George Mitchell

What a sad symbol of Congress in action: Rep. William Natcher, wheeled in from Bethesda Naval Hospital on a gurney, medical personnel hovering, so he could vote and keep alive his record of never missing a single roll call vote in 41 years.His vote helped kill a measure calling for a congressional investigation of the House Post Office scandal. That vote was interesting for other than "Guinness Book of Records" reasons. Mr. Natcher had voted a few weeks before to kill a proposal to apply the new independent counsel law not only to the executive branch but to Congress itself.

News item: Former New York Mets clubhouse attendant Kirk Radomski will spend no time in jail for his part in baseball's far-reaching steroid scandal. He was fined and placed on five years' probation after cooperating with the federal government and Major League Baseball investigator George Mitchell. My take: Once again, a major perpetrator gets a slap on the wrist, while there's a lawyer serving 2 1/2 years in prison for leaking Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative grand jury transcripts to a reporter.

WASHINGTON -- If you ask George Mitchell to compare his success in Northern Ireland with those he achieved as Senate majority leader, he is predictably diplomatic. "It's hard to measure," he says, "because they're so completely different."But it is clear that the almost three years he spent brokering the peace agreement has given him some psychic rewards far beyond what anyone gets out of conventional politics in America today. "I feel a real sense of satisfaction," he says. "We have at least created the possibility of saving lives."

In my continuing effort to show how sophisticated I am, I'd like to quote the French poet Paul Valery: "The trouble with our times," he said, "is that the future is not what it used to be." Never mind that he uttered that cynical little gem several generations ago; no truer words have ever been spoken, particularly when 2007 is going to be such a tough act to follow. George Mitchell shocked the world when he discovered that baseball players have been using steroids. Michael Vick went to jail for his part in a dogfighting conspiracy.

LONDON -- He could have been a U.S. Supreme Court justice. He might even have been baseball's commissioner.Instead, former U.S. Sen. George J. Mitchell has become a jet-lagged, unpaid peace negotiator.Shuttling across the Atlantic Ocean so many times that he has lost count, Mitchell has been locked in talks with everyone from starched government bureaucrats to former gunmen in a bid to bring peace to Northern Ireland.For more than 18 months, the Democrat from Maine, a former majority leader of the U.S. Senate, has chaired all-party talks designed to carve out a settlement between majority Protestants and minority Roman Catholics.

George Mitchell wakes up in the resort community of Ocean Pines and prepares for a typical day of tennis in the morning and an afternoon walk with his two dogs. Long gone are the days when Mitchell, 76, enjoyed one of high school lacrosse's top coaching runs. His St. Paul's School team won nine Maryland Scholastic Association A Conference championships and three state private school titles in 23 years (1957-63, 1969-1984). He took a four-year break from the high school routine to coach lacrosse at the University of Baltimore from 1964 to 1968.

First, suntan is deadly for you. Then Vitamin A. Is nothing sacred?Hutu and Tutsi would rather destroy Rwanda than share it.The Walters Art Gallery picked a Byzantine expert for director. Which was wise.George Mitchell may know something we don't.

Shocking!Flabbergasting!Amusing!It's not the way we're used to hearing George Mitchell described. Usually the 60-year-old Senate majority leader is described as a quiet man; a patient man; a man possessed of a judicial temperament.So brace yourself. In fact, you'd better sit down at the kitchen table for this one. The announcement that the mild-mannered former altar boy is engaged to 35-year-old tennis manager Heather MacLachlan who, judging from her photo, is a knockout, is shaking up that old image of Senator Mitchell.

Now that Leonard Coleman and Gene Budig have assumed the helms of the National and American leagues, respectively, there is still a giant vacuum in baseball's leadership circle. The commissioner's office has been vacant for over a year, and "Winners and Losers" has assembled a list of serious and not so serious candidates to fill the post.CANDIDATES .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ... COMMENTMadonna .. .. .. Winner .. .. Really knows the players... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. Really knows the game.DTC Michele McCloud ... Winner .. Never seen, never heard from.

GEORGE MITCHELL says he's not a Supreme Court candidate because he wants to stay in the Senate and get the Clinton health care plan passed.Oh come now. If the plan isn't passed by October, when the Supreme Court convenes and when he would have to resign from the Senate, it probably isn't going to pass at all, George Mitchell or no George Mitchell.Besides, when did he get to be the key to passage? Until now every assessment of the plan's prospects in the Senate assumed the most important Democratic senators were Finance Committee Chairman Pat Moynihan, Labor and Human Resources Chairman Ted Kennedy and, perhaps, Medicare and Long-Term Care Subcommittee Chairman Jay Rockefeller.

Nashville, Tenn. -- One of the unseen benefits of holding Major League Baseball's winter meetings last week at the gigantic Opryland Resort is that there was plenty of space to accommodate the elephant in the middle of every meeting room. Perhaps as soon as midweek, the result of the independent investigation of performance-enhancing drug use in baseball - dubbed the Mitchell Report after lead investigator and former Sen. George Mitchell - will be released. Baseball is holding its collective breath while assuming dozens of current and former players will be implicated, creating further embarrassment for a sport that has been entangled in steroid controversies for most of the decade.

DENVER -- No matter which or how many players are implicated in the pending steroid report by former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell, baseball commissioner Bud Selig is not worried that his sport's popularity will be affected. "No. Not at all," Selig told a group of reporters last night before Game 3 of the World Series. "If you ask me today, am I concerned about the winter? None, zero. I have nothing to be concerned about." Selig said he still does not have an exact timetable for the report's release.

On December 21, 1920, God blessed Rev. & Mrs. William (Esther) A. Perry with their third child WILLIE CHRISTINE PERRY who passed away February 1, 2004. We celebrate her life today. Willie was educated in the North Carolina School System and graduated from North Carolina State College (North Carolina Central). On December 7, 1965, she married the late Norlington Mitchell, with each of them bringing a child to the union. They shared 39 years of marriage. Mrs. Mitchell is predeceased by her husband Norlington Mitchell, her parents and two sisters Mrs. Esther Newkirk and Mrs. Emma P. Boyer.

A bitter dispute between Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin P. Clark and the president of a group that advocates for black officers is playing out in e-mails to the entire 3,300- member force, with Clark calling the group's leader "reckless" for lobbing heated accusations at a top police commander last week. The battle began on Thursday when Officer Jeffrey Redd, president of the Vanguard Justice Society, and several other members of the organization gathered at police headquarters to hold a news conference attacking Clark's chief of staff.

ANTIOCH, W.Va. - Just before the war began, 3-year-old Bailey Mitchell asked her mom the meaning of the yellow ribbons that had begun to appear around this mountainous region straddling the Maryland-West Virginia border. Brenda Mitchell explained that they were part of American wartime lore - a symbol of the nation's commitment to seeing its soldiers return home. "After that," Brenda says, "Bailey was on a mission." Spc. George A. Mitchell Jr. had shipped out for Kuwait in September, and Bailey was determined to plaster the dozen oak trees around their white-frame home with ribbons and bows for her dad. In one of her last telephone conversations with her father, "she told him she tied those yellow ribbons up for him, and when he came home they were going to take them down together," Brenda said.

A 35-year-old Army soldier who grew up in Lebanon, Pa., and lived in Western Maryland was killed Monday in Iraq when a mortar shell fired by enemy troops struck his command post in southern Baghdad, according to family members. Spc. George A. Mitchell Jr. of Rawlings in Allegany County was an Abrams tank driver in a headquarters company of the 3rd Infantry Division, 2nd Brigade Combat Team. Mitchell, another soldier, and two journalists died when a command area was hit by an enemy shell or missile.

GEORGE MITCHELL says firmly that he doesn't "have any plans to run" for president next year.The Senate majority leader does concede the question comes up more often these days than it did a few months ago -- repeatedly in questions from reporters, sometimes in suggestions from his colleagues. He is, says Mitchell, "especially flattered" when other Democratic senators urge him to run.But none of that means he plans to run. No sir, not on your tintype. "I don't intend to run," he says. "I'm not trying to be coy."

That Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell of Maine is the front-runner for the coming vacancy on the Supreme Court is obvious. Should he be President Clinton's choice (front-runners sometimes stumble), it would be a popular nomination. Confirmation would be almost automatic; he is well-liked and respected by the Democrats he leads in the Senate and by Republican senators as well.A choice like this would be a good one for this president at this time. Mr. Mitchell practiced law for 12 years and has had experience in all three branches of the federal government.