Party Members

George Aloysius Meyers, a member for six decades of the Communist Party of the United States who spent 38 months during the 1950s in a federal reformatory for advocating the violent overthrow of the government under the anti-communist Smith Act, died in his sleep Monday at Sinai Hospital. He was 86.Mr. Meyers, a longtime Northeast Baltimore resident who was still a member of the national board of the party, spent a lifetime working for civil rights and job equality.He was chairman of the party in Maryland and the District of Columbia at the time of his celebrated 1951 trial as a "second-string communist official."

It's the kind of power play that crops up when voters aren't paying close attention. The Republicans Harford County elected to the Maryland House of Delegates have introduced a legislative measure that would give them standing in certain matters that are decided by the county's Republican Central Committee. Ordinarily, it's the kind of move that has all the significance of re-arranging the deck furniture on a ship that isn't in any danger whatsoever. The reality of local politics is that the county central committees have rather limited roles in matters of public policy.

WASHINGTON -- Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that, if correctly decided, will strengthen First Amendment freedoms of speech and association, and demonstrate that much of John McCain's strength in the primaries resulted from state election laws inimical to those freedoms. The question at issue is whether California's "blanket" primary abridges the freedom of individuals to associate in political parties that serve as their right to express their chosen philosophies.

Leaders in the Maryland Republican Party are promoting the recent win in the Annapolis mayoral race as evidence the GOP can secure victories in Democratic strongholds. Upbeat party members gathered Saturday in the state capital for their fall convention. Some said upsets such as the city mayor's race could be repeated if the party is strategic and can devise ways to reach communities whose voters usually cast ballots for Democrats. "We have to be aggressive, and we may have to do some things that we're not comfortable with as a party to win," Senate Minority Leader David Brinkley of Frederick County told the crowd of 250. "We do have a bright future, and we may have to employ some strategies that we haven't looked at before.

U.S. AUTHORITIES recently appointed former Baath Party leaders to help rebuild Iraq. Shortly afterward, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld announced that senior Baath Party members would not be allowed to retain positions of authority in the new Iraqi administration. The assumption is that, in time, people will step forward, identify appointees who were Baath Party members and those appointees will be removed. There are risks in such assumptions. At the end of World War II, in a similar effort to rebuild a defeated enemy country, U.S. officials released Nazi Party members from prison.

Richard D. Bennett, a Baltimore lawyer who put the Maryland Republican Party on solid financial footing in the last year, announced yesterday he is stepping down as chairman after the presidential election in November. Bennett, a moderate who has led the state GOP for just over a year, said he needed to devote more time to his law practice. "My plate is getting fuller and fuller and fuller," he said. "Increasingly, I've realized that something's got to give." Republican Party leaders were surprised by the announcement, which was faxed to many of them yesterday, and they praised his leadership.

WASHINGTON -- Trouble may be brewing for Pat Buchanan in his drive for the presidential nomination of the Reform Party, with old party members growing increasingly resentful about his tactics in attempting to take control of the party and, they charge, revamp its focus and purpose. An effort at last weekend's California Reform Party convention to tie Mr. Buchanan's hands on the vice-presidential nominee and on the party's agenda, under the threat of disaffiliation from the national party, fell short.

SHENZHEN, China -- The life of an official in China's closed political system can be anxious and uncertain. Anyone who doubts that should stride up the initial flight of nine steps leading into the courthouse in Shenzhen. The courthouse used to have 11 steps. Two were removed. Workers also broadened the stairway and placed two fierce ceremonial stone lions at another entrance. The reasons for the redesign haven't been made public. But news reports suggest that agitated officials wanted to halt a run of bad luck, including the jailing of three judges for corruption.

LONG BEACH, Calif. -- Ross Perot launches his second bid for the presidency today at the first of an unorthodox two-part convention of his fledgling Reform Party, a gathering that is likely to be more a coronation of the Texas billionaire than a political race.Former Colorado Gov. Richard D. Lamm, until recently a ex-Democrat, is challenging Perot for the Reform Party's nomination, though the tycoon created the party and continues to finance and run it.Perot is a far less potent political force than he was four years ago, when, after spending more than $60 million of his own money to run as an independent, he won 19 percent of the vote.

MOSCOW - The small group of young political activists had scarcely arrived at the imposing Uzbek Embassy, where they planned an unsanctioned protest, when police swooped in. Apparently tipped off, scowling officers with Moscow's Rapid Reaction Force methodically hauled off 10 National Bolsheviks. The leader, Olga Shalina, who wears a lapel pin depicting a hand grenade, finished only half of her prepared statement before she was dragged away. "Out with tyrants!" she shouted. "Revolution!"

Your recent editorial on Congress and the federal budget was typical of The Sun blasting the GOP ( "Budget battle rejoined," Sept. 12). President Obama hasn't yet proposed a single balanced budget, nor has he proposed one item of the Bowles-Simpson task force. But he gets no blame whatsoever. The tea party representatives in Congress were voted in by their constituents, just like the socialists in Maryland. So they too have to be in tune with their voters, whether you like it or not. In the future, please look at both sides of the discussion.

I sighed when I read J. Nelson's letter ("Obama using bin Laden's death for political purposes," May 10). The accusation that President Obama is politicizing the death of Bin Laden is absurd. The president is a politician, and thus every act in an official capacity is political in some respect. It has been this way since George Washington's time. Since we all know this, then the accusation can't really mean that it's politicized, but rather something else, such as perhaps that the president shouldn't mention it after the fact because it gives him some sort of unfair advantage politically to do so or maybe even that he wouldn't have done it if he didn't think there was political gain in it for him. I don't think any sane American would conclude that the president would allow bin Laden to run around free, taking pot shots at the United States, targeting places like Washington where the president's children go to school.

Simmering tensions among Maryland Republicans have boiled over into a public brawl with leading GOP officers and members of the General Assembly openly clashing with Chairman James Pelura over the party's future. The disagreements - dubbed Pelurapalooza by the popular conservative blog Red Maryland - escalated this week when state party officers called for a meeting with Pelura to explain his actions, including why he sought the resignation of the party's executive director, Justin Ready, on Monday.

BAGHDAD -- The Iraqi parliament passed a bill yesterday to allow some former officials from Saddam Hussein's party to apply for government positions, in the first of the so-called political benchmark measures to pass after months of U.S. pressure for progress. The measure, which is expected to be approved to become law by the presidential council, was described by its backers as opening the door for the reinstatement of thousands of low-level Baath Party members barred from office after the U.S. invasion in 2003.

SHENZHEN, China -- The life of an official in China's closed political system can be anxious and uncertain. Anyone who doubts that should stride up the initial flight of nine steps leading into the courthouse in Shenzhen. The courthouse used to have 11 steps. Two were removed. Workers also broadened the stairway and placed two fierce ceremonial stone lions at another entrance. The reasons for the redesign haven't been made public. But news reports suggest that agitated officials wanted to halt a run of bad luck, including the jailing of three judges for corruption.

WASHINGTON -- For evidence of the struggle among Democrats on the best way forward in Iraq, look no further than Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Steny H. Hoyer, the party's top House leaders, whose personal ties and Maryland roots run deep. Since the debate began, more than three years ago, over whether to go to war, the two have disagreed: He voted for the war, while she argued vehemently against it. Now, as Democrats grapple with the political strategy and the policy questions surrounding how to end the conflict, they are again presiding over different factions of their party.

A leadership feud in the Maryland Democratic Party is expected boil over tonight with a formal request by some ranking party members, backed by Gov. William Donald Schaefer, for the resignation of Chairman Nathan Landow.Citing what he called "great dissatisfaction" among party members with the way Landow has run his office, Schaefer said it is time for the wealthy Bethesda real estate developer to step down.But Landow supporters, including some top General Assembly leaders, are preparing to come to his defense as the party Central Committee meets tonight in Annapolis.

WASHINGTON -- Patrick J. Buchanan's expected bid for the Reform Party's presidential nomination has sparked testy feuds and conspiracy theories across this party, as some members worry that the candidate will blot out their agenda and out-muscle the party faithful to secure his nomination.At the same time, an equally vocal group of Reform Party members sees Buchanan as their ticket out of obscurity -- and believe that the man who logged all those television hours excoriating liberals and Washington politics-as-usual has finally found a home.

This is the strangest good news to come out of Iraq in quite a while: Three of the most virulently anti-American political parties agreed yesterday to band together to increase their chances of success. Washington was thrilled. Thrilled because it means these parties, which represent Sunni Arabs, are serious about trying to achieve their objectives through politics rather than joining in the street-fighting - for now, anyway. Iraqi leaders declared Tuesday that the new constitution had been approved in this month's referendum - despite overwhelming Sunni opposition - and that sets in motion elections for a new parliament, to be held in December.

MOSCOW - The small group of young political activists had scarcely arrived at the imposing Uzbek Embassy, where they planned an unsanctioned protest, when police swooped in. Apparently tipped off, scowling officers with Moscow's Rapid Reaction Force methodically hauled off 10 National Bolsheviks. The leader, Olga Shalina, who wears a lapel pin depicting a hand grenade, finished only half of her prepared statement before she was dragged away. "Out with tyrants!" she shouted. "Revolution!"