Commentary

The term “long covid” came from early patients who called themselves “long-haulers” when their pandemic maladies lingered for months. It is now increasingly apparent that long covid presents a potential tidal wave of suffering — afflictions stemming from covid-19 that refuse to go away. The scope of the problem is still unknown. But a new study from the Netherlands offers important clues. In a paper published in the Lancet, Aranka Ballering and colleagues at the Lifelines Corona Research Initiative report on an effort to discover the nature and prevalence of post-covid conditions based on a large population sample.

I have never understood people who blow it — that is, people who appear to enjoy great success and have many reasons to be happy but fritter away their bliss on irrational choices and petty grievances. I have never understood the guy who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, then used it to dig himself into a hole. Or, to deploy a baseball metaphor — because I’m addressing the Angelos family feud today — consider the guy who was born on third base and thought he hit a triple, and even then, takes too big of a lead off the bag and gets picked off. He blew it!

Does Baltimore care about squeegee kids? That’s the most important question after a driver attacked one of them and was shot dead in return last month. Everyone in cities like Baltimore knows these kids, who live in terrible poverty and stand at stoplights and street corners and wipe the windshields of passing cars. Sadly, in the wake of this tragedy, the risk is that Baltimore will double down on failed approaches that trap squeegee kids in poverty, instead of helping them escape it. This heartbreaking incident has generally divided people along two lines. The first is the most obvious: Crack down on these kids — or even lock ’em up.

With his degree from Regent University School of Law — currently ranked 142nd in the nation by U.S. News & World Report — and his claim of being a “constitutional attorney,” you’d think Dan Cox, the Trump-endorsed candidate for Maryland governor, would know about the supremacy clause. And I don’t mean “white supremacy clause” — just “supremacy clause,” as in Article VI of the U.S. Constitution. It says the Constitution and constitutional laws that flow from it “shall be the supreme law of the land.” In other words, federal law trumps state law.

In recent months, the resurrection of the Red Line, Baltimore’s $2.9 billion east-west light rail system that Republican Gov. Larry Hogan derailed in his first term in office, became something of a cause célèbre for Democrats seeking the primary nomination to become Maryland’s next governor. The winning candidate, Wes Moore, pitched it as part of a broader attempt to serve neglected communities. Even the Hogan administration has suggested that the light rail be considered again.

The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has split the country into joyous supporters and furious dissenters. Emotions are running high, and some protests have turned violent. Yet research shows that people on either side of the abortion rights issue can bridge their divide if they speak directly and respectfully with one another. In July 2022, former leaders of prominent abortion-rights and anti-abortion advocacy organizations in Massachusetts gathered to discuss a new documentary film series about conversations they had regularly from 1995 to 2001.

Ten years. An American, a veteran U.S. Marine, a man who became a foreign correspondent so that his fellow Americans would know what was happening in Syria, has been missing for 10 years. President Joe Biden knows about Austin Tice. So did President Donald Trump and President Barack Obama. Some of them engaged; none of them with apparent results. Mr. Trump’s team said it had evidence Mr. Tice, who worked as a freelance correspondent for my company, McClatchy before his capture, was alive and sent its hostage envoy to Damascus to gather information about him.

Throughout the campaign season, Democrats across the state have proposed bold initiatives, such as building an east-west transit line in Baltimore, universal pre-K, investments in renewable energy and more. While these ideas have the potential to positively impact the state, they will need to include funding mechanisms in order to comply with the state’s balanced budget requirement. Fortunately, using other states as an example, Maryland still has room to raise significantly more revenue. A study from the Tax Foundation found that Maryland collects approximately $6,500 in state and local taxes per resident. Meanwhile, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York and D.C. collect $7,000, $8,500, $9,800, and $11,300, respectively.