Obscenity

Gov. Parris N. Glendening's inaugural parties may not have cost taxpayers one dime, but Maryland businesses and lobbyists paid a pretty penny for them. The governor's inaugural committee raised about $1 million to pay for the ball last night at the Baltimore Convention Center and a pre-inaugural cocktail party Sunday in College Park, according to an incomplete list of contributors. More than $850,000 of that will cover expenses for the parties, with any money left over going to Maryland charities, officials said.

Resentment toward the visiting Indianapolis Colts and the Irsay family ran high among the sellout crowd at Camden Yards yesterday.A group of fans seated in the lower concourse in front of the press box sported T-shirts with a derisive message directed at Robert Irsay, the late owner. The shirts also depicted a Raven urinating on the gravestone of Irsay, who died in January 1997.Things got more personal in the second half, when fans discovered that current Colts owner Jim Irsay and president Bill Polian were seated in the press box. Several fans turned around, repeatedly held up their shirts and waved at them, while throwing in a few obscene gestures for good measure.

IF A STORE sold snacks instead of dirty magazines and movies, county government would have no trouble telling it where to operate. But because magazines and movies involve constitutionally protected activity -- that is, speech and expression -- government can become mired in legal thickets while trying to limit where these establishments can do business.In 1991-1992, Anne Arundel County passed zoning legislation to limit the proliferation of adult bookstores and peep shows and to restrict them to industrial and commercial areas.

Baltimore County is about to tighten control over jail telephones to prevent inmates from making random -- and sometimes obscene -- calls to the outside world.Inmates are allowed to use 76 telephones in the detention center system with a recording that informs recipients that they are getting a collect call from the jail, and how to accept or reject it.But the system has a loophole, a window of opportunity lasting a few seconds in which inmates are supposed to identify themselves -- but can also spout profanity to an unsuspecting person already shocked to be getting a collect call from jail.

BETHESDA -- Greg Norman is used to making headlines as the world's No. 1 ranked golfer, but after the last few days, can the supermarket tabloids be far behind? First there was the verbal confrontation Saturday with one of the starters at last week's Kemper Open. Then there was the obscene gesture Norman allegedly made toward a fan during Sunday's final round.And, oh yes, he took his family to the White House to visit President Clinton and purchased a jet plane for a reported $64 million.

A city councilwoman is demanding an apology from the head of the police union after he reportedly called her an obscenity last night outside a City Hall hearing on alleged racism in the Police Department.Councilwoman Sheila Dixon, who was told of the alleged remark by police spokesman Sam Ringgold after the hearing, said she would seek Officer Gary McLhinney's banishment from the City Council hearing room if an apology is not forthcoming.But McLhinney, who said he was offended by Dixon's comments linking racism and the Fraternal Order of Police, denied making the disparaging statement and accused the city police spokesman of spreading "bold-faced lies."

AH! THE PIETY of it all. As the most heavily financed election ($1.6 billion) in history draws to its close, the voters are treated to the spectacle of Bill Clinton and Bob Dole pleading for campaign finance reform. It comes close to the old joke of "stop me before I kill." Only worse. These are two politicians who have made a killing in their last race for public office and now propose that the cops move in on their successors.True to form, President Clinton is more brazen and Senator Dole more clumsy in trying to deal with the only issue that is making a real impact on fed-up voters.

WASHINGTON -- A computer hacker vandalized the home page of the Department of Justice on Friday night, posting obscenities and anti-government graffiti, a department official said yesterday.The Justice Department's site on the World Wide Web was shut down early yesterday after members of the public called to report the electronic break-in, said a department spokesman, Joe Krovisky.The site will remain shut while the department's technical experts assess its security, he said.Krovisky said the system the hacker broke into was separate from the department's internal computer system, which contains highly sensitive information about criminal cases and investigations.

WASHINGTON -- On June 11, three judges in Philadelphia struck down parts of the Communications Decency Act. The decision, ACLU v. Reno, is being justly celebrated as an occasion for dancing in the chat rooms. The three judges understood how the old First Amendment battles are being overtaken by new technologies; and in an endearingly self-dramatizing touch, they had their separate opinions distributed on floppy disks.But for all their sophistication about the technical difficulties of regulating free speech in cyberspace, the judges were forced by the Supreme Court's archaic obscenity doctrine to rely on an implausible premise: that it's possible to distinguish obscenity (which can be banned)

An ejection from a game last week proved costly yesterday for Washington Bullets forward Juwan Howard, who was fined $5,000 by the league for making an obscene gesture as he was leaving the court.It was the second fine of the season leveled against Howard, who was docked $12,000 and suspended for one game for fighting with then-Miami Heat guard Bimbo Coles on Jan. 17."I'll abide by the rules," Howard said before last night's game in Salt Lake City. He declined to comment further.The recent fine resulted from an incident that began after Howard fouled out of Friday night's loss to Charlotte after being called for his second offensive foul.