National Campaign

THE SEX TALK used to be a 10-minute lecture with no eye contact delivered by a parent who seemed to be leaking from the armpits. It is a whole different thing now.Today, the sex talk is supposed to be a "lifelong conversation and conveyance of values."What that means to most parents and teens is that the awkward moment when your father wordlessly handed you a condom or that day when a box of sanitary products mysteriously appeared on your bed has been stretched out to the horizon.The sex talk can now happen at any time, night or day, in the name of teachable moments.

NEARLY two-thirds of teens who have had sexual intercourse wish they had waited, according to a poll released by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. That sounds like good news. For teen-agers, there is no more convincing messenger than another teen, and they are saying they regret having had sex so young. Moreover, eight of 10 teens surveyed agreed that teens should not be sexually active, and 64 percent said they would tell a younger brother, sister or friend not to have sex until they were at least out of high school.

Three Republican presidential candidates — Rick Santorum, Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich — are preparing to plant a flag in Maryland ahead of the state's April 3 primary, offering GOP voters here a rare chance to take part in a national political battle. Local campaign officials said they expect candidates will swing through the state early next week, following Saturday's primary in Louisiana. Maryland, which has 37 delegates to offer, votes the same day as Washington, D.C., and Wisconsin.

WHEN I WAS a teen-ager, the prevailing wisdom among boys was that there were two sure-fire ways to meet girls: join the class play or the church youth group. We knew what the boys were thinking, and I confess I spent more time in front of the mirror before youth ministry meetings than I did before school. The advantage of these venues was that they satisfied the ferocious need of teens to be together and talk, but they were parent-approved. This is still true today, but the painful irony is that some churches and some parents can't get together on the one issue that is as important to both now as it was then: preventing teen-agers from having sex and getting pregnant.

BOSTON -- When the news broke early this month that teen-age motherhood had dropped by nearly 12 percent in the past five years, I had a bit of trouble putting on my party face.Teen-age motherhood was down to the level of the 1980s? Teen-age motherhood was down to the highest level of any industrialized country? Been up so long this looks like down to us?Nevertheless, the usual suspects claimed credit for the usual reasons. One side said that abstinence education was working. The other side said that contraception was working.

THE GOOD NEWS is, the teen birth rate is down and teen pregnancies are down. More teens report delaying sex, and more teens report using some kind of contraceptive the first time they do. The bad news is, if you ask teens if they used contraceptives the last time they had sex, more of them will tell you no. Something is happening between a teen-ager's first sexual experience and his most recent sexual experience, and it isn't good. According to a study released by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, the number of teens who reported using any kind of birth control the first time they had sex increased dramatically from 1982 (48 percent)

Banking on Constellation Energy Group Inc.'s successful turnaround and financial strength over the past year, Chief Executive Officer Mayo A. Shattuck III told shareholders yesterday that the former regional utility is now focusing on a national campaign to market its energy services to consumers across the country. In the past year, Constellation has opened two major power plants in Texas and California. It also has acquired an energy business with hundreds of large commercial and industrial customers from California to New England and the Midwest to Canada.

I AM CURIOUS enough to take magazine quizzes and fill out online surveys, but they never turn out well for me. My scores always indicate something dreadful -- that I am not saving enough toward retirement, that I am probably depressed, that my marriage is in trouble and that I do not have the proper items in hand in the event of an emergency. So I should not have been surprised when the results of an online quiz designed to test the good sense of teens on the subject of sex indicated that I am "in the know -- most of the time."

TEEN PREGNANCY is declining in Maryland and in the nation, and advocates in the field are scrambling to figure out what is working so they can do more of it. For some reason, teens are having less sex and using contraception more often, and none of the adults is sure why. It is never easy to understand why our children do anything, let alone why they don't do what we don't want them to do, but experts attribute this positive trend to increased "motivation."...

UPDATED with copy of CNN memo and confirmation of cancellation ... John King's nightly show on CNN has been cancelled. King, the star of political reporting during the 2008 presidential campaign, will continue with the channel as its "lead campaign correspodent," according to an internal memo from CNN President Ken Jautz. King was chief national correspondent. Wolf Blitzer's "Situation Room," which now runs two hours, will be expanded to three hours, 4 to 7 p.m. weekdays.