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Sadly, it's not the economy alone
April 23, 2009
It is human - or perhaps just journalistic - nature to think we can explain the inexplicable. We take all the horrifying details that tumble from first one murder-suicide that wipes out an entire family and then unbelievably a second one - the sunny yellow house, the 10th-floor hotel room, the three little tykes, the two sisters, the mom who blogged and the one who volunteered - and we grasp for a universal string theory that will tie the who-what-where-when-and-how to a why.
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City tax sale list is a hall of shame
April 9, 2009
Fur coats, trips and other treats for the mayor? At least $15,348.
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Holton poll seems downright quaint
April 2, 2009
It may be the second-most-noteworthy thing about the now infamous poll conducted during City Councilwoman Helen L. Holton's 2007 re-election campaign - the response to a name-recognition question. After serving on the council since 1995, and thinking she might have a shot at a citywide office in the future, Holton surely had to be taken aback by these results:
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Rookie educators need more support
February 5, 2009
My first reaction to that cell-phone video of Jolita Berry being pummeled by one of her students was this: Any one of the teachers of my youth could have taken that girl, easy. But then, I didn't go to Reginald F. Lewis High School in Baltimore; I went to Catholic school in suburban Chicago where the nuns - however wizened and, at least in my earliest grades, weighed down by their veils, robes and swinging ropes of rosaries - were quite fearsome.
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A dilemma of political etiquette for Mayor Dixon
January 15, 2009
Dear Miss Manners:
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'Ah, Baltimore,' Dixon indictment another exasperating moment
January 10, 2009
It was another "ah, Baltimore" moment. Ever get those? You get exasperated by some bureaucratic runaround at City Hall, and you sigh and steam and maybe that vein on your forehead starts to throb. But after a while, you learn to just surrender - "ah, Baltimore" - and accept you're going to have dial one more number or go to one other office or just do without whatever it is you thought you needed.
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Two indictments, but so many loose ends
January 8, 2009
For some years now, the state prosecutor's long-running investigation of City Hall shenanigans has played out like Chinese water torture, drip by excruciating drip. A subpoena here, a plea bargain there, even a raid on the mayor's home - but what did it all add up to?
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First comes the slots mess, then comes the slots money — we hope
December 7, 2008
Usually, it's the back end of the beast that is the less lovely end. Not so, though, with slots.
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In Carney, diverse neighbors eager to vote
November 5, 2008
Not that I have a thing for CNN's John King, but I long to feel his touch.
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Holes in anthrax case not novel
August 8, 2008
In case I ever turn up dead while being investigated by the Feds, and they release all the suspicious stuff they've uncovered about me, let me explain right now why I recently Googled "novel kill scientist poisoned strawberry."
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What do you get for a mink?
June 27, 2008
You know how you get a song stuck in your head? Ever since the fur started flying in the state prosecutor's investigation of Mayor Sheila Dixon, I keep hearing that song from Guys and Dolls, the one sung by a doll who was shocked, just shocked, at what a guy expected in return for his gifts:
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The elephant in the room
June 20, 2008
I'd like to take the opportunity of all those microphones that have been shoved in my face these past couple of days since my house was raided, and speak directly to you, the citizens of Baltimore.
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A modest people, a respectful distance
October 4, 2006
The customer awkwardly approached the young Amish woman, as many of us have done these past couple of days.
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Evil can lurk in even the smallest, most remote communities
October 3, 2006
Night had already cloaked the valley by the time I arrived, and snow had started falling, gently as it does in the mountains in springtime. Under the twin covers of darkness and snowfall, I didn't realize until the next morning just how beautiful and idyllic Littleton, Col., was.
