Alcohol and traffic deaths

The entire undergraduate student bodies of the Johns Hopkins University and the U.S. Naval Academy combined. The population of Bel Air, according to the 2010 U.S. Census. The average attendance at a Hershey Bears hockey game (the highest in the AHL).

Maryland's model for gun regulation

Tomorrow, Gov. Martin O'Malley plans to sign into law the most comprehensive gun control legislation Maryland has seen in at least 25 years, a bill that will not only help guard against a mass shooting incident, like December's massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, but will also help fight the...

Baltimore's noble but flawed hiring bill

On the face of it, City Council President Bernard C. "Jack" Young's local hiring bill sounds eminently reasonable. When Baltimore spends its residents' tax dollars, why shouldn't it do so in a way that supports hiring city residents, particularly considering the high rate of unemployment here?...

Obama administration assaults press freedom

In Washington, as in any seat of power, most acts of folly begin with hubris. Government leaders, elected or appointed, usually don't intend to do the wrong thing, to overstep or cause harm, but they become so convinced, so certain of their purpose, that they are blinded by their pride.

Baltimore's new downtown

Harbor East is moving farther east with baker-cum-developer John Paterakis Sr.'s announcement Friday that he will break ground this summer on a new, mega-Whole Foods and later on a new residential/retail building across Central Avenue from the glittering mini-city he has almost single handedly built...

Taxing the tea party

Loyal readers of this page are likely aware that we have not been great supporters of the tea party movement. Too often, we have found those anti-tax crusaders who call themselves tea party patriots are simply rebranded John Birch Society members of an earlier time with all the extremist anti-...

Now that's ugly...

School reform 2.0

With city schools CEO Andrés Alonso's announcement last week that he is stepping down at the end of this school year, Baltimore finds itself in the market for a new leader who can continue and expand upon the reforms he instituted. Whoever succeeds Mr. Alonso will have a hard act to follow,...

Stopping the cellphones that foster jailhouse corruption

Gov. Martin O'Malley's announcement of several actions he is taking to combat jailhouse corruption in the wake of the Black Guerrilla Family scandal at the Baltimore City Detention Center is a positive step. It certainly would have instilled more confidence in the public if it had been his first...

Will Minnesota make a marriage equality trifecta?

Six months after Maryland, Maine and Washington voters endorsed same-sex marriage at the ballot box, two more states have adopted laws allowing gay couples to marry, and a third is poised to join them. On Tuesday, lawmakers in Delaware adopted a same-sex marriage law, and Minnesota's House of...

How to make Md.'s taxes more competitive

In his remarks to the Greater Baltimore Committee's annual meeting Wednesday night, T. Rowe Price Chairman Brian C. Rogers noted a contradiction in how the world sees Maryland as a place to do business. On the one hand, it is universally recognized for its top-ranked school systems and universities,...

Benghazi deserves real review

Whether the House investigation into the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, is a political witch hunt aimed at former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her possible run for president in 2016, as Democrats allege, or a principled effort to uncover a shocking scandal on par with...

Military injustice

The recent study estimating that there may have been 26,000 cases of sexual assault in the military last year stirred a lot of tough talk from the Pentagon and the White House over the past 24 hours. But the question is whether that outrage will translate into much-needed reforms within the armed...

A lifeline for the poor

Critics of a federal program that provides free cellphones to thousands of Maryland residents who can't afford regular commercial service are right that some recipients who don't qualify for the benefit are taking advantage of the system. But there's no question the program serves an important...

Getting answers in Md.'s jail corruption scandal

When federal authorities announced a sweeping indictment alleging widespread corruption by 13 guards at the Baltimore City Detention Center, members of the House of Delegates Judiciary Committee were quick to call for a hearing so they could demand answers from corrections chief Gary D. Maynard....

The state busts: How Maryland is losing money on table games

In November, voters approved a major expansion of Maryland's gambling program on the promise that allowing table games and eventually building a sixth casino would ensure that the gambling dollars state residents spend would go toward funding education here and not in states like West Virginia,...