DelMarVa's Premier Source for News, Opinion, Analysis, and Human Interest Contact Publisher Joe Albero at alberobutzo@wmconnect.com or 410-430-5349
An argument at the 7-11 at 139th Street in Ocean City leads to a clerk being backed over in the parking lot. The assailant then fled the scene. The assailant was apprehended near by by the Ocean City Police.
A majority of the Baltimore County Council plans to issue a statement as early as Thursday morning expressing support for a petition that seeks to halt a new state law giving discounted in-state tuition to illegal immigrants, according to Republican Todd Huff.
Republican David Marks said he has already signed the petition.
Huff said he is "strongly opposed" to the bill and supports efforts to put the issue to a referendum.
"I do feel it's going to have an economic impact on local jurisdictions," he said. "We depend on tuition to help fund our community college. Where they lack the funds, we have to supplement, and in these economic times that's not good."
Natural Resources Police say 67-year-old Dolan Lee Hurley of Cambridge has been charged with failing to tag striped bass within 200 yards of his net. Natural Resources Police say Hurley was charged after officers found 500 pounds of untagged striped bass onboard a commercial vessel more than 1,000 yards from the net. 
Multisource political news, world news, and entertainment news analysis by Newsy.com
More than 1.1 million men admitted to getting work done in 2010. The number has jumped 13% this year.
Ireton is doing precisely what his idol Obama does – vilifying in public those who don't agree with him. His personal attack on at least two members of the Council warrants a public apology, as does his recent meltdown outside the Council chambers that was reported in detail on this blog.
It is ironic that he ran against Barrie Tilghman (actually it was Comegys) and now he is following in her wake. No doubt he would be using slurs like "dirty dozen" if she didn't hold its copyright. Instead, his mantra is "turn their backs."
Probably, he also sends nasty and threatening e-mails to those on his enemies list. We have seen that tactic used in City Hall by another mayor.
We are fortunate to have Council members who will face the assault by the mayor, aided and abetted by certain news media and bloggers, that comes with standing up to autocrats such as Tilghman and Ireton who have made Salisbury the laughingstock of the Lower Shore.
Tacitus is a Salisbury resident and frequent contributor to SbyNEWS.
Sussex County is designating four public buildings as "cooling stations" during this week's heat wave.
Residents without air conditioning can go to the County Administration Building, 2 The Circle, Georgetown, from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday to Friday; the South Coastal Library, 43 Kent Avenue, Bethany Beach, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday to Thursday, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday; the Milton Library, 121 Union Street, Milton, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday to Friday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday; and the Greenwood Library, 100 Mill Street, Greenwood, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday.
Free bottled water will be available at the County Administration Building in Georgetown. County paramedics will check in at all four sites regularly. Residents should bring any medication and special items they need.
Temperatures are expected to near 100 degrees today and Thursday, but should slide into the 90s and 80s over the weekend.
"High body temperatures and dehydration will make other medical conditions such as heart and breathing problems much worse," said Sussex County Emergency Medical Services Director Robert Stuart. "It is very important to stay cool and hydrated when the heat index reaches these dangerous levels."
An excessive heat warning has been issued for New Castle County, Del., and portions of southeastern Pennsylvania and South Jersey.
The warning, issued by the National WeatherService, is in effect from noon today to 8 p.m. Thursday.
Temperatures are expected to rise into the mid- and upper 90s, with heat index values around 100 degrees.
The number of homeowners underwater on their mortgages has -- at least temporarily -- stabilized at 120,000 in the Baltimore metro area, according to new estimates from CoreLogic.
The real estate data company says that amounts to 19 percent of all mortgaged homes in the first three months of this year, essentially the same as at the end of last year. Last spring, by contrast, just over 100,000 homeowners owed more on their mortgages than their homes were worth, the company said.
Home prices have continued to drop since the beginning of the year, though, so the next underwater figure might show a return to the upward climb. (About 33,000 Baltimore-area homes were on the edge of negative equity in the first three months of the year, CoreLogic says.)
Maryland remains in the top 10 for its share of underwater borrowers, ranking 8th with just under 24 percent. But the hardest-hit states are much worse off.
Nevada is top of the heap -- more than 60 percent of its mortgaged homes are worth less than the loans on them, CoreLogic estimates.
So how much money are we talking about? The average underwater American is upside down to the tune of $65,000, about the same as the average underwater Marylander.
By the way, it's getting really lonely shouting into the void, which is what we bloggers are having to do while the commenting system is down due to spammers. If you email your comments to jhopkins(at)baltsun.com, I'll post a round-up with links to any relevant posts. Let me know how you'd like to be identified.
As President Obama prepares to visit Northern Virginia on Wednesday, the Republican National Committee is making the case that the Commonwealth — as well as a handful of other swing states — have moved away from the incumbent over the past three years.
In a memo obtained by The Fix, RNC political director Rick Wiley notes that Virginia is one of nine states — Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Iowa and Florida are the others — that Obama won in 2008 and President George W. Bush carried four years earlier.
“His path to re-election must go back through those states, but his prospects there are far from certain,” wrote Wiley. “In only two and a half years, his position in those states, and in many others, has deteriorated dramatically, and Republican strength is in plain view.”
As evidence of the GOP’s momentum in those states, Wiley pointed out that in the three years since Obama won them, Republicans have won a Senate seat, four governor’s races, seven state legislative chambers and 17 House seats in the nine states combined.
It was late one afternoon when the email went out, warning of "hot front page news" that could be a "big embarrassment" to Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler.
The message came from an assistant attorney general, writing to alert her supervisor that a Baltimore lawyer was angry at the state health department lab for destroying blood test records of children with lead poisoning. This private attorney wasn't just any lawyer, her email said, but "a great supporter of the AG's governor aspirations" and "a good buddy" of Gansler's, who is widely viewed as harboring higher political ambitions.
The lawyer also told the government attorney to tell the state's lab director to stop destroying records, according to the email. And so she did, leaving a voice message that conveyed the private lawyer's "instructions," the email said.
Attorneys for the state never intended for the email to be made public. Details of it were contained in a report from the health department's inspector general about the lab's destruction of records, but were blacked out by government lawyers before the document was released. The redacted language was easily restored by The Baltimore Sun, by copying and pasting the document into a new file.
Virginia Education Secretary Gerard Robinson, who took that job just last year, has applied to be Florida's next education commissioner after being courted by officials there. He is one of nine new applicants announced Wednesday.
The State Board of Education, meanwhile, appointed former Commissioner John Winn to his old job on an interim basis until the panel names a permanent replacement for outgoing Commissioner Eric Smith, who resigned under pressure from Gov. Rick Scott.
Robinson is the only current top state education official among the applicants.
Another new applicant, Bret Schundler, was fired as New Jersey's education commissioner last year by Gov. Chris Christie. Stacia Smith also is a finalist for appointment as Ohio's education superintendent. She currently is superintendent of the Clark County Educational Service Center in West Liberty, Ohio, and a former associate school superintendent for Dayton, Ohio.
Tom Gallagher, Florida's second-to-last elected education commissioner, has also applied. Winn has not.
Florida officials approached Robinson about the job, said Tucker Martin, a spokesman for Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell.
The House voted narrowly Tuesday to award Delaware's electoral votes to the candidate who wins the national popular vote, despite critics' condemnation of the bill as an end run around the U.S. Constitution.
House Bill 55, sponsored by Rep. Dennis E. Williams, D-Talleyville, squeaked through with the bare minimum of votes, 21, following debate that centered on electoral politics with a healthy dose of American history.
Williams said the bill will give Delaware, which has three votes in the Electoral College, more clout than it currently has. The media already are reporting that the 2012 presidential election will be decided in six states, Williams said, meaning Delaware essentially has been written off.
But Rep. Lincoln Willis, R-Clayton, said the bill would make Delaware even more irrelevant.
READ MORE …
Del. Lacey E. Putney, I-Bedford, is going for 50.
Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee,Putney said he had traveled throughout the 19th House District and received encouragement from Democrats and Republicans alike to run again.
He will turn 83 this month.
In redistricting, the General Assembly addedAlleghany County and Covington to the 19th District, which also includes the city of Bedford and parts ofBedford and Botetourt counties.
Putney said he will use his years of seniority and committee assignments to fight against what he expects will be attempts by urban legislators to change funding formulas for transportation and education.
"As always, I will continue to follow a common sense, conservative approach to state government, sound fiscal policies and legislation that focuses on sound family values," the Bedford lawyer said.
The Free State really isn’t very free, according to a new report from the Mercatus Center in Northern Virginia, a libertarian research group.
According to a study from Mercatus Center scholars who looks at how truly free each state is, Maryland ranked 43rd, seventh from the bottom. Done by two scholars with the George Mason University-based group, the study ranks Maryland dead last in personal freedom, 44th in regulatory freedom and 28th in economic freedom.
But one surprise in the study was how well Maryland ranks on fiscal issues, coming in 11th among the states on its freedom rankings. The Tax Foundation, business groups and Republicans typically beat up Maryland for high taxes.
Surprise on taxes, spending
Jason Sorens, a political science professor at SUNY Buffalo who co-authored the study, was “a little surprised ” too, given Maryland’s poor rankings in other categories.
The main reason for the good ranking on government taxes and spending is the way the Mercatus study calculated the fiscal burden. Maryland’s state “debt ratio to personal income is very low” compared to other states, Sorens said. “Its ratio of government spending to personal income is also low.”
“On tax collection, Maryland is about average,” he said.
Sorens noted that the Tax Foundation, which ranks Maryland as the 12th highest taxed state, counts taxes paid to other states. The Mercatus study puts Maryland “right there in the middle.”
Maryland’s tax burden looks higher because personal incomes are higher, Sorens said.
"We need more people with a business background in the state Senate," Dodson said.
He is president of Dodson Pest Control, which employs more than 500 people in five states. He was on the Lynchburg City Council from 1998 to 2010, including six years as vice mayor.
He pledged a renewed state commitment to K-12 and higher education.
The new district, which was created recently by theGeneral Assembly, runs from northern Lynchburg through central Virginia to Goochland and Louisacounties.
Five Republicans are seeking that party's nomination to run for the seat. They will face one another in an Aug. 23 primary.
One of the Republicans, Tom Garrett of Louisa County, challenged the other four Tuesday to a series of debates. Garrett, the commonwealth's attorney in Louisa, proposed 10 debates weekly throughout the sprawling district.
Those debates, he said, should show who is the true conservative and who is the triangulator.
by Victor Davis Hanson
If Americans think fuel and food prices are high, they should try Europe, where both can nearly double those in the United States -- while salaries here are often lower.
Italians, like most now-broke Southern European countries, are desperate to privatize bloated public-owned utilities. Politicians are trying to curb pensions, and to encourage the private sector to hire workers and buy equipment, as a way of attracting wary foreigner parents to lend such perpetual adolescents more bailout money.
In theory, Italians accept that they are going to have to be a lot more like the Germans, and less like the Irish, Portuguese and Spaniards. In fact, they may end up like the Greeks, who are still striking and occasionally rioting because too few foreigners wish to continue subsidizing their socialist paradise. Red graffiti on Italian streets still echoes socialist solidarity, while Italian politicians talk capitalism to foreign lenders.
A lot of big dramatic scenes in movies where there's a last ditch effort by one lover to make it right with another lover by grabbing them just before they get on the plane don't seem like they could happen these days with new restrictions that make it so you have to buy a ticket in order to go past security. But it turns out they could still happen, we would just have to have an explanatory side-scene where they ask the ticket counter for what's called a "gate pass."
Lifehacker explains how these gate passes work. Basically they allow you to go through security and go all the way to the gate, just not get on the plane.
They're free and all you have to do is ask for one. It will help if you have the ticketholder standing next to you at the counter at the time - sorry, Hollywood - and securing yours at least an hour in advance of the flight is a wise move too.
Family Going on a Trip? You Can Walk them All the Way to the Boarding Gate if You Ask [Lifehacker]
The nation is at a crossroads and facing unprecedented challenges, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-7th, told a friendly audience in Henrico County on Wednesday.
"I do believe that there is a big choice in front of us, and that choice is almost one of an existential nature," he told the Rotary Club of West Richmond. "It is what kind of country do we want to be, and it is squarely based, I think, on the economy today … of what are we going to do to get back in the mode to grow?"
Cantor talked up the recently released GOP jobs plan and the budget proposal put forth by House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., which includes changes to Medicare.
The Medicare trust fund for seniors is projected to run out of money in 2024, according to a summary released in May by the Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees.
One man in the audience asked how to fix a Medicare system "that far out of whack." Under Ryan's plan, recipients would choose a plan subsidized by the government. It would not change benefits for people age 55 and older, Cantor said. Democrats call the plan extreme and cite it as a reason that Republicans recently lost a New York congressional seat in a special election.
"My question back to them is, 'If you don't like our plan, what is yours?'" he said.
After the program, Cantor, who has called on Republican presidential candidates to embrace the House budget plan, replied "yes" when asked if he'd like to see Republican U.S. Senate candidates do the same.
"Yes," he said. "I believe that the proposal that we've put forward is a credible plan to reduce spending and to reform the system so that we can see a return to prosperity."
Many candidates were reluctant to back it even before the GOP lost the New York seat.
U.S. Senate candidate George Allen has offered tepid praise for the plan, calling it a "constructive" starting point, but he avoided a wholesale endorsement.
Allen "commends Congressman Ryan for offering a thoughtful plan that has started a very important debate," said Allen spokeswoman Katie Wright.
If the Obama administration had any doubt that its signature healthcare law faces a severe challenge in court, it was erased soon after Chief Judge Joel Dubina opened the proceedings here.
"I can't find any case like this," Dubina said. "If we uphold this, are there any limits" on the power of the federal government?
Judge Stanley Marcus chimed in: "I can't find any case" in the past, he said, where the courts upheld "telling a private person they are compelled to purchase a product in the open market.... Is there anything that suggests Congress can do this?"
After nearly three hours of argument Wednesday, the three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals seemed prepared to declare at least part of last year's law unconstitutional.
The law's requirement that nearly everyone buy health insurance by 2014 is the question at the heart of the constitutional challenge. The argument that the mandate exceeds Congress' power initially was waved aside by many legal commentators, but it has now sharply divided the federal courts.
Three federal district judges have upheld the law and two have ruled it unconstitutional. Three cases have reached appeals courts, with a fourth appellate panel scheduled to hold a hearing in September.
Del. Bill Carrico, R-Grayson County, said Monday that he will seek the state Senate seat being vacated by retiring Republican William Wampler of Bristol.
Carrico has served in the House of Delegates for nearly 10 years, representing territory that overlaps Wampler's sprawling Senate district. Wampler announced last week that he will not seek re-election this fall and will leave the Senate after 24 years in office.
"I have worked closely with Senator Wampler on behalf of our region, and I am very familiar with the issues and challenges facing the people of Southwest," Carrico said.
Under a redistricting plan that Gov. Bob McDonnell signed into law in April, the 40th Senate District will stretch from Lee County to Wytheville. Carrico is the first candidate to declare for the seat following Wampler's retirement announcement.
"I understand the challenges and issues facing the families of Southwest because my own family has lived them," Carrico said. "Southwest has always been my home, and I have always stood up and fought for the people of our region."
Carrico, 49, is a retired Virginia State Police trooper who was first elected to the House in 2001. He ranks second in seniority on the House Transportation Committee and chairs two House subcommittees. He made an unsuccessful bid for Congress in 2006.
Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.) has a message for Masschusetts governor Mitt Romney, who is headed to Michigan tomorrow. McCotter declared in a statement, “Motor City hospitality dictates a Michigan message to Mitt that our struggling families, entrepreneurs and workers can’t afford policies that make Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama less than rivals, and more like running mates.” He also held a rally in Plymouth on the “Mitt Romney Obama Ticket.” McCotter is himself considering a presidential bid.
If you work in one of these fields, it might be time to start buffing your resume and taking night classes.
According to a report by IbisWorld, these are the top 10 US industries in the "decline" phase of their life cycle.
1. Manufactured Home Dealers
2. Record Stores
3. Photofinishing
4. Wired Telecommunications Carriers
5. Apparel Manufacturing
6. Newspaper Publishing
7. DVD Game and Video Rental
8. Mills
9. Formal Wear and Costume Rental
10. Video postproduction services
Basic business theory says that all companies go through three-stage cycle of growth, maturity, and then decline. If they don't reinvent themselves and enter a new growth phase, eventually they are liquidated and dissolved. Or maybe they just fade out to a whisper, then a trace, and then a footnote. According to the work of the consultants at IBISWorld, even after the economy improves, these businesses are still not long for this world. There goes my dreams of running my own grain mill.
Ten Key Industries That Will Decline, Even After the Economy Revives (PDF) [IBISWorld]
