Constitution

Republicans in this country are trying to take some satisfaction from the victory of Nicolas Sarkozy in the French presidential elections, not only because he is a conservative but also because he is a conservative who managed to campaign as a fresh face at the end of the two terms in office of his fellow conservative, the enormously unpopular Jacques Chirac. The Republicans hope they can pull the same trick in 2008. Old wine in new bottles? Not really. The voters want change - not only in France but in Britain and America, too. It's just that change in politics sometimes has less to do with ideology than with personality.

Threat is seen to U.S. sovereignty History tells us that we will be celebrating the 220th year our Constitution has existed. It is certainly a landmark for our republic when you consider the efforts made by different individuals and groups to ignore or disparage it. During the week of Sept. 17-23, Americans throughout the country will be celebrating this unique document, which with the Declaration of Independence, forms the basis for our government. It states that our rights do not come from governor, king or government, but from God and are inalienable, meaning that they cannot be removed by any ruler or any government.

Taxation Without Representation" - emblazoned on District of Columbia license plates - could be on its way out. The House voted 241-177 yesterday to give the District a voting representative in Congress. "This has been a 206-year labor of love," said Eleanor Holmes Norton, a nonvoting delegate who represents Washington's 550,000 people. However, the fate of the measure is uncertain in the Senate, where Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat, is expected to introduce a version of the bill soon.

The Venezuelan embassy in Moscow is an unobtrusive pink building on a quiet side street a mile or so from the Kremlin, but we imagine the staff there is going to be plenty busy in the weeks ahead. The question from Caracas must be: How does he do it? The "he," in this case, would be Vladimir V. Putin, and the "do it" his ability to wield so much unchallenged power. Even as the price of a barrel has skidded down to $88, the world is poised to witness the emergence of what might be called "Oil Democracy," a new form of national management in which the managers buy off the voters with the easy money of petroleum exports but maintain the hollow rituals of representative government.

WASHINGTON -- Retired Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun -- a quiet, modest and religious man who came to be adored and damned for a single act of judging, the abortion decision of 1973 -- died yesterday. He was 90.Five years after he retired at the end of nearly a quarter-century on the court, Mr. Blackmun died at 1 a.m. at a hospital in Arlington, Va., of complications after hip-replacement surgery. He had broken his hip late last month in a fall at his apartment in Arlington.Mr. Blackmun joined the court as a reliable conservative ally of Chief Justice Warren E. Burger and left it as a predictable liberal.

On Clinton, impeachment and emperor's new clothes.Has not the Democratic Party just purchased the "emperor's new clothes"?Richard S. Dutton, AnnapolisThe constant one-sided reporting against the impeachment of President Clinton by the news media, including The Sun, is missing an important point: Our government is a representative one. We who take the time to vote for our representatives in Congress do so with the expectation that they will vote on issues...

WASHINGTON -- "Miranda warnings" seem to have become a permanent fixture not only in daily police life but also in television and movie dramas. But that is not the way Antonin Scalia and Paul G. Cassell would have it, and they just might get their way.For years, Scalia, a Supreme Court justice, and Cassell, a University of Utah law professor and a one-time law clerk to Scalia on a lower court, have worked -- not in tandem, but in common purpose -- to...

WASHINGTON -- One hundred and twenty-nine years after the 15th Amendment to the Constitution gave freed slaves and other blacks the right to vote, the Supreme Court pondered yesterday what that amendment means now.An unusual dispute that arose in Hawaii is the only case in the court's current term to test the conservative majority's deepening opposition to government's use of race as a decisive factor in public policy.The case is being watched closely for new hints about the court's views on racial preferences.

FIVE days before two teen-agers went on a murderous shooting rampage in a Colorado high school, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told a group of students at the Park School in Baltimore County that if he had his way, people would have more -- not less -- access to deadly weapons.At a small luncheon following his speech to 300 students there, Justice Scalia said that citizens have a right to own machine guns, said Jessica Munitz, a 17-year-old Park senior.Pressing the outer limits of his thinking on this matter, Jessica -- who has earned early admission to Princeton University -- said she asked Justice Scalia if he thought people should also "be allowed to have hand-held rockets that can bring down airplanes."

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- Because governing America in peace and prosperity seems like child's play, the children -- Donald Trump, Pat Buchanan and others -- have come out to play, using the Reform Party as their sandbox. But Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura, that party's foremost contribution to American governance, is doing something serious.He is campaigning to get the legislature to submit to referendum a constitutional amendment to establish a unicameral legislature. This is not a good idea, but it is a better idea than most of Mr. Buchanan's and is one more idea than Mr. Trump has revealed.

Chanting "just say nay," protesters have been disrupting town hall meetings across the former colonies, as lawmakers try to rally support for the proposed Federal Constitution. Attendees have been carrying signs showing a likeness of a bald Thomas Jefferson above the caption "he's flipped his wig," and at one meeting, a James Madison bobblehead doll was seen hanging from a noose. The protesters characterize their cause as a fertile soil uprising, while critics claim that it is a cobblestone effort, a term used to denote a manufactured social movement.

Congressional representation for Washington, D.C., is a complex and thorny issue, but there is an obvious solution: Return the district to Maryland. It's not as radical as it sounds - and unlike certain other proposals for D.C., it would have the advantage of being constitutional. When I was a young federal employee and later a lawyer in private practice, I resented having no representation in Congress solely because of my living in the district. While I could vote for president and the mayor of Washington, I had no voting member of Congress.

It's no secret that residents of Baltimore's neighboring counties are lured to the city by more than employment opportunities, ethnic restaurants and the occasional ballgame. City police say about 15 percent of the 20,000 drug arrests last year involved suspects from the five suburban counties; City Councilman William H. Cole IV believes the actual number who visit the city for this nefarious purpose is even higher. He introduced an ordinance yesterday to slap the out-of-town miscreants with a civil penalty of $1,000, which would be in addition to normal criminal penalties of jail time and a fine of up to $25,000.

YANGON, Myanmar -- In this cyclone-ravaged country where most people have more important things on their minds, such as the daily struggle for fresh water, food and shelter, Myanmar's ruling generals sent their people to the polls yesterday to vote on a constitution that opponents call a cynical attempt to maintain the junta's grip on power. The regime insists that the vote to approve the new constitution, held in parts of the country that weren't affected by last weekend's devastating storm, is part of its road map to "discipline-flourishing genuine multiparty democracy."

Wrong to pit poor against museums I was dismayed by Daniel Grant's commentary that in essence pits the needs of programs for the poor against the needs of cultural institutions ("Time to rethink tax breaks for charitable giving," Opinion Commentary, Jan 3). As someone who has been a docent at the Walters Art Museum for 19 years, I can attest that there is an ongoing need for every tax break given to what Mr. Grant calls our "culture palaces." The Walters is not a bastion for the rich or for those who wish to be seen as "civic-minded and cultured."

SERIGNE SALIOU MBACKE, 92 Spiritual leader of Senegal Serigne Saliou Mbacke, Senegal's spiritual leader, whose image was ever-present in the lives of his countrymen, has died. Four million people - nearly a third of the West African country's population - were expected to make a pilgrimage to Mr. Mbacke's grave over the weekend, said national police chief Assane Ndoye. Mr. Mbacke was the leader of the Mourides, the most powerful Muslim brotherhood in Senegal. He died Friday and was buried Saturday.

Dec. 18 1865 The 13th Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery, was declared in effect.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- President Pervez Musharraf ended Pakistan's six-week-old state of emergency yesterday, restored the constitution and announced that he believes that emergency rule saved his country. He also said coming parliamentary elections would be "absolutely fair and transparent" and invited international observers, despite widespread fears that the elections would be fixed in favor of Musharraf and his supporters. "Some political leaders are talking about rigging when the elections take place on Jan. 8," Musharraf said in a 25-minute speech to the nation last night.

The Venezuelan embassy in Moscow is an unobtrusive pink building on a quiet side street a mile or so from the Kremlin, but we imagine the staff there is going to be plenty busy in the weeks ahead. The question from Caracas must be: How does he do it? The "he," in this case, would be Vladimir V. Putin, and the "do it" his ability to wield so much unchallenged power. Even as the price of a barrel has skidded down to $88, the world is poised to witness the emergence of what might be called "Oil Democracy," a new form of national management in which the managers buy off the voters with the easy money of petroleum exports but maintain the hollow rituals of representative government.

An individual right to keep, bear arms It appears that some law professors are even more adept at twisting the Constitution than the pro-gun scholars Kenneth Lasson takes to task ("Pro-gun scholars twist Constitution," Opinion Commentary, Nov. 21). The key phrase of the Second Amendment concerns "the right of the people" to bear arms. By concluding that "of the people" refers to a collective right, Mr. Lasson undercuts other constitutional rights reserved to the individual. Should our First Amendment and Fourth Amendment rights, and the right to elect representatives and senators (each of which are granted specifically to "the people")