Policy

Bond Street Social has reversed a policy to restrict admission to those over 23 after 10 p.m.,  the new Fells Point lounge and restaurant said today. Earlier : Can Bond Street Social restrict admission based on age? No, in short. Bond Street Social, the new bar and restaurant in Fells Point, has been open now for a week, and seems to be pulling in big crowds. It's a change of pace for the space, which its previous owners, DuClaw Brewing Company , had complained suffered from sluggish business.

Former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. is right to be disturbed by the Obama administration's flawed Middle East policy ("As Mideast burns, Obama fiddles," Sept. 30). Arab nations that formerly had governments that may not have been friendly but at least tolerated the U. S. now have rulers who mostly represent the Muslim Brotherhood and an agenda that is not only anti-democratic but anti-American. An even more serious foreign-policy failing in that region is the current administration's ambivalence and ambiguity regarding the security of Israel.

As much as I respect Dan Rodricks ' work as a columnist, his recent article castigating President Barack Obama for FEMA's decision to deny relief to Worcester and Dorchester counties was curiously conspiratorial ("No hurricane relief, and no good reason," Dec. 6). One would expect Mr. Rodricks to be knowledgeable about the Federal Emergency Management Agency's mandate and the damage thresholds that trigger eligibility for relief. For him to suggest that President Obama would personally direct or deny relief to any community based on political considerations is disappointing and uncharacteristic of Mr. Rodricks' body of work.

As an American taxpayer who has watched our country shell out trillions in the Middle East, I wondering if that region would have been better off without our meddling ( "Obama and the Arab spring" May 20). For example and close to home , the Maryland Army National Guard is in Egypt, and our National Guard is also involved in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. America has been bombing Libya (under a NATO umbrella); we're asking the leader of Yemen to "step down," and we've imposed sanctions against Syria's President Assad.

It's hard not to be disappointed by the sensationalist Sun editorial, "Partying on the city's dime" (March 29). We can all agree that no one should be gambling or drinking on the job and that anyone found doing so during work hours should be reprimanded immediately. The Sun's suggestion that the problem could be avoided by denying employment to applicants with criminal records is not only misguided, it wouldn't even solve the problem it seeks to address. The Sun makes a scapegoat of those who had a criminal background even when about half of those involved had no prior convictions.

The Orioles have not yet set a policy on tickets for games at Camden Yards that end up wiped out by a players' strike. The club says it will announce a policy after a strike occurs.

Paris.--President Clinton will not improve his own or his country's standing by giving speeches during this European trip on the old and platitudinous subjects of allied solidarity. Nor is it a good sign that the president thinks his foreign-policy difficulties are to be solved by ''doing a better job of communicating.''It surely is obvious to anyone not part of Mr. Clinton's inner circle that the administration's problem is one of bad policy or lack of policy, not presentation. A series of fiascoes has occurred -- Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, China, North Korea.

PARIS -- We now see the disadvantages of a foreign policy driven by electoral considerations, developed from focus groups and public-opinion polls. Put another way, the chickens are coming home to roost.They arrive from the Eastern Mediterranean in general, Kurdistan in particular, and from Bosnia, Russia, Western Europe and Cuba. Policies conceived to please interest groups in the United States are producing good poll results for presidential candidate Bill Clinton, but negative results for the United States.

Millions of people in the path of Friday's powerful storm knew what was coming and braced for the worst. Many hunkered down in their basements, warned by meteorologists who had tracked the storm over 600 miles as it gathered speed and strength and drew a bead on the Mid-Atlantic. But just outside Annapolis, the Maryland Transportation Authority never considered temporarily closing the Bay Bridge, because an instrument atop the bridge was recording winds around 30 mph in the minutes before the storm.

An excerpt of a Friday Los Angeles Times editorial: FOR nearly 40 years, U.S. policy toward Cuba has failed to achieve its stated goal of overthrowing Fidel Castro through an embargo on trade and tourism.Relations between Washington and Havana have been iced since Fidel Castro's revolution broke the powerful U.S. influence on the island nation. President John F. Kennedy imposed a total embargo on Cuba in 1962. Once uncomfortable neighbors, the two countries became implacable enemies.More recently, in 1992, Congress passed the Cuban Democracy Act, which prohibited U.S.-owned or -controlled subsidiaries located abroad from doing business with Cuba.