Common Ground

If you had told me in 2000 that I could find something to admire about President George W. Bush, I would have been astounded. Yet in 2003, when he traveled in secret to Iraq to share Thanksgiving dinner with the soldiers in the war zone, I greatly admired his action. At the time, there wasn't a visitor to Iraq with more of a target on his back. He was not only absent from his own table on the holiday, he put his life in danger to do it. Now, in 2012, I am ecstatic that President Barack Obama has been re-elected.

It was with great amusement that I read in the Sunday Sun about the NRA member who was interviewed at the annual convention in Houston and said he would like for the NRA leaders and the leaders of the country to work together to find common ground. According to the polls there is overwhelming support for closing the loophole on background checks. The latest poll from Quinnipiac University found that 88 percent of gun owners support universal background checks. There is your common ground.

Let's say you live in what might be called the Inner Loop of the Baltimore metropolitan area — that is, the entire territory inside the Beltway. If you're an Inner Loopian, you probably have a sense of where the rich people live, where the poor people live, and where the shrinking numbers of in-between people generally live. And you know who's who, just from observation. Go shopping on York Road or Loch Raven Boulevard or out Route 40, at the city-county border, and you can sort it all out by observing what people buy (hamburger or steak)

There has been much in the news following the end of the 2013 General Assembly session about Gov. Martin O'Malley's "Rain Tax. " This law was actually passed in 2012, and at the time I called it the worst bill passed that year. It forces Maryland's "metro" counties to enact a tax on the amount of impervious surface people have on their property. The statewide amount of the tax could reach into the billions. The reason it catapulted into the news in recent weeks was a failed attempt to pass legislation delaying the implementation of this tax for two years.

One of the ironies in the vast disagreements between the Roman Catholic Church and family planning groups is that both seek to uphold human dignity, human rights and the worth of each individual. For the church, however, contraception remains a sin, and some statements from the church even claim that the pill and forms of birth control other than periodic abstinence have not liberated women, but rather enslaved them.To mark World Population Day yesterday, the president of the International Planned Parenthood Federation released a letter he sent to Pope John Paul II asking for an open dialogue between the church and family planners.

More than a few Catholic bishops spent this election feverishly warning their flock that voting for Barack Obama put their souls at risk and posed a grave threat to religious liberty. Now that the president has been re-elected with a majority of Catholic voters, leaders of our nation's most influential church have some self-reflection to do at their national meeting in Baltimore this week. Bishops should take pause at recent national headlines ("Catholic bishops make last-minute pitch for Romney")

Given how the whole country appears to be super-polarized these days, an American learns to savor the times when fellow citizens on the right, the left and in the middle agree on something. This doesn't happen very much, but when it does, it's almost inspiring. I've only seen it a few times over all my years of watching local, state and national politics, and the one area of public interest that had, surprisingly, a lot of common ground was criminal justice. There's still disagreement over the death penalty, though polling suggests not as much as a couple of decades ago. But everyone agrees that the first order of business is public safety, protecting us from violent offenders.

Common kept his cool last week — and his artistic faith. While controversy swirled around his appearance at the White House for a poetry reading, the rapper-actor was anchoring a movie in Baltimore that should quiet even those pundits who tried to paint him as a gangsta. With concentration and intensity, he was helping first-time writer-director Sheldon Candis and a superb ensemble flesh out a script that proves (among other things) that gangsterism doesn't pay. "LUV" — it stands for "Learning Uncle Vincent" — captures the turning point in the life of an 11-year-old boy named Woody (Michael Rainey Jr)

Common Ground on the Hill will sponsor a concert series at 8 p.m. the first Saturday of each month, from next month through April, at the Carroll Arts Center, 91 W. Main St., Westminster. Tickets are $17 for adults, $15 for Arts Council members, seniors age 60 and older and children age 12 and younger; or $100 for adults and $95 for others for all seven concerts. Scheduled performances: Oct. 2: Northern Lights is a progressive veteran bluegrass band from New England that has performed for more than two decades.

For decades, the Orioles commanded a sweeping empire of fans - a territory larger than some European countries, stretching from southern Pennsylvania to North Carolina and including Washington, where the team operated a popular retail store. The club's games are still broadcast across most of the same region, but the Orioles now share much of it with the Washington Nationals, who are ensconced in a population-rich portion of what was once the Orioles' domain. The Nationals' arrival in 2005 created a complicated relationship in which the teams are at once neighbors, opponents on the field and, lately, bickering business partners when it comes to the regional television network they co-own but the Orioles control.

I read with great interest the Sun editorial, "Unbalanced Budgeting" (Mar 13). The sub-headline summed up that the difference between the two parties is so great that compromise seems impossible. Well, isn't that where the president steps in and brokers a compromise? The president, regardless of party affiliation, is the leader of our country and should put partisan politics aside to achieve consensus in Congress. President Barack Obama has proven time and time again that his first and only job is pushing the Democratic doctrine and maligning the Republican Party.

Is this really the best anyone in Washington can do to avert sequestration? President Barack Obama's call for delaying the automatic spending cuts past the March 1 deadline would seem reasonable enough, except he hasn't really offered up a specific plan to do so. Instead, he's recommended that a few months of delay might be achieved through a "smaller package of spending cuts and tax reform. " Republicans are flatly rejecting any form of tax increase (and, apparently, ending a tax break on corporate jets is regarded as just that by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell)

Commentator John Gehring asserts that Catholic hospitals and universities would not have to pay for birth control coverage for their employees under an accommodation with the Obama administration that requires insurance companies to pick up the tab ("Finding common ground," Nov. 12). This is not true. Neither the Affordable Care Act nor the finalized implementing regulations contain any such provision. Rather, that arrangement is discussed in the Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking published by the Department of Health and Human Services in March, which is not law. It is true that the president held a press conference to announce the proposed compromise, commonly referred to as the "accommodation.

More than a few Catholic bishops spent this election feverishly warning their flock that voting for Barack Obama put their souls at risk and posed a grave threat to religious liberty. Now that the president has been re-elected with a majority of Catholic voters, leaders of our nation's most influential church have some self-reflection to do at their national meeting in Baltimore this week. Bishops should take pause at recent national headlines ("Catholic bishops make last-minute pitch for Romney")

If you had told me in 2000 that I could find something to admire about President George W. Bush, I would have been astounded. Yet in 2003, when he traveled in secret to Iraq to share Thanksgiving dinner with the soldiers in the war zone, I greatly admired his action. At the time, there wasn't a visitor to Iraq with more of a target on his back. He was not only absent from his own table on the holiday, he put his life in danger to do it. Now, in 2012, I am ecstatic that President Barack Obama has been re-elected.

The op-ed by Lillian Lowery and Betty Weller regarding principal and teacher evaluations was informative and encouraging ("Better evaluations mean better schools," Aug. 30). To read an article on a critical issue in education written by the state's schools superintendent and the president of the state's largest teachers union is a powerful sign that these two leaders are not only talking and agreeing, but are taking the time to communicate their agreement on the important issue of teacher evaluations.

Common Ground on the Hill, a festival celebrating the traditional arts on the campus of McDaniel College in Westminster, opens for its 18 t h season Sunday. The multicultural gathering of musicians, artists, writers, actors and dancers sharing their skills with students of all ages and abilities offers two separate weeks of daytime classes and many evening concerts through July 13. Participants can learn to play an instrument, everything from the standard piano to the unusual oud, or perfect their musical skills.