Partisan Politics

WASHINGTON -- Presidential adviser Karl Rove and at least one other member of the White House political team were urged by the New Mexico Republican Party chairman to fire the state's U.S. attorney because of dissatisfaction in part with his failure to indict Democrats in a voter fraud investigation in the battleground election state. In an interview yesterday with McClatchy Newspapers, Allen Weh, the party chairman, said he complained in 2005 about then-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias to a White House liaison who worked for Rove and asked that he be removed.

WASHINGTON -- Leading Republican lawmakers clipped on their microphones in television studios around town yesterday to attack President Clinton for formally invoking executive privilege to block grand jury testimony of senior White House aides in the Monica Lewinsky inquiry.White House officials countered that the Republicans were playing partisan politics.Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott called Clinton's decision "a mistake" that would damage his credibility. "It looks like they are hiding something," the Mississippi Republican said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

A watchdog group has filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service claiming that West Baltimore's New Psalmist Baptist Church improperly engaged in partisan politics when it welcomed President Clinton and Gov. Parris N. Glendening this month.Officials from Americans United for the Separation of Church and State said the Nov. 1 service at New Psalmist, two days before Glendening was re-elected, was essentially a Democratic Party rally.Edward Smith Jr., an attorney for New Psalmist, said neither he nor the church has been informed by the IRS of any investigation.

WASHINGTON -- Like a John LeCarre spy story, the unraveling of Anthony Lake is a complicated tale.And yet, an increasingly familiar theme emerged at the end. Lake's nomination to head the CIA was done in, ultimately, by the Democratic fund-raising affair."

NO ISSUE FACING this nation is important enough to remove it from partisan politics. That's the message Senate Republicans send by blocking almost every nomination to fill a federal court vacancy made by President Clinton. They stall whether the nominee is liberal, conservative or moderate. The result is an overwhelmed court system with too few judges to handle the huge docket that stems from drug cases and civil suits.Mr. Clinton decried the partisan politics in his radio address Saturday, but he must share the blame for the judicial appointments morass.

Brunst-Bowen race: Who's really being unfair?If this were a lesson plan, it would be appropriate to entitle it, "How the radical left extremists try to control local politics through the print media."When I read Anne Haddad's coverage of the Carroll County school board race, I wonder who the Brunst and Bowen candidates are that she writes about. In one article, Jerry Brunst and I were tied to signs that turned out to be an individual's First Amendment protests against the same issues we object to. They were not illegal and permission had been given prior to their placement.

ABOARD THE SPIRIT OF THE 21st CENTURY -- President Clinton, riding the rails to the Democratic convention, yesterday launched his re-election campaign with full-throated, fist-waving whistle-stop speeches to huge crowds who stood in searing heat chanting in response: "Four more years!""Would you take a U-turn if you were going in the right direction?" Clinton asked a crowd of more than 15,000 in Huntington, W.Va., just before boarding the train. "No!" the crowd answered.Putting aside his Rose Garden strategy -- and any pretext of being above partisan politics -- the president criticized the tax cut plan of Republican candidate Bob Dole, made a point of sticking up for his wife, and at each stop ticked off the litany of legislation and economic statistics achieved during his first term.

Someone built a speed bump in the middle of the information superhighway.It's not clear who the culprit was, but there are plenty of candidates. The effort to bring federal regulation of the rapidly transforming telecommunications industry has been slowed. So, inevitably, will innovation in bringing the fruits of the electronic revolution to the homes of U.S. consumers.A bill to revise the 60-year-old federal communications law was ,, one of the most thoroughly studied and heavily lobbied measures in this Congress.

ANNAPOLIS -- The avowedly non-partisan Maryland League of Women Voters was accused yesterday of crossing the line into partisan politics by participating in a pro-abortion rights event with the Clinton/Gore campaign."

The thing that gives some people the willies about the Rev. Dana Walter Collett is not so much what the self-proclaimed conservative doesbut what he says.Collett, 37, refuses to alter his Southern Baptist idiom when he addresses people outside his congregation.So when County Executive Charles I. Ecker nominated him to the county human rights commission, several people complained that Collett's strong expression of his religious convictions crossed the barrier between church and state.Some opposed Collett's nomination because his congregation put blue and pink crosses on the church lawn to represent the number of abortions in Maryland.

Partisan politics has ruined racing If I were a civics professor, I could not find a better example of partisan politics for my students than the slots/race track debacle ("Md. tracks on auction block," March 6). In all four years of his one-term tenure, Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., a Republican governor facing a Democratic-controlled legislature, fought to get a slots bill passed to help bail an anemic Maryland thoroughbred industry and to fund the Thornton education law. In each legislative session he hit a Democratic leadership stonewall and slots went nowhere.

Washington - Think of Barack Obama's political organization as a Maserati, a luxury, high-performance vehicle that lapped the competition this year. The president-elect hasn't indicated precisely what he'll do with his baby, which he's called, perhaps accurately, the best ever built. One thing he's unlikely to do is put it away in the garage for the next four years. Modern presidents typically shut their campaigns down, bring their political advisers into the government and run their political operations out of the White House and national party headquarters in Washington.

Electoral fraud isn't just partisan politics The Baltimore Sun's editorial concerning ACORN and the allegations that it has engaged in voter fraud described these allegations as overblown or the product of Republican or right-wing hysteria ("Crying wolf," Oct. 13). That same day, new reports of ACORN's apparent attempts to submit fraudulent registrations were revealed, including multiple registrations of individuals and the registration of fictitious persons ("ACORN defends sign-ups; GOP lawmakers seeks probe," Oct. 15)

Two months ago, NAACP board member Alice Huffman played a pivotal role in a Democratic National Committee meeting that paved the way for Sen. Barack Obama to clinch the party's presidential nomination. Obama's historic victory - the first for a black candidate - has been celebrated as a civil rights milestone. But when the Illinois senator takes the stage at the NAACP's annual convention in Cincinnati next week, Huffman and other board members of the nation's oldest civil rights organization will not be endorsing him. As a tax-exempt nonprofit, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is forbidden to engage in partisan politics.

WASHINGTON -- Presidential adviser Karl Rove and at least one other member of the White House political team were urged by the New Mexico Republican Party chairman to fire the state's U.S. attorney because of dissatisfaction in part with his failure to indict Democrats in a voter fraud investigation in the battleground election state. In an interview yesterday with McClatchy Newspapers, Allen Weh, the party chairman, said he complained in 2005 about then-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias to a White House liaison who worked for Rove and asked that he be removed.

Senate Republicans accused a State Board of Elections officer yesterday of providing information to Democrats to bolster their case for overturning the governor's vetoes on voting bills. Democrats called the charge an example of partisan politics. Sen. Alan H. Kittleman, who represents parts of Carroll and Howard counties, blamed the director of candidacy and campaign finance at the elections board for offering "talking points" to a member of Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller's staff.

Maryland's two oldest living former governors decried the current high level of partisanship in Annapolis during a panel discussion yesterday hosted by a leading state business group. Marvin Mandel and Comptroller William Donald Schaefer said the state capital is far different from when they served as governors from 1969-1979 and 1987-1995, respectively. "Partisan politics is changing Maryland. There's no doubt about it. It's descending on us from Washington," said Mandel, 85, speaking to business leaders and General Assembly members at a breakfast meeting of Maryland Business for Responsive Government.

BOSTON - There are few phrases in the book of parenting that raise more suspicions among the young than the pronouncement that "I am doing this for your own good." It comes in a close second only to the declaration, "This is going to hurt me more than it will you." In this spirit of skepticism, I have been stalking President Bush's remarks about Social Security. My list starts with the State of the Union address, when Mr. Bush exhorted us to "do what Americans have always done and build a better world for our children and our grandchildren."

WASHINGTON - With regard to who did what before Sept. 11, 2001, or the wisdom of going to war in Iraq, Americans need to get a grip and deal with reality. Our nation does not need and cannot risk more partisan politics. Instead, we need increased protection and long-term solutions before a more lethal attack is visited upon us. Sideshows, finger-pointing, egos and political hacks are delaying the increased protection and solutions our nation demands. Enough is enough. We need to deal with facts and reality and cast aside destructive partisan politics.

A watchdog group has filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service claiming that West Baltimore's New Psalmist Baptist Church improperly engaged in partisan politics when it welcomed President Clinton and Gov. Parris N. Glendening this month.Officials from Americans United for the Separation of Church and State said the Nov. 1 service at New Psalmist, two days before Glendening was re-elected, was essentially a Democratic Party rally.Edward Smith Jr., an attorney for New Psalmist, said neither he nor the church has been informed by the IRS of any investigation.