Howard P Rawlings

For hours, the Obama faithful sat in the pews of Baltimore's Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, watching a large-screen television and waiting for the election results. When CNN announced that he had won, people ran down the sanctuary's aisles,...

Earl Stanford Richardson, the hard-charging educator who led Morgan State University through a rapid and at times rocky transformation from underfunded urban college to modern research university, said yesterday that he plans to retire at the end of...

State Sen. Ulysses Currie, whose ties to Shoppers Food and Pharmacy are under federal investigation, intervened several times in recent years on behalf of the grocery store chain when it was seeking public financing and other concessions as part of the...

Clarence H. Du Burns 1918 - 2003 -------------------- Clarence H. Du Burns, a self-made politician who rose through grass-roots involvement in his native East Baltimore to become the city's first African-American mayor. Throughout his career, Mr....

The flaws in the 1997 law that set up a city-state partnership to run Baltimore's schools might seem crystal-clear in 2004. Even authors of the legislation admit that the system's fiscal woes have exposed its unrealistic expectations and lack of fiscal...

The Maryland House of Delegates narrowly approved a $670 million sales- and income-tax package last night that ranks among the largest in state history, but Democrats leading the effort failed to garner enough votes to overturn a veto promised by Gov....

At a time when Baltimore's delegation in the House would seem to need a united front as important deals are cut on everything from budgets to taxes in the legislature's waning days, there is instead a growing divide. Democratic Dels. Tony E. Fulton and...

Calls for civility had barely subsided yesterday when partisan jousting erupted in the Maryland General Assembly, which convened for a 90-day session that promises no shortage of fights over the budget, taxes, gambling and education. Senate President...

First in a series of occasional articles. One of the most powerful people in this town is so boring you could fall asleep listening to him talk about his work. That's when he unleashes his dry sense of humor, finding new ways to say things to keep even...

Mayor Martin O'Malley focused on the school system's classroom successes and administrative failures yesterday in his fifth State of the City address, in which he also invoked the memory of several recently deceased local leaders, highlighted declining...

It may be a new day in terms of the configuration of Baltimore's City Council districts, but it is a familiar story as far as fund raising goes: Incumbents are garnering the lion's share of campaign contributions. Council members running for re-...

The day after his victory in the mayoral primary four years ago, Martin O'Malley was stopped at the Inner Harbor by a woman clutching a baby who immediately let him know he was in a tough town and facing intense pressure. "She walked up to me and said,...