JUST A FEW little odds and ends that need some attending to:

Oversights and corrections:

Several callers and e-mailers have sent messages requesting how to contact the organization Black Professional Men Inc. - covered in this column June 19. The organization's Web site is www.bpminc.org. For those of you who have no computer, the phone number is 410-377-1023. You'll get a voice mail asking you to leave a name and number for a return call.

BPM members meet in the Associated Black Charities building, 1114 Cathedral St., at 6 p.m. the second Wednesday of every month.

Those of you who are wondering why I couldn't give this information in the first column need reminding that just because the forehead is big doesn't necessarily mean there's an actual brain in the skull.

Which brings me to the boo-boo that appeared in the column: the BPM member who works for the Baltimore Ravens is not a player. He's Kenny Abrams, who works in marketing. Those tickets to Ravens' games BPM mentees received were donated by Ravens defensive back James Trapp, who's not a BPM member but - according to Rod Carter, a mentor in the group - has contributed so much some BPMers consider him an honorary member.

"He's talked with the guys when they were in middle school," Carter said of Trapp's involvement with the mentees. "He told them about his values and his upbringing in South Carolina. And he gave each of them a book."

We media types who love getting cute by referring to the National Football League as the National Felony League should remember that little anecdote about Trapp and, perhaps, try to keep our perspective when writing about the misdeeds of pro athletes. It won't harm us to mention the good deeds once in a while.

Many thanks to the e-mailer who noticed the error in the June 22 column in which I wrote about "subordination of perjury" as one of the many sins of President Bill Clinton. The correct term is "subornation of perjury," though I suspect that if there is such a thing as "subordination of perjury" then Clinton is probably guilty of that, too.

The June 22 column raised the issue of the alleged "extremism" of Republican gubernatorial candidate Robert Ehrlich. The charge of Republican extremism was repeated Thursday when Democratic gubernatorial candidate Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend announced that former Naval Academy Superintendent Adm. Charles Larson would be her running mate. Larson told reporters he changed his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat because Republicans have "strayed farther and farther to the right."

The only straying that's been done has been by the Democrats, who've moved so far left that the view of the middle from way over there seems far right. Democrats love hurling that "extremist" charge about Ehrlich around, but they need to listen to what conservatives are saying about them. Here are a few of the wisecracks going around.

1. To be a Democrat, you have to believe that gender roles are artificial but being homosexual is natural.

2. To be a Democrat, you have to be against capital punishment but support abortion on demand.

3. To be a Democrat, you have to think the NRA is bad because it supports certain parts of the Constitution but believe the ACLU is good because it supports certain parts of the Constitution.

There's more, much more, to justify why many former Democrats switched to the Republican Party as dem Dems moved ever leftward, but let's take the Republican extremism charge to its illogical conclusion.

If Ehrlich is an extremist, then so is every man and woman in Maryland's 2nd District who voted him into Congress. Ditto for those voters who sent Maryland's other three Republican representatives to the House.

If Ehrlich is an extremist, then so is every member of the Baltimore chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police, which recently endorsed him.

If Ehrlich is an extremist, then so are the voters in those congressional districts who sent GOP representatives to the House, where Republicans are a majority. Voters in some 30 states favored President Bush over former Vice President Al Gore in the 2000 election, so to hear Larson and other Democrats tell it, 60 percent of the country is also extremist.

There's a transposition of roles here that's downright eerie. In the 1950s and well into the '60s, conservatives labeled folks who were even a wee bit to the left as either communists or pinkos. Today, it's the Democrats on the left throwing the term "extremist" around.

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose - the more things change, the more things stay the same - the French say.