Identity

Ever feel like you're alone out there, fighting the good fight against scammers, identity thieves and other scoundrels? Ever feel like you could use a hand? Someone to watch your back? Assistance from some righteous authority benevolent enough to put you on somewhat equal footing? That authority does exist, and it's - surprise - the General Assembly. From small but meaningful moves like licensing home inspectors to home-and-hearth-saving actions like banning ground rent ejectment, our legislators passed a number of laws last session that will help the little guy hang onto his hard-earned money, personal property, financial identity and sani- ty. "Out of all of them, though, there were really three that were major victories this year for all consumers," said Stephen D. Hannan, an administrator in the Howard County Office of Consumer Affairs who also sits on the board of the Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition.

Youth exhibit -- The Anne Arundel County Circuit Courthouse is exhibiting Insights: The Identity Project through August at 7 Church Circle, Annapolis. The photographs and writings are by participants from the Juvenile Treatment Court, which treats substance abusers. 410-222-1901.

WASHINGTON -- We come from a long line of dead people. Malachy McCourt says this at the end of "A Couple of Blaguards," the two-man stage show based on his memoir and his famous brother Frank's. It's supposed to be about the Irish experience, but of course there are pieces of every ethnic minority arriving in America, reaching out for an identity and wondering: Whose identity, exactly? My own, and my people's, or something off the new-model assembly line?"I want to assimilate," McCourt says shortly after arriving in New York from Limerick, Ireland.

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- On one level, they spoke the same language. On a deeper level, they couldn't communicate at all.That is how Chiang Pei-ling recalls her experience with several mainland Chinese students during an exchange program a few years ago. At first, they chatted comfortably. When the topic turned to politics, though, they argued over the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown -- which one mainland student insisted had never occurred."We were surprised," says Chiang, now a 25-year-old law student here at National Chengchi University.

For playwright David Henry Hwang ("Golden Child"), being Chinese-American has meant contending with "this idea of being perpetual foreigners."For architect I.M. Pei, it's meant that, even after 60 years in this country, "I'm still Chinese."And for Connie Chung, it meant beating her classmates to the punch when it came to joking about her distinctive appearance."The kids would say, `Can you see the ceiling and the floor, because your eyes are [so narrow]?' I used to make jokes about it. If I joked about it before anyone else did, then they wouldn't make a joke about me."

CARTHAGE, Tenn. -- Vice President Al Gore, beginning the delicate process of separating himself from Bill Clinton, formally opened his presidential drive yesterday with a promise to provide "moral leadership" for America."

It's impossible to think of a better pairing of artists than Elizabeth Catlett and Faith Ringgold. Two separate one-person shows of their work opened side by side at the Baltimore Museum of Art last week, and they have a chemistry that comes from dealing with the same subject matter in strikingly different but equally impressive ways.Seeing the two of them together is like listening to two great voices sing a duet in which the words are different but the melody unites them. The melody in this case is that both are African-American women whose work deals with being African-American and a woman but, at the same time, has a breadth of appeal that knows no boundaries.

Columbia resident John R. Righter was convicted yesterday of forcing a former co-worker into his vehicle and driving her handcuffed to Ohio in a case of infatuation turned obsession.The verdict came after Righter presented no evidence in his defense, leaving Stephanie Musick's gripping testimony about her 19-hour abduction virtually unchallenged. Howard Circuit Judge Dennis M. Sweeney found Righter, 22, guilty of eight counts, including kidnapping, false imprisonment and assault.Sentencing is scheduled for July 31. The kidnapping charge alone carries a maximum sentence of 30 years.

A Baltimore man accused of using another person's identity )) to defraud an Ellicott City leasing company of $5,000 might be responsible for several similar crimes in other counties, Howard County police believe.Charged with two felony theft counts in the Sept. 16 incident at Norwest Financial Leasing Inc. is Larry Lamont Bush, 38, who has been released on bail.Police said that when they searched Bush's home in the 100 block of N. Wolfe St. recently, they found papers containing personal information -- including names, addresses and Social Security numbers -- on more than 60 area residents, said Cpl. Ellsworth Jones, a property crimes detective.

For American Jews, fear of assimilation and the enormous differences among Jews, who range from ultra-Orthodox to Reform, from practicing to non-practicing, and from believers to what is known as "secular" Jews, have exacerbated intense inner questioning about Jewish identity. Who is a Jew? Who has the authority to make a definition stick? In this period of ethnic soul searching, other ethnic groups have asked questions similar to those Jews are asking of themselves - but none as poignantly introspective as are Jews.

Who knows how honest the vote tabulations on American Idol are? After all, no outside source verifies them. But no matter how Fox and the producers of the series managed to get here, they now have their most culturally potent finale ever in the showdown between Adam Lambert and Kris Allen. Each embodies an archetype of musical and sexual identity at least as old as television. And the choice viewers and voters make this week will have something very important to say about where we are as a nation and what kind of pop star we are willing to celebrate and embrace.

For three years after he died, Frederick A. Kessler Jr. continued to pay his bills. His mortgage was caught up, his utilities covered and his taxes dutifully paid. His mail, too, was regularly collected. It turns out that was the problem. Yesterday, a 45-year-old Baltimore man pleaded guilty to stealing Kessler's identity, in part by stealing his mail. David Anthony Johnson faces 30 years in federal prison and a fine of $1 million, according to the Maryland U.S. attorney's office. The government did not name Kessler in court documents; The Baltimore Sun identified him through public records.

The recent provincial elections in Iraq confirmed the national identity of the Iraqi people. Voting overwhelmingly for nationalist candidates, Iraqis voted to keep Iraq together as one - an outcome that defies the predictions of many. Myths and distortions about Iraq's history have been used to promote arguments for a divided Iraq. Peter Galbraith, in an October op-ed in The New York Times, claimed that Iraq has an "absence of a shared identity ... [and] there was never shared national identity."

I Am My Own Wife is the true (or not) story of a man (or not) who survived the Nazis and resisted the East German Stasi (or didn't) to live as a transvestite for more than 30 years in Berlin, ultimately becoming the darling of the European press after the Berlin Wall came down. Confused? A precision performance by Everyman Theatre's Bruce Nelson actually makes all of this abundantly clear as he plays Berlin's most famous transvestite, Charlotte von Mahlsdorf - and the 34 other characters in playwright Doug Wright's one-person show.

You did not have to be around for the glory days of the Orioles to understand why putting Baltimore back on the road jerseys is so uplifting to the city's soul. "Every other team comes in here with their city's name on the front of their jerseys," said Kris Burton of Parkville as he stood inside the Gallery at Harborplace for the unveiling of the new jerseys yesterday afternoon. "It means a lot to me. I'm proud of Baltimore. It doesn't matter how bad [the Orioles have] been or how much they've been losing.

Four years ago, Barack Obama introduced himself to America by painting a picture of a nation that was united, somehow, in spite of itself. The pundits, he said in the keynote address to the Democratic National Cnvention, like to "slice and dice" the country: red states for Republicans, blue states for Democrats. "But I've got news for them, too: We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states. We coach Little League in the blue states, and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states."

Federal authorities and police in two Baltimore-area counties are investigating what is believed to be an interstate identity-theft scheme that was foiled this week at a Glen Burnie department store. Three Kansas residents were charged with multiple counts of theft in Anne Arundel County yesterday as authorities worked to determine the extent of the alleged scheme, which police said involved using others' identities to establish credit cards and buy items to sell on the Internet. According to charging documents, employees became suspicious as the men - one wearing a suit and tie - shopped for expensive items at the Boscov's store at Marley Station Mall.

A 22-year-old Baltimore woman was sentenced yesterday to three years in prison followed by one year of home detention for stealing people's identities and using the information to run up credit card bills in excess of $311,000, the Maryland U.S. attorney's office said. Marquita Lane also will have to serve three years of supervised probation and pay restitution to her employer, Home Depot, several stores and CitiBank USA, according to prosecutors. She pleaded guilty to aggravated identity theft and bank fraud charges in February.

Maryland's highest court overturned yesterday a Howard County man's conviction on identity theft charges, ruling that the state law is ambiguous and can't be used to prosecute someone who takes the identity of a fictitious person. The law prohibits someone from assuming the "identity of another" -- which is what police charged Kazeem Adeshina Ishola with doing in 2003 when they said he tried to open bank accounts under two fictitious names. But a majority of judges on the Maryland Court of Appeals ruled that the law hadn't properly defined what "another" meant, and that state legislators hadn't explicitly banned the use of fake names in the statute.

Members of the 9/11 Commission suggested it. Twice, Congress passed laws requiring it. Yet, more than six years after the 9/11 attacks, America still lacks voluntary national standards for identity cards such as driver's licenses. But that may change soon. Last month, the Department of Homeland Security finally announced a plan to establish minimum standards for state-issued ID cards that are used for federal purposes (such as passenger screening at U.S. airports). Although some states have vowed to challenge this plan, Maryland, to its credit, is not among them.