weeks or months later. False negatives often happen during the earliest and most contagious stages of the infection.

And with teens, those crucial months matter.

“The test is only as good as when you get the test,” said Agwu. “I can’t tell you the number of times I spoke to a patient, and they say, ‘Well I’m negative. And they go on to doing whatever risky behaviors they’ve been doing.”

Of the 53,000 new HIV infections diagnosed each year in the United States, 14 percent of those occurred in 13 to 25-year-olds, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

And the CDC reported last week that nearly half of all HIV positive teens don’t know they have the virus.

Agwu thinks doctors need to look further, probe deeper about their patients’ risk behaviors and consider a test that detects the virus’ genetic markers rather than relying on antibodies to the virus.

But testing is only part of the broader issue of getting teens to be aware of the dangers of HIV, said Agwu. Doctors and parents need to do a better job talking frankly to teens about sex and the risk for HIV, particularly in a city like Baltimore with higher than average rates of the disease, she said.

There's no doubt that it's touchy territory for parents. Today, an AIDS daignosis is no longer a death sentence and teens are often desensitized to the dangers or think it will never happen to them, Agwu said. There's no easy way to combat this, Agwu admits. But engaging teens in a constant frank conversation about the disease is a start.

Dealers oppose 'right-to-repair' [Random Rodricks]

2009-07-08T04:50:16-07:00

More on today's column about the "right-to-repair" effort by auto parts manufacturers and independent mechanics:

What the National Automobile Dealers Association says in opposition.

Why the Automotive Service Association thinks federal or state laws are unnecessary.

Why Canadian dealers oppose the effort in their country.

A 2007 New York Times story on mechanics and high-tech repair information.

Green, but not so clean [B'More Green]

2009-07-08T03:43:15-07:00

Phosphate-free dishwasher detergents may help restore the Chesapeake Bay, but there could be a price to pay -- dirtier dishes.

Maryland is one of 14 states that are banning sales of dishwasher detergents containing phosphates next July, and Congress is considering extending the ban nationwide. State lawmakers are yanking phosphate dishwasher detergents from store shelves to protect the environment -- the phosphorus in standard detergents spurs growths of algae, which can suck the oxygen out of water that fish need to survive. And the bay is choking on an overdose of nutrients, including phosphorus.

But some consumers have complained that the new phosphate-free detergents don't get their dishes as clean as the old standbys. In Spokane, Washington, where phosphate products were banned last year, some housewives becames so upset with their dirty dishes that they began driving across the state line to Idaho to buy the outlawed dirt-fighting blends.

Now comes Consumer Reports to say the greener dishwasher detergents generally don't work as well as the phosphate soaps. "In our tough tests, five of seven phosphate-free dishwasher detergents left lots of baked-on food," the magazine reports in its August issue. The rankings are available only to subscribers, but you can read the magazine's general comments on dishwasher detergents, with mentions of some individual products, here.

(I've found the same thing, though admittedly without the rigorous testing. I spied Palmolive Eco in my supermarket several weeks ago and decided to give it a try. We found bits of dry cereal still clinging to the bowls when the dishwasher finished its work - an inconvenience that seemed to end when we switched back to a phosphate gel.)

Not all phosphate-free detergents flunked Consumer Reports' tests. Method Smarty Dish tablets did pretty well, for instance, though not with cleaning pots. The key may be the enzymes used in lieu of phosphates, the editors suggest.

But your options in buying phosphate-free detergents right now are still pretty limited. That's the reason, says Brian Sansoni of the Soap and Detergent Association, that the industry lobbied Maryland lawmakers a year ago to delay their phosphate ban by six months, from Jan. 1 to July 1 of next year. The major detergent manufacturers said they needed more time to develop and market greener products.

What to do for now, then, if you care about the environment but can't stand spots or grit on your dishes when you take them out of the dishwasher?

"It's most certainly a quandary for people," acknowledges Celia Kuperszmid-Lehrman, deputy home editor for Consumer Reports. She suggests taking greater care in loading the dishwasher - making sure dishes are not stacked on top of each other or too close together.

She also recommends using rinse agents if the dishwasher is equipped to dispense them; many folks like me skip them because they seem an unnecessary expense, but Kuperszmid-Lehrman says they actually do help keep food from sticking to dishes.

Tempting as it may be, she cautions, don't pre-wash bowls and plates before putting them in the dishwasher. "That wastes an enormous amount of water," she said, thousands of gallons a year.

The same advice applies for those who wonder if it wouldn't be greener just to scrub plates and silverware by hand in the sink. A dishwasher uses five to 10 gallons of water - maybe 15 if it's an older model - to clean a load, Kuperszmid-Lehrman points out. But the standard kitchen faucet spits out 2.5 gallons a minute, so you'd use more water washing dishes by hand if you left the faucet run as little as five or six minutes.

"Dishwashers are quite an efficient use of resources,'' she said. Meanwhile, detergent manufacturers are still working on developing green dish cleaners, so maybe they'll find more suitable substitutes for the scum-fighting power of phosphates.

Has anyone else discovered this dirty little secret about green dishwasher detergents? Or is it much ado about nothing? Are a few gritty dishes a small price to pay for cleaner water?

Guest Post: My day in court [In Good Faith]

2009-07-08T03:12:24-07:00

Rabbi Yaakov Menken is the Director of Project Genesis, a Jewish cyber-outreach organization based in Baltimore. Yesterday found me at the District Court of Maryland, Traffic Division, to fight a parking ticket. We had received a "Warning Notice" for failure to respond to a citation that we had never received, for our van being parked in a Transit Zone, in one of those neighborhoods in which you might be ill-advised to park in the most legal of spaces -- especially after dark, which, according to the time on the notice, it was. Mistakes happen, and the most likely explanation is that the wrong license plate number was transcribed from the citation onto the notice. Besides a compliment from the judge for having a "mean" hat (like many Orthodox Jewish men, I wear a black fedora, which he didn't want me to forget on the bench), he also gave me the Not Guilty verdict I was looking for (benefit of the doubt). The experience was notable for a few reasons. First and foremost, the judge was (as the previous comments might indicate), very friendly and down to earth, very unpretentious. He was handling "non-incarcerable offenses" (his translation: "the only way you can go to jail is by doing something really dumb in this courtroom"), and was happy to show the friendlier side of the court system. Everyone appealing a ticket seemed to have some justification, and he was happy to give a Not Guilty to, for example, the obviously handicapped woman who was driving the wrong car on the day she was ticketed for using a handicapped spot. "Justice, justice shall you pursue..." but tempered with mercy. I was impressed. He also told the following story, which happened to take place in the same neighborhood in which we were charged with parking illegally. He walks, he says, through all of Baltimore's neighborhoods, and on a Sunday morning a young man approached him on the otherwise-deserted street corner. "Hey man," he said, "want some weed?" The judge responded by reaching into his pocket, and pulling out his badge indicating that he is a judge. The young man looked at him, looked at his badge, back to him, back to the badge, and finally back to him. And then he said, "so does this mean you don't want any, or you can't have any?" Of course, the story had to be shared simply because it's very funny. But I also wonder what it says when a young drug dealer is so unaware of the law and its possible consequences ... or so brazen as to imagine the judge would have no thought of having him arrested. Religion teaches us about the need to control our baser instincts, to respect a Higher Authority. And, thinking pragmatically, a Jewish teacher of millenia past blessed his students that they should fear G-d as much as they fear other people (they were taken aback, but he pointed out that many will do in private, i.e., in G-d's Presence, what they would never do in public). What does it say about society when even an earthly higher authority is given so little recognition?

MTA double fatality called an accident [Getting There]

2009-07-07T15:34:01-07:00

The Maryland Transit Administration has determined that the two teenagers who were fatally struck by a train Sunday near the Lutherville light rail station were struck from behind as they walked in the middle of the tracks with their backs to a train, an MTA spokeswoman said Tuesday.

MTA police arrived at the judgment that the deaths were accidental after viewing video from the train that struck the pair about 2:55 p.m. Sunday, spokeswoman Jawauna Greene said.

The MTA said earlier Tuesday that they believed that Connor Peterson and Kyle Patrick Wankmiller, both 17, had been lying on the tracks while two trains passed over them. But Green said the video evidence shows the two were walking north on tracks that are usually used for southbound travel when they were run over.

At the time, the light rail system was in two-way operations on one track because another train had been damaged after it ran into a highway guardrail that apparently had been left on the northbound tracks.

Greene said the boys apparently thought the approaching train was using the other track.

"When you hear a train coming from the southern direction you expect it to be on (the northbound track)," Greene said. "It cal lull you into a false sense of security."

Greene noted that members of the public are not allowed to walk on the tracks except at designated crossing points. To walk along the tracks is considered trespassing, she said.

Still unexplained was how the operator of the train that struck the pair could have missed seeing them. Greene said the investigation is continuing.

The two teens were discovered severely injured about 3:10 p.m. after the operator and fare inspector aboard another train noticed something on the tracks and the inspector walked back to determine what it was. Wankmiller died Sunday at St. Joseph Medical Center. Peterson died Monday at Maryland Shock Trauma Center.

Big change coming on east side interstates [Getting There]

2009-07-07T15:25:54-07:00

A detailed announcement is expected Wednesday, but here's an early heads up that the Maryland Transportation Authority will implemet an important change to the traffic patterns on Interstate 95 and Interstate 895 starting Sunday iif weather permits,

Where in the past people heading for the Fort McHenry Tunnel had to take a ramp to stay on southbound I-95, after Sunday they will be able to do so by simply going straight, As of that day, travelers heading for the Harbor Tunnel via Interstate 895 will have to uuse an exit ramp.

The Harbor Tunnel carrries about half as much traffic as the McHenry Tunnel. The change is part of the overall reconstruction of I-95 to allow the addition of express toll lanes between the Beltway and White Marsh.

Video to show other cities' transit lines [Getting There]

2009-07-07T14:34:58-07:00

A group of mostly pro-Red Line sponsors will show a film Wednesday evening at the downtown Enoch Pratt Free Library intended to show Baltimoreans what other cities have been doing to integrate transit lines into their communities.

While this presentation will likely play up the virtues of surface light rail, it could be useful information for folks whose only exposure to light rail has been the circa 1991 north-south light rail line along Howard Street.

Whatever decision is made on the Red Line, it shouldn't be based on a notion that the current line is the state of the art.

The release follows below.

What can Baltimoreans learn from other cities building light rail transit lines? Are there lessons from Phoenix, Portland, Seattle and Los Angeles that can help increase public involvement in building the east-west Red Line, mitigate disruptions and respond to community concerns?

A film screening and panel discussion will explore those possibilities on Wednesday, July 8 at the Enoch Pratt Central Library at 5:30 p.m. Admission is free.

The 16-minute film, “Transit Around the Nation,” is an outgrowth of trips last fall by 60 neighborhood activists, elected leaders, developers and government officials to four cities building light rail lines. The travelers reunited a few weeks later to talk about what they saw, heard and learned that could improve communication with neighborhoods and businesses during the Red Line’s planning and construction.

The idea of the 2008 trips was “to expose people to the reality beyond Baltimore City and Baltimore County” in taking on a light-rail project that holds much potential but also prompts reminders of unhappy past experiences, says Otis Rolley III, President and CEO of the Central Maryland Transportation Alliance, which sponsored the transit trips along with the Citizens Planning and Housing Association (CPHA), Baltimore City, and the Maryland Transit Administration.

The four transit tours allowed participants to understand more about economic opportunities, transit-oriented development and construction mitigation techniques. They spoke with community activists, housing officials, neighborhood outreach leaders, government officials and people living near the light rail lines.

During the tours, participants posted real-time updates on Twitter, a social networking service, and pictures on Flickrs, a photo sharing service. The Megaphone Project interviewed participants during these trips and afterward and produced the 16-minute documentary.

The film screening will be followed by a panel discussion in Wheeler Auditorium at the Enoch Pratt Central Library, 400 Cathedral Street in downtown Baltimore. The July 8 event begins at 5:30 p.m. and is expected to run until 7 p.m.

One kidney saves eight lives [Picture of Health]

2009-07-07T14:29:42-07:00

It all started with a Virginia man who offered his kidney to a woman from his parish who needed one. They had never met but Thomas F. Koontz thought the donation would be a good way to give back to God, whom he credited with saving his teenage daughter's brain cancer. The woman from church ended up finding a different donor. So Koontz called Johns Hopkins. He offered his kidney to anyone who might needed it,

His completely selfless act started a chain of events that would allow not just one person to get a desperately needed kidney, but eight people who needed new organs to keep them alive.

Surgeons at Johns Hopkins Hospital this morning held a press conference to announce that they -- along with doctors from hospitals in Oklahoma City, St. Louis and Detroit -- had performed a record feat. They completed an eight-way, multi-hospital, domino kidney transplant. This swap required seven pairs of people -- each made up of one person in need of a kidney and one willing to donate, but whose blood or tissue type was incompatible with the intended recipient. A computer program was fed all of the potential donor pairs and devised a complicated exchange that took place over the course of three weeks and involved several kidneys being flown around the country. At the end of the line was someone who didn't have a live donor offering a kidney, a woman who received her kidney at Hopkins last night. She was the ultimate recipient of Koontz's largesse.

"At the end of the chain, that kidney still goes to someone in great need," said Dr. Robert Montgomery, the Hopkins doc who led the transplant team. "But along the way, you're able to accomplish two, three, four, eight transplants. ...

"These are all ways of trying to optimize the number of people who are able to receive life-saving transplants."

Hopkins has been doing this for years and the number of kidneys transplanted each time seems to keep rising. At first, it may seem like a publicity stunt, an effort to outdo themselves just for the sake of it. But that is not what goes on here. The more people involved, the more people who benefit from a single kidney donation.

Montgomery says he hopes this will go a long way to address the biggest limitation in the number of kidney transplants that can be done: There aren't enough kidneys to go around.

"A transplant surgeon can maybe do 2,000 surgeries in a lifetime," he said. "The work that we're doing here will be responsible for thousands and thousands of transplants.

"What could be better?"

Baltimore Sun photo of Dr. Robert Montgomery

DIY cat litter [B'More Green]

2009-07-07T13:29:33-07:00

On the subject of pet waste being toxic for the environment, not only is it necessary to consider how diligently you clean up after your dogs and cats, but also how often they may be coming into contact with toxic substances. For example, did you know that clumping clay litter contains carcinogenic silica dust that can clog your cat’s lungs? Plus, the sodium bentonite that acts as a clumping agent is poisonous, as cats ingest it each time they groom themselves. One solution: newspaper litter. In about 45 minutes, you can make your own 2-3 week supply using little more than newspaper, warm water, and baking soda. Here is the full tutorial. And, to read more about what other environmental toxins may be affecting your fur baby, visit Pets for the Environment – a great site that contains helpful information for how to create a healthy environment for pets and people. (Photo by me)

Four evenings beneath the Int'l Space Station [Maryland Weather]

2009-07-07T13:05:49-07:00

There is always a chance that clouds and storms will interfere. But if we get lucky, there should be plenty of opportunity to spot the International Space Station this week as it passes over the mid-Atlantic states.

The long hours of northern daylight at this time of year are keeping the station in direct sunlight later into the evening, and earlier in the morning, so there are actually more than 20 flybys that observers in the Baltimore area could catch in the next nine days if they were so inclined. But many are in the wee hours of the morning, and other passes are low to the horizon and harder to see.

In this post I'll highlight just four passes, all of them very bright, evening opportunities at least halfway up the sky from the horizon. Here goes:

Tuesday evening, July 7: Look for the ISS as it rises above the southwestern horizon at 9:32 p.m. EDT. It will pass through the Summer Triangle, climbing to 43 degrees above the southeastern horizon by 9:35 p.m. From there it will cruise off toward the northeast, disappearing at about 9:38 p.m. UPDATE: Good pass, very bright, no clouds. The unmanned Russian Progress supply ship trailed the ISS by about 15 seconds.

Wednesday evening, July 8: On this pass, too, the ISS will rise from the southwest at 9:57 p.m., passing just above Saturn. Then it will travel through the stars of the Big Dipper, about 48 degrees above the northwestern horizon at 9:59 p.m. From there it will head off toward the northeast as it flies over New England and the Canadian Maritime Provinces and disappears at about 10:02 p.m.

Thursday evening, July 9: This pass will begin in the southwest at 8:46 p.m. EDT. The ISS will appear like a bright, moving star, rising 46 degrees above the southeast horizon at 8:49 p.m. From there it will fly off toward the northeast and vanish at 8:52 p.m.

Friday evening, July 10: Watch for the space station to rise out of the western sky at 9:10 p.m. EDT, passing just below Saturn this time, then climbing to 46 degrees (halfway up) from the northwestern horizon. It will pass along the bottom edge of the Dipper stars at 9:13 p.m. before moving off toward the mortheast, where it will fade away at 9:16 p.m.

As always, come back here and let us know how you did. Take the kids out to watch. One of them might decide to become an astronaut. Or a science writer.

The image above, by the way, is the expected view through the ISS Cupola that astronauts will carry to the station and install sometime next year.

MTA police seek public's help [Getting There]

2009-07-07T12:58:23-07:00

The Maryland Transit Administration Police are asking members of the public to come forward with any information they might have concerning a fatal incident near the Lutherville light rail station that left two teenagers dead.

MTA spokeswoman Jawauna Greene appealed to anyone who saw anything connected with the incident to call the MTA Police at 410-454-7720.

"We still need a lot of help in ferreting out what happened," she said.

Greene said investigators have reached no conclusions about what led to the deaths of Kyle Wankmiller and Connor Peterson, both 17, of Lutherville. She said police were still interviewing witnesses and verifying reports that people had been seen standing in a nearby wooded area
shortly before the incident.

Greene said the two were found lying between the rails of the southbound track just south of the Lutherville station. Evidence indicated that two trains struck them while passing over them while they were prone, but there were no signs they had been knocked over by a train, Greene said.

Wallops to test crew escape system Wednesday A.M. [Maryland Weather]

2009-07-07T12:09:32-07:00

There's an interesting launch planned for early Wednesday at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility, down on Virginia's Eastern Shore. It's not one that will be visible for hundreds of miles around, but it does mark an important milestone for manned space flight. The weather forecast is promising.

At 6:15 a.m. EDT, NASA will attempt to launch its Max Launch Abort System, a rocket-propelled mechanism that's designed to pull astronauts and their crew capsule away from their boosters in the event of a failure at, or near, the launch pad. If there's a delay, the launch window is open until 10 a.m.

UPDATE: Launch (photo) was successful. Anyone see it?

The idea recalls the tall escape towers that topped the old Mercury and Apollo capsules. They were essentially small rocket engines designed to yank the crew capsule to safety and provide time for its parachutes to deploy and lower the crew safely to the ocean.

If the space shuttle had had a similar system, the Challenger crew might have made it to safety as their booster rockets and liquid fuel tanks blew up after launch in 1986.

The MLAS system is being developed for possible use with NASA's planned Orion spacecraft, the Apollo-like capsule that will carry astronauts to the International Space Station by 2015, and on to the moon in 2020, if all goes according to plan.

Anyway, the launch from Wallops Wednesday morning will be a short one - two minutes. The MLAS rocket is expected to carry a simulated Orion capsule no more than a mile into the sky, and a mile out to sea. But it would sure be something nifty to watch if you happen to be nearby.

The test vehicle is 33 feet tall and the whole system weighs 45,000 pounds. The weather forecast for the area is good.

For more information, visit the Wallops Web site. Their launches can be followed on Twitter @NASA_Wallops.

(NASA PHOTO)

Healing the U.S.-Russia rift [Second Opinion]

2009-07-07T12:08:30-07:00

President Barack Obama's visit to Russia this week is a logical follow-up to his stop in Egypt last month.

In Cairo, Mr. Obama took steps to heal the United States' wounded relationship with the Arab and Muslim world. In Moscow, the president has begun to mend U.S.-Russian ties, which were also badly damaged during the Bush years.

In a few short days, Mr. Obama has made important progress in restoring one of America's most important bilateral relationships. He and President Dmitri Medvedev quickly reached an agreement to cut their strategic nuclear arsenals by at least one-quarter. (Mr. Obama has had a deep interest in the nuclear issue dating back to his college days, as The New York Times reported over the weekend.)

In his speech Tuesday, Mr. Obama returned to a theme that has served him well at home and abroad by stressing that the U.S. and Russia "share common interests" -- in particular deterring North Korea and Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. He struck a conciliatory tone aimed at soothing Russia's sensitivity about its sovereignty and role in the world.

[Associated Press photo]

But contrary to the claims of some of Mr. Obama's critics, there was no tone of apology or surrender in Mr. Obama's remarks. He refused to give any ground on a missile defense system in Eastern Europe or the expansion of NATO, two issues that raise suspicions of U.S. interference in what many Russians still, in a holdover from Cold War attitudes, regard as their sphere of influence.

The U.S. and Russia still have a lot of work to do, on this issue and others; let's hope future summit meetings will include more discussion of the problem of securing loose nuclear material in Russia and elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, which experts consider one of the gravest threats to international security.

Mr. Obama didn't claim any quasi-mystical divinations into Mr. Medvedev's soul this week, thank goodness. Instead, he spoke straightforwardly about U.S. positions on issues of interest to Russia, emphasizing common ground but not shying away from disagreements. Seems like a good way to win back the respect that is America's due.

Save the bay, clean up after Fido! [B'More Green]

2009-07-07T10:51:56-07:00

When looking for culprits to blame for the Chesapeake Bay's foul shape, it's tempting to point fingers at smelly sewage treatment plants, or at farmers whose flocks or herds of animals produce highly visible, not to mention odoriferous, mounds of manure.

But before pointing fingers, maybe we should look a little closer to home. Household pets, particularly the legions of dogs taken for walks every day, collectively are a significant source of water pollution, experts say, and even a threat to human health.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation issued a report today highlighting the ways in which pollution and bacteria put humans at risk when they swim in the bay or its tributaries, when they eat locally caught fish or when they drink water from wells. I wrote a story about it for The Baltimore Sun.

The report cites the usual suspects for much of the pollution that is linked to disease-causing bacteria, harmful algal blooms and toxic substances in the water. It points to farm animal waste, for instance, as a likely source of nitrates getting into ground water and people's wells on the Eastern Shore and in southeastern Pennsylvania.

But it's another story in urban and suburban areas. According to a state study, pet waste is the leading source of bacteria found in a stretch of the Severn River where a few years earlier a Crownsville man acquired a life-threatening bacterial infection after swimming with a mild scrape on his leg.

The 2008 state study estimated that 69 percent of the bacteria found in the water came from pets, with wildlife contributing about 24 percent, livestock and humans just three percent each. And the report noted that about 41 percent of the dog owners in the area admitted they do not pick up after their pets most of the time.

So, fellow dog owners, ask yourselves, how diligently do you clean up after your four-footed companions? Do you scoop the poop? Put it in the trash, bury it or even flush it down your own toilet? That's what expert say you ought to be dong with it.

Mind you, I'm not perfect. We have two dogs at my house, and we do pick up after them when we go for walks. We take at least a couple plastic grocery bags along, and the bagged business winds up in a trash can along our route, or occasionally back at home - which state officials say is okay.

(As an aside, this is one argument for not banning plastic bags from supermarkets - though I imagine some enterprising soul could market disposable doggie-doo mitts.)

But we aren't doing the right thing routinely with our dogs' droppings in our own yard. Usually, we simply remove the offending deposit from footpaths and redeposit it along the back fence, away from the house. But state officails say it really shouldn't be left in the open, even in a wooded area. The next rain will break it up and carry at least some of the bacteria and excess nutrients into the nearest storm drain, and ultimately the local stream.

So I guess I'll bring along a bag or a shovel when I make the backyard sweeps from now on. Let me know if you have any better ideas. We'll be doing the bay, and our neighbors, a big favor by doing something with that doo-doo. If we want clean water, we have to take responsibility for what we can do.

For more on pet waste's impact on the bay, go here.

AP photo

Hot weather due back (briefly) for the weekend [Maryland Weather]

2009-07-07T10:18:09-07:00

Feeling a little warm downtown at the moment (87 at The Sun's weather station), but the airport remains at a comfortable 83 degrees as we write. This mild-for-July weather is expected to continue for the rest of the work week. But hot weather is due back for the weekend, forecasters say.

We're only a week into July, of course, but so far the temperatures for the month at BWI-Marshall are averaging a cool 71.5 degrees. That's 4 degrees below the long-term average of 75.5 degrees for the first week of July in Baltimore.

It can't last, of course. But if it did, it would make this the coolest July on record for the city. The only Julys that come close are 1891, which averaged 71.6 degrees for the entire month; 2000 and 2001, which ended with an average temperature of 72.7 and 72.8 degrees, respectively.

Two days so far this month have failed to reach the 80s, and two nights dipped into the 50s at BWI. No records were broken, but we're all saving a bundle on our cooling bills.

The days ahead look pretty much the same as another cold front slips by. Forecasters see slight chances for precipitation today, followed by some clearing and drier air for Wednesday. More chances for showers return Thursday, with highs only in the low- to mid-80s, which is a few degrees cooler than the long-term averages. Nights will hold in the 60s at the airport.

By Saturday, however, we'll be crowding 90 degrees again, with increased risk of showers and thunderstorms. That will persist until the next cold front drops by, perhaps by late Sunday.

Long-term outlooks still don't see much in store for us in the way of our more typically hot and humid Chesapeake Summer weather.

You're welcome, but please... In lieu of flowers, you may donate to your favorite charity.

(SUN PHOTO by Kim Hairston 2006)

Tomorrow's editorials: Stem cell research and IndyCars and hotel bookings downtown [Second Opinion]

2009-07-07T09:18:49-07:00

Here are previews of the editorials we're working on for tomorrow's paper. Let us know what you think. We'll run the best comments alongside the editorials in the print edition.

--The National Institutes of Health’s new guidelines for federal funding of stem cell research provide a common-sense approach to the ethics of a type of science that has been wrapped up in excessive controversy for years. The new rules also provide a potential boon for Maryland researchers, who, by dint of geography and the deep ties between the NIH and scientists at Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland, are sure to pick up a substantial share of the newly available funding.

Even so, there is still a place for Maryland’s state stem cell research grants. Like several other states, Maryland established its own grant program when federal rules were so restrictive as to effectively cut off whole branches of research, but those funds also became an important part of the economic development competition over who will benefit from what is sure to be a lucrative science. Maryland, North Carolina, California, Massachusetts and other states would all like to be the Silicon Valley of biotech, and any state that drops its funding now risks finding itself at a competitive disadvantage.

Maryland’s funding -- $15.4 million for the current fiscal year – pales next to the support the federal government can give to the research, but the state can still use its investments to help translate the science into spinoff businesses that could drive the state’s economy for years to come.

--Despite the recession, downtown Baltimore is showing some signs of life. The Baltimore Convention and Visitors Bureau reported this week that future hotel bookings by convention or business groups grew 16 percent last year, a sign that the city’s gamble on the new convention center hotel next to Camden Yards might be paying off.

And at the same time, a group of racing enthusiasts is working to bring an Indy Car event to downtown Baltimore in 2011. No doubt the prospect of closed streets for such a four-day event would be a headache for commuters, but the benefits – a sporting event with an economic impact that could best the Preakness, not to mention the prospect that downtown’s major thoroughfares might get a well-needed smoothing out to accommodate speeding racecars – would more than justify the inconvenience.

(Sun photo)

Meteorite hunter says: Check security camera tapes [Maryland Weather]

2009-07-07T08:57:26-07:00

Professional meteor hunter Steve Arnold is asking home and business owners in central Maryland and southern Pennsylvania to check their security tapes from early Monday morning for evidence of the meteor that scores of residents across the region have been reporting.

Most reader reports to this Blog put the time between 1:00 a.m. EDT and 1:15 a.m., July 6, with many focused on 1:08 - 1:10 a.m.

Arnold, co-star of the Science Channel's "Meteorite Men" program, is hoping to use the tapes to triangulate on the meteor and calculate its path. From that, he hopes to launch a search for any bits of the space rock that may have made it to the ground.

"That security camera footage is badly needed," Arnold told me in an email note. "I am optimistic, as there should be a few thousand cameras that caught it on tape. The key is to find at least three good camera angles to triangulate from. By 'good,' I don't necessarily mean the clearest, or in color, but ones that have physical objects visible in the distance so that when visiting the camera in person, with a compass, one can tell exactly where the fireball extinguished. This way a definite line can be drawn from the lens of the camera to the object and on the the point of 'redardation.' Three good lines intersecting gives us what we need."

Arnold also asked me to see whether the region's weather radar captured a trace of the falling meteor. I've asked the National Weather Service at Sterling to look into it.

Security camera footage has been used before to document fireball meteors. There are lots of them on YouTube. So, if you own or have access to security camera tapes in the region, check your Monday morning data for the flash. If you find something, you can contact me at frank.roylance@baltsun.com, or Steve Arnold at MeteorHntr@aol.com. Or, copy us both.

The University of Maryland's guitar hero? [BaltTech]

2009-07-07T07:04:11-07:00

I know next to nothing about electric guitars. Several years ago, I was lucky enough to get a tour of Paul Reed Smith's fascinating guitar factory in Stevensville, for a story I wrote about his business. Some big rockers use PRS guitars, including Carlos Santana and Creed.

So, knowing what I know about PRS's local growth into a big-name guitar company, I was interested to read about the work of Bruce Jacob, a University of Maryland electrical and computer engineering professor, in the field of electrical guitar-making. (What a cool field to be working in, huh?)

It seems Jacob -- with the help of students and partners -- created some new electronic gadgetry that allows you to squeeze many more different sounds out of the same guitar. They formed a company, Coil LLC, that, in addition to guitar-building, is also sponsoring audio electronics development at the university with the help of a $135,000 state grant. It's located in the new TERP Startup lab, a tech-incubation program for university faculty, students and entrepreneurs.

Coil LLC, started selling guitars this week via their Website.

To get a full rundown on what Jacob and Coil are doing, check out this news release out of College Park (which, incidentally, mentions PRS guitars.) And to watch young dudes jamming on Coil guitars, check these videos out. Gnarly! Rock on!

Oh, and if you're daydreaming of quitting your day-job and learning how to build guitars, Jacob even offers a course: ENEE 159b: Start-Up 101 - Electric Guitar Design.

Child shot [Baltimore Crime Beat]

2009-07-07T05:30:00-07:00

I return from a short vacation to deal with yet another shooting of another innocent child -- a 5-year-old hit by a stray bullet in Southwest Baltimore, apparently during an argument between two teens who should've been behind bars in the first place.

First, as I pointed out last year, it seems that every child shooting comes with its own image -- the sister of 10-year-old boy killed in 1993 holding the cap he had been wearing, fingering the bullet holes on each side; two grapefruits left on rowhouse steps, which had been carried by a boy to an elderly neighbor when a bullet cut him down last year. Now, we have this haunting picture of Raven Wyatt's sandals left behind on the street after the attack.

The suspect, a 17-year-old, had been on home detention as a juvenile offender and apparently cut off his electronic home monitoring ankle bracelet to get back onto the street. We also learn that the intended target of the shooting also was in juvenile court to face charges, but a judge evicted reporters from the courtroom.

State juvenile officials say they were searching for the 17-year-old within 15 minutes of him cutting off his monitoring device, but that was plenty of time for a little girl to get shot. The status of the suspect and his intended victim will eventually come out, but too much remains shrouded in secrecy -- their backgrounds, why and how they remain on the street despite lengthy criminal records, and their complete criminal history. We are rightfully upset they were out, but we don't know the full circumstances, and the criminal justice system will argue that we shouldn't to protect their privacy.

This shooting occurred in the area covered by the Southwest Police District where I spent time with an officer during a community ride-along. We went out with a member of the neighborhood association who does community walks and watched officer speed from call to call and make several arrests.

McNair, Kazemi photos [Random Rodricks]

2009-07-07T05:04:44-07:00

TMZ claims these are recent photos of Steve McNair and Sahel Kazemi together.

Robert McNamara's Vietnam Legacy [Second Opinion]

2009-07-07T05:01:28-07:00

“War is so complex it’s beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend,” wrote former defense secretary Robert S. McNamara. “Our judgment, our understanding, are not adequate. And we kill people unnecessarily.”

That realization came late in life for Mr. McNamara, who died Monday at the age of 93. As defense secretary during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, he was the architect of America's tragic misadventure in Vietnam, a decade-long conflict that even he was eventually forced to conclude had been a terrible mistake. But by then the war already had claimed the lives of 16,000 Americans, and 42,000 more would die before it finally ended seven years later.

As the antiwar movement grew during the 1960s, McNamara became more and more personally identified with the war's costs in blood and treasure. But throughout that period he insisted publically that victory was at hand, even though privately he had begun to doubt both the military and moral justification of the war. It was not until 1995 that he finally admitted the war had been futile from the start and that America's involvement had been "wrong, terribly wrong." His critics excoriated him for his belated confession, and for the rest of he life he was haunted by the consequences of his failure as one of the country's "best and brightest."

Kennedy called McNamara the smartest man he had ever met. So how could such a brilliant leader and administrator -- before becoming defense secretary, McNamara had risen to president of Ford Motor Co. and dramatically turned its fortunes around -- have erred so grievously in his prosecution of what turned out to be an impossible war?

The answer may lie in the classic formulations of Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese military theorist, and Thucydides, the Greek historian who chronicled the decades-long war between Athens and Sparta. Both cautioned against embarking on wars lightly, since the outcome is always unpredictable; they also warned that knowing one's enemy is crucial to success. America ignored both those lessons in Vietnam, a conflict it entered on the basis of flawed intelligence and against an enemy whose motives it never clearly recognized or understood. One can only hope the country won't repeat those mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan, where out enemies are equally determined to waste the blood and treasure of an entirely new generation of Americans.

Can long trips be bad for your health? [Picture of Health]

2009-07-07T05:01:24-07:00

Long-distance travel may increase the risk of potentially deadly blood clots, a new study published today suggests, and the longer the trip, the greater risk of danger.

The relationship between venous thromboembolism -- clots that form in the veins, typically the leg, and can be deadly if they move to the lungs -- and travel has long been suggested. But previous studies have yielded contradictory findings. The study, published in this week's issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, looks back at previous data and finds that travel by any means is associated with a three-fold higher risk of these blood clots. And when limited to air travel, that relationship was even stronger: For every two additional hours on a plane was associated with a 26 percent increase in risk for blood clots.

Still, don't panic. These clots are still relatively uncommon. ...

Doctors aren't sure why the clots form more often during travel, but they suspect it has something to do with the fact that passengers spend so much time sitting still. They recommend moving around and staying hydrated to help stave off the clots.

And pay attention to symptoms: Leg pain, swelling, redness, and warmth in the affected limb. Of course these can be a sign of all sorts of things, but if you see a doctor for these symptoms soon after traveling, don't forget to tell your doctor you have been on a long trip. A college friend, otherwise healthy and in her mid-thirties, was complaining of pain in her leg after a many-hour flight from Mexico to New York over the holidays last year. Her pain even brought her to the doctor's office a few days later. He didn't ask her if she had been on a plane. The next day she died from a pulmonary embolism.

Recent fave: 13-year-old reviews Sony Walkman [BaltTech]

2009-07-07T04:14:03-07:00

For those of us who remember owning a bona fide Sony Walkman back in the '80s, this cheeky little review by a 13-year-old will bring back some memories.

The review is titled "Giving up my iPod for a Walkman," and it's been making the Internet rounds lately.

This part made me chuckle, hard, and helped me realize I am indeed of the older generation. Not the iPod generation, but the Walkman generation.

It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equaliser, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette.

Kids these days. They might have their Touches and iPhones and iPods and Zunes now, but never forget, Generation X (I think that's us, right?), we were there first to have portable music in our hands, in our ears and on our hips, with the proliferation of the Sony Walkman (which, incidentally, recently celebrated its 30th birthday.)

Love the photos in the article, too. I, too, was once a young teen strapping his Walkman to his belt, jamming to whatever it was I listened to back then, and wearing jams. (Photos of yours truly during this period are mysteriously missing from the historical record.)

If you still have your Walkman, share a pic of it with us over on the Flickr group. Vintage photos of you with a Walkman, back in the day, however, would be much preferred. ;-)

(Photo credit: AP Japan, the original Walkman)

Guest post: How to defeat the Taliban, Part II [In Good Faith]

2009-07-07T03:12:27-07:00

Shaukat Malik is a Muslim-American Certified Public Accountant from Potomac. He left his native Pakistan in 1972 and has been living in the United States since 1980. At last, the people of Pakistan are convinced that the Taliban are traitors and must be eliminated. Now Pakistan’s elected National Assembly must validate the military action by the Pakistan Army in support of U.S. action. Unless and until the voters' representatives are seen and heard condemning the Taliban by passing a resolution, all action against the Taliban will be seen by many Pakistanis as America's war against terror. Many lawmakers, especially those from the religious parties and the right, are sitting on the fence when it comes to openly condemning the mad Taliban. They see the National Assembly as a rubber-stamp body that is under the president, a legacy of the dictatorship of Pervez Musharraf. Powers usurped by military dictators must be restored to the "people's house" to win confidence of Pakistani voters. A bill should be passed in the elected National Assembly authorizing the monitoring of all Madrassas and the conversion of all Madrassas to regular schools with the help of regional school boards in Pakistan using U.S. aid dollars. Madrassas should no longer be allowed to become recruiting grounds for suicide bombers, Taliban and murderers hiding behind the “Burqa” of Sharia. As a matter of fact, the names of these institutions should end in “school,” thereby killing any hope of a fascist mullah trying to use it as his private military academy. They should teach music and social sciences to broaden the thought processes of students presently focused and stuck on hate. Having laws like Pakistan's Hadood ordinance that restrict personal freedoms for women present an opportunity for usurpers like the Taliban and others to condemn large populations to petty disputes, for example, between Shia and Sunni, and also result in an extraordinary focus on the moral behavior of women. Pakistan’s Supreme Court must look at the Hadood ordinance and Sharia-based laws to establish whether they are just and fair, especially in the context of today’s Pakistan. This process of studying and analyzing Sharia laws, through a process of Ijtehad – reasoning – is already being employed in Turkey, as part of that country’s exercise in making its laws more compatible with its European neighbors. Turkey is doing this to join the European Union, but the beneficiaries will be Turkey's Muslim population. Pakistan should do the same by studying what Turkey has done and incorporating it into Pakistan’s legal system. This will have the powerful effect of neutralizing the extremist element in Pakistan. Unfortunately, a Taliban running from U.S. action on the Afghan border can quickly disappear into the frontier wilderness. All he has to do is shave his beard and change the color of his Turban and he will look like any local resident. Most of these fugitives will find safe houses in Pakistan’s Madrassas unless the Madrassas and other extremist schools are strictly monitored. The U.S. government must help the Pakistan government to monitor every Madrassa by offering technical assistance. We should also request Pakistan government to start the monitoring and conversion process immediately. These actions are a prerequisite for a Taliban-free Afghanistan and Pakistan.

It's all Greek to me, but ... [In Good Faith]

2009-07-06T14:52:44-07:00

The world's oldest Christian Bible has been digitized and uploaded to the web, where it may be searched by scholars and the curious alike.

The Codex Sinaiticus, handwritten in Greek 1,600 years ago on 400 pages of prepared animal skin, contains a complete New Testament and portions of the Old Testament and the Apocrypha, with handwritten corrections added during the ensuing centuries.

It was discovered in the mid-19th century at the Monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai but soon was divided among collections in Britian, Germany, Russia and Egypt.

Now the known pieces have been reunited online by the Codex Sinaiticus Project, a consortium including the British Library, Leipzig University Library in Germany, the Monastery of St. Catherine in Sinai and the National Library of Russia in St. Petersburg. with funding and experitse from those countries, the United States and others. The extant text became available on the web on Monday.

"It's such an important book -- that's why it should be accessible," project manager Juan Garces told the Associated Press. "If you would have liked to see it before you would have had to travel to four countries in two continents. If you want to see the manuscript right now all you have to do is go online and experience it for yourself."

Photo by the Associated Press

Here's how the project describes the significance of the codex:

Codex Sinaiticus is one of the most important witnesses to the Greek text of the Septuagint (the Old Testament in the version that was adopted by early Greek-speaking Christians) and the Christian New Testament. No other early manuscript of the Christian Bible has been so extensively corrected.
A glance at the transcription will show just how common these corrections are. They are especially frequent in the Septuagint portion. They range in date from those made by the original scribes in the fourth century to ones made in the twelfth century. They range from the alteration of a single letter to the insertion of whole sentences.
One important goal of the Codex Sinaiticus Project is to provide a better understanding of the text of the Codex and of the subsequent corrections to it. This will not only help us to understand this manuscript better, but will also give us insights into the way the texts of the Bible were copied, read and used.
By the middle of the fourth century there was wide but not complete agreement on which books should be considered authoritative for Christian communities. Codex Sinaiticus, one of the two earliest collections of such books, is essential for an understanding of the content and the arrangement of the Bible, as well as the uses made of it.
The Greek Septuagint in the Codex includes books not found in the Hebrew Bible and regarded in the Protestant tradition as apocryphal, such as 2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, 1 & 4 Maccabees, Wisdom and Sirach. Appended to the New Testament are the Epistle of Barnabas and 'The Shepherd' of Hermas.
The idiosyncratic sequence of books is also remarkable: within the New Testament the Letter to the Hebrews is placed after Paul's Second Letter to the Thessalonians, and the Acts of the Apostles between the Pastoral and Catholic Epistles. The content and arrangement of the books in Codex Sinaiticus shed light on the history of the construction of the Christian Bible.
The ability to place these 'canonical books' in a single codex itself influenced the way Christians thought about their books, and this is directly dependent upon the technological advances seen in Codex Sinaiticus. The quality of its parchment and the advanced binding structure that would have been needed to support over 730 large-format leaves, which make Codex Sinaiticus such an outstanding example of book manufacture, also made possible the concept of a 'Bible'. The careful planning, skilful writing and editorial control needed for such an ambitious project gives us an invaluable insight into early Christian book production.

Mr. Smith stays in Towson [Second Opinion]

2009-07-06T13:57:15-07:00

Jim Smith announced Monday afternoon that he would forgo the comptroller's race in 2010, ending months of speculation about his political future. He said he'll look for ways to serve in the future but that his heart wasn't in a run for that office:

"After much deliberation, I have decided not to run for Comptroller in the 2010 election. Although this has not been an easy decision, I am confident that I am making the right choice. Having spent many months thinking about the duties of Comptroller in the State of Maryland, I have concluded that it is not a position to which I aspire. I have never pursued any elected office because it was expedient. I always sought the opportunity to serve because I thought I could make a real difference -- as a councilman, a judge, and currently as County Executive. I did not feel that passion when considering a run for Comptroller."

That says something good about the man who has been running Baltimore County for the last seven years. Set aside for the moment the question of whether he would have been a good comptroller or a bad one, whether he would have won or lost against incumbent Peter Franchot, or whether Gov. Martin O'Malley did or didn't want him to run. The simple fact that a politician chose not to run for a higher office that he had no real interest in is, sad as this may be to say, refreshing.

Jim's 2002 race for county executive was the first big election I covered for The Sun. We got to know each other in the early days, when he would pop into our Towson office after going to the gym next door. It was a rare period in his adult life when he was not a county councilman, judge or county executive. Just, for a moment, a private citizen.

That campaign didn't set the world on fire -- it's major legacy was the unfortunate and repeated use of the word "renaissance" as a verb -- but Jim had a certain engaging earnestness about him. He was a Baltimore County guy through and through -- born and raised there, leaving only briefly to go to college, and then coming back to raise a family in Resisterstown. The only chink in his bona fides, according to a story he once told me on the way to a campaign stop, was that in high school, he dumped "a hot little number from Randallstown" in favor of his future wife, Sandy, whom he met while she was cheerleading at a basketball game in Westminster.

He could quite comfortably have spent the rest of his career on the bench, but, he said, he wanted to serve the county more directly. Being county executive, he insisted at the time, was no steppingstone to something else for him. He wanted that job, and that was it.

Over his two terms, as the county continued to run smoothly and he continued to amass political cash and clout, people started whispering into his ear about statewide office. There's no way to know whether the state would have been well or ill served by such a move, but it always disappointed me a little to think that the man I'd met with the seemingly simple purpose had been won over by years of chauffered cars and hangers-on.

There is something to be said for ambition in our elected officials. People looking to move up might be extra aggressive in trying to be innovative in their current jobs. Sometimes people grow into offices they don't inherently have much interest in -- Smith's predecessor Dutch Ruppersberger, for example, has developed a surprising relish for his work as a congressman, despite some ambivalence when he first decided to run for the post. And maybe there's more to Smith's decision than his announcement lets on.

But it's nice to think that something essential about the Jim Smith I met eight years ago remains in the man today.

(AP Photo)

Ex-O'Malley campaign manager failed to register as lobbyist [Maryland Politics]

2009-07-06T12:52:39-07:00

Rite of Passage, a for-profit juvenile services provider, fought hard to defeat a Maryland bill to limit the capacity of private facilities such as the one it is opening this month in rural Carroll County. But one of the Nevada-based company's most important advocates -- a former government aide and campaign manager for Gov. Martin O''Malley -- failed to register with the State Ethics Commission. Josh White, who works for Annapolis powerhouse Rifkin, Livingston, Levitan and Silver, said the missing lobbying registration for the legislative session was an unintentional paperwork oversight that he is working to correct. "The firm had every intent to disclose my clear and highly visible advocacy for this important juvenile services facility," White said in an e-mailed statement. "All fees and expenses were reported and disclosed. The firm submitted paperwork to fix the administrative error." White left the O'Malley administration to become a lobbyist in late 2007. White personally lobbied lawmakers and spoke to reporters on Rite of Passage's behalf throughout the January to April legislative session, though the company is officially the client of Michael Johansen, another Rifkin employee. Everything Rite of Passage has paid to the firm for the session -- $27,100 -- is documented on Johansen's filings, White said. The company has paid Rifkin lobbyists about $50,000 in the past year, according to disclosure forms. The State Ethics Commission can levy fines and other penalties on unregistered lobbyists. According to its Web site: "If the Ethics Commission determines that the respondent has violated the law, it may issue an order of compliance or issue a reprimand. The Commission may require a respondent to file any additional reports or information and has the power to impose a fine not to exceed $5,000 for each violation." The site also notes that unintentionally late registrations, which White said is the case here, can result in up to $250 in fees. "From the commission's perspective, when people voluntarily come forward to acknowledge a problem, it doesn't make sense to severely sanction them" said Robert Hahn, executive director of the ethics commission. "We know that mistakes can happen and do happen." Rite of Passage succeeded in batting down Sen. Bobby A. Zirkin's bill to limit all private juvenile facilities to 48 beds -- a law already on the books for state juvenile facilities. The company's lobbyists were the only ones to testify against Zirkin's bill. White said he "look(s) forward to working with them for years to come."

Wynn lobbying for company accused of ties to Sudan genocide [Maryland Politics]

2009-07-06T12:28:19-07:00

Sarah Palin’s surprise decision to walk away from her job as governor of Alaska held special resonance for at least one group of Marylanders. Not long ago, their congressman did pretty much the same thing. Rep. Albert R. Wynn, one of the state’s senior lawmakers in Washington, abruptly quit his post last year. Shortly after earning lame-duck status, he announced that he was abandoning the job, even though he still had more than one-fourth of his term left to serve, to join a big-time lobbying firm. Unlike Palin, who made a personal decision not to seek re-election, Wynn became a lame duck involuntarily. He was resoundingly unseated by the voters of his own party, who picked Donna Edwards over Wynn in the 2008 primary. After announcing his decision to quit and join one of Washington's biggest lobby firms, Wynn said his decision to quit early would enable his successor to get a head start on seniority in the House. Critics blasted the decision, in part because it forced taxpayers to shell out money to pay for a special election to choose his replacement. Published estimates pegged the cost between $500,000 and $2 million. For the departing congressman, however, the decision was a win-win. First, it allowed him to escape a job he’d been forced to give up eventually. Second, and more important, it gave Wynn a head start on lining his pockets in his next, more lucrative, career: peddling influence to his former colleagues in Congress. Under House ethics rules, an ex-representative must wait a full year before stepping through Washington’s revolving door and registering as a lobbyist. Of course, though there was nothing in those rules to prevent Wynn from helping clients in his new job as a “special advisor” at Dickstein Shapiro. Wynn grabbed that job almost immediately after he failed to persuade voters in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties to return him to Congress for a ninth term. Had he served out his term, as defeated representatives usually do, he could not become a lobbyist until 2010. Instead, he’s perfectly positioned to grab a share of this year’s biggest lobbying bonanzas. One potential money pot: the high-stakes fight over rewriting the rules of the road for energy companies. As Democrats try to pass sweeping climate change legislation, companies who stand to win or lose big from the proposed legislation are shelling out hefty bucks for Washington lobbyists to help them carve out special provisions. Wynn has registered as a lobbyist for Wartsila North America, a wholly owned subsidiary of Wartsila OYJ, a Finnish company that manufactures power generating systems and ship engines. Wartsila is also a U.S. defense contractor that does business with the Navy. Wynn is not specifically listed as a lobbyist on the energy bill. But he registered in the "energy/nuclear" area. According to the lobbying registration form, filed by Dickstein Shapiro and dated June 30, 2009, Wynn became a lobbyist for Wartsila on May 18. That is exactly one year to the date of the election held to replace him. However, it is slightly earlier than the official May 31 resignation date announced by Wynn last year, when the one-year "cooling off" period for lawmakers headed for the lobbying world was expected to begin. Joining Wynn as a lobbyist for Wartsila is Curt S. Clifton, who was Wynn’s top aide in the House. Clifton became a lobbyist for Dickstein Shapiro in 2008. Neither Wynn nor Clifton responded immediately to emailed requests for comment. Wartsila, the company Wynn now represents, has been criticized for its business dealings in Sudan, where violence in the country’s Darfur region has been condemned as genocide. The Genocide Intervention Network, a human rights group, has said that business transactions by Wartsila OYG and other international companies have helped the Sudanese government. Wartsila OYJ has sold power plants for oil projects in Sudan. Last week, after a two-year review of its investments with companies that failed to provide adequate responses about their dealings with Sudan and Iran, the New York State pension fund announced plans to divest more than $86 million in holdings from nine companies, including Wartsila OYJ. “We don’t expect our investments to benefit regimes that support genocide and terrorism,” said New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli. In a strange coincidence that brings this story full circle, last fall Palin announced that she was divesting herself of an investment in a mutual fund from Legg Mason, Inc. of Baltimore that owned shares in Wartsila OYJ. Palin held shares in the Legg Mason International Equity fund, with a value of up to $15,000, when it was brought to her attention that the fund’s holdings included companies that human rights activists said were assisting the government of Sudan. The Republican vice-presidential nominee immediately said she would dump the investment. Palin “is committed to doing everything she can to stop the genocide and atrocities in Darfur,” a campaign spokesman told ABC News at the time.

Kratovil pays FEC fine [Maryland Politics]

2009-07-06T12:28:19-07:00

Rep. Frank Kratovil of Maryland has been fined $3,860 by the Federal Election Commission for failing to report more than two dozen last-minute donations to his successful House campaign last fall. The FEC assessed the penalty under its administrative fine program. The commission uses the program for less serious violations of federal election law, especially the late filing of disclosure reports. A Kratovil spokesman, Kevin Lawlor, blamed an “administrative backlog” for the failure to disclose 26 contributions within 48 hours after they were received, as required by FEC regulations. Lawlor said the campaign made on-time disclosures of contributions totaling more than $200,000 in the weeks leading up to the November, 2008 vote. “There was such a large amount of donations coming in at that time. There was an administrative backlog and not all of them were filed on time,” he said. The unreported donations included $5,000 from the Congressional Black Caucus, $2,000 each from the campaign accounts of Democratic House candidate Ben R. Lujan of New Mexico and Democratic Rep. Xavier Becerra of Los Angeles, Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Doyle’s political action committee and $1,000 each from Democratic Rep. Gary Ackerman of New York and Illinois Rep. Mellissa Bean's PAC, the Boilermakers union, Washington lobbyist Thomas H. Boggs Jr. and the U.S. Sugar Association’s political action committee. Kratovil’s campaign did not contest the FEC enforcement action. It paid the fine in late April. The FEC announced the enforcement action in its more recent weekly report. In the 2008 campaign, Kratovil raised and spent nearly $2 million to win one of the closest House races in the country. He defeated Republican state Sen. Andy Harris of Baltimore County. Harris, who unseated moderate Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest in last year's primary, spent almost $3 million and is seeking a rematch with Kratovil in next year's election. Kratovil, a former Queen Anne's County state's attorney, "campaigned on his rule-of-law credentials, then got caught violating campaign finance rules," said Andy Seré, a spokesman for the National Republican Campaign Committee. "It’s a bit like campaigning as a Blue Dog, then voting like a lap dog for the National Energy Tax and the so-called ‘stimulus’ plan." Kratovil, of Stevensville, is the first Democrat in 18 years to represent the First Congressional District, which takes in the entire Eastern Shore, plus portions of Baltimore, Anne Arundel and Harford counties. The Baltimore Sun previously reported that Kratovil, who campaigned as an outsider, attracted more than $20,000 in post-election campaign donations from political action committees representing some of the nation's most powerful interests. They included the banking industry, pharmaceutical manufacturers, broadcasters, Realtors, dairy farmers (Kratovil was given a seat on the Agriculture Committee) and companies such as Verizon, Microsoft and Disney.

Scorecards Part Deux: Lawmaker ratings on friendliness to business hit new low [Maryland Politics]

2009-07-06T12:28:19-07:00

Maryland Business for Responsive Government released this month the 2009 edition of its Roll Call, which measures the voting records of state lawmakers on a number bills that affect business. The nonpartisan group does political research and aims to improve Maryland’s business climate. The General Assembly has a reputation for being decidedly un-friendly to the corporate world, and this year lawmaker scores were the “lowest on record,” according to the group. In the study, MBRG authors describe “an attitude by lawmakers that suggests the irrelevance of business.” Particularly troublesome, the group contends, was passage of legislation giving the state eminent domain rights over the Preakness Stakes. State officials worried the bankruptcy of owner Magna Entertainment Corp. would imperil the horse race’s future in Maryland, and quickly stepped in. MBRG authors said they hadn’t seen anything like it. The bill sets an “extraordinary precedent” by asserting a right to take the private property of a specific corporation and interferes in a bankruptcy, they said. Republicans generally scored well in the MBRG scorecard. But only two Democrats voted 70 percent or better on the business-related legislation that’s highlighted — Sen. Rona E. Kramer of Montgomery County and Sen. James E. DeGrange of Anne Arundel County. Fifteen years ago, 84 Democrats voted at least 70 percent favorably on business-related issues. The full report can be found here. Despite this year’s Roll Call, Robert O.C. “Rocky” Worcester, MBRG’s president, is hopeful that his group can address what he calls a “paucity of leadership” in the business community and in Annapolis. That’s because he has enlisted as the group’s co-chairs former Gov. Marvin Mandel, a Democrat, and Ellen R. Sauerbrey, a two-time Republican gubernatorial candidate who was appointed ambassador by President George W. Bush. Mandel pledged in a statement to expand and grow MBRG’s influence.

Maryland congressmen break along party lines on cap-and-trade [Maryland Politics]

2009-07-06T12:28:19-07:00

Maryland lawmakers voted along party lines as the House of Representatives narrowly approved a massive energy and climate-change measure this evening. The vote was 219-212, with 44 Democrats opposing the legislation and 8 Republicans providing the support that Democrats and President Barack Obama needed to send the legislation on to the Senate, where its prospects are cloudy. The legislation, which includes a cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, is the first of its kind ever to gain approval in either house of Congress. Democrats opposing the measure included rural conservatives and liberal mavericks. The Republicans who backed the bill included moderate Rep. Mike Castle of Delaware and Mary Bono Mack of California. The votes of all House members can be seen here. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, the state's lone Republican, whose district takes in northern portions of the Baltimore metro area and extends to the state's western border, was the only Marylander to vote "No." The remaining congressmen, all Democrats, voted "Aye." House Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland, in supporting the legislation, prepared the following floor speech: “This is a transformative moment. This is a moment to build a clean energy future for our country. This is a moment to create jobs. This is a moment to take on, at long last, a defining challenge of our time: global warming. I know that my colleagues can seize this moment; I know they can look back from a future in which America is independent of foreign oil and leading the fight against climate change and be able to say that, on this day, they were on the right side of this vote. “This bill, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, is a true turning-point. It is a complex bill, but we can sum up its outcomes simply: new American jobs, less dependence on foreign energy, and a reduction in the carbon pollution that causes global warming. “How does this bill accomplish those goals? Among its most important provisions are a requirement that utilities meet 20% of electric demand through renewable sources and energy efficiency by 2020; significant new investments in renewables, carbon capture and sequestration, electric vehicles, and cutting-edge energy research; and energy-saving standards for buildings, appliances, and industry. This bill also creates a Clean Energy Bank to fund promising energy projects across America; and it invests in high-tech transmission lines to build the essential foundation for a more efficient grid. New transmission lines, comprised of superconducting cable and other efficient wires, will carry more power within existing rights-of-way, with less land use. The result will be a more secure, environmentally-friendly grid. I worked with the Chairman and Rep. Inslee to ensure that those transmission provisions were included, because they are such an important part of a more cost-effective, energy-efficient future. “Of course, the bill also includes the reduction of our carbon emissions by 17% by 2020 and more than 80% by 2050. We can fight global warming with the same kind of market-based, cap-and-trade solution that was so effective at combating acid rain at minimal cost in the 1990s. Global warming threatens every one of us; it will affect the kind of lives our children will lead and the kind of prosperity our country, and our world will enjoy. “To those who complain about the cost of this bill, I answer that we are all paying the cost of carbon emissions already. The longer we wait to act, the more we will pay every year. But if we take action now, we can get jobs, growth, clean energy and energy independence for less than the price of a postage stamp a day, for each of us, according to the EPA. And with this bill passed and signed, the United States will finally be able to argue persuasively and credibly for global action on a challenge that knows no borders. “At the same time, action on global warming will send a powerful, job-creating price signal to the private sector, spurring innovation in every part of the renewable energy economy. That is one of the reasons why the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a business coalition dedicated to fighting climate change, has argued that ‘the way we produce and use energy must fundamentally change, both nationally and globally’—and that this coming change represents an excellent opportunity for economic growth. “And that is why another coalition of 19 businesses, including the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Duke Energy, National Grid, H.P., Starbucks, and Nike, wrote to President Obama that this bill ‘will drive investment into cost-saving, energy saving technologies…create the next wave of jobs in the new energy economy…[and] will provide the predictability we need to plan for future business success.’ “It’s long been understood that acting on global warming is a moral necessity—but now, more and more of us are realizing that it makes powerful economic sense, as well. “Madam Speaker, a future of clean energy is well worth the price. My children, my grandchildren, and the generations to come will be either the beneficiaries of our stewardship, or the victims of our neglect. I urge my colleagues to pass this bill and put themselves on the side of progress and responsibility.” Bartlett, who has crusaded for years on the energy issue, issued the following statement: “I’ve never voted for a tax increase and that is the main reason why I could not support this bill. The Congressional Budget Office found this bill would force a massive redistribution of $1 trillion and increase federal government revenues by $24 billion. My constituents clearly understood that the cap and trade system in this bill is a gigantic hidden tax that they would end up paying. That’s why they were overwhelming opposed to it.‬‪ “I’m a scientist and I’ve studied this issue very carefully. I agree that emissions from burning fossil fuels pose a threat to our global environment by contributing to climate change. However, our dependence upon oil, especially imported oil poses a far graver and urgent threat to America’s economic prosperity and national security. “It is a shame that the House majority chose to pursue a purely partisan process that produced a complex, convoluted, monstrosity of a bill. It grew by 600 pages in the past three days alone. It deserves to die from the weight of the games and back room deals. This bill is a monument to everything Americans hate about business as usual politics in Washington, DC.”‬‪ Actually, the CBO, whose analysis Bartlett cited, determined in a recent report that the House cap-and-trade legislation would cost the average American family about $165 a year. The nation's wealthiest families would pay more. The nation's poorest families would actually benefit from the measure, by $40 a year, according to the recent CBO analysis. Bartlett, of Frederick, is a leading spokesman for the "peak oil" movement, which maintains that most global petroleum supplies have already been tapped, or will be shortly. He is promoting a "green energy" event Monday in his district.

Michael's Steele's latest poll numbers are a positive surprise [Maryland Politics]

2009-07-06T12:28:19-07:00

Lee Atwater, a master of attack politics and onetime Republican national chairman, had this rule of thumb: Drive up your opponent's negative poll ratings high enough and you make that person unelectable. So the following question might be particularly relevant as a severely battered Republican Party looks for someone who might be electable in 2012: Which nationally known Republican has the lowest negatives in the latest Pew Research Center opinion survey: Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Michael Steele or Mitt Romney? The answer: Maryland's Mike. Surprised? Okay, what if we narrow the focus and take the temperature of Republican voters only? Palin goes from polarizing to highly popular. Her negatives drop sharply. Only 17 percent of Republicans rate her unfavorably, compared with 44 percent of all voters. And which of our quartet of nationally known Republicans has the lowest negatives among Republican voters? Once again, it's the Chairman. But wait. These are trick questions, or misleading ones at best. Let's look at the other half of the picture, the "favorable" ratings of the same nationally known politicians. This time, Palin comes out on top. Steele, on the other hand, winds up in last place. And that's the catch. Steele isn't nationally known. At least not very much. Almost two out of three people aren't familiar enough with his name to venture an opinion A majority of Americans (51 percent) said they'd never heard of Steele. Another 12 percent said they couldn't rate him. Even among Republicans, a clear majority (58 percent) didn't know the man or couldn't rate him one way or the other. That's a useful reality check for close followers of politics (and cable TV news) who have this crazy idea that Michael Steele is a household name. For the record, Steele got a favorable rating from 23 percent of all adults and 28 percent of Republicans. Among all independents, Steele has two-to-one positives to negatives (26 percent favorable to 13 percent unfavorable). And even Democrats are no worse than evenly divided (19 percent favorable to 17 percent unfavorable). But among Republicans, Steele's positive-to-negative ratio is weaker than that of either Gingrich (55-22), Romney (57-18) or Palin (73-17). Only 10 percent of Republicans, incidentally, didn't know Palin or couldn't rate her. Younger voters and blacks are slightly more likely to be able to identify Steele, according to Pew. And conservative Republicans view the former Maryland lieutenant governor more positively (31 percent favorable versus 14 percent unfavorable) than moderates do (23-13). By comparison, Palin got a thumbs up from 45 percent of all Americans and 73 percent of Republicans. But Romney got the headline in Pew's analysis because his image has improved since earlier this year, and now is net positive by 12 points among voting-age Americans. Perhaps Steele's relative anonymity is why he wants to get together with the leader of the other party at the White House. That might help raise his profile. Steele's, that is. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was asked at today's White House daily briefing about Steele's ambition to meet with the president. Steele wants to talk "about health care and a whole host of issues, especially since this administration has had such a wonderful Republican outreach. He wants to be one of those that the public and the President reaches out to," a reporter informed Gibbs. Responded the Obama spokesman: "You know, I think the president has Republicans here at the White House today. I'd be interested to know what -- whether Mr. Steele believes that we can make progress working together or if the tone of his rhetoric is something that might prevent him from working constructively with the President of the United States."

Maryland nearly flunks disclosure of state lawmaker finances [Maryland Politics]

2009-07-06T12:28:19-07:00

Maryland still rates a “D” and when it comes to financial disclosure requirements for members of the General Assembly, according to the Center for Public Integrity, a national watchdog group. The Old Line State hasn’t improved its grade in the last several years. The center has been reporting on disclosure in state legislatures since 1999, using a 43-question survey that measures public access to information on lawmakers’ employment, investments, personal finances, property holdings or other activities outside the legislature. Maryland has a citizen legislature, so most members return to their regular jobs when the 90-day regular session ends in April. Maryland scored a 68.5 on a 100-point scale and ranked 23rd out of 50 states. That represents a slipping in the rankings from 2006 when Maryland was 21st. One aspect of Maryland’s disclosure laws that has irked watchdog groups is the requirement that citizens appear in person at the State Ethics Commission to obtain copies of financial reports. Some states offer the forms online. Responses from Maryland to the center’s survey questions can be found here.

Husband of blog post author comparing Obama to Hitler defends wife's views [Maryland Politics]

2009-07-06T12:28:19-07:00

The husband of an Anne Arundel County Republican woman who wrote a blog plosting comparing President Obama to Hitler said his wife's comments have been misunderstood, and that criticism is piling up. Responding to a message for comment, Charles Thomann, the husband of Joyce Thomann, the president of the Anne Arundel County Republican Women's Club, said his wife was in Denver caring for her ailing 96-year-old mother and could not immediately comment. A Republican member of the five-person Maryland State Board of Elections and an adjunct history professor at Anne Arundel Community College, Charles Thomann, speaking on behalf of his wife, defended the online letter comparing Obama and Hitler and said "It wasn't meant in the way people are taking it." Thomann conceded that "maybe she wasn't as artful as she could have been," referring to his wife's comments, but said he and his wife view Obama's push of what they deem socialist programs similar to the way Adolf Hitler spread the Nazi ideals in Germany. "The methods that [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and [President] Obama are using to get the socialist view point across, is similar to what Hitlder did. And the German people regretted it. I just happen to be up on it. I happen to be a history teacher." Thomann said his wife's email inbox is piled high with messages and he has been fielding angry calls from the public since news of the letter broke online. It has been linked from the Huffington Post and other outlets. "We've gotten a lot of calls," Thomann said. "The liberal Democrats have really been pushing it. Most of it is very vitriolic. I think it's been completely misunderstood ... Once black woman, who said she was black, called and said, 'I really resent this because you're racist.' I told her we're not racist. We're delighted to have a black president. Heck, we'd like to see a woman president, too." Kory Blake the chair of the Anne Arundel County Democratic party, said "That they would compare the president of the United States to the worst mass murderer in the history of the world, it's uncalled for and it's unncessary. It enforces, for me, the belief that the Republican party has been overtaken by an ideology of hate and they will do anything to try to discredit this president. Unfortunately, they carossed the line on this comparison. People all around the country are looking at Anne Arundel County and scratching their heads. It's appaling." -- Nicole Fuller

Who is deciding what will be taught in classrooms of the future? [InsideEd]

2009-07-06T11:53:46-07:00

We've recently found out who will be writing and reviewing the new national or "common core" standards for math and language arts. For those of you who would like to know who is likely to be the group deciding what is important to be taught in classrooms, here's the list.

This year, Maryland and 45 other states decided to jointly develop a common group of standards for what should be taught in kindergarten through high school. The collective wisdom among most education policy experts is that it would be easier and cheaper if there were national standards. In other words, what a second-grader might need to know in Florida or Massachusetts varies little.

But for years, every state developed its own curriculum, standards and tests. That process will likely change soon. For a good story on the subject, go to Education Week.

Rating the Scientology advertising campaign [In Good Faith]

2009-07-06T11:15:15-07:00

Add Seth Stevenson to the list of observers questioning whether the new advertising campaign run by the Church of Scientology will do much to burnish its increasingly negative public image. Stevenson, who writes the Ad Report Card column in Slate, offers a nice historical overview of religious advertising during the television area, from the brief morality plays aired by the Mormons in the 1970s to the quirky spots marketing the Northern Virginia-based New Life Christian Church as “a place for random people,” before focusing on the Scientology campaign:

The three new spots from the Church of Scientology don't traffic in humor or upbeat mini-fables. Their mood is dark. Their tone is dramatic. Their scope is epic. The Scientology ads employ a time-honored Madison Avenue tactic: Show the problem. In a classic show-the-problem ad, you might first zoom in on those grass stains that have been ground into little Billy's trousers. You'd then reveal, in a lingering product shot, the new and improved detergent that will save the day. Here, the problem is slightly more abstract than ground-in grass stains. The problem is spiritual emptiness. "We're all looking for it," intones the announcer in one of the Scientology spots. "Some of us have been looking our whole lives. Some think they can buy it. … Some travel the world in search of it. Most don't even know what they're looking for. But we all feel it. That aching desire." The final reveal suggests that Scientology, much like a powerful laundry detergent, will provide a solution.

Stevenson asks whether the ads are effective.

They're certainly professional. You've got to be impressed with the cinematography and editing. The high-budget gloss alone will likely sway a few viewers to visit Scientology's content-rich Web site. But Scientology's marketing challenges are different from those faced by religions with more established bona fides. By now—especially in the wake of the Tom Cruise couch-jumping incident, and the subsequent snarky national conversation—I think there are a fair number of people out there who have a nascent, inchoate sense that Scientology is weird. They're looking for reassurances that this is a faith for everyday people, not just eccentric celebrities. They're wondering whether Scientology's worship services will be something they're comfortable with. These grandiose yet stubbornly vague ads, with their intimations that Scientology holds the answers to all life's riddles, don't bother to address any of those less lofty concerns.

Please, someone save tennis from Roger Federer [Second Opinion]

2009-07-06T10:51:17-07:00

I, the girl with a savings account that has been specifically named "Wimbledon fund," did not even bother watching the final this year.

Oh yes, I've heard from everyone that it was the greatest match ever played, Roddick played his heart out, and Federer finally, after all that, beat Pete Sampras' record with 15 Grand Slam wins. The trouble is, I knew all that before I even sat down to watch Roddick slip past Andy Murray on Friday. Federer was a lock, no matter how wicked Roddick's serve, because who -- besides Rafael Nadal -- can possibly beat Roger at a Grand Slam?

I'm just bored with it all. To me, tennis was at its most sublime about 10 years ago, when you were never quite sure who would come out on top: Sampras, Agassi, Hewitt, Safin, Rafter (whose autographed picture is a highlight in my dining room) or even an upstart such as Roddick or James Blake.

And by the way, Blakey, I love you, but stop losing in the first round and breaking my heart, OK?

Do we even know if this Swiss phenom is human? How can we be sure that the traditionally neutral Switzerland hasn't been pumping its research and development dollars into the perfect bionic tennis player, while the rest of the world has gotten bogged down in nuclear proliferation concerns?

So here's my plea: Won't some hot new tennis star break through at the U.S. Open in August and show this guy some real competition? (Sorry, Nadal, but you don't count. You're almost as perfect and boring as Mr. Grand Slam himself.)

Let us know your most likely candidate (or why I should leave Federer alone) and you could win L. Jon Wertheim's Strokes of Genius: Federer, Nadal, and the Greatest Match Ever Played, which chronicles last year's monster of a Wimbeldon final. And please excuse Mr. Wertheim's title; how was he to know that Federer's win this year would be even more phenomenal?

(AP photo)

A Mason-Dixon meteor? [Maryland Weather]

2009-07-06T09:43:07-07:00

We have been receiving reports today of a likely meteor over north-central Maryland and southern Pennsylvania early Monday morning. (Not the one in the Flickr.com image above.)

Below are the first reports we have received. If you heard or saw something similar, around the same time, please leave a comment. Include the time, your location, which direction you saw the object or flash, a description of what you saw, and note any boom or other sound you heard, as well as the time lapse between flash and boom.

The York Dispatch: In York County, Pa., police officers from Penn Township, Southwestern Regional and Newberry Township reported seeing a flash and hearing a boom around 1:15 a.m. Monday, July 6, according to local 911 centers. Officials in Harford County, Md. also reported seeing a flash and hearing a boom near the Mason-Dixon Line.

Capital Gazette: An Annapolis city police officer reported that she and her partner both saw what she described as a "bright blue light in the sky" just after midnight. It was followed by "a light with a tail, falling from the sky," according to our informant. Annapolis police reported hearing a similar report on Baltimore County police radio.

Gary Moon, reporting to The Sun's News Tips: "I heard and felt a deep earth blast similar to an earthquake, which shook my home in Glen Rock, Pa., early Monday morning. I thought I would hear MUCH more about this one ... nothing."

Deborah Markow, Havre de Grace: "Last night, couldn't sleep, went out on back deck, laid on lounge, eyes closed and then it was like someone pointed a flash light in my eyes it was so bright. I saw another one streak through the sky ... It was one of the most thrilling sights to behold a ball of fire flying through the sky."

I have not yet seen any meteor reports of this event on the American Meteor Society's Fireball Sightings Log, but it's early yet, and this fireball, coming in the wee hours after a long holiday, probably did not catch many people out and about.

Which makes reports like these, and yours, all the more important. If you saw this object, be sure to leave a report with the AMS, too.

But judging from the descriptions, it almost certainly was a fireball, which is simply an especially bright meteor, vaporizing with an impressive flash.

Here's a pretty good example on video.

They are sometimes followed by a sonic boom, which would explain the booming noises in the reports. Some fireball observers - though none yet for this event - also report a crackling or hissing sound that is concurrent with the meteor's flash and which has never been fully explained scientifically.

Although meteor rates begin to pick up in July, this is not the peak time for any particular meteor shower. It seems likely this was a "sporadic," or isolated meteor that just happened to be especially big and bright. Big ones like this are always unexpected, always startling to witness, and always a thrill.

Reading rack: "Street Farmer" in NYT Mag [B'More Green]

2009-07-06T09:26:26-07:00

There was a great feature in The New York Times magazine Sunday on Will Allen and his Growing Power group trying to bring good food to the inner city through urban farming.

An interesting example of the group's ingenuity -- raising tilapia and perch in tanks and recycling the wastewater through watercress beds. Worm ranching, too, to help revitalize nutrient-poor urban soil. You can read the piece here, and find out more about Growing Power here.

Tomorrow's editorials: Bowling Brook reopens, and Americans drive less [Second Opinion]

2009-07-06T09:24:45-07:00

Here are previews of some editorials we're working on. Let us know what you think. The best comments will run alongside the editorials in the print edition.

--Maryland juvenile justice officials insist they've learned the lesson of the death of a Baltimore boy held at the Bowling Brook Preparatory School: keep facilities small, and keep youths in lockups close to their home communities. But the reopening of the Bowling Brook campus by a for-profit, out-of-state company that specializes in large centers in the West takes the state in a dangerous direction. Gov. Martin O'Malley and members of his administration insist that the opening of Silver Oak Academy is just a temporary measure to help the state as it transitions to a reformed juvenile justice system, but the decision will make it all too easy for this administration or another to go back to the bad old days of sprawling, unmanageable youth lockups that were magnets for violence and abuse.

--Gas prices aren't anywhere near as high as they were at this time last year, but the nation's motorists are acting like they are. New federal figures show a 4 percent drop in the number of vehicle miles driven over the last year, the biggest year-over-year drop ever recorded. Whether it was $4 gas, the recession, growing environmentalism or some other factor, motorists' behavior changed more last year than it did during the oil crisis of the 1970s, when gas rationing was the rule. Time will tell whether this trend continues, but it could mark a fundamental change in Americans' relationship with the car, one promising a host of potential benefits to clean the air, lessen dependence on foreign oil and foster more sustainable communities.

Warren to Muslims: Let's work together [In Good Faith]

2009-07-06T09:07:04-07:00

In an appearanced criticized by some of his fellow conservative Christians, megachurch Pastor Rick Warren told several thousand American Muslims over the weekend that "the two largest faiths on the planet" must work together to combat stereotypes and solve global problems, the Associated Press is reporting. "Some problems are so big you have to team tackle them," Warren, author of The Purpose-Driven Life, told the annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America. He said Muslims and Christians should be partners in working to end what he calls "the five global giants" of war, poverty, corruption, disease and illiteracy. The Christian Post quoted Warren, the founder of Saddelback Church in Orange County, Calif., as saying he was "not interested in interfaith dialogue. "I am interested in interfaith project. There is a big difference,” he said. “Talk is very cheap. You can talk and talk and talk and never get anything done. Love is something you do,” Warren maintained. “It is something we do together.” The Associated Press called Warren's willingness to show support for U.S. Muslims, under intense scrutiny since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, "a huge gain for the community."

Calling all Facebook MDs [Picture of Health]

2009-07-06T09:07:02-07:00

My friend Rebecca posted something about her toe Friday night on her Facebook page. Rebecca wrote that she thought "it's broken; my husband thinks it's just bruised. Either way, my toe hurts."

What struck me about this was the response that came from her friend Tracy less than an hour later: "Post pix and let your FB MDs decide."

I loved this reply. Health topics that were once taboo (OK, maybe not broken toes) are now open for discussion -- on Facebook, no less. As a medical reporter, I've had more than one man start a conversation with me about his prostate exam and PSA numbers. But more often, in talking to friends, we discuss ours ailments or our kids' maladies and try to make armchair diagnoses. A lot of them figure our combined knowledge could be (nearly) as good as any docs. I wouldn't go that far, but that doesn't mean I don't engage in a little informal doctoring of my own.

Do you and your friends "play doctor," trying to diagnose one another? Do you use Facebook to do it? Twitter?

Photo/Getty Images

The strange summer of flu [Picture of Health]

2009-07-06T06:39:21-07:00

"If you've seen one influenza season, you've seen one influenza season," Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious diseases expert at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, has told me more than once. It's an attempt at some medical humor, I guess, but there may be plenty of truth in his quip.

Researchers and public health officials have been trying to pin down this H1N1 virus since it hit the U.S. in April. They don't know if it will stay mild (it has sickened an estimated 1 million in the U.S. but killed 170 at last count). They thought it would go away over the summer since flu usually does, but in many places, more people keep coming down with it. The official number of new confirmed cases in Maryland, for example, has risen every week since the first case was confirmed here in May (and, officials say, those numbers are likely much higher since most people who get sick don't visit the doctor and most people who go to the doctor aren't getting tested for flu). Experts predict the virus could come back worse for flu season this fall and winter, like the Spanish Influenza of 1918 did. That remains to be seen, of course. ...

The truth is, since this is a new strain of the flu, health officials haven't a clue how it will behave. They want us to be wary of the swine flu, but not afraid. They want us to be comforted by the fact that the symptoms are mild, but concerned enough to avoid catching it if at all possible. They want us not to cry out that a vaccine is needed unless they are able to mass-produce one in time for the coming flu season. Then they will want us to line up and get immunized.

Said Dr. David Blythe, the state's epidemiologist: "It's hard to know what to expect when you have a new flu virus."

Photo courtesy of CDC

More search options for home buyers [The Real Estate Wonk]

2009-07-06T06:19:28-07:00

You might use Google to search for a variety of things, but chances are you don't for real estate listings. Thing is, you can.

Search Engine Land, a search engine news site, notes today that Google Maps has expanded its real estate information. To take a look, throw in "Baltimore real estate" on the site, then click on the option to "Search for real estate listings near Baltimore, MD." (If you don't click that option, you'll see a map dotted with real estate companies and organizations.)

What you get isn't all you can find on the established real estate search engines. But you might find it useful:

On the map, each individual listing, whether a property for sale or rent, behaves like a business listing does in Google Maps’ business search. Users can click the red icon/dot for more information about the property; they can get directions, save the listing to My Maps, or send the listing to someone else via email, phone, car, or GPS.

I was interested to see how local listings (at least the ones Google could find) were spread out in nearly all the nooks and crannies of the area. You really can get a fuller perspective by seeing something mapped out.

I also tried searching for Baltimore real estate on Google Base. There, you can specify if you want to see properties for sale or for rent, or things that are being sublet, or even rooms for rent. Google Base tells you where it's pulling the information, so you can jump to those sites if you want to search them directly.

Thanks to the excellent Liz Kay for noticing the Search Engine Land article! Seen any other interesting housing-search options lately?

Handmade in Maine [B'More Green]

2009-07-06T06:16:50-07:00

I visited Damariscotta, Maine, this weekend. It's a small coastal town where the green living culture is alive and well. Around here, folks seem to believe firmly in supporting local agriculture and local artists. It seems that everyone has a wonderful awareness of what the earth has to offer them. The shops are difficult to resist as they are full of organic treats, local art, recycled and handmade goods. After the local 4th of July parade on Saturday, I went browsing down the main street and happened upon Milo in Maine, a company based in Portland that produces handmade shirts for men, women, kids and babies. I couldn't resist purchasing one of their silver jellyfish tees, which is printed on the softest organic cotton I've ever worn. And, to accompany my new T-shirt, I splurged on a Sea Bag tote made from recyled sails. Each one is designed and inspired from a sail and has hand-spliced rope handles. They are also machine washable and incredibly durable. I guess I just wanted to brag a little about my weekend and also share my excitement over discovering such a lively and prolific craft culture here in Maine. If you have a chance this summer or maybe even in the fall, take a breather from Baltimore and make your way up to Damariscotta. I promise that you'll love it. Photo courtesy of Milo in Maine

Maryland better than New York for start-ups? [BaltTech]

2009-07-06T06:03:58-07:00

There's a new New York-focused study that came out last month which compared that state's efforts with other states in encouraging investment in start-up ventures. Interestingly, the study claimed that Maryland does a better job than New York in turning federal research and development dollars into viable businesses. I couldn't get access to the full study, but here's the press release that details it. Here's a snippet:

In 2006, NY universities and academic research centers drew $4.5 billion in primarily federal R & D spending, second only to California. In commitments to state-supported venture funds, however, New York ranked 25th, whereas California, Pennsylvania, Texas and Maryland all ranked in the top ten.

And here's a July 4th news article from the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle that gives some perspective. What's your take on the Maryland start-up and venture capital scene? Strong or weak? I know more small companies than venture capitalists, and the common refrain I've heard in the past is that it's hard to attract attention and investment from the locals. But some think the tide is changing. Share your thoughts here. I'm all ears.

Raw video: The wait for Maryland biotech tax credits [BaltTech]

2009-07-06T04:13:43-07:00

Remember the story about the long, five day wait for tax credits for biotech start-ups? The company execs started lining up because the state program, which started accepting applications for the generous credit on July 1st, would only dole them out on a first-come/first-served basis (per state law.) The wait took place at a conference room at the University of Maryland-Baltimore's BioPark. The university's news team was there to shoot video of the scene. Check it out below: If you can't see the embedded video above, here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIbqOzHSCZU

New poll: Weigh in on Q&As [The Real Estate Wonk]

2009-07-05T17:51:16-07:00

So: Q&As with housing experts -- with the Q's coming from you rather than me. You've already weighed in on the types of experts you're most interested in questioning (though feel free to keep suggesting professions or specific people in these comments). Now let me know how you'd like to do it. Live? Not?

The nice thing about a live chat is that it can turn into a conversation, with answers to questions begetting more questions. The downside: You'll miss it if the time doesn't work for you. (Worse, if no one shows up on the blog at the allotted time, the chat will become the proverbial tree falling in the woods.)

Take a moment to tell me whether you'd come to the blog for a live chat -- almost certainly over lunch hour -- or whether you'd prefer another option:

Death penalty 'exonerations' [Random Rodricks]

2009-07-05T15:31:55-07:00

Recently, I made another reference to the number of Death Row inmates across the country who have been spared execution because of exonerations of one form or another. The Death Penalty Information Center keeps this count -- it is presently 133 -- and it has been verified elsewhere in the mainstream press. When I first started using the numbers from DPIC, I conducted Sun archive and Internet searches to independently check the exonerations, and found a large sampling of them to be accurate.

But, at the same time, I think "exonerations" should only be used when a person is convicted but later found to be innocent of the murder that resulted in a sentence of death. That is the popular meaning of "exoneration," and yet the DPIC uses it to cover those whose convictions have been overturned because of legal flaws.

A reader of my column wrote to challenge my acceptance of the word "exoneration" as shorthand for all those who have been removed for various reasons from Death Row. The reader cited a report of a victims' rights organization, the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which challenged the DPIC numbers and definition of "exonerated."

Here is the reply to questions about the accuracy of the exonerations list from Richard Dieter, DPIC director.

The Death Penalty Information Center is a non-profit organization dedicated to research and education on the death penalty in the U.S. We do not have a position on the morality or rightness of the death penalty per se, though a number of our reports focus on the problems in capital punishment and hence have been critical of the way it is applied.

With respect to your question about our list of exonerated individuals, we use very strict and objective criteria for inclusion of cases on this list. Basically, the list is determined by the decisions of courts and prosecutor offices, not by our subjective judgment. As we state in a number of places on our Web site and in our reports, the criteria for inclusion on the list is:
Defendants must have been convicted, sentenced to death and subsequently either-
a) their conviction was overturned AND
i) they were acquitted at re-trial or
ii) all charges were dropped
b) they were given an absolute pardon by the governor based on new evidence of innocence.
The list includes cases where the release occurred in 1973 or later, which was the time that states resumed sentencing people to death after the U.S. Supreme Court had struck down the death penalty. The list originated from a request from Congress asking us to identify the risks that innocent people might be executed. The original list that we prepared was published as a Staff Report of the House Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights. The list has been favorably referred to by Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court and other federal courts, as well as by many public officials around the country.

We believe the term "exonerated" is entirely appropriate to refer to the individuals on this list, which now numbers 133 individuals. Exonerate means to clear, as of an accusation, and seems to come from the Latin "ex" and "onus" meaning to unburden. That is precisely what has occurred in these cases. The defendants were convicted, given a burden of guilt, and then that burden was lifted when they were acquitted at a re-trial or the prosecution dropped all charges after the conviction was reversed. These are not individuals who received a lesser sentence or who remained guilty of a lesser charge related to the same set of circumstances. All guilt was lifted by the same system that had imposed it in the first place. Our justice system is the only objective source for making such a determination.

This notion of innocence, that an individual is innocent unless proven guilty, is a bedrock principle of our constitution and our societal protection against abusive state power. One does not lose the status of innocence merely because a prosecutor or other individuals retain a suspicion of guilt. Of course, it is true that this list makes no god-like determination of knowing exactly what happened in the original crime. Such perfect knowledge of past events is impossible, either to absolutely prove that a person did or did not do an act. We do not try to make a subjective judgment of what we think happened in the crime. We are merely reporting that in a great many cases the justice system convicted an individual and sentenced them to death, but when the process that arrived at that conclusion was reviewed, the conviction and sentence were thrown out. The individual, who often came close to execution, could not even be convicted of a traffic violation. Surely, that should be a cause of concern in applying the death penalty.

Maybe "exoneration" isn't the most accurate word here. But Dieter has a point -- if a conviction was wrongly achieved, our system says that conviction is thrown out and the the justice system returns to square one for the accused. However you shake this, at least 133 people were put on Death Row and slated for execution who should not have been there. These were near-fatal mistakes, in the eyes of our system, way too much imperfection in the area of criminal justice, above all, that requires perfection.

Remember the Smithereens? [Random Rodricks]

2009-07-05T13:58:18-07:00

Pat DiNizio, lead singer of this Jersey band from the 1980s, performs solo July 18 in Baltimore to benefit former Raven Michael McCrary's fund for the PAL centers for at-risk kids. The event is cosponsored by the Baltimore Community Foundation. It's described as "an eclectic evening of acoustic music, fine wines and tapas" at the Silo luxury condos. Tickets are $60, 410-837-3630.

Roma Sausage in Giant [Random Rodricks]

2009-07-05T09:43:46-07:00

At long last, Roma Sausage, Baltimore's best Italian sausage, has made it to the meat cases at Giant. This was confirmed by Dean Paciocco, the owner of the sausage-maker. "I am pleased to inform you that Roma Sausage is now in all 181 local Giant stores and I feel that your columns have been very helpful with that development." OK, well, I can't take too much credit for this. Maybe consumers figured out that the so-called Italian sausage Giant has been selling (Johnsville? Are you kidding me?) was not so great. Maybe Giant execs are taking the buy-local thing seriously and, if so, good for them.

The growth for Roma means the sausage-maker had to move out of the little Highlandtown corner rowhouse it occupied for decades. The company moved to a new space in the old Crosse and Blackwell building at 6801 Eastern Avenue.

Paciocco sent me an e-mail boasting about Roma's Chesapeake sausage. "We are combining Phillips Seafood seasoning along with my own blend of spices and making a signature sausage exclusively for Giant and calling it Chesapeake sausage with both company logos on the product."

I sampled this recently and . . . well, let's just say I won't make that mistake again. (It's just not my thing.) I'll settle for what Roma does best -- Italian sweet or mild, browned in a little olive oil, then left in a simmering tomato sauce for about two days and served with linguini. Buona fortuna!

Gay alumni: USNA [Random Rodricks]

2009-07-05T08:56:22-07:00

Followup on today's column on the gay alumni of the U.S. Naval Academy:

Similar organizations for alumni of both the Air Force Academy and West Point have formed since USNAOut started up in 2003. The Air Force has Blue Alliance, and the U.S. Military Academy now has KnightsOut. The co-founder of KnightsOut, an Iraq veteran from New York named Dan Choi, was recently recommended for discharge after outing himself.

Poll results: The experts you'd like to question [The Real Estate Wonk]

2009-07-05T06:08:16-07:00

I'm thinking of lining up some expert-types willing to do live (or email) Q&As with you folks. When I mentioned that last week, I asked you to choose the sorts of experts you're most interested in questioning.

The results of the multiple-choice poll:

Housing-market forecaster got the most interest, with 19 votes. Not surprising, since the direction of prices and sales is always a hot topic among commenters here.

Close behind was appraiser -- also not surprising, what with recent debate about the effectiveness of the Home Valuation Code of Conduct.

After that, in order of popularity:

Mortgage originator

Credit-score expert

Real estate agent (a few of you offered specific suggestions -- thanks!)

And with one vote each: home stager, successful investor and flipper. (The last two were write-ins.)

Now, here's the thing: Housing forecasters -- good ones, at least -- have plenty of opportunities to appear in the national media. I don't want to convince one to free up a half-hour to an hour for a live chat and then have no one show up to ask questions. They'll never do it again -- ya follow?

So here's the deal: I'll look for a knowledgeable local appraiser willing to give this a go, and you be ready to pepper him or her with great questions. If that goes well, I don't see why we can't do this with a forecaster next, and then a mortgage originator and so on down the line.

Does that sound like a plan?

In secondary poll results, I asked you if you'd like to see fewer polls. (Yes, a poll about polls. Oh the irony.)

Almost half of you say you like the weekly polls and to keep doing them. Twenty-seven percent of you have no opinion one way or the other. Nineteen percent of you say less frequent polls would be preferable.

Of the remaining two voters, one of you opted for the choice to stop the polls altogether, and the other wrote in this suggestion: "how about doing some REAL reporting?" (Er -- you do realize you don't have to read this blog if it annoys you, right?)

I think Wonk reader MrRational's recommendation could make most folks happy: "Having polls is a great feature; but don't feel obliged to create one because of a schedule." So I'll still aim to do regular polls, but if nothing suggests itself in a particular week, I won't sweat it.

Space Station flyover Monday night [Maryland Weather]

2009-07-05T05:01:28-07:00

Space Cadets! There will be an unusually nice opportunity Monday evening to watch the International Space Station fly by on its way from the Louisiana coast to the Canadian Maritime provinces.

If skies are clear, we'll pick it up at 10:43 p.m. EDT, rising out of the southwest as it passes over northern Alabama. Look for a bright, star-like object hustling toward the northeast, rising about halfway up the northwestern sky by 10:46 p.m. At that moment, it will be somewhere over central Pennsylvania, about 280 miles from viewers in Baltimore, moving northeast at 17,500 mph.

From there it will pass through the handle of the Big Dipper and race off toward the northeast, disappearing from view at 10:49 p.m. as it flies over New Brunswick, Canada.

Sure, it's a bit late. But hey, it's summer. Take the kids outside with you and let them try to be the first to spot the station. That's their money up there, too. Here's more on what they're doing up there.

Tougher times for renters, landlords [The Real Estate Wonk]

2009-07-04T04:10:02-07:00

We all hear that layoffs and salary reductions are bad for homeowners and will probably keep foreclosure numbers from dropping anytime soon. But the cuts aren't good for renters, either. And what's not good for renters -- in this case -- is bad news for landlords.

Half of U.S. property managers are having more trouble filling their units with "qualified renters," according to a new TransUnion survey. Eight out of 10 say they're worried about how the rest of the year will go. (TransUnion, a credit-information company that sells renter-screening services, said it surveyed more than 870 property managers last month.)

But what about the people who got foreclosed on? Aren't they in need of a place to rent? As it happens, only half the surveyed property managers reported an increase over last year in applicants leaving foreclosed properties. TransUnion speculates that "many consumers coming from these circumstances are moving in with family members or friends to share expenses."

Local landlords, how are things going for you? (Come on, now. I know some of you are reading. Well -- maybe not on the Fourth of July, but I'll wait.)

Renters, have you needed to make a change -- moving to a cheaper apartment, bringing in a roommate, going back to live with parents -- to deal with tighter finances? (Or are things going so well that you're moving to a nicer place?)

Fourth of July salmon [Random Rodricks]

2009-07-03T18:52:08-07:00

Three-For-All Salmon for the Fourth

For Independence Day 2008, I accidentally created what I think is a new poached salmon recipe and want to share this with you. My guests raved about it -- and, really, I had no idea the results would be so good.

You need a long, rectangular stainless steel pan, like the chafing trays professional caterers use. (You don't need the whole set-up -- just one of the trays.) I have picked these trays up over the years from restaurant-supply stores. They come in varying depths. The one I used was about three inches deep. The tray needs to be long enough to handle a large salmon filet. You can probably double-up aluminum foil pans, like those used for roasting turkeys, but they may not be long enough for this recipe.

Purchase three skinless salmon filets -- nice, big ones, about 16 to 18 inches long. You're going to invest about $45 to $55 in salmon for this dish, but it will serve plenty of guests, and this will still be more affordable than any other seafood dish you might serve at a party.

Slice a bunch of celery on a sharp diagonal line, as thin as possible, and lay this as the bed in the steaming tray.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Place one of the filets on this bed of celery.

Sprinkle with salt, pepper and lemon juice.

Slice four fresh carrots on a sharp diagonal, also thin. Lay them evenly atop the filet.

Sprinkle with salt, pepper and lemon juice.

Place the second filet on top of the carrots.

Slice one large cucumber into thin, diagonal pieces. Lay them evenly atop the filet. Sprinkle with salt, pepper and lemon juice.

Place the third filet atop the cucumbers.

You have now stacked three filets. They are going to steam together and adhere to each other.

Into the pan pour about two cups of dry white wine and two cups of water. Do not cover the salmon completely with the liquid. Sprinkle in some bay leaves, some dill spice and some mustard seed. Throw in a sprig of rosemary.

Cover the pan with aluminum foil and slide the pan into the oven, reducing the temperature to 375 F.

I think my three-story salmon steamed in 30 minutes. Use a thumb test to see if the top filet has firmed up. Overcooking is always a concern. But I think, since this dish is based on oven-steaming, you have less chance of that goof-up. Your kitchen will smell much better than it does when you try to pan-fry or broil salmon indoors.

I thought I would remove each filet and serve them separately. But I discovered that the salmon filets became one during the cooking. I left it alone to cool, then covered it with plastic wrap and placed the pan in the refrigerator overnight.

But first . . . before putting the poached salmon in the 'fridge . . . .

Drain all but a few drops of the grand-smelling liquid out of the pan and into a pot. Strain out the spice, bay leaves and seed. Reduce the broth for about an hour over low heat. Let that cool and use it the next day as a base for a sauce vert. The sauce vert can be made in a blender with the cold reduction, a skinned and chopped cucumber, some watercress, dill and parsley, and mixed with some mayonnaise to the consistency of a creamy salad dressing.

This topping was served cold along with the chilled salmon, which appeared to one guest to be the "largest, fattest salmon filet I've ever seen." It was actually, of course, a three-in-one, with some surprising mild crunch (carrots and cukes) between the slices. Use a very sharp (and wet) knife to cut slender (one- to one-and-a-half-inch wide) pieces for your guests. Each stack should hold together nicely (sans tooth picks) and taste delicious with the sauce verte.

Bon appetite.

Hey there, underwater borrowers: Want a refi? [The Real Estate Wonk]

2009-07-03T18:04:49-07:00

HUD announced this week that the Home Affordable Refinance Program will now accept borrowers who aren't behind on payments but are up to 125 percent underwater -- people who aren't going to find anyone else offering them a refi. Originally, program eligibility was limited to borrowers whose mortgages totaled no more than 105 percent of their home values.

You still need a loan that was bought or guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. (Don't know if it was? Ask your lender. Or check here for Fannie and here for Freddie.)

Zillow, the real estate information site, estimated yesterday that 29 percent of Baltimore-area homeowners are prime candidates for the program because they owe between 80 percent and 125 percent of their homes' value on their conforming first mortgages. That's 151,000 homeowners. But Zillow can't say how many meet the Fannie/Freddie requirement. (That's not publicly available information, the company says.)

These figures are up from the 113,000 (or 22 percent) of metro-area homeowners with conforming mortgages who owe between 80 and 105 percent of their home values.

The number of potentially eligible folks is higher nationwide: 36 percent of conforming-loan borrowers now and 26 percent under the original rules, Zillow estimates.

But apparently-eligible and actually-eligible are very different things, as the original rules of the program prove. Bloomberg reports that Fannie and Freddie have refinanced 80,000 mortgages under those guidelines, a tiny fraction of the participation the feds hoped for. And 60,000 of those had loan-to-value ratios of 80 percent or less. Mortgage professionals say it's tough for borrowers to qualify.

Has anyone out there tried to refinance under the older rules? I'm curious to know how it went.

Instead of new homes, these folks got heartache [The Real Estate Wonk]

2009-07-03T18:04:29-07:00

If you put down a deposit on a new home, you expect to get a new home. But whenever you hand over a chunk of change for something in return down the road, there's always an opportunity for something to go horribly wrong.

Example one:

Two business-partner siblings who registered a homebuilding company with the state near the beginning of the housing boom pleaded guilty this week to misusing deposits from 22 couples and individuals. I reported the story for today's paper -- you can read more about it here, but here's a taste:

Walter Osborne Ely Jr. and Kimberly Zahrey started JAE Developers in 2002 and collected between $1,000 and $50,000 in upfront payments from prospective home buyers, according to Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler's statement of fact submitted to Baltimore County Circuit Court Judge Vicki Ballou-Watts. Instead of putting the money in escrow accounts as required, the two quickly spent it. Some of the money went to business expenses that had nothing to do with building the customers' homes, the state said. Some of it Ely and Zahrey spent on themselves, the state said.

Meanwhile -- example two -- the state attorney general announced Wednesday that a Garrett County homebuilder also failed to build homes for several customers or return their money.

This comes on the heels of Lorraine Mirabella's stories about Altieri Homes, which the state has charged with "failing to start or finish construction of at least 20 homes in Harford and Howard counties after taking deposits and payments." Owner Greig Altieri said in a story last month that the tough economy put him out of business.

This story makes me feel itchy [The Real Estate Wonk]

2009-07-03T18:03:26-07:00

The City Paper's Edward Ericson Jr. has a story that will send a chill down the backs of homeowners and renters alike: Bed bugs are an increasing problem in parts of Baltimore. (There's a map here showing the location of bed-bug-related 311 calls.)

He writes, "They are fiendishly hard to eradicate, tougher than roaches, silent as a draft."

Just the thought of them makes some of the people interviewed in his story start "involuntarily" scratching. Many of the readers probably have, too.

Real estate for the Facebook crowd [The Real Estate Wonk]

2009-07-03T18:03:07-07:00

Sawbuck.com has updated its real estate information site with a nod to social media, including a news feed of home listings that's a lot like the friend status updates on Facebook. Choose Baltimore as your city of search, and you'll see this compilation of new listings and price changes. (You can see sales and contracts, too, but only if you register.)

The Sawbuck site also offers its take on housing-market health, rating Baltimore a 58 -- "Not Healthy," though closer to "Barely Healthy" (60-69) than "Deteriorating" (40-49). The scale runs from 0 to 99.

Market activity varies from neighborhood to neighborhood, of course -- that's true nationwide. How would you rate the housing-market health in your neighborhood? (I realize this is tricky because "deteriorating" in a seller's mind might be "improving" from a buyer's perspective. Hmm: Maybe choose a number from 0 to 99 with 0 being a market where buyers can get homes for nothing and 99 where sellers can successfuly demand a buyer's first-born child in exchange for accepting their offer?)

Baltimore's new-construction tax credit [The Real Estate Wonk]

2009-07-03T18:01:42-07:00

The clock starts today on that second chance for people who qualified for Baltimore's new-construction tax credit but didn't apply in time (it's a short window after buying). Here are the details on the amnesty approved by the City Council:

If you went to settlement on a new home after Oct. 1, 2004, you can apply for the city’s new-construction tax credit through Aug. 28, when the amnesty period ends. Homeowners in properties that were substantially rehabbed after being vacant may also be eligible.

You can find more details from the city Department of Finance, including the application form, in this PDF document. (You can also read my original post on the topic here.)

Why should you care, you ask? Because the credit reduces a homeowner’s property tax bill by half and then phases in the full amount over a five-year period. Yeah. That's why.

The City Council also changed the process going forward so new-home buyers have two windows to apply: within 90 days of settling and within 90 days of getting the first tax assessment notice.

Baltimore schools and colleges [InsideEd]

2009-07-03T07:00:00-07:00

Baltimore schools chief Andres Alonso proudly presented a group of high-achieving students going off to the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland, College Park at a board meeting recently.

It was an honor for the students, who are among a smaller-than-usual pool who had been accepted at those schools through special programs.

In recent years, Hopkins and College Park have attempted to boost the number of city public school students who were able to attend their institutions – among the most prestigious in the state – by getting rid of one of the most difficult barriers: money.

Turning watermelons into energy? [B'More Green]

2009-07-03T06:38:23-07:00

As we enter the peak watermelon-eating season, it turns out someone has figured out a new use for all the juicy red fruit that doesn't get slurped down over the Independence Day holiday weekend - fuel to run your car!

According to Inside Science News Service, scientists at the Agricultural Research Service in Lane, Okla., have been processing watermelons to extract their lycopene and citrulline, two substances believed to boost heart health. A chemist there, Wayne Fish, figured out that the juice left over after that extraction was rich in sugars that could be fermented into ethanol. He estimated that a 20-pound melon would yield about seven-tenths of a pound of ethanol.

If you think that's an awful waste for a tasty food, consider this - an awful lot of watermelons never make it to those cookouts. Though farmers harvested 4 billion pounds of melons in 2007, the news service reports, they left 800 million pounds in the fields with external blemishes or deformities that made them hard to sell.

Death in the back seat: accident or a crime? [Second Opinion]

2009-07-03T06:08:05-07:00

If a parent makes a foolish mistake and a child is killed as a result, what should the consequence be?

This is the question facing authorities in Howard County, where a 23-month-old girl died after spending nine hours alone in a hot car. Every summer -- tragically and predictably -- a spate of such horrifying incidents is reported around the country.

Such cases are deeply vexing because they stir conflicting responses. On the one hand, most people feel strongly that the death of an innocent child ought to be punished. And yet, the parent who is guilty not of cruel behavior but of a horrendous error has already suffered the worst kind of punishment imaginable, by causing the death or his or her own child.

The response of Howard County officials to the case at hand is a bit curious. The mother who left the child in the car has not been charged, and a police spokeswoman said charges likely wouldn't be filed if the incident is "determined to be accidental." The state's attorney, Dario J. Broccolino, said his office would review the police findings, adding, "There are a million variables in these kinds of cases."

"Determined to be accidental"? What other explanation could there for what happened here? Only a monstrous psychopath would intentionally leave a child to bake in a hot car. As for the "million variables," that just isn't the case. Rather, these kinds of incidents (15 children have died in locked cars this year, according to Safe Kids USA) are all depressingly similar: A distracted parent or guardian simply forgets that he or she has a small child in the back seat, parks the car and leaves.

The legal responses to such cases seem to vary considerably, with little rhyme or reason to explain the variations. A Bowie woman was charged with reckless endangerment, although her 14-month-old survived. A Virginia man was charged with involuntary manslaughter when his toddler died. (Worth researching: Is the justice system less forgiving of men in such cases?). But our Ellicott City woman, apparently, is unlikely to face any charges at all.

"I can't imagine that any judge can hand down any sentence that is worse than what the parents are doing to themselves," State's Attorney Broccolino said.

That's no doubt true, but it accounts for only one aspect of our system of justice: the inflicting of punishment on the guilty. The system aspires to do other things, like giving a victim a kind of post-mortem justice by valuing the life that has been lost. And yet, society finds it difficult to do this when a death is accidental rather than intentional; just consider the often startlingly light sentences -- sometimes no jail time at all -- given to drivers guilty of vehicular homicides.

Should the law, and society, be tougher on those who cause death through accident or negligence? And should it matter whether the culpable person is a parent of the victim?

From our Look Before You Leap department [Second Opinion]

2009-07-03T05:37:36-07:00

After the Brian Morris fiasco last month, in which a former Baltimore city school board president was forced to resign from a high-paying, unadvertised job as a school administrator after it was discovered he had a long history of bad debts, foreclosures and other financial problems, the state school board says that from now on it will take responsibiity for vetting applicants for such posts.

Among the questions the state panel expects to ask prospective city school board members are whether they've paid their taxes, been convicted of a crime, have a civil judgment against them or been barred from practicing law or had a professional license revoked.

That would seem to cover most of the important bases, but just to be sure The Sun's Liz Bowie reports the panel will also include a more general question: "Is there anything that the state board should know about you that has the potential for causing embarrassment to the citizens of Baltimore City if you were selected?"

That's the kind of catch-all question intended to elicit a multitude of sins, but it also makes it far to easy for ethically challenged applicants to prevaricate with such artful dodges as "can't recall," "not to my knowledge" or the classic "it depends on what you mean by the word 'embarrass.'"

So to ensure there's no room for evasion, we think the panel needs to get down to the knitty gritty of the vetting process:

1) Have you ever rented out a house you didn't own and then collected rent on it until the real owners showed up?

2) Been to Argentina lately?

3) Played footsie in an airport men's bathroom?

4) Organized a $60 billion ponzi scheme that ruined your family and friends?

5) Dated a hooker during an out-of-town junket?

6) Used gift cards meant for needy children or accepted a fur coat from a developer doing business with the city and not reported it?

Answer each question separately; if your answer is "yes" to any of the above, explain on the line below. Failure to answer truthfully is a violation of state law and may subject you to a fine, imprisonment or both. Thank you for your interest in the Baltimore City School Board.