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Foundation work started in June on the tallest U.S. building, which would stand 2,000 feet high over downtown Chicago in 2010, if completed on time. The Chicago Spire would look like a giant corkscrew to shed wind currents that might make the building sway. It would house about 1,200 condominiums.

If you are looking for the future of legal scholarship, chances are that you may find it not in a treatise or the traditional law review but in a different form, profoundly influenced by the blogosphere.

Law-related blogs are proliferating on the Internet—more than 80 are listed on the blogroll of one popular law-related blog, Concurring Opinions. A significant number of the blogs—sometimes called “blawgs”—are hosted by law professors.

An ethics panel has warned county officials that a bill allowing uniformed police officers to moonlight in bingo halls and restaurants that serve alcohol could result in a legal challenge from the state.

In an opinion issued Thursday, the Anne Arundel County Ethics Commission upheld its previous opinion that police officers “might be tempted to ignore minor illegal activity by the secondary employer” and argued that a proposal before the County Council “presents issues of conflict of interest that should be carefully examined.”

Haven’t the New York City politicians heard of coal-fired power plants? They need to get in step with the times.

http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/18567/

In Maryland, she’s a state trooper. In the National Guard nine years, she’s also a trained Army medic. But in the center of a war zone, Spc. Marta Koock has become a tour guide.
[...]

Koock, from Charles County, principally works at the resort-like Camp Slayer, where Hussein’s old palaces line carp-filled lakes. Her other duties include managing some of the 600 lease agreements that establish where military and contractor tenants can erect their housing and offices.

Dressed in colorful, shimmering leotards, the 30 girls gathered on the big blue mats inside the Elite Gymnastics and Recreation Center in Waldorf.

Smiling brightly after warming up, they were ready for the day’s challenge: a gymnastics workshop led by former Olympian Dominique Dawes.

Even as Southern Maryland farmers stopped growing tobacco, the crop helped pay the bills.

After years of declining usage, falling prices and increases in the cost of labor, tobacco had begun to lose its hold. So from 2000 to 2005, farmers were paid $1 per pound not to grow the plant that had served as a cornerstone of agricultural life in the region for generations.

The name for Oz in the “Wizard of Oz” was thought up when the creator, Frank Baum, looked at his filing cabinet and saw A-N, and O-Z, hence “Oz.”

Anna Dailey (staff writer at The Bay Net) made the following reply to a comment made by a reader on the article “Citizens Fear ‘Plume of Doom’, Dry Water Wells; State Turns Deaf Ear”.  (Make sure you read all the comments over at The Bay Net on the article.)

Rose Lady,

We know about the closed loop system. It’s a marvelous idea, but it’s not the total cure here.

The county has to build the closed loop system. They have to budget the money to extend the pipes all the way out there.

Last spring when they were forecasting capital improvement projects in the budget for the next five years, this system wasn’t on the list. That means something else is going to have to give in order to come up with the money to build the thing.

Mirant sure isn’t going to pony up. They sit right on a lovely big supply of river water but didn’t want to spend the $ on a desalinization system to make it usable.

Related article: System Would Use Effluent to Produce Power

This year, at least four state legislatures are considering measures that would allow employees to sue their bosses for creating abusive work environments, a development that, if passed, promises to keep Donald Trump’s lawyers busy for decades to come. And at first glance, the idea of suing the supervisor has an anarchic appeal: Turn the world on its head, show the boss who’s boss - and collect up to $25,000 while doing so (at least in the New Jersey version).

Senate electoral playing field that was already wide open for 2008 has become considerably more perilous for Republicans with the retirement of Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.) and the resignation of Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho).

Republicans need a net gain of just one seat to take back control of the Senate, but they have 22 seats to defend, and campaign cash is conspicuously lacking. Warner’s retirement raised to two the number of open Republican seats, and both of them—in Virginia and Colorado—are prime targets for Democrats.

HOW WET SCRUBBER PLUME DESTROYED AN OHIO TOWN

Check out the two soundbites over at Stop Mirant (MIRANT BOSS SAYS THE COMPANY PLANS TO EXPAND ITS EXISTING SITES - HEAR CEO ED MULLER EXPLAIN)

UPDATE: 1/8/2007 Ltr from our County Commissioners actually expressing concerns over the required water use for the wet scrubbers. (Added to the middle of the page)

Charles County Board of Commissioners President F. Wayne Cooper mis-represented, to The Bay Net, the Board’s interaction with Maryland’s Public Services Commission regarding the Mirant Mid-Atlantic Morgantown power generating station expansion project. 

Washington Post

Household incomes increased across Southern Maryland between 2005 and 2006, jumping most dramatically in Charles and St. Mary’s counties, according to annual census figures released this week that showed rising personal wealth throughout the Washington metropolitan region.

The tri-county area’s population grew over the same period and became increasingly diverse, particularly in Charles, Southern Maryland’s largest county. Charles’s black population grew by nearly 4,000 residents, and its white population shrunk by about 2,600. African Americans make up 36.5 percent of the county’s population of 140,416, according to the new estimates.
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“This has got to be a pride moment for Charles County, to be up in that top 10 group,” said John Reardon, the county’s outgoing director of economic development. “It continues to reflect that we’re getting a very strong professional core.”
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Charles County Commissioners President Wayne Cooper (D-At Large) said he is pleased with the county’s growth trends.

“I think we’ve been doing all the right things to attract higher-income people to the county,” Cooper said. “I’m excited to hear this news. It’s been our goal.”

Stadium cleaners at Camden Yards are not included in a law that requires government contractors in Maryland to pay a living wage.

“Right now they’re making $7 an hour. And a lot of them just can’t live on $7 an hour. A lot of the women…have three or four children to take care of,” said Rose Menustik, with the United Workers Association. [WTOP]