No 'courtesy' for Wegmans

Baltimore County Councilwoman Vicki Almond faces the kind of decision that makes a job like hers tough. She is being asked whether to allow the rezoning of an empty industrial site in Owings Mills to allow a major retail development anchored by a...

Egypt's new beginning

For the first time in some 5,000 years of Egyptian civilization, voters went to the polls this week to select a leader in a contest where the outcome was uncertain. Given Egypt's crucial role in maintaining order and stability in the Middle East...

Pensions, bonuses and county budgets

This is the season when local governments finalize their budgets for the next fiscal year, and the grousing about their penurious circumstances is in full swing. Some are even complaining that the state's revised budget and tax plan — signed...

Rape and prison

The prospect of spending years behind bars in a tiny cell is sufficiently chilling to deter most people from ever committing a crime. Those who willfully break the law anyway and get caught have no one to blame but themselves when a judge sentences...

The Bain of Romney's candidacy

Newark Mayor Cory Booker was wrong and President Barack Obama is right: Mitt Romney's record at Bain Capital deserves closer scrutiny by voters. Whether a brief television ad accomplishes this is another matter.

Playing catchup with the minority birth rate

Pudgy, pink Gerber babies are no longer the typical children being born in the United States. According to theU.S. Census Bureau, moms who are Latino, Asian, African American or mixed race are now giving birth to just over 50 percent of American...

O'Malley's slots gamble

Our biggest concerns about the push to expand gambling at the end of this spring's regular session of the General Assembly were that there had been insufficient public debate about all of the changes slots boosters wanted to institute and that...

Citizens United II

"While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this Court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics."

Special session on gambling

SpaceX pushes back the final frontier

If all goes as planned, sometime this morning a spacecraft will blast off from its launchpad in Cape Canaveral, Fla., and ride a fiery plume of contrails upward through the pre-dawn darkness to begin a two-week journey to the International Space...

Another boost for same-sex marriage

How ironic that a divorce will be remembered for strengthening the rights of all Marylanders to be married regardless of sexual orientation.

Standing between fortune and chaos

Maryland gay marriage ruling

Cardinal O'Brien's legacy

Reducing the threat of Armageddon

President Obama achieved a major foreign policy goal in 2010 when he concluded the New START Treaty committing the U.S. and Russia to reduce the size of their long-range nuclear arsenals by a third within six years, to 1,550 warheads on each side....

We need a war on lead poisoning

The reports that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cut its threshold for lead poisoning from 10 micrograms per deciliter to 5 micrograms were something of a simplification. What the CDC said, after years of study and discussion, was that...

Baltimore and bigotry

It is always tempting to ignore the bluster and bombast emanating from the vicinity of Patrick L. McDonough, the Baltimore County delegate and radio talk show host who considers himself a man of the people but mostly is a self-promoting bomb-thrower....

At Preakness time, a new optimism

The Preakness Stakes arrives at Pimlico Race Course on Saturday absent one of the event's hallowed traditions. Sure, there will be sundresses and...

Tea party victories in Ind., Neb., are no boon to the Democrats

If it has accomplished nothing else, the tea party insurgency has made Republicans vastly more newsworthy than Democrats. While the party of the left plods along performing the boring old tasks of governing, the party of the right is engaged in...

The Sun at 175

If Arunah S. Abell dared to imagine 175 years into the future when he produced the first copies of The Sun on May 17, 1837, he almost surely would have guessed that the nature of his business would remain fundamentally unchanged. The news would be...

Baltimore welcomes a new archbishop

Today's installation of William E. Lori as the 16th archbishop of Baltimore is a noteworthy event, not only for the half-million Catholics in an archdiocese that stretches from Middle River to the mountains of Western Maryland,...

Special session fallout

They did what they had to do, and they went home. That's the best that can be said of the special session of the Maryland General Assembly that concluded today. The tax increases, spending cuts, fund transfers and other measures lawmakers approved in...

The St. Patrick's Day brawl

New details of the Baltimore police response to a particularly large, unruly and violent crowd of youths downtown over theSt. Patrick's Dayweekend not only raise the question of whether the department has the resources it needs to anticipate and...

Annapolis' unfinished business: Transportation funding

Not long after the Maryland General Assembly last adjourned back in mid-April, gasoline prices were approaching $4 a gallon. Currently, a price-conscious shopper can purchase a gallon of regular unleaded in the Baltimore area for as little as $3.50.

Crowding Balto. Co.'s classrooms

The results of Baltimore County Superintendent Joe Hairston's poor decision to cut teachers from high schools are now clear: A sharp drop in the number of classes available to students (including Advanced Placement courses), increasing class sizes...

Setting boundaries in Frederick

How far should a locally elected official have to go to avoid business dealings in his city or county?

High school Romney vs. high school Obama

Sure, you may know which man -- Mitt Romney or Barack Obama -- you want to see running the country, but which one would you have wanted to know in high school?

Pit bull legislation

KAL: The war on voters

And you thought the war on women was bad...

Restoring Mount Vernon

Baltimore's Washington Monument in Mount Vernon Square is one of the city's most recognizable landmarks, a classical Doric column towering 178 feet above its elegant surroundings. But nearly 200 years after its completion in 1829, the building and...