Republicans And Democrats

WASHINGTON - About 780,000 jobless Americans will lose their unemployment benefits at midnight, and a prolonged dispute between Republicans and Democrats could keep them and thousands more workers cut off from further aid for weeks. Those affected, including roughly 10,000 Marylanders, are caught in the middle of a partisan debate about how generous the government should be in providing additional benefits. Having failed to reach agreement before adjourning for the year, Congress is expected to act soon after it returns Jan. 7. Democrats are calling for 13 more weeks of federal jobless aid, while Republicans have proposed shorter extensions targeted to states with higher unemployment rates.

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.

WASHINGTON - In a breakthrough for the White House, key Republicans and Democrats agreed with President Bush yesterday on a measure authorizing him to use force against Iraq. The agreement sets the stage for Congress' approval of a war resolution as early as next week. The compromise - the product of negotiations by the White House and bipartisan House and Senate leaders - won broad backing. It would allow Bush to invade Iraq, provided he declared to Congress that further diplomacy was useless and that an attack would not hinder the war on terrorism.

Cecil County voters, who did not take part in early voting, set to end Thursday, will get their chance to make their voices heard on the regular primary election day on Tuesday, April 3, from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. This year is the first voting for offices created when voters, after many previous failed attempts, approved a home rule charter for the county in the 2010 general election. The primary election also features an interesting judicial race involving three candidates. Both Republicans and Democrats can vote for two of the three.

Carroll County Democrats repelled a last-minute Republican rally last week and won by one, the narrowest of margins. That would be a run, not a vote. Area business leaders and officials organized a spirited softball competition to put the political parties on friendly terms. The bipartisan game, rescheduled three times, finally was played Thursday evening in downtown Westminster. "We wanted to prove to everybody in the county that people can just agree to disagree and not let politics polarize us," said Josh Kohn, a Westminster business owner.

OVER THE decade that Maryland lawmakers have been studying casino-style gambling, many delegates and senators have taken stands that differ from their current positions, and their words are returning to haunt them. After the House of Delegates Republican Caucus announced its support last week for an immediate special legislative session to pass a slots bill, aides to House Speaker Michael E. Busch, a Democrat, quickly noted that many of those Republicans held a similar news conference in 1995 - when they vowed to vote en bloc against casino gambling.

Republican senators finally caught on that the groundswell for legal assault rifles is led by self-styled militia who want them to overthrow the federal government, Republicans and Democrats alike.

Gonzales faced a relentlessly hostile grilling from Senate Republicans and Democrats Thursday as he attempted to explain inconsistencies in his previous statements about the firing of eight federal prosecutors. ?Why is your story changing?? Sen. Charles Grassley, Republican of Iowa ?At the end of the day I know I did not do anything improper.? Attorney General Alberto Gonzales

Republicans are always the ones pushing those wholly unnecessary English-as-official-language efforts, doing everything possible to make immigrants feel unwelcome here. Apparently few in the Angry Old Party see this as politically short-sighted, a way to guarantee that Democrats keep and even broaden their anticipated demographic advantage for years to come. You'd think a young Republican such as Blaine Young (Frostburg State '93) might want to take a new, fresh approach by opening up the "big tent" that members of his party talked about just a few years ago. Mr. Young is chairman of the all-Republican Frederick County Commissioners and a radio talk show host.

Waco, Texas -- THE VOTERS are on the verge of doing to Democrats in the Congress what they did to Republicans in the White House -- throw the bums out.Incredibly, Republicans have a chance to take control of the House for the first time in 40 years. Republicans have had control of the House for only four of the past 63 years. And the Republicans also are on the verge of taking control of the Senate where they have been in power for less than a dozen years.But if America's voters actually hand control of Congress to the Republicans in the Nov. 8 general election, the victors had best not be too cocky.

Republicans are always the ones pushing those wholly unnecessary English-as-official-language efforts, doing everything possible to make immigrants feel unwelcome here. Apparently few in the Angry Old Party see this as politically short-sighted, a way to guarantee that Democrats keep and even broaden their anticipated demographic advantage for years to come. You'd think a young Republican such as Blaine Young (Frostburg State '93) might want to take a new, fresh approach by opening up the "big tent" that members of his party talked about just a few years ago. Mr. Young is chairman of the all-Republican Frederick County Commissioners and a radio talk show host.

Republicans and Democrats disagree about whether the economy is adding jobs today. But no one is publicly disputing that up to 1.5 million Americans will lose their jobs if Congress doesn't stop the $500 billion in automatic defense cuts triggered by the debt ceiling law. These unprecedented cuts would de-fund the next generation of war fighters, along with their support infrastructure, planes, ships and the technologies - built by highly skilled...

I usually read Dan Rodricks ' commentaries to get his left of center take on local and national issues because he supports his points. However, in his latest piece about Mitt Romney he demonstrates the same class warfare that the current administration uses to castigate those who have followed the rules, taken risks and profited from their investments ("A man out of tune with the times," Jan. 22). Mr. Rodricks shows he has drunk the Democratic Kool-Aid by implying that Mr. Romney is part of a movement by the rich to regain the presidency.

(Dec. 21) Maryland Democrats continued to ramp up pressure on House GOP leaders Wednesday over a stalled effort to extend a payroll tax cut that benefits as many as 2.6 million wage earners in the state. With days left before the 2 percentage point payroll tax cut expires, Washington is once more languishing in impasse. House Republicans want to continue negotiations on a one-year extension of the cut. Democrats are calling on House GOP leaders to vote on a two-month extension the Senate passed over the weekend -- a bill all but seven Senate Republicans supported.

Who's to blame is the question of the day in Washington, where Republicans and Democrats have been rushing to point fingers ever since the deficit-cutting supercommittee admitted failure and stopped negotiations. But for the rest of the country, the exercise is not particuarly productive. Both sides took positions and held to them, and both concluded that what the other side proposed was worse than the consequences of failing to reach a deal - about $1.2 trillion in mandatory cuts, split about evenly between domestic programs and defense.

Ron Smith often seems to be out of touch with the working man's heartbeat. His latest column ("Is serious social unrest in our future?" Oct. 7) is full of his favorite go-to guys off the bench, statistics, as essentially the sole support for his contentions. The problem with this approach was identified quite astutely by Mark Twain when he noted, there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. Statistics are fine as one component to measure trends as long as we don't deliberately or inadvertently omit other crucial information.

CREDIT A ROBUST economy for a budget accord on Capitol Hill that has all the elements of a Christmas tree. Deficit hawks can point to the promise of a balanced budget within five years, assuming the economy stays strong. Meanwhile, tax-cutters can revel in the first significant tax cuts in a decade and a half. And advocates for children and the poor can point to significant victories in funding health care for uninsured children and in requiring welfare recipients who move into jobs to be paid the minimum wage.

Samuel A. Culotta, a Baltimore lawyer and perennial Republican mayoral candidate, said he's supporting Sen. John McCain. "I love Rudy, but I'm for McCain. He's a leader and has the background, knowledge, experience and courage to be president," Culotta, 83, said in an interview. Culotta, a Northeast Baltimore resident who has practiced law since 1951, served in the administrations of Theodore Roosevelt McKeldin when he was mayor and governor, and was a state delegate from 1954 to 1959.

A plethora of contemporary political phenomena that may otherwise seem only bizarre — the various "pledges" not to compromise, the rejection of Social Security as a Ponzi scheme, the denial of evolution and climate change — begin to make sense once one recognizes that the historical analogy used to describe the movement responsible for them is inaccurate. Don't think 1774, 1776 and the Boston Tea Party. Think 1832, 1860 and nullification. Historically, nullification meant the sheer refusal of a state government to accept and abide by national legislation — specifically, in 1832, a tariff law with which South Carolina was unwilling to comply.

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty isn't the only GOP presidential candidate who can make epic, movie-style campaign ads.  Texas Congressman Ron Paul's new ad is out -- and it's straight out of an action flick.  True to Paul's independent streak, the ad criticizes both Democrats and Republicans for letting the nation spend like a slots machine-addict.  But more than anything, it paints Paul as a fiscal conservative superhero --...