
A few months ago we had a winter fair at our neighborhood elementary school that gave us a much needed excuse to get out of our snowbound homes. Those in attendance were elementary schoolers, pre-schoolers, their parents, and a few grandparents. Also in attendance were volunteers from a local wildlife rescue and rehabilitation organization. The…

While Wootton folks have been making a lot of noise about the Crown part of the Crown Damascus boundary study, the Damascus part is equally concerning. The irregularities began in March 2024 when the Board of Education adopted a boundary study resolution combining the boundary studies for Crown High School and the Damascus expansion based…

“We don’t have the money,” according to MoCo Exec Marc Elrich and Council President Natali Fani-González. They promise us they will talk about how to get more money, and they do not rule out increasing our taxes. In fact they warn us to expect taxes to be increased. Targeted tax increases. We all know who…

Maps of the Middle East before World War I approximate an area called Palestine bisected by the Jordan River. The 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica describes a Western Palestine and an Eastern Palestine. The River Jordan, it is true, marks a line of delimitation between Western and Eastern Palestine Today, Western Palestine is the…

In his 1789 work An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Jeremy Bentham gives a definition for ethical behavior. Ethics at large may be defined as the art of directing men’s actions to the production of the greatest possible quantity of happiness for those whose interests are in view. Bentham’s thinking later became…

In 2003, Vladimir Putin ordered the arrest of Russia’s wealthiest citizen Mikhail Khodorkovsky. During the preceding decade, the oligarch had challenged Putin’s increasingly centralized authority. Those challenges included funding opposition political parties. The charges against Khodorkovsky included fraud, tax evasion, and embezzlement. There is strong evidence that these charges were synthetic. After his conviction, Khodorkovsky’s…

In 1632, King Charles I granted Lord Baltimore a charter to settle an area of new New World delineated by the Atlantic Ocean, 40th degree latitude, the Potomac River, and islands in the Chesapeake Bay. Charles named the area Maryland. Because Baltimore was chummy with Charles, he received very enticing terms of ownership. And we…

Anyone who cares about affordable housing supports rezoning—including President Biden’s administration and more recently the Senate’s bi-partisan ROAD to Housing Act. For my part, I’ve written dozens of articles in favor of blanket rezoning the acres upon acres of single-family lots throughout Montgomery County to increase the supply and lower the price. Unfortunately, recent experience…

Council Member Marilyn Balcombe stated it perfectly: she cast the county’s recent special SNAP appropriation as a “response to federal chaos.” The recent federal shutdown was due to deliberations concerning lifting the debt ceiling. Without congressional authorization to borrow even more money than it already has, the government shut down due to lack of funds.…

Samantha never once committed larceny. She routinely writes Twitter posts denouncing the crime and anyone who commits it. Julie committed larceny once, was apprehended, did 60 days in jail, and is fully reformed. She openly denounces the crime and its perpetrators, but from a position of repentance. She can (and should) serve as a mentor…