Nomination

U.S.House candidate Wendy Rosen shifted her attention to the general election Thursday after her opponent conceded the race for the Democratic nomination in Maryland's 1st District — ending the final disputed contest from last week's statewide primary. Rosen, a Cockeysville businesswoman, led Chestertown physician John LaFerla by 82 votes out of more than 25,000 cast after state election officials had counted most of the absentee and provisional ballots. The district includes portions of Baltimore, Carroll and Harford counties as well as the Eastern Shore.

Four players from last fall's top two varsity football teams were among 13 from Maryland schools nominated to play in the 2013 U.S. Army All-American Bowl. Gilman linebacker Micah Kiser and defensive lineman Henry Poggi and Calvert Hall defensive backs Delando Johnson and Kennedy Frazier have been nominated for the Jan. 5 game to be played in San Antonio. The four are among 400 nominees for 90 spots in the annual East-West game. Nine others were nominated from Maryland: Zach Bradshaw, wide receiver, Damascus; Stefon Colbert, wide receiver, Good Counsel; Kirk Garner, defensive back, Good Counsel; Kendall Fuller, defensive back, Good Counsel; Brendan Marshall, quarterback, Good Counsel; Marcus Newby, linebacker, Quince Orchard; Marcell Ngachie, linebacker, Good Counsel; Dorian O'Daniel, linebacker, Good Counsel; and Na'Ty Rodgers, offensive lineman, McDonough.

In a testy outburst over the weekend, President Bush dug in his heels on his nomination of Robert Gates to head that most shadowy and enigmatic mechanisms of American government, the Central Intelligence Agency.As a former head of the CIA himself, Bush no doubt knows what kind of person he wants in that job, but if we read the convoluted language of Washington correctly, Sen. Bob Dole is telling the president he should consider withdrawing the nomination in light of new revelations of deceit and lying to Congress at the top levels of the CIA. "If the president wants to pursue the nomination," said Dole, "then we should move very quickly."

For the 72 nd year, the area's most deserving unheralded football and girls basketball players will be honored at the McCormick Unsung Heroes Award Banquet Monday night at the Hunt Valley Inn. One male and one female will receive the 2012 Charles Perry McCormick Scholarships, which are valued at $36,000 over four years of college. The athletes - 112 seniors - come from 68 schools in Baltimore City, Baltimore County, the Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association and the Interscholastic Athletic Association of Maryland.

Maryland Republicans pushed Mitt Romney closer to the GOP presidential nomination Tuesday, giving the former Massachusetts governor a double-digit margin of victory on a day when he also won in Wisconsin and the District of Columbia. With the sweep, Romney now has more than half of the 1,144 delegates he needs to secure the nomination, and remains on pace to pick up the rest before the primaries end in June. "Thank you, Wisconsin!" he told supporters in that state. "And Maryland!

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WASHINGTON - Hillary Clinton's name will be placed into nomination at the Democratic National Convention later this month, ending months of speculation about how her candidacy -- and supporters - would be represented there. "I am convinced that honoring Sen. Clinton's historic campaign in this way will help us celebrate this defining moment in our history and bring the party together in a strong, united fashion," Barack Obama said in a statement issued jointly by their two press offices.

There is no reason to question whether Dr. Henry Foster deserves the high esteem in which he is held or that he could ably serve as surgeon general of the United States. The real problem with this nomination is political: The last thing the Clinton administration needs as it tries to deal with a hostile Congress is the prospect of mounting a nomination fight keyed to an issue as volatile as abortion.If President Clinton lacked a clue as to how difficult that fight would be, he got it Friday in the announcement from Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden, former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, that he would vote against Dr. Foster.

The bad news arrived on a cold January day in a phone call from Alexander Williams Jr., the Prince George's County state's attorney who had been nominated for a federal judgeship five months earlier.A committee of the powerful American Bar Association had found him not qualified, Mr. Williams told Silver Spring attorney Koteles Alexander. That rating could kill his nomination. Would Koteles help devise a strategy to push the nomination forward?Mr. Alexander, a partner of Alexander, Gebhardt, Aponte and Marks -- the largest minority-owned law firm on the East Coast -- knew little about the nomination process.

President George Bush nominated Delegate John R. Leopold, R-Pasadena, to the National Commission on Disabilities yesterday.Bush released the nomination to the national media while touring Chicago. Meanwhile, Leopold -- who is running against state Sen. Philip C.Jimeno, D-Brooklyn Park, for the state Senate seat in District 31 -- notified county newspapers.The 15-member Commission on Disabilities recommends new laws to the president and Congress, dealing with the disabled in the workplace and the hearing impaired as well as other issues concerning the handicapped.

The silence of the other shoe dropping pretty much describes the clamor that greeted the departure of Newt Gingrichfrom his overblown, self-centered fight for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. The man who vowed he would go all the way to the convention slinked away at a sparsely attended farewell news conference, with yet another offering of the ersatz erudition for which he is infamous, and with an ungracious quasi-endorsement of the man who whipped him, Mitt Romney. The coming election, Mr. Gingrich noted, "is not a choice between Mitt Romney and Ronald Reagan.

Rick Santorum's exit from the fight for the Republican presidential nomination was a belated recognition that he was outgunned by Mitt Romney's huge financial advantage. But the damage Mr. Santorum inflicted on the GOP brand in the process leaves Mr. Romney leading a divided party in which he remains an uncomfortable fit. The man who has oddly described himself to be "severely conservative" stands on the brink of nomination despite the party base's general coolness toward him and despite the divisions in its ranks that frustrated his efforts to nail down the nomination for so long.

U.S.House candidate Wendy Rosen shifted her attention to the general election Thursday after her opponent conceded the race for the Democratic nomination in Maryland's 1st District — ending the final disputed contest from last week's statewide primary. Rosen, a Cockeysville businesswoman, led Chestertown physician John LaFerla by 82 votes out of more than 25,000 cast after state election officials had counted most of the absentee and provisional ballots. The district includes portions of Baltimore, Carroll and Harford counties as well as the Eastern Shore.

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum's decision today to drop out of the presidential race leaves GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney with a clear path to his party's nomination but a rocky one to an eventual contest with President Barack Obama in the fall. Mr. Santorum, largely viewed as a fringe candidate until his surprising surge in the Iowa caucuses, has provided Mr. Romney with a much stiffer than expected challenge, and overcoming a strong competitor in the primaries has given the former Massachusetts governor an invaluable taste of the kind of battle he will face in the fall.

Spring art programs Registration is under way for the Howard County Arts Council's spring programs at the Howard County Center for the Arts, 8510 High Ridge Road in Ellicott City. The programs, for those ages 5 and older, are open to the public and begin the week of April 22. Classes range from one-day workshops to six-week classes. Registration and class listings are available at hocoarts.org. Information: 410-313-2787. Donations needed Books, records, DVDs, CDs and videos are needed for the annual media and book sale taking place at Shepherd of the Glen Lutheran Church, 14551 Burntwoods Road in Glenwood, Sept.

If this year's competition for the Republican presidential nomination were a real horserace rather than a figurative one, Mitt Romneywould be rounding the backstretch and heading for home. Only if he suffers the political equivalent of throwing a shoe or breaking a leg in the homestretch is he likely now to lose the race. The three remaining walking wounded -- Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul -- all avow their intentions to keep competing all the way to the convention in Tampa.

The integrity of both the Maryland state Senate and the Maryland judiciary are at stake today as the nomination of former Del. John S. Arnick comes up for an expected final vote in Annapolis. In our view, Mr. Arnick's undisputed displays of gender bias and his aggressive demeanor, especially toward women, make him ill suited for a seat on the District Court.Few members of the legislature have addressed the central issue: Mr. Arnick's fitness for serving as a judge. Instead, they have rallied around their longtime colleague, even using subtle forms of intimidation to keep women from coming forward to testify against the nominee.

Maryland's Republican voters, long marginalized in the selection of the president, may have contributed to the tipping point in the long and unpredictable GOP nominating process. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney won the Old Line State easily, along with neighboring Washington, D.C. That was no surprise; the relatively affluent, urbanized electorate here has been a strong Romney constituency from the beginning. But the number of delegates Mr. Romney cleared from those contests and from what another win in Wisconsin should mark the beginning of the end of the 2012 primaries and foretell a shift toward the broader debate that will take place before November's general election.

Cecil County voters Tuesday picked their first nominees for the office of county executive and for the first two seats on their new county council. They also voted to retain two of their sitting circuit court judges, rejecting the challenge to the judges posed by one of the county's state delegates. Voting was light, with more Republicans showing up to the polls than Democrats. The Democratic and Republican county executive nominees chosen Tuesday, who will square off in the November general election, are both women, which means the first person to hold the office of Cecil County Executive will be a female.