Distractions

With Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri refusing to leave the race for the U.S. Senate seat, the distractions are guaranteed to keep coming ("Akin fights on, says he's 'standing on principle,'" Aug. 23). Despite his apologies and retraction, and despite Governor Mitt Romney's condemnation of the remarks, the focus for the next week will be on abortion. It doesn't matter that the Romney ticket has stated that they support abortion for victims of rape and incest, they will be lumped together with the more rabid anti-abortion faction of the Republican Party.

Strange as it may sound, only a few years ago Marylanders were heatedly debating whether to ban drivers from text-messaging on their cell phones while behind the wheel. The dangers of "distracted driving" were an illusion, opponents claimed, manufactured by a nanny-state government to justify unwarranted intrusions on personal liberty. Never mind that texting while driving was already known to cause thousands of traffic fatalities nationally every year, or that researchers had found that texting drivers' ability to concentrate on the road was about the same as if they had imbibed four or five drinks.

The other day I saw a woman driving with a dog on her lap; the dog was sticking his head out the window.  I thought to myself, boy that's got to be unsafe — certainly as unsafe as talking on a cell phone — and I wondered if she would get pulled over and ticketed.  Later that morning, I almost rear-ended the car in front of me after I spilled hot coffee on my lap. Unsafe?  Yep, but not illegal. And having a conversation with a passenger in my car is probably as distracting as have a conversation on my cell phone.

March has been a rough month for Maryland Republicans. In Annapolis, they watched helplessly as Democrats worked their way through an ambitious ideological wish list that includes new taxes and spending, death penalty repeal, Second Amendment limitations, wind power subsidies, and other proposals anathema to Republicans. Seven of 12 GOP senators - apparent victims of "Stockholm syndrome" - - supported Gov. Martin O'Malley's budget, which includes $1 billion in new spending. And just as state Democrats rammed through an 87 percent hike in state gas taxes, David Ferguson, executive director of the Maryland Republican Party, canceled a planned training session for candidates to embark on a quixotic national "tour" to preach the evils of a possible Martin O'Malley presidency.

The video of Mitt Romney speaking to donors at a fundraiser in Boca Raton was reportedly "leaked" by James Carter IV, the grandson of former President Jimmy Carter. How appropriate. It apparently was saved for the most politically opportune moment and then published by the liberal Mother Jones Magazine in hopes of causing maximum damage to the Romney campaign. It's all part of the Democrats' attempt to distract attention from the president's failed record. But the Obama campaign has had to deal with a "leak" of its own recently, namely the release of a 14-year-old audio recording of remarks supposedly made by then-Illinois State Sen. Barack Obama at a conference in Chicago.

The Ravens open training camp today, and as players report to the world-famous Best Western Hotel high atop scenic Route 140 in Westminster, they'll be directed to a side room and measured for their Super Bowl rings. Sure, most teams wait until they've actually won the Super Bowl before worrying about ring sizes. But what's the point of waiting with this stacked Ravens team? Isn't just about every NFL pundit picking them to go all the way to the big dance? So why not get the ring measurements out of the way before they get on with that other business of preparing for a new season?

- In recent days, members of the Maryland men's basketball team have been absorbed with final exams, writing papers and - perhaps - allowing themselves to think ahead to holiday gifts and an upcoming break. Their coach, Mark Turgeon, has been contemplating all the distractions that make this such a difficult time of year to coach. It's not that Turgeon is some sort of holiday grinch. The coach is giving his players - who just completed eight days of finals - four days off around Christmas to recharge.

SAN DIEGO -- Brian Roberts endured it with the firing of Mike Hargrove, then Lee Mazzilli and now Sam Perlozzo, three managers he liked and respected. So when he was approached by a small group of reporters in the visiting clubhouse at Petco Park and asked about Perlozzo, he quickly grew agitated. "I've seen managers come and go here," said Roberts, who has been with the Orioles for parts of the past seven seasons. "To tell you the truth, I just want to come here and play baseball. That's all. I am tired of dealing with the manager situation.

In the middle of Wednesday's Terrell Owens melodrama, the Ravens opened their locker room for interviews. Reporters rushed in and asked players about Owens instead of the Ravens' upcoming game against the San Diego Chargers. It was a familiar scene. Over the years, the Ravens have endured more than their share of off-field controversies that dominated conversations and distracted players. The difference this time, of course, was it was another team's player, not a Raven, who was making the wrong kind of news.

IF YOU'RE part of the chattering class, you should pay attention to this: Yammering into a hand-held cell phone while driving became illegal last week in Washington, D.C., and New Jersey. Why? Because cell phone chatterers are apparently more likely to be involved in car accidents. But outlawing driver use of cell phones really won't address the problem, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA), the organization that represents state highway safety agencies. Hands-free devices, while reducing some distractions and adding convenience for the driver, do not mitigate the mental distraction of the conversation itself.

I agree that distracted driving is a problem ("Pair propose way to stop distracted driving," March 10). However, making cellphones inoperable when they're in a moving car is problematic. Would this mean that in addition to the driver, no one else in the car could use their cell phone either? How would a device that made the driver's phone inoperable distinguish that phone from those carried by the vehicle's passengers? And when the software is part installed on the phone, how does it tell if the user is in a private vehicle or a passenger on a bus or Metro, where there's no reason people shouldn't be able to use their phones?

The Orioles have passed the halfway point in spring training and there is plenty that we still don't know about them, but you have to like what has happened at the Ed Smith Stadium facility so far. Almost nothing. The first four weeks have been surprisingly uneventful. There have been no major injuries and no big off-the-field problems, unless you count the fact that shortstop J.J. Hardy actually lost a game of ping pong the other day. The tone has been upbeat throughout, except the part where all the players in the Orioles clubhouse keep talking about the unfinished business to need to attend to in 2013.

I guess it will happen at some point. A kid in Baltimore will come across a faded black-and-white picture, or notice all those blue #19 jerseys, and he won't quite believe it: "We had a football team before the Ravens?" Maybe it's already happened, given how thoroughly the Ravens have worked their way into our lives in the 16 years since they came to town. In sports franchise years, that's almost yesterday. And yet sometimes I have to stop and think a bit to remember when they weren't here, when fall turned into winter rather than season into postseason, when I didn't have to resist a charmingly insistent lady's request to print her recipe for a purple playoff cake.

It wasn't that many years ago that the prospect of relatively few fatal accidents involving drugs or alcohol would have been presumed to coincide with relatively few fatal accidents altogether. As it turns out, the number of deadly vehicle collisions in Harford County in 2012 where drug or alcohol use was believed by police to have been a factor was zero, yet depending on how you count, the number of people killed on roadways in the county in the recently passed year was 31, making it the most deadly year for highway fatalities in about two decades.

- In recent days, members of the Maryland men's basketball team have been absorbed with final exams, writing papers and - perhaps - allowing themselves to think ahead to holiday gifts and an upcoming break. Their coach, Mark Turgeon, has been contemplating all the distractions that make this such a difficult time of year to coach. It's not that Turgeon is some sort of holiday grinch. The coach is giving his players - who just completed eight days of finals - four days off around Christmas to recharge.

The announcement that House Speaker John Boehner has offered to take the debt ceiling off the table in the current "fiscal cliff" negotiations is, in one sense, a welcome development. If the Senate agrees, we will temporarily be spared the sort of embarrassing brinkmanship that accompanied the last increase, in August 2011. But a year from now, we will likely be back in the same place, where the debt ceiling is being held hostage by people who have no qualms about using the good credit of the United States as a negotiating ploy.

Cooperstown hasn't called yet.Phil Regan isn't saying "I told you so."And it definitely isn't always going to be this easy for Curtis Goodwin.But after two games, the Orioles manager has reason to feel his obvious infatuation with the rookie center fielder was, and is, justified. Regan passed over Damon Buford, whose minor-league track record is more extensive, in favor of Goodwin months ago.He did so for one reason. Speed.Not because Buford doesn't have it. He does, but not quite the same quantity as Goodwin, who can be classified as a "burner."

Charlotte, N.C. -- First, they swallowed a familiar pill, as their strong credentials failed to elevate them to a more prestigious postseason game. Then, their head coach took over at a rival school within their own conference. Yet, even as he conceded the month of December has been full of challenging distractions to the Boston College football team, Eagles junior linebacker Jolonn Dunbar said he and his teammates are too determined to make another winning statement on the field to allow any outside influence to sway them.

With the Ravens inching closer to qualifying for the postseason for the fifth time in the last five years, the last thing anyone is thinking about is coach John Harbaugh's job status. The same, however, can't be said for Harbaugh's counterpart in Sunday's game. The San Diego Chargers have dropped five of their last six contests after a 3-1 start, and the calls for coach Norv Turner to lose his job are building in volume and intensity. A win against the Ravens might perhaps silence the doubters for a while, but Turner, who has coached the Chargers for the past six seasons, said he can't worry about the rumors swirling around the team's practice facility.

Gov. Martin O'Malley has postponed his planned post-Thanksgiving economic development trip to the Middle East, saying he does not want to create a distraction during the conflict between Israel and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The governor's office released a statement Tuesday saying O'Malley would reschedule his planned mission, which would have taken him to Israel, Jordan and Ramallah on the West Bank. "Not wanting to be a distraction from the urgent cause of peace, I look forward to visiting Israel in the months ahead with Maryland business, research and academic leaders," O'Malley said.