Commentary

There was a time when indoor retailing space, with restaurants and food courts and major department store “anchors,” dominated not just retailing but the social scene. “See you at the mall” was a common refrain a generation ago — before the enormous popularity of online shopping made them largely extinct and COVID-19 drove a final nail in that coffin. So-called “dead malls” now can be found all over this country, empty shells of their former selves.

Ever come across a place and try to imagine what it was like 300 or 400 years ago? It’s not something you do every day, when you have errands to run, work to do, children to care for, meals to fix, politics to abhor. But sometimes and some place, you surrender to the moment and try to squint away all the clutter of the modern world — office buildings in the distance, plastic bags in trees, the board fence on the edge of a pasture.

The Maryland General Assembly is considering a gun control bill that would absolutely save lives in this state. And it isn’t the one you are probably thinking about. The state Senate is moving forward on a needed revision to the concealed-carry law, in the wake of a Supreme Court decision that struck down a similar law in New York. We believe that measure deserves support to reinstate limits on the ability to carry a gun in many settings to preserve public safety.

While Montgomery County is dominated by elected leaders who are concerned with things like adding bike lanes on Old Georgetown Road, which don’t get used but severely clog traffic, and who promote drag shows for minor children at local libraries, Northern Virginia continues to grow its economic base and generate revenue that will lessen the financial burden on working taxpayers.

Dan Rodricks’ recent column (”Dan Rodricks: Fox45 ignores context on Baltimore’s post-pandemic test scores,” March 3) as well as Roberta E. Sabin’s letter to the editor about Baltimore City Public Schools’ test scores (”This retired teacher wants to help tutor city students. Any takers?” March 10) illustrate a key question: What can community members do to support our city’s future leaders?

Maryland aims to have 300,000 electric vehicles on the road by 2025. As of Dec. 31, 2022, there were 62,744 EVs registered in the state. As the number of EVs in Maryland continues to grow, it is essential that the state’s EV charging infrastructure keeps pace. One crucial aspect of growing the infrastructure is ensuring that the EV charging stations are fully functional.

When one political party is consistently defeated by the other in an area, it tends to inspire childish behavior: If you can’t win at cards, you can at least knock over the table and scatter the deck. What we are seeing in politics is an equivalent partisan approach to elections. Democrats seek policies to convenience voters and maximize turnout.

Maryland has been trying to address the needs of child sex trafficking victims since at least 2007 when the Maryland Human Trafficking Task Force was established. Laws have since passed that define trafficking as a form of child abuse and that impose harsher penalties on traffickers. The Regional Navigator Program, established in 2019, now provides child trafficking victims immediate, specialized care in nearly every county. Yet, despite these advances, the state still has not passed Safe Harbor legislation to protect sex-trafficked children from being charged as prostitutes.