|
U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts said Tuesday the scene at President Barack Obama’s first State of the Union address was “very troubling” and that the annual speech to Congress has “degenerated into a political pep rally.”
Responding to a University of Alabama law student’s question about the Senate’s method of confirming justices, Roberts said senators improperly try to make political points by asking questions they know nominees can’t answer because of judicial ethics rules.
St. Joseph Medical Center in Towson, facing lawsuits and a pair of federal investigations related to its cardiac care business, has informed another 169 heart patients that they received expensive and potentially dangerous treatments they might not have needed.
The additional cases, announced Tuesday, bring to 538 the number of patients notified by St. Joseph that coronary stent implants they received at the hospital might have been unnecessary. Hospital officials also said an internal review of patient records is continuing, and that more questionable procedures could be uncovered.
Plans to build a fly ash recycling facility at Mirant Mid-Atlantic’s Morgantown plant on the Potomac River are receiving mixed reviews from the community.
On the one hand, an effort to 100 percent recycle the toxic byproduct of burning coal to produce electricity is great news because currently the stuff is trucked to landfills in Faulkner and Brandywine where, despite the best efforts of the company, it leaches into the groundwater, community activists said.
In fact, the Maryland Department of the Environment has a pending lawsuit in Charles County Circuit Court in La Plata that calls for closing the Faulkner plant that has been open since 1970, according to Jay Apperson, MDE spokesman. The lawsuit, which is tentatively scheduled to be heard April 2 in La Plata, also calls for the site to be cleaned up, he said.
[...]
The store officially opened two weeks ago in what used to be a plumbing supply store and had about two hundred customers at its soft opening.
[...]
The Waldorf location is one of the largest in Maryland and Virginia with about 20,000 square feet of overall space.
[...]
The discount home improvement store offers antiques, furniture, building materials, appliances, flooring and more at a fraction of the retail price.
A Waldorf man is charged with threatening to blow up the Gov. Harry W. Nice Memorial Bridge, a statement he allegedly made Saturday to a toll worker while looking at her with “evil eyes,” court documents state.
As he was trying to cross from Maryland to Virginia at about 10:30 p.m., Frank Joseph Davis, 53, told the toll collector at the Nice Bridge that he was a “U.S. Marine marshal” and was headed to the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Dahlgren, Va., according to the charging documents filed in his case.
The nation’s governors and state schools chiefs proposed standards Wednesday for what students should learn in English and math, from kindergarten through high school, a crucial step in President Obama’s campaign to raise academic standards across the country.
State boards of education around the country are moving rapidly to take up the proposal, the leader of a national association said, with many in the South eager to act within the next few months.
Charles County Sheriff’s Office - March 9, 2010
Charles County Sheriff’s Office - March/ April 2010
The Census is spending tens of millions of dollars in advertising but is that money being well spent?
The U.S. Census Bureau is spending $133 million for a series of television ads to raise awareness of the 2010 Census. The agency head says it is expensive, but it works.
[...]
This census will cost $48 per person counted. The first census in 1790 cost just a penny a person.
[...]
A Washington Post analysis shows that as many as 33 former National Highway Traffic Safety Administration employees and Transportation Department appointees left those jobs in recent years and now work for automakers as lawyers, consultants and lobbyists and in other jobs that deal with government safety probes, recalls and regulations.
The reach of these former agency employees is broad. They are on staff rosters for every major automaker and every major automotive trade group, and they appear as expert witnesses and legal counsel for the industry in major class-action lawsuits over auto safety.
Two years ago, this gritty mining city hosted a brief 21st-century gold rush. Long famous for coal, Puertollano discovered another energy source it had overlooked: the relentless, scorching sun.
Armed with generous incentives from the Spanish government to jump-start a national solar energy industry, the city set out to replace its failing coal economy by attracting solar companies, with a campaign slogan: “The Sun Moves Us.”
[...]
Puertollano’s wrenching fall points to the delicate policy calculations needed to stimulate nascent solar industries and create green jobs, and might serve as a cautionary tale for the United States, where a similar exercise is now under way.
States and companies have started investing very differently when it comes to the billions of dollars they are safeguarding for workers’ retirement.
Companies are quietly and gradually moving their pension funds out of stocks. They want to reduce their investment risk and are buying more long-term bonds.
But states and other bodies of government are seeking higher returns for their pension funds, to make up for ground lost in the last couple of years and to pay all the benefits promised to present and future retirees. Higher returns come with more risk.
Despite a struggling economy, state leaders are pushing several initiatives proposed by a state commission on higher-education funding.
Gov. Martin O’Malley was joined at a news conference Friday by Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown (D), legislative leaders and business representatives who served on the Commission to Develop the Maryland Model for Funding Higher Education.
[...]
O’Malley (D) outlined three bills, including measures to stabilize tuition, to track student performance and to make permanent the P-20 Leadership Council, which aims to ensure that state schools are producing a competitive workforce.
James Gray once saw himself as a drug warrior, a former federal prosecutor and county judge who sent people to prison for dealing pot and other drug offenses. Gradually, though, he became convinced that the ban on marijuana was making it more accessible to young people, not less.
“I ask kids all the time, and they’ll tell you it is easier to get marijuana than a six-pack of beer because that is controlled by the government,” he said, noting that drug dealers don’t ask for IDs or honor minimum age requirements.
So Gray — who spent two decades as a superior court judge in Orange County, Calif., and once ran for Congress as a Republican— switched sides in the war on drugs, becoming an advocate for legalizing marijuana.
Is the wholesale firing of teachers and administrators at an underperforming Rhode Island high school just the kind of get-tough intervention students need? Or is it an unproven, risky disaster waiting to happen?
President Obama angered teachers unions last week by coming out in favor of the firings at Central Falls High School.
Advertisement
Advertisement |
-
No longer an elected position.
* denotes incumbent
Number of posts: 23021
Number of Comments: 26093
Last: 03/10/2010 09:34 pm
Guests online: 26
The most visitors ever was 221, on 08/24/2009 06:57 pm
Members logged on:
RSS 2.0
Atom
Follow us on Twitter
Follow us on FacebookHosting by EngineHosting
Delusional Duck has been visited 6228669 times. Thanks for supporting us.
Home | Discussion Forums