National Policy

WASHINGTON -- Members of Congress said yesterday that they plan to introduce legislation creating a national steroid policy, a proposal immediately opposed by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and players' representatives from football and baseball. "It is my full intention to move a bill," Rep. Bobby Rush, chairman of an Energy and Commerce subcommittee, said during a hearing that brought together the commissioners of baseball, the NFL, NBA and NHL, as well as NCAA president Myles Brand.

My mother went into paid work soon after my father's clothing store was flooded out in a hurricane, almost wiping him out. She had no choice. We needed the money. This was some two decades before a tidal wave of wives and mothers went into paid work. For the relatively few women with four-year college degrees, this change was the consequence of wider educational opportunity and new laws against gender discrimination that opened professions to well-educated women. But the vast majority of women entered the paid workforce because male wages were dropping.

Cardinal William H. Keeler will meet today with at least 165 of his priests for a "listening session" to hear their thoughts and concerns about the clergy sex abuse scandal that has rocked the U.S. Catholic Church. The meeting at St. Mary's Seminary & University in Roland Park will be closed to the public, but Keeler said he will address the media afterward. He said wants to hear from priests about how the crisis is affecting them and their parishes. The cardinal said he will use the input to refine the child sex abuse policy in the Archdiocese of Baltimore and to help form a national policy.

As the federal government shifts its drug control strategy toward drug treatment and education initiatives, the U.S. drug czar said Wednesday at an event in Baltimore that he plans to emphasize the expansion of drug courts to divert nonviolent offenders to treatment instead of prison. Gil Kerlikowske, director of national drug control policy, announced the changes at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine as he laid out his goals for the year. The former Seattle police chief said there would be no official change in the federal stance that marijuana is an illegal and harmful drug, a hot issue since two states voted to allow its use last year.

WHOEVER RULES the waves rules the world." It has been a century now since Adm. Alfred Thayer Mahan, U.S. Navy, plied his great sea power thesis.Looking aft, it's solid history. But it's also a telescope to national policy today.Mahan's two volumes, "The Influence of Sea Power Upon History and Upon the French Revolution and Empire," spanned the great years of fighting sail, 1660-1812.In them he showed that the flag follows trade on a watery globe to insure national security and prosperity.

An excerpt from a Saturday New York Times editorial:The Clinton administration's decision to make methadonmore accessible to heroin users is a long-needed change in national policy.Gen. Barry McCaffrey, head of the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy, has proposed allowing physicians to administer methadone in their offices. Currently it is dispensed through clinics, limiting the number of people who can use this treatment. Only about 115,000 of the estimated 800,000 Americans addicted to opiates are participating in methadone maintenance programs.

Brushing aside reports of a lack of consensus among church leaders, Cardinal William H. Keeler returned to Baltimore last night from Rome expressing confidence that the U.S. bishops will adopt a "zero tolerance" policy toward sexually abusive clergy when the bishops meet in Dallas in June. Keeler, speaking on the steps of the Basilica of the Assumption, said the cardinals who traveled to Rome this week for an extraordinary Vatican summit on clergy sexual abuse returned with high-level assurances that the U.S. bishops' conference can adopt a strict national policy that will be binding on every diocese in the country.

WASHINGTON -- When sweeping aviation-noise legislation passed in the closing hours of the 101st Congress, citizen activists such as Tom Holland of Linthicum saw hope for residents living under the flight paths of a busy airport."

Last week, top Maryland Democrats announced their intention to make it more difficult to put statewide policy referenda on the ballot. The move is a clear response to Republicans' success last year in putting to referendum policy questions in the hope of achieving victories the GOP couldn't win in the legislature. The Republicans' ballot plans backfired, most notably the surprising approval by voters of same-sex marriage. But the Democrats, who dominate state politics thanks to large legislative majorities, took notice of the potential threat to their legislative monopoly.

PROMOTED WITH great fanfare almost two years ago, the idea of establishing a national energy strategy is dying a slow, agonizing death in Washington.A proposed policy was put forth earlier this year by Energy Secretary James Watkins. It was an abysmal effort. It said the country should steer a steady-as-she-goes course and rely on fossil fuels and a rejuvenated nuclear power industry in the coming decades. Alternative and renewable sources of energy were given short shrift.Now the proposal is in the clutches of Congress.

Last week, top Maryland Democrats announced their intention to make it more difficult to put statewide policy referenda on the ballot. The move is a clear response to Republicans' success last year in putting to referendum policy questions in the hope of achieving victories the GOP couldn't win in the legislature. The Republicans' ballot plans backfired, most notably the surprising approval by voters of same-sex marriage. But the Democrats, who dominate state politics thanks to large legislative majorities, took notice of the potential threat to their legislative monopoly.

The agreement reached Tuesday between Constellation Energy Group and EDF Group giving the French company full ownership of a proposed expansion of the Calvert Cliffs nuclear plant may have kept the project alive — but perhaps only barely. The episode certainly produced its share of international corporate drama, from Constellation's threat to exercise an option that would force EDF to buy the company's non-nuclear assets at an inflated price to EDF's effort to put a notorious shark (pardon, an aggressively inquisitive attorney)

I've spent my whole life living and often fishing along the Atlantic Seaboard. My most exciting experience was catching a 900-pound giant bluefin tuna off the coast of Massachusetts 10 years ago — an epic, 75-minute battle I'll never forget. So it bothers me that nearly all the fish I purchase for my seafood distribution company for Washington, D.C. -area restaurants must come from Alaska and the Pacific. But I only source seafood from healthy, sustainable fisheries, and the sad fact is most East Coast species are severely depleted.

WASHINGTON -- With 18 months left in his term, President Bush's ability to shape the country's agenda appears to be shriveling away. Republicans in Congress are joining Democrats in growing numbers in opposing Bush's most significant initiatives, from the war in Iraq to, most recently, an ambitious plan to overhaul the nation's immigration laws. As a result, success for the embattled president may increasingly be demonstrated less by enacting new proposals than in blocking efforts by Democrats in Congress to put their stamp on national affairs, Washington veterans say. Bush's aides have acknowledged that their strategy for asserting influence is shifting, in light of the harsh political realities he faces.

His name and title: Alex X. Mooney, Republican state senator from Maryland's 3rd District in Frederick and Washington counties. But the key part is the "X." It's short for Xavier, a middle name from his Cuban mother's side of the family. That single letter holds the key to Mr. Mooney's political ideology, fueled initially by fervent anti-communism and then kept going by his continuing idolization of Ronald Reagan. (A life-size sculpture of the 40th president graces the senator's legislative office in Annapolis.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush is delaying until January his planned report to the nation on the direction he and aides are charting for the United States in Iraq, the White House said yesterday, pointing to a need for continuing internal discussions of policy and tactical shifts. White House press secretary Tony Snow said Bush has "decided, frankly, it's not ready yet," even though most of the internal debates "have kind of been ironed out." Bush is in the midst of private discussions on how to overhaul the campaign to end the sectarian violence in Iraq.

GATHERED in a Northeast Baltimore parish hall recently to talk about the clergy sex abuse scandal, 165 parishioners of St. Matthew's Catholic Church couldn't wait to get started. They had plenty to say: Deal with allegations promptly. No more cover-ups. Address the problem from the top down. Educate parishioners on the demands of the priesthood. Hold leaders accountable to the laity. Tell us how this happened. Those concerns reflect many of the critical issues that make up a proposed national church policy to deal with the sexual abuse of children by clergy.

Suddenly "charrettes" are all the rage in North Baltimore, where a large community planning process is afoot, stretching across 35 neighborhoods that used to be worlds apart.From Waverly to Roland Park, Hampden to Remington, residents are gathering in forums under the name of the Greater Homewood Renaissance to discuss traffic patterns, schools, vacant houses and the need for more trees, bicycle lanes and police foot patrols."Although these 35 neighborhoods are very diverse, we share a lot of problems common throughout urban America," said Sarah Begus, a member of the Renaissance steering committee.

A consortium of large banks and major philanthropic institutions is pushing for a new national urban policy that stresses reliability in federal funding and flexibility in how the money is spent. In a letter last week to the White House and an accompanying statement, the group, known as Living Cities Inc., backed President Bush's proposal for the creation of a new challenge fund for revitalizing distressed communities as "exactly the right way to go." But it said the money should not come out of existing U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development funds, as the administration has suggested, and should be funded at higher than the recommended $200 million.