Arrogance

More than anything, it's the arrogance that rankles. That's the first thing that came to mind when I saw Sun reporter Gus Sentementes' article with the headline "Police step up frisking tactic." It ran Sunday. On the inside jump was another headline: "Police aggressively frisking people, review shows." Police frisking people isn't bad in and of itself. It's one of the most routine parts of a cop's job. Some people do, indeed, need frisking. And when it comes to Baltimore's thug and drug-dealer element, some may need more than that.

WASHINGTON - Karl Rove might be embroiled in the scandal surrounding the leaked identity of a CIA operative, but he still has time to entice campaign donors to open their checkbooks - and Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele is taking advantage. Last night, Rove headlined a fundraiser for Steele, an expected candidate for U.S. Senate in 2006. Rove's presence at the closed-door event at the National Republican Senatorial Committee headquarters sent Democrats into a frenzy. They criticized Steele for allying with the Republican presidential adviser and choosing quick campaign cash - he raised an estimated $75,000 from about 60 contributors, a spokesman said - over Maryland values.

WASHINGTON - When President Bush cloisters himself in a Scottish resort with the leaders of the world's other major economic powers this week, he'll have an important mission for his broader foreign policy agenda: damage control. Bush will use the annual Group of Eight summit - a carefully scripted and highly secluded series of meetings among the major industrialized democracies - to burnish the U.S. image and pledge support for the top priorities of his allies. The administration hopes to build good will for Bush's goals, chief among them bringing stability to Iraq.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - It's a little like hearing Cotton Mather confide that he has a thing for witches. Brent Bozell, The Man Hollywood Loves To Hate, the TV filth-fighter and smut-smasher par excellence, the arch-nemesis of Dennis Franz's rear end and Janet Jackson's nipple, has a confession: He's a secret fan of The Simpsons. That is, the Fox cartoon where dads cavort with strippers, kiddie-show hosts rob convenience stores, and gay characters marry one another. The same one that Bozell demanded the FCC bust last year for an episode in which a character, protesting a cut in school arts funding, carried a sign that read: DON'T CUT OFF MY PIANISSIMO.

SURE, tomorrow's congressional hearing on steroids in baseball is, at its core, an act of political grandstanding. And yes, the committee holding the hearing has taken several missteps, the largest being the failure to invite Barry Bonds, whose under-oath testimony would be, um, interesting to say the least. But anyone who believes the House Committee on Government Reform shouldn't hold the hearing is either a blatant apologist for the players or just not thinking. The time has come to hold baseball up to the brightest possible light.

You've heard of the "Summer of Love" and the "Summer of Sam"? This year, the hot-weather season at the cinema could be called the "Summer of Arrogant Nitwits." From mainstream laugh-fests such as Anchorman, Dodgeball and Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle to such talked-about indie comedies as Napoleon Dynamite and Saved!, the big screen has been overrun by nincompoops with attitude. "For the last five or so years, there's been a particular genre of stupid movies that are just stupid for the sake of being stupid," says B.J. Sigesmund, movie editor for US Weekly.

TO TAKE the measure of a man's character, so the saying goes, apply a little pressure. Anyone can behave well when life is easy. The true test comes when the going gets tough. So, while the X-rated insult Vice President Dick Cheney hurled Tuesday at Vermont Democrat Patrick J. Leahy might be forgiven by the senator as the product of a "bad day," it fits so well into a broader pattern of arrogance as to be indicative of the inner life of the man who plays an enormous role in running this country.

PORTLAND, Ore. - Though Sen. John Kerry planned to focus his appearance here yesterday on the issue of high gasoline prices, a question from the audience provoked a sharp comment on the Bush administration's Iraq policy. "It is an unbelievable statement about the failure of the diplomacy of this president and this administration" that Europe and the Arab countries have sat on their hands even though they are more threatened by the prospect of Iraq as a failed state than the United States, Kerry said.

WASHINGTON - Despite its strenuous efforts to discredit Richard A. Clarke's accusations, the White House acknowledges that in the months before Sept. 11, 2001, terrorism was not the overriding foreign-policy priority Clarke says he tried to make it. "Urgent priority? Absolutely. Only priority? No," Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, said in one of the briefings intended to counter Clarke's testimony this week. The Bush administration entered office in 2001 with its own national security agenda, which it articulated before and after the 2000 elections.

Drug indictment charges against Jamal Lewis have thrust the star running back and the Baltimore Ravens into crisis-control mode. But experts say such incidents have, in twisted irony, become less damaging as they have become more commonplace. "I think that we're in an age where these types of events are no longer as traumatic to a sports organization as it would have been," said Eric Dezenhall, a crisis-management consultant in Washington. "It's become normalized in the culture. These types of arrests have not been shown to disrupt business."