Czar

I was a "Repdem," a Republican for fiscal responsibility and government intervention and a Democrat for abortion, gay rights and other social issues. The government's "Pay Czar" has now made me a raging, radical Republican. Imagine that your company establishes a pay plan where everyone earns the same salary. Everyone arrives at nine and leaves at five, takes a coffee break at 10:30 and lunch at noon. A perfect working environment with the exception of one thing -- production decreases, and the business will go bankrupt.

General Electric is planning to move its 115 year old X-ray division from Waukesha, Wis., to Bejing. In addition to moving this headquarters, the company will invest $2 billion in China, train more than 65 engineers and create six research centers. Remember this is the same GE that made $5.1 billion in the United States last year but paid no taxes. President Obama appointed GE chairman Jeffrey Immelt to head his commission on job creation in the United States. But it appears that President Obama forgot to tell him in which country he was supposed to be creating jobs for. If this doesn't point out the total lack of leadership of this president, I don't know what does.

THE LAST TSAR: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF NICHOLAS II. By Edvard Radzinsky. Translated by Marian Schwartz. Doubleday. 462 pages. $25.TWENTY years ago, Vera Leonidovna Yureneva, a formeactress, was living out her life in a two-room apartment in Moscow. Edvard Radzinsky, then a young student at the Historical Archival Institute and a budding playwright, rented one of the old woman's rooms. Evenings, when he returned home, the two had long talks in the communal kitchen.It was during one of these kitchen conversations that he heard the legend of Czar Nicholas II's execution in July 1918; how the czar was the first to die; how the bullets bounced off the czar's four daughters who had sewn the crown jewels in their corsets; and how the czar's young son, Alexei, exhibiting a "strange vitality," warded off the assassin's bullets with his hands.

Baltimore's top financial officer and longtime budget writer said Monday he will retire from city government, the first Cabinet-level departure since Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake won the Democratic primary this month. Though not a household name, Edward J. Gallagher has been a behind-the-scenes force in shaping every Baltimore spending plan since he was hired in 1983. The city's finance director since 2005, he plans to remain in the job until the mayor's office completes a national search for a replacement.

JANET Reno was vague in her congressional testimony last week about how the government might go about censoring violence in movies and television. I think they will need a czar.Writing law to cover every conceivable form of violence to be banned is obviously impossible. Screenwriters' imaginations will always be 10 miles ahead of the plodding congressman.Until young men began copying a nutty movie stunt by lying down in traffic to prove their manhood, who would have thought to fatten a kinder-gentler-entertainment law by forbidding movies to show scenes of people supine on the highway?

WASHINGTON - A top executive of American International Group Inc. has been granted a $4.3 million pay-package bump by the troubled insurance giant's majority owner - the U.S. government - because the executive has decided to remain with the company. Kenneth Feinberg, the Obama administration's pay czar, approved an AIG request to grant the executive a long-term compensation package that includes stock options with a current value of $3.26 million and an additional incentive award of up to $1 million on top of the executive's 2009 base salary of $450,000.

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake on Thursday turned to civic leaders and a top local company for help in luring a high-profile Google pilot project to the city and appointed a volunteer "Google czar" to spearhead the effort. Rawlings-Blake said the Greater Baltimore Committee, a group of more than 500 businesses and nonprofits, and the Economic Alliance of Baltimore, the region's main marketing organization, will assist a grass-roots campaign to catch the attention of the online search giant.

A country's constitution is its platform of ideals. Some countries live up to those lofty goals, others cynically and brazenly violate the spirit and letter of their basic law. The most glaring example of the latter is the 1936 Soviet constitution. It presented a framework for a caring human-rights society at a time when Stalin's executioners were in the midst of one of the bloodiest purges in history.President Boris N. Yeltsin is now proposing a constitution for his country that would erase the much-amended Soviet-era document.

Corporate America is shocked at pay czar Kenneth Feinberg. That Washington appointed him to oversee compensation at companies getting bailouts? Nah. That he thinks people who abused shareholders and crippled the economy don't deserve pay of tens of millions in some cases? Not really. People are flabbergasted he has the stomach to do anything about it. CEOs figured that Feinberg would be like every other paymaster they ever had. That he would rub his chin, act concerned about doing the right thing and then wire the gross domestic product of Nicaragua into their bank accounts.

MOSCOW -- The czar's daughters -- Masha, Tanya, Olya, Nastya -- were the biggest problem on that July day in 1918 in the city of Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains. The bullets had trouble penetrating their diamond-studded vests, and they had to be finished off with bayonets."What was surprising was how the bullets from the revolvers ricocheted and bounced around the room like hailstones," Yakov Yurofsky, one of the executioners, wrote in his official report."When they tried to stab one of the girls with a bayonet, even the bayonet couldn't penetrate the bodice," he wrote.

One of the most curious things in the whole Allen Dyer/school board controversy is how quickly people, usually Democrats, are so willing to allow others, in this case, the school board, curiously also Democrats, to circumvent the will and/or voice of the people and attempt to remove their — the people's — duly elected representative. In this case, perhaps Dyer has made himself a thorn in the side of the rest of the board members. Perhaps even Dyer is a disagreeable character.

The Environmental Protection Agency's Chesapeake Bay "czar" announced Tuesday he is leaving to help launch an international ocean conservation organization. J. Charles "Chuck" Fox, senior adviser to the EPA's administrator on cleanup of the bay and of the Anacostia River, said in a brief interview that he's taking "a dream job" next month to work on saving endangered marine creatures around the world. He's leaving at a crucial time for the long-running bay restoration effort, as federal and state officials have dickered over how to accelerate the pace of cleanup after nearly three decades of costly efforts and frustration.

When the nation's drug czar visited Friday, the recovering addicts at Tuerk House in West Baltimore did a little showing off. Those taking the culinary jobs training course whipped up a lavish breakfast. Those in the landscaping and maintenance program spruced up the grounds. "It's been a blessing to me," Mack Campbell, 56, said of the program that he hopes will finally break his personal cycle of addiction, imprisonment and relapse. "I'm learning how to live without drugs. " Inside, Gil Kerlikowske was offering much the same message — but on a broader level.

Baltimore State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy might have a challenger in the fall election — and it's an intriguing one. Word is that former Assistant U.S. Attorney Gregg Bernstein is testing the waters. Bernstein may be best known for successfully defending former state Sen. Larry Young against bribery and extortion charges. But he is also the husband of Sheryl Goldstein, director of the Mayor's Office on Criminal Justice. In that role, Goldstein works closely with the Police Department and other law enforcement agencies, and is an integral part of programs such as GunStat and issues dealing with juvenile justice.

In explaining the unhealthy eating habits that have fostered widespread obesity and other health problems in the inner city, Baltimore faces a chicken-and-egg (or, perhaps more accurately, Chicken McNugget-and-Egg McMuffin) issue: Do people not choose healthy foods because they are unavailable, or are healthy foods unavailable because people choose unhealthy ones? It's probably some of both. Supermarkets followed affluent residents to the suburbs, and the corner markets and convenience stores that remain rarely stock fresh fruits and vegetables.

I was a "Repdem," a Republican for fiscal responsibility and government intervention and a Democrat for abortion, gay rights and other social issues. The government's "Pay Czar" has now made me a raging, radical Republican. Imagine that your company establishes a pay plan where everyone earns the same salary. Everyone arrives at nine and leaves at five, takes a coffee break at 10:30 and lunch at noon. A perfect working environment with the exception of one thing -- production decreases, and the business will go bankrupt.

MOSCOW -- Faith brought a thousand people to an old war monument here yesterday, faith in the redemptive power of a man who in life was loving, mild and inadequate.In death, the murdered Czar Nicholas II has become something else altogether. Above the priests and uniformed Cossacks and kerchiefed old women who came to mark his 130th birthday, the banners flapping in the warm breeze bore his likeness as if that of an icon."I think the czar fulfilled his mission, which was like Christ's," said Valentina Shatskaya.

PARIS -- Russian church authorities have called on the Moscow government to examine claims that Czar Nicholas II and his family were murdered in 1918 on the orders of an international Jewish conspiracy.The Holy Synod, the Russian Orthodox Church's ruling body, announced that it was making the request in order to demonstrate the falsehood of such an allegation.But, noting the close ties between some Orthodox clergy and extreme nationalist groups known for their anti-Semitism, French historian Georges Minc said it was "inconceivable that, after so many years, the church leadership should revive charges of this nature unless the intention was to stir up a fresh wave of anti-Jewish feeling among many Russians who now look on the murdered imperial family as martyrs."

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake on Thursday turned to civic leaders and a top local company for help in luring a high-profile Google pilot project to the city and appointed a volunteer "Google czar" to spearhead the effort. Rawlings-Blake said the Greater Baltimore Committee, a group of more than 500 businesses and nonprofits, and the Economic Alliance of Baltimore, the region's main marketing organization, will assist a grass-roots campaign to catch the attention of the online search giant.