Nominee

That pop you may or may not have heard the other day was the bursting pipedream of a centrist presidential candidate outside the establishment parties. The organizers of a group calling itself Americans Elect decided to close shop after failing to find anyone who would qualify to be its standard-bearer in November. No one who met the group's eligibility requirements to become its presidential nominee was able to corral the threshold 10,000 endorsements needed from "delegates" in an online nationwide convention.

Twenty-four graduating high school student-athletes, representing Harford County's 12 senior classes, will be honored at the 28th Annual Al Cesky Scholarship Fund's (ACSF) awards banquet Wednesday at the Richlin Ballroom, beginning at 6 p.m. Tickets are $40 each, with a student price of $35. Call 410-838-6787 or visit http://www.alceskyscholarhsip.org for more information. Two of the scholarship winners, one male and one female, will receive scholarship awards amounting to $5,000 each from the ACSF to help defray the cost of their post-secondary education.

A city council subcommittee on Wednesday approved, 4-0, the nomination of Harry E. Black as Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's nominee for city finance director. The entire council must now vote on Black's nomination. During the hourlong hearing of the Executive Appointments committee, there were no speakers who voiced opposition to Black's nomination, despite the tumultuous three years Black spent as the top financial official in Richmond, Va. During that time, he oversaw the forced ejection of the school board from City Hall and was sued by the Richmond City Council.

The Tewaaraton Foundation, which is tasked with designating the Tewaaraton Award to the top male and female collegiate player, released its list of 25 nominees Friday night, and Loyola and Maryland each have two candidates on that list. The reigning national champion Greyhounds are represented by 2012 Tewaaraton finalist and senior attackman Mike Sawyer and senior long-stick midfielder Scott Ratliff. The Terps, who have been to the last two NCAA title games, boast senior long-stick midfielder Jesse Bernhardt and redshirt goalkeeper Niko Amato.

WASHINGTON -- The White House abruptly changed plans and decided not to send its nominee for surgeon general to Capitol Hill yesterday. Instead, it sent Vice President Al Gore to Tennessee with the nominee, Dr. Henry W. Foster Jr., to highlight the physician's work in combating teen-age pregnancy.The schedule shift was made after a meeting Sunday evening in which the White House officials responsible for shepherding the nomination through the Senate decided that they should lay more groundwork before dispatching Dr. Foster to confront his critics directly.

If last week's public hearing is any indication, the administration's latest nominees for the Ethics and Human Rights commissions -- unlike their predecessors -- will be confirmed by the County Council.Mary Lorette Lowe is County Executive Charles I. Ecker's second nominee for the human rights panel vacancy. Pierre G. Kieffer is Ecker's third nominee for the ethics opening. Both moved swiftly through theirconfirmation hearings Tuesday.The council found Ecker's first ethics nominee so unpalatable that it changed the legal criteria governing such appointments.

Local preservationists have challenged one of Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke's nominees to Baltimore's Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation, saying he lacks the qualifications to fill the position.David A. Portnoy, a history teacher and soccer coach at Gilman School, was nominated to succeed Loyola College history professor Jack Breihan, whose term expired in December.At a meeting of the City Council's Executive Appointments Committee yesterday, a member of Baltimore Heritage, a preservation advocacy group, argued that Mr. Portnoy does not have the required credentials.

WASHINGTON -- Defeated presidential nominees more often than not are regarded in this country the way Peter Finley Dunne's Mr. Dooley described the plight of being vice president: "It isn't a crime exactly. Ye can't be sint to jail f'r it, but it's a kind iv disgrace. It's like writin' anonymous letters."H.L. Mencken proposed in 1926 "a constitutional amendment providing that every unsuccessful aspirant for the presidency, on the day his triumphant rival is inaugurated, shall be hauled to the top of the Washington Monument and there shot, poisoned, stabbed, strangled and disemboweled and his carcass thrown into the Potomac."

Mayor Martin O'Malley's nominee to become city Housing Commissioner moved one step closer to confirmation yesterday. Paul T. Graziano, former director of the New York Housing Authority, met with the City Council's Executive Appointments Committee yesterday during an hourlong confirmation hearing when he addressed questions on issues from vacant housing to historic preservation. O'Malley chose Graziano to replace former Housing Commissioner Patricia J. Payne, who resigned in October. His nomination is expected to be approved by the council at its meeting Tuesday.

TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran's hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, suffered another defeat yesterday as Parliament rejected his third nominee for the sensitive leadership of the Oil Ministry. Mohsen Tassaloti, 51, a director of petrochemical development in southern Iran, received 77 of 254 votes cast. His opponents faulted him - as they did the other two nominees - for not having enough experience in the oil industry and for lacking the political influence to lead Iran's interest as the second-largest oil producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

The Tewaaraton Foundation today announced the Tewaaraton Award men's and women's nominees, including 2012 winners Katie Schwarzmann (Maryland) and Peter Baum (Colgate). Twenty-five women and 25 men were selected as nominees, from which 10 finalists (five women, five men) will be announced May 9. The winners will be honored May 30 at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian in Washington. On the men's side, five schools had two players nominated, including Albany (Lyle Thompson, Ty Thompson)

Thomas E. Perez, the former Maryland labor secretary nominated to lead the U.S. Department of Labor, faced pointed questions at his Senate confirmation hearing Thursday about whether politics influenced his decisions as the top civil rights attorney in the U.S. Justice Department. But the 51-year-old Takoma Park man, nominated last month by President Barack Obama, focused his testimony largely on the economy, faced questions on only a fraction of concerns Republicans have raised in recent weeks, and made no obvious missteps during the two-hour hearing.

On Thursday, the U.S. Senate will hold a confirmation hearing on Gina McCarthy, President Barack Obama's nominee to lead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Over her decades of public service, Ms. McCarthy has demonstrated a strong commitment to protecting public health with pragmatic solutions to our pollution challenges. In short, she has proved that she is a true public health champion. While Ms. McCarthy's most high-profile accomplishments came from her work strengthening and modernizing historic clean air standards to ensure that Americans will be able to breathe easier over the long term, she has dedicated her entire career to keeping kids safe from chemicals, ensuring we have clean and safe drinking water, and tackling the environmental health issues that really matter.

Carolyn Colvin, the former secretary of the state Department of Human Resources, became acting commissioner of the Woodlawn-based Social Security Administration on Thursday. President Barack Obama has not yet nominated a successor for Michael J. Astrue, the appointee of former President George W. Bush whose six-year term ended last month. Obama's nominee must be confirmed by the Senate. Colvin was deputy commissioner under Astrue and has also served as special assistant to Maryland's secretary of transportation.

The Oscar nominees for best picture owe a huge debt to books -- and the creativity of authors. Most of the top films are screen versions of tales that were woven by printed words (or digitized versions). That's not taking anything away from the writers who adapt a novel or work of non-fiction. I'm slogging my way through Victor Hugo's Les Miserables now, and it is a wonder that a hit musical and movie could be distilled from the sprawling 1800s. Here are other adaptations that join Les Mis in the best picture category: -- "Lincoln," drawn from " Team of Rivals" by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

Local film fans may have a leg up on the competition when it comes to their Oscar pools, thanks to the folks at the Maryland Film Festival and Chesapeake Film Festival. "Beasts of the Southern Wild," which enjoyed a long run at The Charles Theatre last year, received four nods among the Oscar nominations announced Thursday morning in Los Angeles. The film had its Baltimore premiere June 5 at MICA, before an audience culled from members of the Maryland Film Festival's Friends of the Festival program.

The nominee as Public Service Commission chairman would be walking into a job where millions of dollars in corporate revenues, the pocketbooks of citizens across the state and the political interests of Maryland's most powerful leaders are affected by his every decision. It's a situation he knows well. Gov. Martin O'Malley's nominee for the job, Steven B. Larsen, made his reputation as a fearless regulator four years ago when as Maryland insurance commissioner he rejected the conversion of CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield to a for-profit company, a deal that he argued shortchanged consumers in favor of lavish executive bonuses.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush offered no explicit endorsement yesterday of John McCain, the likely GOP presidential nominee, but he began to prepare the battlefield for the eventual nominee, calling on conservatives to put the primary campaign's feuds behind them. Speaking just after dawn to the annual meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference for the first - and final - time as president, Bush received a hero's welcome as he ticked off what he called the key differences between Democrats and Republicans.

President Barack Obama is expected to soon nominate a new head of the Social Security Administration, replacing an incumbent appointed by his predecessor, George W. Bush, but the White House is mum on who should take the helm at the agency, which faces voluminous backlogs, potential insolvency and a raft of critics. Social Security Commissioner Michael J. Astrue's six-year term expires Jan. 19. His successor must be confirmed by the Senate, in a process that Sen. Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat, expects will take a couple of months from the hearings to a vote.