Political Parties

Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler's opinion concerning the voting rights of 17-year-olds is a welcome return to sensibility. The political parties have long enjoyed the right to determine how to select their nominees for office. And for decades in Maryland, teens who turn 18 before the general election have had the right to vote in the primary - even if they're only 17 at the time. How did 17-year-olds suddenly lose this right? It was the result of an unfortunate chain of events starting with last year's Court of Appeals decision striking down the state's recently enacted early voting law. The court's new interpretation of the state constitution applied general election standards to primaries.

CLAREMONT, N.H. -- The picture of Republican John McCain and Democrat Bill Bradley shaking hands on cam paign finance reform has far less to do with the issue of political money than with each of their campaigns in the Feb. 1 New Hampshire presi dential primary.The target group is made up of 274,927 citizens of New Hampshire who have registered as independ ents, thus for the first time outnumbering the 265,679 Repub licans as well as the 197,816 Demo crats.Indeed, it is probably not extrav agant to say that the independents have the potential to play a deci sive role in both party primaries if they show up in the expected num bers.

With total fund raising for the 2000 election expected to top $3 billion, the Senate began consideration yesterday of a new proposal to overhaul the nation's campaign finance system. The House of Representatives recently approved a measure designed to curb the influence of big money in politics. And political reform is becoming a hot issue in the presidential campaign trail.Throughout the decade of the '90s, campaign finance has been fought over in Washington almost every year. But the result has been a legislative stalemate and widespread confusion over the terms of the debate.

MOSCOW -- A Russian political boss, sitting down in seclusion to put together his party's list of candidates for December's parliamentary elections, scratches his head and seeks that perfect blend that spells success. He wants a few candidates who bring celebrity to the ticket, perhaps a general or two, a couple of women, a Jew or a Muslim -- and then a trainload of others who might be thought of as the paying passengers.Political parties here typically make ends meet by selling slots on their lists of candidates.

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- Never underestimate the ability of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to turn an international crisis to his domestic advantage.With his country on the brink of NATO airstrikes to end the standoff in the Serbian province of Kosovo, Milosevic and his supporters have moved to quash dissent in the past week even more so than normally.They have closed independent radio stations, outlawed the rebroadcast of foreign news, ordered newspapers to withhold publishing "defeatist" articles and even threatened to ban some political parties in the event of airstrikes.

LONDON -- Now, the hardest bargaining can begin.That was the message behind British Prime Minister Tony Blair's dramatic entry into the Northern Ireland peace process yesterday as he flew to Belfast after the province's largest Protestant party -- the Ulster Unionists -- rejected an outline of an agreement to end decades of violence."

LONDON -- Northern Ireland's sputtering peace process was dealt another blow yesterday when a political party with links to an outlawed band of Protestant gunmen walked out of all-party talks designed to end decades of violence.But the blow was not considered fatal. "There are no prospects whatsoever of the talks collapsing," said Irish Foreign Minister David Andrews.The Ulster Democratic Party left the talks before it was shoved out, as tempers continued to flare over a post-Christmas wave of bloodshed in Northern Ireland that has left 10 men dead, including eight Roman Catholics.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Acknowledging that it may have gone far outside the law in granting a blanket amnesty to top officials of South Africa's ruling government, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission said yesterday that it would submit its decision to a court for review.vTC The amnesty, granted last month to 37 leaders of the African National Congress, including Deputy President Thabo Mbeki, immediately drew fire from South Africa's other political parties.They pointed out that the amnesty was unlike any other issued by the commission.

THE POLITICAL SCANDAL in our midst isn't the president's "Old South" definition of what constitutes sexual relations.Naturally, seven months of ad nauseam television coverage would make it seem that way.It's all Zippergate this, White-House-under-fire that. Presidency-in-crisis here. Monica's-stained-dress there.The nation is consumed with sex -- and in denial.We say we don't want to know about Bill Clinton's White House intern adventure, yet we're hooked on "all Monica, all the time" TV.Then there's the barrage of "pop" sex TV coverage, the so-called culture war's sexual battles.

BY THE TIME the U.S. Senate finishes burying campaign finance reform efforts for the year -- perhaps as early as this week -- there should be little difficulty separating the reformers from the defenders of the corrupting system that now rules national politics.The reformers are the ones vigorously pushing for passage of the McCain-Feingold bill to ban unlimited donations to political parties and curb the influence of special-interest advocacy commercials -- which are not subject to contribution limits, either.

Washington - Political parties aren't human beings. You can't hook them to a machine and check their vital signs. But when a party goes brain dead, it's usually easy to tell. These days, clues are everywhere that Republicans are fresh out of ideas. Blaming the messenger or saying the problem is simply a failure to communicate are classic indicators that a party lacks a pulse. Those excuses were prominent lines the other day when the senior Republican in the land, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, addressed party leaders.

The election's over; should political parties be over too? Is it time to junk the D's and the R's after politicians' names, and all the baggage that comes with them? How meaningful and relevant are candidates' political parties anymore? When a New England Republican can be more progressive than a Texas Democrat, when millions regard themselves as independents and occupy the takeout-menu middle on political issues, why do we need to belong to parties? Barack Obama is in the Democratic Party but in some ways seems not to be of it. He built his own political operation and fundraising mechanisms, and so - unlike Bill Clinton, who constructed his political machine within the party framework - owes less to the Democratic edifice than he does to the support of an even bigger tent full of Americans.

Last week's election results in Pakistan give Islamabad's next government the mandate to finally put the terrorists out of business. Violence in Pakistan - mostly driven by Taliban and pro-al-Qaida forces - has not abated since the December assassination of leading opposition candidate and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. But in a potential hinge moment for what Newsweek recently called "the most dangerous nation in the world," Pakistani public opinion has turned suddenly and decisively against the radicals.

BAGHDAD -- During a surprise visit here yesterday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice praised Iraqi leaders for making progress on several key goals of the troop buildup, including the approval of a controversial new de-Baathification law. Speaking alongside Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, inside the Green Zone, Rice praised the passage of the law, which is intended to undermine the Sunni Arab-led insurgency and to draw more Sunnis into the...

Joan M. Becker's first political campaign was at age 16, when she worked for the 1974 re-election of Democratic Gov. Marvin Mandel. Her father, Frank Lupashunski, is a registered Democrat who taught sociology and government and politics for three decades at her alma mater, Howard High School, where Democratic state Sen. James N. Robey, a former county executive, was his student years earlier. In a county of more than a quarter-million people, it is still not uncommon for these old personal connections to come up among people involved on all sides of public life.

Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler's opinion concerning the voting rights of 17-year-olds is a welcome return to sensibility. The political parties have long enjoyed the right to determine how to select their nominees for office. And for decades in Maryland, teens who turn 18 before the general election have had the right to vote in the primary - even if they're only 17 at the time. How did 17-year-olds suddenly lose this right? It was the result of an unfortunate chain of events starting with last year's Court of Appeals decision striking down the state's recently enacted early voting law. The court's new interpretation of the state constitution applied general election standards to primaries.

The Harford County Public Works Department's engineering and construction division will conduct a public meeting tomorrow on the closing of West Medical Hall Road in Bel Air. The hearing will begin at 6 p.m. at the Harford County Department of Public Works, 212 S. Bond St., Bel Air, third-floor conference room. Comments from the public will be received on the petition to close the road. Plats and/or plans for the proposed closing may be reviewed from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. weekdays at the department offices.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Muhammad Akif Khan does not wear his uniform to work anymore, changing in the office instead. He takes taxis instead of driving his car. And he no longer sleeps at home, worried that the police may come for him. Khan is no criminal, no political activist. Instead, he's a lawyer, known in Pakistan as a "black coat," because of the black suits and ties lawyers must wear in court. Because of his job, Khan has become by default a key member of the opposition to President Gen. Pervez Musharraf and his decision to impose emergency rule Saturday.

Nonpartisanship improves governing Now that the election has been decided, everyone's talking about the need for bipartisanship ("Partisan jockeying begins," Nov. 10). This is wrong. Partisanship in this context means loyalty to a political party. Political parties are a medium for running an election, for narrowing the field of those seeking offices to a manageable number and for getting out information about those candidates. Political parties are not part of the legislative or governing process.

LOS ANGELES -- President Bush signed a bill Thursday authorizing a 700-mile-long fence along the U.S.-Mexico border but leaving aside other aspects of the immigration debate for now. As a Mexican, I'm outraged that Mr. Bush and other politicians in Washington believe it is necessary to build a wall to keep my compatriots from coming here to work. But I'm also ashamed that Mexico is, in many ways, to blame for making the border fence possible. Mexico's failure to understand the immigration debate in the U.S. has weakened its negotiating position.