Republican

A cabal of corrupt corrections officers and members of the Black Guerrilla Family gang enjoyed nearly free rein inside the Baltimore City Detention Center, federal authorities allege, smuggling drugs and cellphones into the jail and having sexual relationships that left four guards pregnant. An indictment unsealed Tuesday names 25 people - including 13 women working as corrections officers - who face racketeering and drug charges. Twenty of the accused also face money-laundering charges.

Well, that didn't take long. Just as several genuine scandals cast the Obama administration in an unfavorable light, Republicans in Congress are already overreaching - with hyperbolic comparisons to Watergate, calls for special prosecutors, outrageous claims about President Barack Obama's involvement, possible impeachment and assorted hyper-partisan rhetoric. Just this weekend, there was Sen. Rand Paul on TV claiming there was a "written policy" at the Internal Revenue Service to target people opposed to President Obama.

On Thursday, the day the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare, a 47-year-old Baltimore woman went to the drugstore, and pulled out her debit card to pay for a prescription refill. But she didn't have enough money in the account to cover the $425 charge. So she asked the pharmacist and staff for a favor. "I asked them to break up the prescription to give me one-third," says the woman, who would not allow her name to be published because she didn't want to disclose her medical conditions.

Days after voting again to repeal President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, congressional Republicans have tapped Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland to deliver their weekly address. “As a physician for nearly thirty years who helped mothers and their new babies get through childbirth, I have seen what is good and what is bad about America's health care system, and ObamaCare makes our system worse,” said the Baltimore County Republican, an obstetric anesthesiologist.  “Instead of lowering costs like Washington Democrats promised, ObamaCare is leading insurance companies all over the country to raise their rates by double and triple digits.” House Republicans voted this week for the third time to fully repeal the Affordable Care Act. They have held 37 votes since they took the majority in 2011 to repeal the law in full or in part.

Today's story on the problems of New York Rep. Anthony Weiner ("Emotional Weiner admits he sent suggestive photo," June 7) only appeared on page 7 in today's Sun. Yet if Representative Weiner were a Republican, this would be front-page news for two weeks. You might even print a special edition. Jerry Schmechel

During a recent pro-O'Malley rally in Annapolis, union boss "Josh" Williams, president of the Metropolitan Washington Council of AFL-CIO, said of the Maryland State House: "Are we going to let our piece of property be taken over?" The last time I checked, the unions didn't own the State House. The citizens of Maryland do. Through these words, Williams articulated the need for fundamental political change in Maryland more eloquently than any Republican ever could. Richard Cross, Baltimore

I just saw a commercial approved by the O'Malley for governor campaign which tells the viewer all the bad things Bob Ehrlich has done, like earning a living, while he has been out of office. There isn't one word in the commercial telling the viewer what Gov. Martin O'Malley plans on doing for Maryland or how he plans to do it. Has Mr. O'Malley not been listening to folks who state again and again they are sick and tired of listening to opposing-candidate bashing with little other substance?

An 18-year-old Baltimore County man is seeking the Republican nomination for comptroller. Brendan Madigan said he filed last week after considering a run for more than a year. Madigan said he could not "stand on the sidelines" while Maryland is run "into the ground." The Sparks resident said his campaign will focus on ending the "tax-and-spend mentality of those in Annapolis." Madigan served as the Baltimore County coordinator for Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty and recently founded the blog GOP Resurgence.

An effort to expand telecommuting by federal workers ran afoul Thursday of a newly intensified Republican strategy to highlight government spending as an election-year issue. The House of Representatives rejected a telework measure, introduced by Rep. John Sarbanes of Maryland, that would require uniform rules for federal employees who work at sites other than their regular government offices, such as their homes. In addition to improving government productivity, proponents say, telecommuting can reduce traffic congestion in places like the Baltimore-Washington corridor and lessen air pollution by taking cars off the road.

George Bush is not Ronald Reagan, and for this grievous lapse the conservative core in the Republican Party will never forgive him. Hardly had the election returns popped on the TV screens when the long knives were out, skewering the president for running a terrible campaign, slashing him for his alleged lack of compass and conviction, cutting deep in terms of personal contempt and rage.Of course, those gung-ho for the Gipper never liked George Bush. No matter his conversion to the anti-abortion crusade, no matter his espousal of supply-side theories he once branded as "voodoo economics," no matter his heroics in the Persian Gulf, he was always suspect.

Del. Steve Schuh was elected Friday to chair the Anne Arundel County delegation to the General Assembly. Schuh, a Republican from Gibson Island who is also a candidate for county executive, takes over from Del. Nic Kipke, a Pasadena Republican. Kipke was named House minority leader.

Republicans like Rep. Darrell Issa and Bob Ehrlich must be getting pretty desperate trying to make a big deal about an Obama cover up on Benghazi ("Benghazi: The Obama spin continues," May 12). What is known is that a murderous crowd attacked the U.S. consulate and killed our ambassador and three other Americans. Whether there may have been al-Qaida thugs in the crowd or not appears to be a distinction without meaning. It seems ironic that the same crowd that dragged us into an unnecessary war in Iraq based on non existent WMD are now making a big deal out of a contrived issue.

Republicans could make an easy hit on the Obama administration by highlighting the State Department's apparent bureaucratic blundering during and after the deadly terrorist attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, last fall, but they refuse to settle for such a small political prize. Instead, they have got themselves all steamed up and snarling about heinous, impeachable offenses that are figments of their imaginations. The latest round of House hearings about the Benghazi incident provides a perfect example of how American politics has been warped and gummed up by bombastic, partisan extremism.

If former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hoped she could segue quietly into private life as she pondered a presidential bid in 2016, that fantasy has been abruptly harpooned in the resurrection of the political squabble over the terrorist attack on the American consulate in Benghazi. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee's hearing into the failure of the Clinton-led State Department to respond in a timely fashion has made clear that the issue will haunt her and any political aspirations she may have between now and the next presidential election.

The chemical and fertilizer plant in the town of West, Texas, where at least 15 were killed and more than 200 injured a few weeks ago hadn't been fully inspected by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration since 1985. (A partial inspection by a different agency in 2011 resulted in $5,250 in fines.) OSHA and its state partners have a total of 2,200 inspectors charged with ensuring the safety of more than 8 million workplaces employing 130 million workers. That comes to about one inspector for every 59,000 American workers.

Richard E. "Dick" Hug, a prominent businessman and prolific fundraiser for Republican candidates, died Saturday. He was 78. Mr. Hug was the finance chairman for three Maryland gubernatorial campaigns - Ellen R. Sauerbrey in 1998 and Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. in 2002 and 2006 - becoming known as the $6 million man after he raised that amount for Mrs. Sauerbrey's unsuccessful attempt to unseat Gov. Parris N. Glendening. He belonged to numerous civic boards and associations, including the University System of Maryland Board of Regents, and he served a stint as chairman of the Maryland Chamber of Commerce.

Republicans are holding a unity meeting on Kent Island today. They hope to begin the general election campaign that could win the party a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in November. This -- Maryland's First District -- is perhaps the party's best chance in the nation to take a seat away from a Democratic incumbent. Doing that is a rare thing. In the last off-year election a Republican candidate bested a Democratic incumbent in exactly one contest. In the off-year election before that, the GOP won only two such races.

THE STARTLING discovery that affiliation with the Republican Party is genetically determined, announced by scientists in the current issue of the journal Nurture, threatens to overshadow the announcement by government scientists that there might be a gene for homosexuality in men.Reports of the gene that codes for political conservatism, discovered after a long study of quintuplets in Orange County, Calif., have sent shock waves through the medical, political and golfing communities.Psychologists and psychoanalysts have long believed that Republicans' unnatural and frequently unconstitutional tendencies result from unhealthy family life -- a remarkably high percentage of Republicans had authoritarian, domineering fathers and emotionally distant mothers who didn't teach them how to be kind and gentle.

Maryland's House Republicans decided this week to jettison Del. Anthony J. O'Donnell from the leadership of their caucus on the grounds that a new messenger is needed to revitalize the party's prospects and pick up seats in the 2014 election. We wish new Minority Leader Nicholaus Kipke and new Minority Whip Kathy Szeliga the best of luck; Maryland is better when it has two functioning political parties. But color us skeptical that rearranging the deck chairs in the House GOP caucus is going to accomplish much.

Since Mitt Romney lost to President Obama on Nov. 6, the conventional wisdom has been that the Republican Party is in trouble. The less conventional truth is that it is the Democrats whose chances may be more bleak. Yes, Republicans are currently engaged in a round of intraparty sniping between establishment conservatives and the militant, purist right-wingers who abound in the ranks of party activists. And yes, the 2012 election exposed the GOP's profound unpopularity among rising voting groups, especially Latinos.