Vice President Kamala Harris has earned the distinction of being the first presidential candidate to have supported legalizing marijuana federally. Yet she seems to think this is a liability rather than the opportunity it really is. In 2019, Harris co-sponsored a bill that would have lifted the federal ban on pot. But since launching her presidential campaign, she’s been silent on the issue.

The political landscape has indeed reached an unprecedented low-water mark, stained by a grotesque degradation of discourse that would have been unimaginable in more civilized times. Both the media and the campaigns of Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump have engaged in an incendiary rhetorical warfare that not only degrades the standards of political exchange but is, frankly, counterproductive to the health of the nation.

It has been a challenging enough season for Ocean City without the latest debacle — a wave of medical waste including hypodermic needles washing up on the beach. If it’s any comfort to Maryland’s Atlantic coastal residents (and it’s probably not), they were not the only victims. Officials were forced to close beaches to swimming from Delaware to Virginia. The danger is simply too great that someone will be injured by a needle of unknown origin.

Kondwani Fidel says he began wearing New Balance sneakers right “out of the womb.” They’ve always been one of his go-to brands, along with Nike’s Air Force 1 shoes. Most of his friends wore them, too. They enjoyed the versatility of the shoe — whether that be wearing them with a suit jacket or to play hoops. “You couldn’t tell me I wasn’t fresh with New Balance,” he said. “That’s how we put fits together.”

 

Baltimore County Public Schools are redrawing attendance boundary lines once again. It’s a regular occurrence and often involves multiple schools to ease overcrowding. That’s the case with this next batch of changes, but the school system also wants bus routes to be considered when lines are drawn. The decision to potentially change where kids go to school lies with the community.

Since that cold March morning, when María del Carmen Castellón Luna learned her husband was among those who died in the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse, her grief has been eased by unexpected warmth. Much of what has happened during the past six months might have seemed like a blessing, she said, if it had all happened for a different reason.

Each weekday, Baltimore-area motorists lose more than 20,000 vehicle-hours due to effects of traffic caused by the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse, and each day, the state gets infinitesimally, but incrementally, closer to rebuilding the felled structure. The Maryland Transportation Authority — the bridge’s owner — has applied for a Water Quality Certification and a Tidal Wetlands License, which are among the approvals it needs from the Maryland Department of the Environment.

Frederick County leaders are urging state officials to put money to complete design of improvements to U.S. 15 through the city of Frederick back into the state’s long-term transportation plan, as transportation officials prepare to visit the county in October.Proposed cuts of $1.3 billion to the state’s 6-year Consolidated Transportation Program would eliminate $14.3 million from the plan for design, engineer, and other work on a project to widen U.S. 15 from Interstate 70 to Md. 26, a longstanding transportation priority for the city and county.

The proposed redevelopment of a public surface parking lot in downtown Bethesda into a 12-story multifamily apartment building with up to 59 units for sale is moving forward now that Montgomery County planners have approved the project’s latest plans. The project, led by Broad Branch Partners of Washington, D.C., also includes the construction of a public park that will be part of the downtown Bethesda Eastern Greenway, an element of the 2017 Bethesda Downtown Plan. The building will be located near 4702 West Virginia Ave. to the east of Wisconsin Avenue.

The Frederick Board of Aldermen, at long last, is ready to vote on charter changes recommended by the committee appointed in 2022. A vote is scheduled for Thursday, although it’s unclear if the board is guaranteed to address every recommendation that day or hold off on some for later. After meeting and discussing the charter for a year, the Charter Review Committee last December recommended 19 changes.