Commentary

If you were to walk around downtown Baltimore today, you may feel a little uncomfortable. With foot traffic noticeably sparse and storefronts empty, many streets feel somewhat abandoned and unsafe. The environment is missing the level of activity you would expect in a dense urban setting, all of which is the inevitable result of decades of economic decline.

The state budget is likely to be foremost in the minds of Maryland lawmakers, as they head back to Annapolis for their annual 90-day legislative session Wednesday. Not simply because state lawmakers, unlike their counterparts in Congress, are required by law to approve a balanced budget, and increased spending is expected to outpace tax revenue growth, but because so many other popular initiatives are linked to the state’s fiscal health, including Blueprint for Maryland’s Future K-12 education spending and the state’s transportation budget (which faces a potential $3.3 billion imbalance all by itself).

An article from the Baltimore Banner in Maryland Reporter’s State Roundup Monday was headlined: Prison and probation: A look at the Marylanders involved in the Jan. 6 insurrection. There is that word again – insurrection. I know this is the favorite tool of the Democrats to try and convince the rest of us that an insurrection took place on Jan. 6, 2021.

Two writers could not be more different than Bruce Fleming and David Poyer. Fleming is a professional rebel, a Naval Academy professor and nonfiction author who tells anyone who will listen how his institution is broken and desperately needs change. Poyer, who graduated from Annapolis in 1971, is best known for a long-running series of naval fiction thrillers about the derring-do career of his Navy hero, Dan Lenson.

When you’re deeply immersed in a project like I am in this one about single motherhood, you find yourself frequently falling down Google rabbit holes, some completely random and others more fruitful. It was during one of the latter that I came across “The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind.”

The increasingly absurd and grossly inhumane conflict over immigration reached a new height of idiocy in recent weeks with the reports that border states are now changing tactics as they continue to ship busloads of undocumented immigrants north to sanctuary cities. As cities like Chicago and New York — their resources to house and feed new arrivals stretched woefully thin — attempt to limit such traffic by regulation or lawsuit, bus operators are being directed by their overseers to drop off their human cargo in the suburbs.

If you have shopped in the city of Frederick since New Year’s Day, you probably noticed a change when checking out: No more plastic bags. For those who like to bring home their packages in plastic, the city’s new ban on single-use plastic bags might be an inconvenience or even an annoyance. But it is an important step in protecting the environment, one that local governments in Maryland and around the country are increasingly taking.