Conclusion

Environmental Elements Corp. announced first-quarter net income yesterday of $221,000, up 6.8 percent from the $207,000 reported for the first quarter of 1998. Earnings per diluted share remained unchanged at 3 cents in the three months that ended June 30.The Baltimore-based provider of air pollution control systems said it had revenue in the quarter of $11.8 million, down 40 percent from $16.5 million posted for the corresponding period a year ago.Ted Verdery, chairman and chief executive officer, said although revenue declined, "the work we are doing has a higher premium for the customer and earns a higher profit."

THE VIRTUE of Chief Justice William Rehnquist's rejection of Justice Department pleas to delay Secret Service testimony before a grand jury is that it allows Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr to get on with the job.His search through President Clinton's personal luggage has convulsed the nation, titillated the world and distracted government. The sooner he can reach a conclusion -- be it to indict certain people or report to the House Judiciary Committee -- the better.Still, debate continues over the argument of the Secret Service, supported by the Justice Department, that it needs the total confidence of the president to protect his life.

WASHINGTON -- A study released yesterday found that industry-sponsored legislation to rewrite U.S. bankruptcy laws would have forced thousands of bankrupt consumers to make repayments even though they lacked sufficient funds.The study by two professors at the Creighton University Law School in Omaha, Neb., said that far fewer debtors had the ability to repay, in contrast to an earlier study financed by the credit-card industry.They found that had House-passed legislation become law, only 3 percent of debtors would have had sufficient income to be moved from Chapter 7, which can wipe away debts, into Chapter 13, which can require debtors to repay some or all of their debts.

Republicans abused their power in vote to impeach 0) presidentListening to the speeches by various members of Congress, I came to a conclusion that Republicans have decided their constituents do not count.A number of times, Republicans said, "despite popular opinion" or something similar. Because the Republicans are no longer functioning in the roles for which they were elected, to represent their constituents; they are acting against the interests of the American people.Perhaps I am an idealist, but I always thought that the whole idea of a representative was to listen to the people and to bring the views of those people to Capitol Hill.

"The New Explorers" (9 p.m.-10 p.m., repeats 1 a.m.-2 a.m., A&E) notes that every three seconds somewhere on Earth there is a sighting of an unidentified flying object. In "Bringing UFOs Down to Earth," host Bill Kurtis and his team head out to investigate two sighting reports -- one on the edge of a rain forest in Brazil and the other in the town of Puebla, Mexico. Both believers and skeptics are interviewed before Kurtis draws his own conclusions.At a glance"C-16" (8 p.m.-9 p.m., WMAR, Channel 2)

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Pitching coach Ray Miller watched miles of videotape while he was preparing for the 1997 season, and he did not limit his focus entirely to the guys throwing the ball.He also studied the catching regimen of veteran Chris Hoiles and came to an interesting conclusion -- that people were selling him short behind the plate.Of course, that insight was in direct opposition to the conventional thinking about Hoiles, who was criticized for his pitch selection by one starter two years ago and has taken heat throughout his career for his inability to throw out an adequate percentage of opposing runners.

One of last season's strongest episodes of the woefully underappreciated "Law & Order" (10 p.m.-11 p.m., WBAL, Channel 11) gets a repeat airing on NBC tonight.Sam Waterston shines in the conclusion of a three-parter that had the detectives and prosecutors scurrying between the East and West Coasts to find the killer of a female movie executive whose body is fished out of a New York river.Tonight's conclusion offers Waterston plenty of chances to bemoan the media circus the trial has become (any similarities to the O. J. case are purely intentional)

WASHINGTON -- Deputy White House Counsel Vincent W. lTC Foster Jr., depressed in the days shortly before his suicide in 1993, cried at dinner with his wife, sought legal advice from attorneys and told his mother he was unhappy because work was "a grind."The poignant portrait of Foster is sketched in a newly issued report by independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, who concluded that the longtime friend of President Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton took his own life.The report cites a suicide expert's opinion that "to a 100 percent degree of medical certainty," Foster killed himself.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Pitching coach Ray Miller watched miles of videotape while he was preparing for the 1997 season, and he did not limit his focus entirely to the guys throwing the ball.He also studied the catching regimen of veteran Chris Hoiles and came to an interesting conclusion -- that people were selling him short behind the plate.Of course, that insight was in direct opposition to the conventional thinking about Hoiles, who was criticized for his pitch selection by one starter two years ago and has taken heat throughout his career for his inability to throw out an adequate percentage of opposing runners.

DORSEY EMMANUEL United Methodist Church -- originally the home of a German sect called the Evangelical United Brethren -- is 147 years old this week. The congregation is celebrating its birthday, Heritage Sunday, and everyone is invited.At 10 a.m., the congregation's children will present a program on Pentecost, followed by a revival-style worship service at 11 a.m.A picnic lunch will be served at noon.Children's games and a music festival will be held in the afternoon, and the day ends with an ice cream social at 4 p.m.Throughout the day, memorabilia and old photographs will be on display in the Christian Education Building.

Christmas is probably unconstitutional. I'm no lawyer, but the logic seems unassailable to me. Consider: Santa Claus aside, Christmas is an explicitly Christian holiday and the only holiday of any religion to be observed by the federal government. Which would seem to violate the First Amendment edict that Congress "shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." Yet to the best of my admittedly limited knowledge, no one has ever sued Christmas before the Supreme Court. Not that I'm trying to give any ideas.

The Sun's article "Supporters of war make their voices heard in Md." (March 19) highlights the sincerity, patriotic feelings and thoughtfulness of the supporters of the Iraq war. It also, indirectly, highlights the most serious problem that fair-minded observers have with their arguments that we should "stay the course" - to wit, nowhere in the article does any war supporter give any definition of what "achieving victory" or "finishing what we (or they)...

What's the point? -- Ever dissatisfied with the conclusion of a film you've just invested a couple of hours of your life in? So are the folks at How It Should Have Ended. Instead of just whining about it, they make short animated films with more logical endings. What to look for --Recent postings include an alternate ending for Borat that has the title character thanking everyone for all the money and suggesting that people read contracts before signing them, as well as a Texas Chainsaw Massacre short that has the film ending during any chase scene with the killer getting a swift kick, followed by a beat-down.

1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus By Charles C. Mann Before 1491, the Americas were a far more urban, more populated and more technologically advanced region than generally assumed; and the Indians, rather than living in static harmony with nature, radically engineered the landscape across the continents, to the point that even "timeless" natural features like the Amazon rainforest can be seen as products of human intervention....

On deck -- Astros at Nationals -- Houston's Andy Pettitte faces Washington today in the conclusion of the four-game series.

What happens to America after Iraq? It may seem like a premature question, but the day is going to come when the U.S. involvement there has reached some sort of conclusion - and that day may be sooner than many would have thought, with the country teetering on the edge of civil war and public support here in America for a prolonged occupation rapidly evaporating. Among those who most strongly advocated in favor of this war, it's already possible to see a sort of pre-positioning rhetoric so as not to be caught flat-footed if it should become a lost cause.

One of the most important challenges that newspaper editors face is being consistent in their judgment about the play of stories and photographs on the front page. The size and position of articles, the tone of the headlines and the structure of stories reflect a newspaper's philosophy - its news judgment. Readers will not always agree with the newspaper's choices, but if the editorial judgment is steady, most of them will feel that the decisions are carefully considered and the product of experience.

CHICAGO - When T. S. Eliot wrote that "humankind cannot bear very much reality," he could have been talking about the abortion debate. As abortion rights advocates try to make their case against the nomination of John G. Roberts Jr. to the Supreme Court, they have abandoned fact-checking in favor of mythmaking. The myths in this case are two. The first is that Judge Roberts is a frothing extremist on the subject of Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision creating a constitutional right to abortion.

A Baltimore Circuit Court judge denied a motion yesterday for a new trial in the case of a city man who was convicted six years ago in a case that hinged on gunshot residue evidence that his attorneys say is unreliable. Judge John N. Prevas ruled that there was "no need to roll the clock back" in the case of Tyrone Jones, who had asked the judge for a second time to set aside his conviction for conspiracy to commit murder in a June 24, 1998, shooting in East Baltimore. The Jones case is among hundreds that a team of public defenders has been examining in an effort to find wrongful convictions from what they believe to be faulty gunshot residue evidence.

A Long Way Down By Nick Hornby. Riverhead Books. 352 pages. $24.95. Nick Hornby's first couple of novels, High Fidelity and About a Boy, installed him as part of the pop-culture firmament. He did three things very well in those books: He established ownership of a character type with wide appeal, the overgrown, callow, but well-meaning fanboy; he built protagonists with ample room to grow; and he wrote in an up-to-the-minute conversational style that proved screenplay-ready. In fact, the film versions in both cases made the books themselves seem almost dispensable.