Commentary

In the next week, Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown is expected to decide how best to deal with the Nov. 21 federal appeals court decision overturning key provisions in a decade-old gun safety law requiring handgun purchasers be fingerprinted, trained and face a waiting period of up to 30 days. A three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ruled that these restrictions failed the standard set by the U.S. Supreme Court in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen last year that such limits must be “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

When confronted with a vexing and evolving problem, managers are sometimes tempted to go for the big solution, to bite the bullet and create a plan that will fix the problem for several years, rather than make incremental change. When the problem is simply a matter of numbers, that can sometimes be the right path. But when the problem involves people, the big idea can be disruptive and divisive.

One of the great things about working at Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper, was the constant stream of candidates for U.S. House and Senate who would come by for interviews. When I was there, from 2002 to 2010, Roll Call shared offices with The Rothenberg Political Report. Getting grilled by our reporters and the Rothenberg folks became part of the ritual for congressional contenders on their visits to Washington, D.C., along with meetings with party leaders, campaign strategists, interest groups, lobbyists, and donors.

Students tell Hopkins researchers about impact on their lives and education And I know, maybe, it’ll probably be a little bit more expensive, but at the same time, it’s, “How much do you care about the student?” That comment came from Kendra, an 18-year-old Baltimore City Public Schools student who participated in one of 187 interviews conducted and analyzed by the Nobody Asked Me research team in the School of Education at Johns Hopkins University.

Nate Balis wants you to know that kids make up just 4% of all arrests in Baltimore City. Four percent. The other 96% are committed by adults. So if you’re watching TV every day at 6 and 11 and have become convinced that Baltimore teens are the reason the city is on an unsafe if not outright deadly path, you might want to change the channel. Why? Because the numbers tell a different story, says Balis, director of the Juvenile Justice Strategy Group at the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Wildfire smoke from Canada. Record-breaking summer temperatures. Sea level rise. More powerful storms and more frequent flooding. We are seeing the effects of climate change here in Maryland. There are other, harder-to-see impacts from climate change: an increase in pests and weeds as temperatures rise. Yet, in an ironic twist, some of the substances we use to kill pests and weeds are key contributors to climate change.

At 6-foot-5 and roughly 350 pounds, Joel Johnson-Liphart is a big man. So when, according to police, he hit his caretaker at their group home last week in Linthicum, it must have hurt. Then the 25-year-old allegedly struck her repeatedly with a metal stepladder before trying to strangle her. The attack took place at an Arc of the Chesapeake group home six years after another violent outburst involving Joel. That one resulted in the death of his grandmother at their home in Arnold.