Declaration Of Independence

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.

IN YOUR FACEBeing a kid isn't easy. Here's a look at events that affect kids -- their battles and, sometimes, their victories:A Sexist DeclarationPATRIOT GAMES: Along with reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic, a New Jersey senator wants to add recitation to students' school lessons. Republican Sen. Gerald Cardinale is trying to pass legislation that would require students in his state to recite part of the Declaration of Independence each day. So far, he hasn't had a lot of luck. His bill failed in June when women in the assembly said the wording of the Declaration -- "all men are created equal" and "governments are instituted among men" -- is sexist because it excludes women.

'Salute to Independence'Join the Maryland Symphony Orchestra and music director Elizabeth Schulze for the 14th Annual Salute to Independence on Saturday at Antietam National Battlefield in Sharpsburg. Patriotic music includes John Williams' "Star Wars Medley" and Gould's "American Salute." The Maryland Army National Guard, B Battalion, provides cannon fire during Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture." The concert concludes with fireworks to Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever."A military fly-over precedes the concert.

President Clinton's trip to China has given that country a taste of the freedoms the United States has come to appreciate since the Declaration of Independence was signed and proclaimed 222 years ago today.The declaration towered over the Great Wall as President Clinton gently lectured Chinese President Jiang Zemin that government derives its being from the rights of the governed.Its ideals could be heard at Beijing University, where the American president carried the founding document's message of individual liberties to a receptive generation reared in a Communist, and often repressive, society.

First we elected a pro rassler to be governor of Minnesota. Then we subjected ourselves to mud wrestling in the House Judiciary Committee.The nerve of that Slick Willie, now leading the attack on the global economic catastrophe as if he were the leader of the free world, just to distract from what really matters, which of course is Monicagate.Who are the real leaders of House Republicans: Fresh new Livingston and Watts, or tired old Armey and DeLay?Psst, buddy, wanna buy a Declaration of Independence signer's house?

Gifford Lemaster gave the lug wrench a final spin, let the nut fall to the ground and wiped his brow."Yeah, I can sing 'The Star-Spangled Banner,' " he said, turning away from the flat tire he was fixing. " 'Oh, say can you see, by the danserly light.' "Danserly?"Yeah, danserly," said Lemaster, 41."I think that was one of the battles they fought -- for freedom."Standing above him, 78-year-old Ethel Eaton sighed: "Well, they don't teach them that stuff in school anymore."While Lemaster and his buddy Paul Hawes joined others around Baltimore yesterday in displaying a somewhat precarious knowledge of American history on the eve of Independence Day, Eaton noted that they embodied true American spirit.

Sealed in inert helium in a bulletproof, bombproof and lightproof shrine at the National Archives, the Declaration of Independence seems as sacred and immutable as the Ten Commandments.And though Thomas Jefferson, the "author" of the Declaration in American mythology and his own mind, may have been inspired in his writing, he was no Moses receiving the tablets from Jehovah. The Declaration has always been an evolving document, never unchanging.On this Fourth of July, the day on which we traditionally celebrate the signing of the parchment document by the Founders, the Declaration of Independence means something very different to us than it did to Thomas Jefferson and the signers.

If Congressional debates today seem acrimonious, you should have been around in the early summer of 1776. Colonial delegates argued over every word in what became the Declaration of Independence.You can eavesdrop on that revolutionary debate via the Cockpit in Court production of the musical "1776." It brings such personalities as John Adams and Benjamin Franklin alive and helps animate the political issues that made the quest for independence so difficult.As with most historical pageants, it unfortunately has its share of long speeches and tediously didactic moments.

MY CHILDHOOD recollections of the Fourth of July are punctuated by picnics, parades and my father's claim that he was related to one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. My family paid little heed to Pop's claim, and he ** made very little of it. There was no hard proof, just an oral history handed down from his mother.Although my hometown, Wilmington, Del., was segregated, Pop always told us that the Declaration of Independence was an important document. On one particular July Fourth, when I was about 10 years old, I remember him repeating these words in a voice heavy with irony:"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Today in history: May 4In 1626, Dutch explorer Peter Minuit landed on present-day Manhattan Island.In 1776, Rhode Island declared its freedom from England, two months before the Declaration of Independence was adopted.In 1886, at Haymarket Square in Chicago, a labor demonstration for an eight-hour workday turned into a riot when a bomb exploded.In 1927, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was founded.In 1932, mobster Al Capone, convicted of income-tax evasion, entered the federal penitentiary in Atlanta.

A new plan to build up to 325 detached homes instead of a retirement community at historic Doughoregan Manor in Howard County is being quietly presented to community groups in western Ellicott City. The Carroll family, descendants of the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence, is preparing to take their new plans public early next month before submitting them to the county, said Joseph Rutter, a former county planning director who is acting as developer. The housing would take 12 to 13 years to be completed if approved, and the project would likely produce 171 new county schoolchildren for all grades, Rutter said.

Pasadena Theatre Company, showing a good sense of timing or a little bit of luck, scheduled in the middle of an election season a musical chronicling the vote for independence by the Continental Congress in the summer of 1776. The theater group knew about the historical parallels between the 1969 Broadway opening when Americans were divided over the Vietnam War and the present political divisions over Iraq, but it is unlikely to have anticipated the wrangling in Congress over the financial crisis during this musical's opening week.

KIGALI, Rwanda - Today I will be celebrating the Fourth of July in a different context than ever before. In Rwanda, July 4 is a holiday that commemorates the liberation of the country from the genocidal regime that murdered 1 million Tutsis and tens of thousands of Hutu political moderates who were committed to freedom and democracy, from April to July of 1994. It is a celebratory day, for it marks the end of the genocide and the establishment of a nonracist state that upholds the principles of liberty, equality and the peaceful coexistence of all Rwandans.

Americans are celebrating Independence Day this election year as the presidential candidates of the two major parties engage in a spirited debate over the direction the country should take over the next four years. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, soaring gas prices and rising unemployment, falling home values and a slumping economy are only the most visible challenges facing the nation. But the patriotism of the two major-party presidential contenders, which has figured as a subliminal but increasingly disturbing undercurrent of discontent on the talk-show circuit and on the Internet, is not one of them, and it should not be. Patriotism is the love of one's country, its people, its culture and, perhaps most important, its ideals, which represent the nation's most cherished hopes in a world that remains far from perfect.

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.

From a secluded garden in downtown Baltimore, shaded by four ailanthus trees, there's hardly any sense of the high-rise office buildings several blocks away or the traffic whizzing by on the Jones Falls Expressway. The garden once bordered the estate owned in the early 19th century by Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence. Much later, it became part of the Baltimore City Life Museums campus, a public attraction that told the story of Baltimore's history before the museums closed abruptly in 1997.

Today, we celebrate 231 years of American independence - or, rather, declared independence. Anyone who has read David McCullough's compelling account, in 1776, of Gen. George Washington's troubles in Boston and New York that fateful year knows the July 4 signing was a high point during a period that brought its share of defeats for the revolutionaries and reformers. Last week, I was in Katmandu to give a series of lectures to Nepal's civic, military and major-party leaders about that country's attempt to form a constitutional government.

America's Founding Fathers didn't spend the Fourth of July in the backyard standing over a hot grill. It is more likely that the founding wives and mothers or their servants spent the day in front of a hearth, where temperatures might reach 170 degrees, juggling cast-iron and copper cookware over an open flame. The Fourth of July in the late 1700s wasn't celebrated with hot dogs and hamburgers. And there was no corn on the cob, except maybe in the American frontier, which in 1776 might have been just to the left of Pittsburgh.

There's no point in talking about rude behavior and cell phones any more - that fight is over and the forces of evil have triumphed over the forces of good, and the loud-talking nitwits reign. If you even bring up the subject of cell phone etiquette now, you're seen as a cranky old guy who's hopelessly out of step with society. No, the rules of modern life are clear: Everybody must have a cell phone. Everybody must talk on it constantly. And everybody must talk as loudly as they can, because this is your right as an American.

Ann C. Leadbetter, a homemaker who was active in patriotic organizations, died of cancer Tuesday at her Chestertown home. She was 71. She was born Ann Craft and raised in Holly Springs, Miss. She earned a bachelor's degree from Centre College in Danville, Ky., and studied at the Cincinnati School of Art. Mrs. Leadbetter taught high school art classes in Ohio and Mississippi before coming to Queen Anne's County in 1963 as an elementary art teacher. After her 1967 marriage to Frederick E. Leadbetter Sr., she ended her teaching career to raise her family.