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Mavericks have seen a bit of a comedown recently. Their independence has had a kind of PR cast, as if the image of independent was more political theater than reality. And even if accurate, the maverick thing looks thin compared ...

Tagged with: C. Fraser Smith

The catastrophe in Haiti puts everything in perspective — politics, health care bills, football playoffs, you name it. But, of course, less dramatic crises don’t go away. President Obama still needs 60 votes to pass the health care bill. The ...

Some 1,000 protesters signed up to decry Mayor Sheila Dixon’s taxpayer-funded golden parachute this week. Some of them shouted their disapproval in front of City Hall. They were there for their own tea party. How could a public official, convicted ...

Tagged with: C. Fraser Smith

Here we go again. More accurately, here we don’t go. The year 2010 begins with the prospect of a 90-day snore in Annapolis. Legislators and governors don’t like to do much in an election year. At the top of the ...

Tagged with: C. Fraser Smith

The roller coaster stopped for Mayor Sheila Dixon Wednesday inside a Baltimore courtroom. With blinding rapidity, she had moved from low expectations, to high marks — and almost instantly to object lesson. Some politician or other is always stumbling into ...

Tagged with: C. Fraser Smith

Here endeth the year in which newspapers as we knew them were declared more or less dead. Some cling to the hope the report was premature, a Twain-like overstatement as it were. And yet, if newspapers were animals, we would ...

Tagged with: C. Fraser Smith

The transition must surely have begun. City Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake must surely be preparing for a new title: Mayor of Baltimore. The incumbent, Sheila Dixon, has been convicted of embezzlement. She ignores calls for her resignation. She’s a tough ...

Tagged with: Baltimore C. Fraser Smith

Gov. Martin O’Malley says he’s ready to make the 2010 election a referendum on government. He rejected the idea, popular in some quarters, that government should stand aside. “If you want to do nothing and you think that things will ...

Tagged with: C. Fraser Smith

A great clamor calls in some quarters for Mayor Sheila Dixon to be treated before the law as any of us would be. That is, without regard to her title. Actually, it may be precisely that — her position of ...

Tagged with: C. Fraser Smith

Who will lead? The question might not have been different if the verdict in the trial of Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon had been not guilty. The case against her was decried as picayune. In dollar terms, it surely was — ...

Tagged with: C. Fraser Smith