It was tough sledding this year for the mudslingers

November 16, 2008

Voters in Maryland's 1st Congressional District were urged to vote against Democrat Frank M. Kratovil Jr. because he agreed to a plea bargain involving a child molester. The assumption: Voters would see the two-term Queen Anne's County prosecutor as soft on crime, a hopeless liberal Democrat.

Recent columns

• Solving the 'baffling problem'

  November 7, 2008

  For those who labored to vanquish Jim Crow, President-elect Barack Obama's accomplishment exceeds their fondest dreams.

• Finally, it's our turn, with the only poll that counts

  November 2, 2008

  This year may turn out to be the year of the voter.

• Kicking the can in Annapolis: Will you play along?

  October 26, 2008

  Slots are a bad idea whose time, according to the polls, has come. Support for more gambling is on the rise. Anybody know why?

• Marylanders for Obama look to the battlegrounds

  October 19, 2008

  With his party's nomination finally in hand, Sen. Barack Obama urged Democratic leaders in Maryland and elsewhere to realize that an extraordinary organizational effort would be needed for him to win in November.

• Dirt and destruction: our political guilty pleasures

  October 12, 2008

  It is said that political campaigns spend big money to put lies and distortions on television because they work.

• Marylanders want to know: Where's my bailout?

  October 5, 2008

  A Prince George's County state senator says the Wall Street bailout came up a lot last weekend at the Maryland City Volunteer Fire Department's fall bazaar. People were wondering why they weren't getting bailed out.

• First District no longer a Shore thing for GOP

  September 21, 2008

  Maybe they should call it the Fractured First. The political terrain is splintered, politics are fractious, and the price of dissent is spiking.

• Good timing for bad move

  September 14, 2008

  My friend Elizabeth, who used to clean my office, would occasionally ask what I was doing on the coming weekend. I'd respond, and then ask her the same question. Sometimes she'd smile a little mischievously and say, "I'm going up to Delaware to donate."

• 'Sarah who?' steals the spotlight in St. Paul

  September 7, 2008

  Sometimes, as we all know, it's better to be lucky than good. The most compelling, contemporary case in point: Sen. John McCain.

• Marylanders helped pave the way for Obama's journey

  August 31, 2008

  Sen. Barack Obama is the Democratic Party's presidential nominee by virtue of his own talent, but he stands on the shoulders of Americans who built, over many decades, a more welcoming social and political landscape in this country.

• Celeb sightings in Denver: Bunk, Biff — and Stalin?

  August 28, 2008

  Free speech at the Democratic National Convention this week is where you find it. Near Market Street, maybe, not far from the Pepsi Center, where delegates hear party pronouncements in well-scripted speeches. Here, a nicely dressed man reads aloud feverishly from the Bible, as if the end were near. No one seems to be listening.

• She's going the extra mile (or so) for Barack Obama

  August 24, 2008

  She's not Obama Girl, but Cheryl A. McLeod may be the essence of the national phenomenon generated by Sen. Barack Obama.