Tag: Maryland

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Montgomery County, Maryland:  Can anything good proceed from this accursed progressive principality or is it damned forever?  The most populous county in the state, it leans far left, has for decades and routinely makes the news for some kind of outlandishness, if not outright malevolence.  I remember once writing an article about something that occurred there […]

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Join Jim and Greg as they welcome good poll numbers for Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and strong support for much of his agenda. They also shudder as Sen. Chuck Grassley unveils more evidence that the FBI actively covered up allegations against Hunter Biden during the 2020 campaign. And they point out the insanity of Maryland election law allowing mail-in ballots to arrive 10 days after election day – and fear this could create tremendous controversy if it happens in key races around the country this year.

 

Join Greg and Scot Bertram as they appreciate Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett telling Americans to “read the opinion” before getting worked up over the court’s upcoming opinions. They also analyze the effects of Colorado’s newly signed abortion bill, which allows abortions up to the moment of birth, and the hard left shift by Democrats nationally on the issue of life. And they roll their eyes as Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer vetoes legislation to clean up the voter rolls of citizens, saying it’s an undue burden on county clerks.

Brooding Over Cicadas? Just Eat Them. The UN Says So.

 

“Brood X” Cicadas are making their appearance in a big way this weekend in northern Virginia. They’re a nice, harmless, and (eventually) noisy diversion from our current theater. But just wait – someone will politicize them, too. You know it’s coming.

In a sense, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan already has. He’s declared the months of May and June as “Magicicada Months.” Never missing a chance to promote his state, he notes that the bugs sport the official colors of Maryland.

Join Jim and Greg as they are hopeful that a Microsoft purchase of TikTok will protect the privacy of millions of Americans and let everyone keep their little app.  They also slam local officials in Maryland in Virginia who are clearly drunk on power.  And they get a kick out of the obvious timing of a New York Times opinion column suddenly suggesting we ought to do away with presidential debates.

Redistributing Whiteness in Maryland

 

Is whiteness a commodity that can be allocated like money or social services? Maryland’s wealthiest suburban counties are embarked on race-based school policies that will not end well. Busing is back in a big way in suburban Maryland.

In the 1960s, my father worked on desegregation plans in Tennessee and Mississippi as a civil rights attorney with the USDOJ Civil Rights Division. He said there was an implicit understanding among those who worked on these plans about a psychological “critical mass” in white communities. That meant that when a formerly all-white school reached or exceeded a certain percentage (“critical mass”) of black students, “white flight” would ensue and the schools would rapidly re-segregate. As a matter of law, these plans had to be implemented no matter what because the segregation was de jure and there was no way to simultaneously mandate entire communities to exchange residences to achieve residential integration so the schools were always a principal focus. So “white flight” was widespread.

He also said that when the dust settled and the politics had worked their way, it was invariably only the poorer southern whites who got bused. The children of doctors and lawyers prepping for admission to Duke or Vanderbilt were never bused. The benefit to minority children from mingling with the least advantaged whites was always likely rather limited even if there was a big benefit from removing the stigma of forced segregation.

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The tragedy at the Capital Gazette last week in Annapolis, MD has raised a lot of questions. Some of them are very familiar to the ones raised after the Parkland school shooting, namely how come so many people could have accurately predicted the future actions of a disturbed individual without authorities doing something to prevent […]

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Another Disturbed Teen Does Not Open Fire on Maryland High School, No Deaths Reported

 

Lost in the daily torrent of data as mere local news, not worthy of national ballyhooing, was a story of a father’s tough love for his 18-year-old daughter. He found a journal and materials in her room and called the cops, who promptly and properly responded. The incident happened last March and the now 19-year-old woman was sentenced late last month to 20 years in prison.

Nicole Cevario, 19, was sentenced after pleading guilty to possessing explosive material with the intent to create a destructive device.

Need a break from the memo frenzy?  Have some martinis with us!  Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America get a kick out of seeing the Democratic National Committee with less than half a million dollars on hand heading into the midterms while Republicans have $40 million ready to go.  They also shake their heads as Maryland GOP Gov. Larry Hogan wants to opt out of the Trump’s administration’s plans for offshore energy exploration, a move made much easier by government already granting an exemption for Florida.  And they bang their heads against the desk as PolitiFact hired unhinged former Florida Rep. Alan Grayson to be part of their team, only to reverse course after liberals and conservatives howled in protest.  Jim and Greg also share their unvarnished thoughts on Groundhog Day and offer their Superbowl predictions.

Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America get a big kick out of Democrats insisting there are no real real benefits for the middle class in the recent tax bill – even as company after company publicly announces higher wages, new jobs, and bonuses.  They also shake their heads as emergency official in Hawaii create a major mess by trying to run a missile alert drill and send out an actual missile alert instead.  And they sigh as convicted military leaker and felon Bradley Manning, who now identifies as a woman named Chelsea, runs for the U.S. Senate in Maryland.

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In 1991, Governor Schaefer of Maryland referred to his state’s Eastern Shore as a s**thouse. The Eastern Shore is a rural, Republican part of Maryland. Several people from the Eastern Shore loaded the backs of their pickup trucks with portable outhouses and drove around State Circle in Annapolis to protest the remark.  State circle surrounds […]

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Why Can’t the US Use Its Assets Like the UK?

 

If you’re like many Ricochet folks, you get “The Daily Shot” in your inbox every day. (No, I’m not going to scold you if you don’t.)

Wednesday morning’s edition caught my eye because of some talk about Queen Elizabeth II getting a pay raise. As Americans, we’ve occasionally made comparisons between the Royal Family’s expenditures versus our own First Family. This was a relative sport for some, until earlier this year.

In both the US and the UK, the citizens bear the bill for their respective “families,” but across the pond, that isn’t as direct as it is here. The esteemed writer and editor of the daily newsletter did a fine job of explaining that:

We’re Against Emotionalism, Except When We’re Not

 

Conservatives have rightly taken pride in Neil Gorsuch’s calm and cerebral performance at his Senate confirmation hearings. Many commentators, along with Republican senators, have mocked Democrats for presuming to evaluate Gorsuch based on the outcomes of his cases. Did he “side with the little guy” or with big corporations? The correct answer, conservatives have correctly chided, is that justice is supposed to be blind. A good judge makes determinations based upon the facts and the law without regard to whether he personally prefers one party to another and without some social justice agenda to equalize the fortunes of little guys versus big guys. It’s not little versus big, sympathetic versus unsympathetic in a courtroom, but facts and law.

It’s a shame then, that so many conservatives are disregarding the virtues they laud in Gorsuch – prudence, careful weighing of facts, refusal to be swayed by emotional appeals – when it comes to a disturbing story of a rape in Maryland.

Reports indicate that a 14-year-old high school student in Rockville, Maryland (a suburb of Washington, DC) may have been sodomized and raped in the boys’ bathroom by two suspects. At least one of the suspects, according to Fox 5 in Baltimore, was an 18 year old who had recently entered the country illegally and was enrolled in the school as a freshman. The other, also an immigrant, is 17.

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The streets are narrow as you head east of Baltimore City into Dundalk and Essex. The Port is still there but Martin Aerospace is gone, now just a footnote in the Lockheed Martin “Beltway Bandit” conglomerate. Beth(lehem) Steel ran the biggest steel plant in the world at Sparrows Point. When I was in graduate school in engineering […]

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What GOP Voters Are Thinking: A Snapshot from Maryland

 

Donald-trump-marylandBefore our local Maryland primary on April 26 — part of the so-called I-95 set of primaries that was Donald Trump’s penultimate victory before his clinching Indiana win — I spent a couple of days canvassing for John Kasich and local candidates door to door, at public places, and at the polls in Frederick and Montgomery Counties. I’ve done this a couple of times before elections and have never regretted it; I always learn a lot about what’s on other people’s minds.

A few takeaways from this season:

1) Trump had plenty of support in the places I went, across a considerable diversity of voters at many income and education levels. Unlike Trump supporters I had encountered on Twitter, most of his real-life voters were not angry or combative, though some were.

Comprehensive and Common Sense Justice Reform in Maryland

 

Jails-620x394Last week in the Baltimore Sun, Robert Ehrlich highlighted a comprehensive justice reform package released last month in Maryland that seeks to “further reduce the state’s incarcerated population, reduce spending on corrections, and reinvest in strategies to increase public safety and reduce recidivism.”

Compiled by the “Justice Reinvestment Coordinating Panel,” which convened upon Gov. Larry Hogan’s signature of legislation during the 2015 session, the package addresses years worth of growing expenses in Maryland that has lead to, in Ehrlich’s words, a “bloated and inefficient” corrections system:

“For example, last year the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services accounted for nearly 14 percent of the total state workforce and 7.1 percent of expenditures from the general fund. State spending on corrections has increased by 10 percent since 2006, adjusted for inflation.”

Baltimore Burning

 

bal-students-residents-clash-with-police-at-mo-015In a scene that’s all too common in the Obama era, an American city is in flames. This time it’s Baltimore, where a funeral for a man killed by cops was quickly followed by mob violence carried live on cable news and social media. Every few months another Democrat stronghold is convulsed by turmoil. Hope and change involves a lot more riots and looting than I expected.

Meanwhile, our President is touring the Beltway with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe. They visited the Lincoln Memorial (must have special significance to a man named Abe) and tomorrow features a state dinner replete with Wagyu beef and exceedingly rare wines. I’m curious if the PM’s security detail is alarmed by the race war occurring just down the road or if his staff is simply aghast at how the world’s leading superpower has fallen so far and so fast. The shocking footage out of Baltimore isn’t a helpful backdrop for hosting one of our closest allies, especially when his nation is facing down an increasingly belligerent China and North Korea.

Details from the riots are changing quickly. Here’s the latest update from the Baltimore Sun: