Commentary

Late summer gives Republican state Sen. Michael Hough plenty of reason to sweat — and it has little to do with the weather. To win the county executive’s race in an increasingly purple Frederick County, where registered Democrats now outnumber Republicans, Hough will likely need to position himself as a moderate. Although that may be asking too much for even a savvy career political operative as Hough, who before becoming a state senator spent years as consigliere to a RepublicanMaryland state senator turned West Virginia congressman in Alex Mooney (Hough currently works in Washington as Mooney’s chief of staff).

The central fact about the democratic world today is that it is leaderless. Twenty-five years ago, we had the confident presences of Bill Clinton, Helmut Kohl and Tony Blair — and Alan Greenspan. Now we have a failing American president, a timorous German chancellor, a British prime minister about to skulk out of office in ignominy and a chairman of the Federal Reserve who last year flubbed the most important decision of his career. Elsewhere: the resignation of Italy’s prime minister, a caretaker government in Israel, the assassination of Japan’s dominant political figure.

Journalists are finally putting a long-overdue spotlight on the veterinarian shortage affecting millions of Americans and their beloved pets. The problem, however, goes beyond the wrenching experience of not being able to find treatment for your dog or cat. If you eat meat, got the COVID vaccine or hope that one day there will be a cure for cancer, then you too will be impacted by the shortage, as veterinary medicine is also used to maintain the health of food production animals, oversee the responsible use of lab animals in clinical trials, and conduct cancer research that benefits both animals and humans.

Maryland should be moving toward a New Center. Our politics is extremely polarized, and we need a politics which respects the 30% to 50% of the country which does not align with pure versions of either the Republican or Democratic Party or certainly extremist right-wing and left-wing perspectives. With 43% of the country identifying as independents according to a recent Gallup poll, the national dialogue about our red-coat/blue-coat war remains a serious distortion. Maryland in recent years has been a laboratory of change, deliberately or unintentionally, on the part of the voters and the politicians.

The recent Supreme Court decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n was aimed at a citizen’s right to carry a concealed handgun, or more aptly, the ability of a state to require a showing of cause or real apprehended danger before issuing a license to carry in public.  In essence, the court held a citizen must be permitted to carry a gun for defense outside the home—concealed or open carry must be allowed.  One or the other must be permitted; both modes of carry cannot be prohibited.

The data documents a radical decline in crab numbers — the lowest ever recorded. This nadir was reached after crab numbers dropped by 32 percent in 2020 and an additional 30 percent in 2021. We are now at less than one-third of the population of 30 years ago. Juvenile crabs declined three years in a row and in five of the past six years, denoting a serious recruitment failure likely leading to even fewer crabs. The radical decline in male crabs to the lowest recorded level is of grave concern. But the linkage to overall crab abundance from low sperm availability has been overemphasized.

Think disenfranchisement isn’t your problem? We live in Maryland, after all. You’re registered, a citizen, not trying to break any laws. You have voted your entire adult life. You’ve contributed. It could never happen to you, right? Think again! A North Carolinian by birth, my widowed, retired, cancer-survivor mother moved to be near me, her only daughter, and one of the first things she did as a Marylander in 2002 was register to vote. She had never missed an election.