Millionaire

WASHINGTON - Wealthy political candidates caught a break yesterday as the Supreme Court struck down a campaign finance rule that benefits their opponents. By 5-4, the court ruled that Congress went too far when it loosened fundraising restraints for politicians facing millionaires who invest in their own campaigns. The court's majority declared that the campaign finance double standard violated First Amendment free-speech guarantees. "The argument that a candidate's speech may be restricted in order to level electoral opportunity has ominous implications because it would permit Congress to arrogate the voters' authority to evaluate the strength of candidates competing for office," Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote for the majority.

Millionaire entrepreneur Alan Fabian strode from the main house on his North Carolina beach property last August to deliver the bad news to a colleague vacationing in a guest cottage. In a brief conversation, Fabian told employee Greg Barr that he was leaving for a few days to face an indictment for fraud in a Baltimore federal court. But he assured Barr that things would be OK. "He was supremely confident and saying that it was basically a misunderstanding," said Barr, who worked for Fabian at a Maryland nonprofit.

It's quite an exclusive club, Maryland's new millionaires' tax bracket. A little more than 6,000 households statewide qualify for the distinction - more than 40 percent of whom reside in Montgomery County. It's a group that includes a Fortune 500 executive in Potomac, an energy company CEO in Roland Park and wealthy retirees with bayside estates in St. Michaels.

News item: The Orioles drew an announced crowd of 10,505 on Wednesday night - by far the smallest in the history of Camden Yards. My take: Club officials insist there were a lot of season-ticket exchanges for that night, but breaking the all-time low attendance record by nearly 2,700 fans in the second game of the season can't bode well for the rest of the year. If the O's end up drawing 1.7 million fans this year, we'll remember that crowd as the canary in the mineshaft. News item: The Detroit Tigers have committed $138 million in payroll to make another playoff run but are the last winless team in the major leagues.

Maryland's "tech tax" is dead. The House of Delegates passed a bill yesterday evening repealing the new sales tax on computer services, wiping the unpopular levy from the books before it could ever go into effect. "I'm looking forward to signing it," said Gov. Martin O'Malley, a Democrat, after the 93-44 vote. "We're repealing a tax that hits a lot of growing small businesses and entrepreneurial people, the very sort of creative people that we want to encourage to stay." The repeal bill, which has already passed the Senate, replaces the computer tax with a combination of cuts and a three-year individual income tax surcharge on earnings of more than $1 million.

The Maryland Senate voted last night to repeal the computer services tax and replace it with a combination of cuts and an income tax surcharge on millionaires. The 30-17 vote sends the repeal bill, backed by Gov. Martin O'Malley, to the House of Delegates. House Speaker Michael E. Busch said passage in the Senate - where the "tech tax" was born - was the "biggest hurdle" to scrapping the unpopular levy. He predicted that even tax-weary delegates would support a temporary tax on millionaires.

London Bridge isn't falling down. It's still standing in Arizona, 40 years after American oil millionaire Robert P. McCulloch spent about $2.5 million to buy it and relocate it to manmade Lake Havasu near the California border. The audacious plan to draw attention to the new community worked out pretty well, and Lake Havasu City is a popular tourist destination. Personally, I'd rather go to London and see the Tower Bridge, which might also be within driving distance of the Super Bowl if the NFL ever follows up on a suggestion by commissioner Roger Goodell to consider playing the big game overseas.

Many people know a workaholic, but today at Laurel Park there will be at least one overzealous worker who is a horse. Silmaril, the 2-1 favorite in the $80,000 What A Summer Stakes, is that horse. She is the star of trainer Chris Grove's stable at the Bowie Training Center and will be running with a chance to become only the fifth female Maryland-bred to win $1 million in purses. She would also be 17th among all Maryland-breds to reach the $1 million plateau. Cigar tops all Maryland-breds with $9,999,815 in winnings.

NEW YORK -- -- John Ferber is wound up tighter than a terrier, lording over a laptop set up on a cocktail table in the middle of the room. Above him, a disco ball turns slowly. Behind him, the open bar. He zips through pages of his PowerPoint presentation, pausing briefly to sip from a Captain and Coke. In roughly half an hour, he's holding a coming-out party - a "media launch" - for his latest company. It's an advertising-supported, free social-networking site, called Cellware, that helps people create and distribute personalized ringtones and other mobile phone content, like screen wallpaper (Ferber's girlfriend is so far the most downloaded)