Intact

The Maryland Stadium Authority ratified yesterday an agreement under which the lettered facade of Memorial Stadium will be kept intact as city-owned property, state officials said. The state's contract with Potts and Callahan to demolish the stadium was amended to add about $1 million to the original $2.5 million cost. The authority will hire a consultant and contractor to give advice on how to stabilize and support the 10-foot-high wall. Under the agreement between the state and the city, the memorial wall will be maintained by the city after the site is turned over to the nonprofit Govans Ecumenical Development Corp.

Pardon me if I'm encouraged -- but not enthused -- by the decision of the Boy Scouts of America to lift its century-old ban on gay scouts. I just can't get that excited about the fact that an organization that holds a deep-seated distrust in gay men is now letting gay kids join the club. The dynamic creates a puzzle in my head, and I'm still trying to find the corner pieces and determine some structure here. Given the green light by some of the organization's largest donors, including the Mormon and United Methodist churches, and facing the withdrawal of funding from many other donors, more than 60 percent of the BSA's 1,400-delegate-strong National Council voted to lift the ban yesterday.

Harford Community College, reeling after several cuts in its operating budget over the past few years, has asked the County Council to spare the school's 1994 budget any reductions."

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- When the Orioles open the regular season this afternoon at Tropicana Field against the Tampa Bay Rays, a team they outlasted in the final days of the 2012 regular season to earn the franchise's first playoff spot in 15 years, they will field a team nearly identical to last year's. To many experts, the club's reluctance to make expensive free-agent signings or trade for high-profile reinforcements this offseason was reason to predict a regression from the Orioles' 93 wins.

Say this much for the Orioles: When they decide to go under, they don't fool around.It doesn't matter that they're in the middle of a forgiving stretch of games against the White Sox and Royals, a pair of faceless, losing teams going nowhere.When the Orioles decide there's nothing left to play for, they don't concern themselves with trifling matters such as easy scheduling. They just go, baby.Glub, glub, goodbye.It isn't pretty, no. Losing nine games in a row against vastly inferior teams is about as ugly as it gets, in fact.

WASHINGTON -- The chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee proposed yesterday to keep the school lunch program intact, rejecting House legislation that would turn it over to the states and limit spending.Sen. Richard G. Lugar's proposal, welcomed by the Clinton administration, was included in a bill that would scale back nutrition programs for the poor.The House welfare bill passed in March would give the states TC "block grant" to run the program and end the guarantee of a school lunch for every poor child.

WASHINGTON -- "Greenmail" -- a favorite and lucrative tactic of corporate raiders -- survived its first legal challenge in the Supreme Court yesterday.Without explanation, the court voted to leave intact a federal appeals court ruling that had blocked a claim that greenmail is a form of "white collar extortion" outlawed by the federal extortion law.The appeals court had said that a target of greenmail by corporate raider Carl C. Icahn -- Viacom International Inc. -- had suffered no damages, and thus a lawsuit seeking a tripled monetary award against him could not go forward.

A partial agreement reached yesterday will keep intact Maryland's horse-betting network until at least Nov. 15.Rosecroft Raceway received the concession it sought from Maryland Jockey Club president Joe De Francis, raising the take for the harness track and its horsemen and breeders to 70 percent from money wagered on thoroughbred racing at night. That applies until the new deadline for a permanent deal.Under the contract which expired this week, Standardbred interests received only 65 percent of that money.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court gave its implied blessing yesterday to Congress' power to ban private individuals from having guns -- starting with machine guns.In a brief order, the court left intact a lower court ruling giving the broadest possible interpretation to a 1986 law against the private ownership of machine guns.Congress, according to the lower court, had intended that law to wipe out the private possession of machine guns unless the owner had the weapon before the day that law went into effect: May 19, 1986.

MIAMI -- The Orioles arrived in New York early this morning, counting bodies instead of wins.With a telling four-game series against the Yankees beginning tonight, the Orioles find themselves at their most vulnerable. A wrung-out bullpen and a hobbled lineup have conspired to slow their offense to a crawl and to drive manager Davey Johnson to distraction."The last three or four days, I've felt like I wasn't managing. I was just being a head nurse on a ward taking care of the retired soldiers and trying not to inflict more damage on the troops," he said.

A joint session of two key House committees tweaked parts of Gov. Martin O'Malley's sweeping gun bill during the first five hours of a debate expected to last into the evening. The changes - which left intact the central provisions of handgun licensing and a ban on the sale of assault weapons - were made in the first public action since February on the legislation. The bill also limits magazines to ten bullets and addresses when people with mental illness can buy guns. Over the past month since the Senate passed the bill, lawmakers have been debating behind-the-scenes whether to scale back the ban on assault rifles to exclude some models, including the AR-15.

Gov. Martin O'Malley's gun control bill faces a crucial test this week, when it is expected to receive committee votes in the House of Delegates. Although the legislation passed the Senate with strong support - and despite polling showing the vast majority of Marylanders approve of its key elements - it has produced some grumbling in the House, and not just from Republicans, who have stood unified in opposition to the measure. Lawmakers are likely to consider a host of amendments to the legislation, some of which are reasonable and some of which are not. Perhaps the trickiest area of the legislation is the standard it sets for who, by virtue of mental illness, should be prevented from buying a gun. Existing state law prohibits purchases by those who are found not criminally responsible or incompetent to stand trial because of mental illness - those provisions are not controversial - and anyone who has spent 30 consecutive days in an inpatient mental health facility.

Last season, the bullpen was one of the Orioles' season-long strengths, and while the club's corps of relievers returns intact in 2013, executive vice president Dan Duquette said he's open to adding another bullpen arm this offseason. The Orioles' bullpen compiled a 3.00 ERA last season, the fifth-best mark in baseball and the third best in the American League. The bullpen returns five locks: closer Jim Johnson, Pedro Strop, Darren O'Day, Luis Ayala and Troy Patton. Right-hander Tommy Hunter blossomed when he moved to the bullpen, so he's a likely candidate to return.

U-19 men's lacrosse U.S. beats Canada; gold streak intact The U.S. under-19 men's national team captured the Federation of International Lacrosse world championship Saturday, beating Canada, 10-8, in Turku, Finland. The win avenged a loss to the Canadians during pool play. The United States kept alive its streak of winning every gold medal since sanctioned U-19 international play began in 1988. Canada finished in second place for the fifth time in tournament history; the Iroquois Nationals placed third after an 18-1 win over England earlier Saturday.

Spare me. Spare me the calls to abolish Penn State's football program in the wake of findings by former FBI Chief Louis Freeh that Coach Joe Paterno and other men in power hid the crimes of child rapist/assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky. Spare me the NCAA's ominous warning that they "will determine whether any additional action is necessary on its part at the appropriate time. " Spare me the self-righteous rage of sports writers who spent decades burnishing the Paterno legend and now rush to tear it all down.

The Transportation Security Administration could scarcely have bought itself worse publicity than the recent revelation that a 95-year-old wheelchair user, a late-stage cancer patient, received a security pat-down and was ordered to remove her adult diaper by TSA agents in Florida. The thought that this poor woman who is so unlikely to pose a serious threat to anyone would face such indignity is painful just to think about. She was, according to her daughter who filed a complaint with federal authorities last week, simply trying to get from Florida to Michigan in order to spend her final days with relatives.

They sure don't make roofs like this one anymore. Restoration workers at Fort McHenry have peeled a layer of roofing tin from a 91-foot barracks porch and uncovered a shake-shingle roof that has survived nearly intact since it was built in 1829. Scott S. Sheads, the National Park Service historian at the fort, called the roof over the second-floor porch of Barracks 1 "the earliest intact roof on a military building that we know of." Sheads said yesterday that the same roof shaded Baltimore Mayor George Brown, 31 members of the state legislature, and Baltimore newspaper editor Francis Key Howard - the grandson of Francis Scott Key - after they were jailed at the fort in 1861.

DEPENDING ON which path Congress takes, airport security will improve a little or improve a lot. The Senate already has voted for a lot, in the form of a bill that would create a federal law enforcement unit for the nation's airports. Its 28,000 skilled screeners would be paid more and trained better than the high-turnover, minimum-wage earners who now are the last line of defense against airline terrorism. This bipartisan measure would root out a system that is nothing more than a security masquerade at the metal detectors.

The Baltimore County Council is on track to leave Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz's proposed $1.6 billion budget intact, ignoring most of the county auditor's recommended cuts. The council voted Tuesday to cut the spending plan by approximately $258,200 — only a fraction of the $1.5 million that the auditor suggested. Council members also urged schools Superintendent Joe A. Hairston to find ways to restore some of the 196 teaching jobs that would be cut through attrition in the proposed budget.

The Department of Justice's antitrust case against Microsoft was one of the largest and most carefully watched in history. The courts ruled that Microsoft illegally maintained its monopoly of personal computer operating systems (OS). After years of oversight of a "behavioral remedy," the department's notoriously weak settlement with Microsoft expired Thursday. After the finding of liability and almost a decade of monitoring Microsoft's behavior, the net result has been to leave Microsoft pretty much where it started — with its Windows monopoly intact.