Gary Hart

After a last-minute invitation, Mayor Martin O'Malley is accompanying President Clinton on a two-day trip to Northern Ireland. O'Malley left last night as part of a 25-member delegation traveling with Clinton on his third and final presidential visit to the troubled country, where the president has been credited with playing a critical role in forming the 1998 peace accord. O'Malley, who leads a Celtic rock band that has produced CDs with Irish themes, met Clinton in Baltimore in July during the national convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and asked if he could be included in the trip.

I think it may be time to forgive Gary Hart for his sins.I think so because I have almost forgotten what his sins were.He ran for president a couple of times, but you can't hold that against a man forever.And now a newsmagazine reports that next year he might run for the U.S. Senate from Colorado, a job he held for 12 years.(In 1984, Hart won 29 primaries and caucuses and narrowly lost the Democratic nomination for president to Walter Mondale, who asked him, "Where's the beef?" Mondale is currently a U.S. ambassador, but nobody knows to where.

WASHINGTON -- This time was supposed to be different.After the 1988 presidential campaign, critics of the news media, including many in the press itself, felt reporters had gone too far in exposing the personal lives of politicians.But again this year, a candidate's private sexual behavior is drawing headlines and filling the airwaves. And once again, the politicians, their handlers and the people who report the news are groping for ways of dealing with an explosive subject.Has nothing changed?

A 29-year-old Severna Park man was placed on six months probation yesterday in a November beating the man said was sparked by a racial slur.Carter Rigsbee, a carpenter of the first block of Lockleven Drive, Severna Park, pleaded not guilty to battery in the beating of Gary Hart, 42, a real estate broker of the 3700 block of Thomas Point Road, Annapolis.PD He admitted that he fought with Mr. Hart, but argued that he hadbeen provoked.Judge Bruce C. Williams withheld a verdict on the charges, giving Mr. Rigsbee probation before judgment.

It's after 10:30 Monday morning, and the Gary Hart rape trial is already more than an hour behind schedule. The delay only causes the line of people standing outside the courtroom door to swell.Finally,a sheriff walks out of the judge's office and issues the ground rules. Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. No standing is allowed. A number of seats are reserved for family members and the press."I expect all of you to conduct yourselves like ladies and gentlemen," the sheriff hollers.

"Power is the great aphrodisiac." - Henry Kissinger Was Ed Norris not paying attention? Did the name Bill Clinton not ring a bell? Or Gary Hart? Or JFK? Were there not enough cautionary examples? Not enough powerful figures brought low by sexual recklessness? Maybe someone should have told The Commish that sometimes these things get out. When they do, they have a way of ruining reputations and careers, tarnishing legacies, imperiling marriages. The good news for Norris may be that a little infidelity - well, a lot, apparently - may be the least of his troubles now. In an indictment handed down this week, Norris was charged with illegally spending about $20,000 from a police fund, allegedly including a number of expenditures on lady friends.

BOSTON -- So we part company. Again.Just a couple of weeks ago, I took some small comfort from the fact that this sex scandal had not opened up a gender gap. Since then, I've been reminded in no uncertain terms that it's opened up the intra-gender gap. Again.Women who once came from different ends of the political spectrum to skewer Gary Hart have now retreated to opposite sides over the fate of President Clinton.A phalanx of women's rights leaders to the left. A coterie from the ranks of the Independent Women's Forum to the right.

WASHINGTON -- Creation of the Department of Homeland Security is a vindication for former Sens. Gary Hart, Democrat of Colorado, and Warren Rudman, Republican of New Hampshire, who nine months before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks warned of the threat and called for just such a new federal agency. Mr. Hart, while expressing some satisfaction that it has now been approved, says "a year and a half has been wasted" by President Bush's failure to act sooner on their recommendation and those of Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman and Republican Rep. William "Mac" Thornberry.

An old reporter often begins his daily routine by turning to the newspaper's obituary page with mild trepidation, fearing another friend has gone to that great newsroom in the sky. So it was this week in reading of the death in Baltimore, at only 62, of Richard Ben Cramer, arguably the best writer of a presidential campaign chronicle ever. That would be his 1,047-page opus of one of the less memorable contests, in 1988, among six less-than-heroic candidates: Republicans George H.W. Bush, the eventual winner, and Bob Dole; and Democrats Michael Dukakis, the eventual party nominee, Richard Gephardt, Joe Biden and Gary Hart.

EIGHT YEARS ago this month this column under the above by-line appeared here for the first time. Today it does for the last time.Beginning next week, it will appear on Mondays and Thursdays. This is a return to the column's historic roots.The use of the final section of The Sun's editorials columns for personalized, sometimes idiosyncratic writing began on Monday, April 28, 1958. It was called "Other Comment" briefly, then became "Notes and Comment. (Later "&.")It joined a somewhat similar Thursday column that then appeared on the far side of the cartoon and letters entitled "The Spillway.