Republican

PHILADELPHIA - This year's Republican mandate: to officially get jiggy wit it. An aim of the convention, as the Republicans load the line-up with all manner of entertainers, is to get those celebrities to rub their hipness off on the party. Hence, the break-dancers in tight shirts, the R&B singer in leather pants and the anticipated arrival of Bo Derek - not running toward the camera in a bikini and cornrows, but baring Republican skin nonetheless. When television viewers tune in tonight and see Chaka Khan busting some moves from the convention stage, they will, the Republicans hope, feel that George W. Bush and his party are the voter-friendly choice.

Maybe what this country needs on the Supreme Court is a real politician or at least a sensible political scientist or two. Perhaps they would help the court's majority understand how it has allowed unlimited big-donor money to contaminate and almost destroy our politics. The infamous Citizens United decision -- which permits corporations and individuals to flood election campaigns with torrents of cash through super PACs as long as they are independent of candidates' formal organizations -- has invited some of the worst abuses of negative campaigning.

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

They did what they had to do, and they went home. That's the best that can be said of the special session of the Maryland General Assembly that concluded today. The tax increases, spending cuts, fund transfers and other measures lawmakers approved in 21/2 days this week protect public education, health and public safety and put the state on a path to fiscal sustainability, all while requiring a relatively minimal additional contribution from taxpayers. After a chaotic end to the regular General Assembly session, order has been restored.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Meet "Julia. " She is the star of an infographic created for President Barack Obama's re-election website to illustrate the policy differences between him and Republican challenger Mitt Romney. The slide show follows Julia from the age of 3, when her parents enroll her in a Head Start program, through college, paid for by government-subsidized loans, through the birth of her own child, with lots of free maternity care, to a retirement cushioned by Medicare and Social Security.

Talk about out of touch or on another planet ("Polls put Obama, Romney in a tie," May 8)! To quote, Republican Mitt Romney, "The American people are good-hearted people with the desire for good things to happen to one another, and we hoped that this president would be able to be successful.... " How can he say this when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said from the get-go that he wanted to destroy President Barack Obama? Robert V.P. Davis, Baltimore

In response to a recent letter-writer claiming that the Navy SEALs, rather than President Obama, deserve the credit for killing Osama bin Laden, there are few sadder things than watching Republicans try to play down the facts ("SEALs, not Obama, deserve credit for bin Laden death," May 9). Here are the facts: President Obama is commander-in-chief whether his opponents like it or not. He was the one - and the only one - responsible for ordering those SEALs into action. They did not make that decision on their own. He was the one in charge.

There's a tendency among some to shorthand the ongoing federal budget debate as between Republicans who want to reduce government spending and Democrats who don't. This isn't really the case, as recent actions in the House have demonstrated. On Wednesday, the House Armed Services Committee took a close look at President Barack Obama's proposed $525.4 billion defense spending plan and decided that simply wasn't enough. The GOP-controlled committee voted to authorize nearly $4 billion more than what the Pentagon had requested for 2013.

"They do that because they were born that way. " If you say that about homosexuals, you are tolerant and realistic. If you say it about blacks, you are racist (unless you're black yourself). If you say it about women, you may or may not be sexist, depending on who is manning (er, womanning) the feminist battle stations. If you say it about men, you just might be a writer for Esquire. But if you say it about conservatives, you're a scientist. Over the past decade, a new fad has taken hold among academics and liberal journalists: call it the new science of conservative phrenology.

There has been a lot of discussion about President Obama's highlighting or even bragging about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden and its results ("Bin Laden volatile campaign subject," May 1). Much of this discussion has been criticism by Republicans, proving once again that the one area where Republicans are remarkably consistent is in their hypocrisy. They don't seem to remember cheering for a certain former president strutting about in a flight suit on the deck of an aircraft carrier celebrating "Mission Accomplished!"

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.

Washington. -- If there is one lesson for the Republican Party in Maryland from Parris Glendening's narrow victory it is that the black vote should no longer be ignored.Other GOP gubernatorial candidates did well with black voters: Ohio's Gov. George Voinovich took 40 percent of the black vote; New Jersey's Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, 25 percent; Gov. George Allen of Virginia, 25 percent, and California's Pete Wilson, 21 percent. Ellen Sauerbrey's 7 percent showing -- yes, 7 percent -- contributed significantly, if not decisively, to her 6,000-vote loss.

With the Republicans going full swing with their war on women, and the Republican war on union employees, and the Republican war on the environment, and the Republican war on the middle class, I'm left to wonder one thing. Why do the Republicans hate America so much? Maybe they secretly joinedal-Qaida. William Smith, Baltimore

Rick Santorum's exit from the fight for the Republican presidential nomination was a belated recognition that he was outgunned by Mitt Romney's huge financial advantage. But the damage Mr. Santorum inflicted on the GOP brand in the process leaves Mr. Romney leading a divided party in which he remains an uncomfortable fit. The man who has oddly described himself to be "severely conservative" stands on the brink of nomination despite the party base's general coolness toward him and despite the divisions in its ranks that frustrated his efforts to nail down the nomination for so long.