Party Line

NAGANO, Japan -- U.S. forward Lisa Brown-Miller can remember in 1991 when the women's national hockey team did not even own matching sweat suits.Ancient history, folks.Today, the team is sponsored by Nike.The number of females playing hockey in the United States has more than quadrupled since '91. And last night, when defenseman Sue Merz glanced at the ice before a faceoff, she saw the Olympic rings under her feet."It's almost beyond comprehension," forward A. J. Mleczko said after America's 5-0 victory over China.

Roscoe Bartlett is a Maryland original. The state's only Republican in Congress is a charter member of the House tea party caucus. Yet he boasts that he's personally directed more than half a billion dollars in earmarked federal spending, much of it to his district, which sprawls from the banks of the Susquehanna in the east to the West Virginia border. His conservative voting record tracks the party line, but he broke with President George W. Bush and almost sounds like a liberal in criticizing U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.

This year's election will be the third and last based on County Council district lines drawn a decade ago by a party line, 3-2 vote won by council Democrats after the last federal census, and Republicans say they want to "take back the county" this year so they can redraw the lines themselves. That issue became clear at a fundraiser September 16 for Republican Robert L. Flanagan. The candidate — former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s transportation secretary — is hoping to replace Democrat Courtney Watson as the council member for District 1, covering Ellicott City and Elkridge.

A fellow who needed money for an operation walked into the American Political Items Collectors (APIC) convention in Anaheim, Calif., last August with a couple of old campaign buttons to see what he could get for them. The convention was called to order over the public address system and, in keeping with an APIC tradition, the buttons were auctioned, right then and there. One was an extremely rare button picturing John W. Davis and his running mate, Charles Bryan, the 1924 Democratic candidates.

The event was pegged as the first major debate among GOP presidential hopefuls in 2012, but Monday night's gathering turned out to be less a clash of competing ideas than a rote recital of hoary political nostrums that Republican primary voters have made a litmus test of ideological purity. The candidates dutifully repeated the mantra of tax cuts and touted their conservative credentials on social issues such as abortion, gay rights and immigration. But there was little real passion in the give-and-take, which by the end of the event seemed more like polite dinner-party chatter than a discussion of matters of grave national import.

*TC PERESTROIKA, the slogan Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev used to describe his economic program, means "to rebuild."Nonetheless, Gorbachev's economic policies mostly involved tearing down the country's centralized planning system -- and not replacing it.That's the major reason the Soviet economy has done so poorly in recent years. And that performance is one of the major causes of Gorbachev's removal from power Monday.The Soviet economy "is in a no man's land," says Edward P. Lazear, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and an economics professor at the University of Chicago Business School.

ASK CAROL L. Hirschburg if she knows most of Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s appointments to the state judicial nominating commissions, and the Republican party strategist will tell you no. That's a good thing because it signals that political affiliation wasn't the key consideration in determining who will screen and recommend judicial candidates. Mr. Ehrlich's predecessor, Parris N. Glendening, kept Maryland's judiciary firmly in Democratic hands -- so much so that qualified Republicans saw no reason to apply for judgeships, critics say. Two years ago, a survey by a Republican Party lawyer found that only 8 percent of the 144 judges appointed by Mr. Glendening were Republicans.

Mary Ann Saar, Maryland's public safety secretary, said it again last week at a breakfast honoring both ex-offenders who find their way into the mainstream working world and the companies that have the guts to hire them: "This is not a liberal issue. This is not a conservative issue. This is not a Republican issue. It is not a Democratic issue. This is a common-sense issue that will serve all of us. " The issue is corrections reform: putting corrections back into corrections after decades of mindlessly warehousing criminals - particularly, nonviolent offenders and drug addicts - at great expense.

In a state that consistently ranks among the nation's most dangerous, former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and Gov. Martin O'Malley defy partisan stereotypes in their approaches to crime. O'Malley, the Democrat, describes public safety as "the foundation of everything," and his zero-tolerance arrest policy as mayor of Baltimore helped to position him as a law-and-order candidate for governor four years ago. Ehrlich, the Republican, likes to remind voters of the controversial policy, which critics say resulted in the arrests of innocent people, and which was particularly unpopular with the African-American voters both campaigns covet.

Glenelg High School teacher James P. Mundy would rather not spend class time coordinating fund-raising efforts, but he says it's necessary if his school is to have enough computers to teach students technological skills for the future.That's just one reason the Democratic state Senate candidate says funneling taxpayers' money to private schools through tax credits or other schemes is "irresponsible" and a "knee-jerk reaction" to the public schools' problems."To take away money from public schools to subsidize private schools -- to teach the best and forget the rest -- is not only ethically, but fiscally, irresponsible," said Mr. Mundy, a former Howard teachers union president.