Make Decisions

The eight candidates for Carroll commissioner plan to sign a letter this evening asking the current board of commissioners not to take major actions during the remainder of its term, several of the candidates said. The letter follows similar requests from town and state officials, concerned that Commissioners Donald I. Dell and Robin Bartlett Frazier are trying to cram irreversible policy decisions into their final weeks in office. Their terms end in early December. "History has shown in many jurisdictions throughout the state, that late-term decisions made on critical issues are not prudent," the letter reads.

"My grandmother is 91 and has been in a nursing home for three years. When she was admitted, she and I met with a geriatric psychiatrist and a lawyer, and she signed over medical power of attorney to me. That gives me the legal right to make all medical decisions on her behalf. She told me at the time that she did not want her life extended for any reason, although if she were ill she wanted medication to ease pain."Last week, after suffering a fall, she underwent a series of X-rays at the local emergency room.

The Ravens are going to make a coaching change after this season, but that's not what they need most after three losing seasons.What they need most is a general manager.They can use any title they want. Director of football operations. Vice president. Godfather of on-field personnel. Whatever. By any name, he'd be in charge of the football side of the organization. His vision of the Ravens, and his vision alone, would count.Sure, he'd have a staff of lieutenants to help make decisions -- scouting director, pro personnel director, etc. And the coach would be close to his equal.

Since we got to be here, let's live. - Marvin Gaye If I am ever diagnosed with cancer, I already know what I'm going to do: laugh my fool head off. I will ensconce myself in front of the big screen with a stack of DVDs - the "Vitameatavegamin" episode of I Love Lucy will be at the top, but Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby and Bob Newhart will also be in there, along with Frasier, Albert Brooks, Borat, The Daily Show - anything that has ever made me giggle will...

Back in the 1970s, Midge Rothrock says, she "had a boss from hell.""He was a practicing alcoholic and quite good at it," says Ms. Rothrock, who was a manager. "He was driven in his work, had a mistress who was a co-worker -- and I reported directly to him."Though Ms. Rothrock now is a high-level executive who earns in the six figures as manager of human resource development for Hughes Electro-Optical and Data Systems Group in El Segundo, Calif., she believes her former boss at a different company temporarily hurt her career.

KAREN HUGHES, President Bush's closest and most trusted adviser, is vacating her place at the center of power and returning to her home in Texas so her son can finish his high school career where he has grown up. Her decision has been widely interpreted as proof positive that a woman can't have it all, that Hughes made the choice many women make when trying to balance work and kids: the kids come first. There is a lesson for working women, and their daughters, in Karen Hughes' dilemma, but I am not sure that's the one. Rather, I think Karen Hughes is an example of how a woman can have it all. Hughes, a former television journalist, became Bush's communications director in 1994 during his first gubernatorial campaign, and in the years since she has made herself absolutely indispensable to him, so much so that he declared that he would not run for president if she would not agree to come to Washington with him if he won. Now, when she finds herself torn by family concerns, she has the cachet with the boss to cut a deal that will allow her to continue working closely with Bush while living in Austin; a deal that will keep both her president and her family happy.

In President Bush's first term, some of the most important decisions about U.S. national security -- including vital decisions about postwar Iraq -- were made by a secretive, little-known cabal. It was made up of a very small group of people led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. When I first discussed this group in a speech Oct. 19 at the New America Foundation in Washington, my comments caused a significant stir because I had been chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell for more than two years.

One month from today, William Jefferson Clinton will be sworn in as president of the United States.One month and one day from today, he is supposed to offer his prescription for the rescue of the economy from the morass of Reagan-Bush budget deficits, trade imbalances, wealth maldistribution, recession, slow growth, credit crunch, education neglect, untrained workforce, uncompetitiveness and just about every other ill in the liberal lexicon.Rarely has there been such a buildup for a policy decision whose outlines have been so thoroughly signaled in advance.

WJZ meteorologist Bernadette Woods is leaving the CBS-owned station to join a non-profit firm in New Jersey focused on climate change, she said Wednesday night. Woods, who has been with WJZ for seven years, said she will remain at the station helping with the transition for the next month. After that, she, her husband and their two children will be moving to Princeton, N.J., where she will join Climate Central as staff meteorologist. "I'm very excited about the opportunity in Princeton," she said.

While other city high school principals excitedly read off the names of colleges and universities their students will disperse to at the end of the school year, Denise Gordon fanned through a stack of acceptance letters with less enthusiasm. "New Era, Dunbar, Ben Franklin, Carver, Edmondson, Digital, Mervo - a lot of New Era," she read. Gordon, who has spent her eight years as a principal at Southside Academy, which closed its doors for good Wednesday, never thought she'd be sending her students to different high schools, faced with the school system's decision that they'd be better served somewhere else.