Resolved

They gathered to put price tags on the broken bones, the emotional trauma and a life that was lost. It was nearly a year to the day after a truck had knocked down a Baltimore Beltway overpass during evening rush hour, and the injured and the bereaved were demanding compensation. But they were not in a courthouse. They were in a downtown hotel, ignoring the swimming-pool horseplay just outside the window and watching a retired appeals court judge scurry from room to room. And, in the end, forging a $2.6 million settlement that's being hailed as a model for a new era in justice.

One theory has it that the universe is constantly expanding, which would explain Paul Prudhomme, the gun-slinging gourmet.But not the NFL.Definitely not the NFL.The NFL stays the same size -- now, and unless I'm wrong, forever.I mean you don't believe these guys when they say this latest delay may be hardly a delay at all, do you?Sure, they'll expand soon. If certain conditions can be met. If it is discovered that Paul Tagliabue was really the fifth Beatle. If you can say Bundesbank without smiling.

Last week, I asked for your New Year's resolutions. Most of the resolutions I received were much more selfless than mine: I've resolved to slow down - again - to avoid a repeat of the speeding ticket I received in February. Jeff Gardner also acknowledged having an ulterior motive: high gas prices, which have changed the way he drives. "I have slowed down and stayed within 5 mph of the speed limit," he said. "I guess I should resolve to be more patient while I am driving. Try not to let the ill-advised moves of others bother me. And to give myself more time to get where I am going."

It is the war we cannot forget. It is the war we do not wish to be reminded of.It is the war that ended 20 years ago. It is the war over which our citizens still fight.It is that most unusual of things in our national history and occupies that most unusual of places in our national psyche: A war we actually lost.And that is why we have punished Vietnam for so many year with our economic and diplomatic boycotts.A nation uncommonly gracious in victory, the United States has been mean-spirited in defeat.

Rift between owners, commissioner will be resolved -- in 0) 1994Just what baseball needs, a hostage crisis.Commissioner Fay Vincent is holed up in his office on Park Avenue, waiting out his term while 18 of the 28 major-league owners bark angrily at his door.Who's right? Shouldn't Vincent's employers have the right to remove him if he is not performing to their satisfaction? Shouldn't Vincent be accountable to someone when he summons his best-interests-of-baseball powers and makes some sweeping decision that could affect the game for generations?

Broad legislation that could fundamentally change the balance of power between health maintenance organizations and their members appears to be gaining momentum in the Maryland General Assembly.The most significant proposal would give patients an avenue outside the insurer's internal appeals process to challenge decisions denying them coverage for medical procedures.According to legislators and a leading industry lobbyist, it is also the most likely to pass.The measure would set up a grievance and appeal process that would give patients the option of taking their complaints to the state insurance commissioner to be resolved.

Orioles manager Johnny Oates has yet to get the ultimate vote of confidence from the team's new ownership group, but he has gotten the good managing seal of approval from his peers.The Sporting News will announce today that Oates was voted American League Manager of the Year in a late-season poll of the league's 14 managers. The actual vote count will not be released until today, but Oates narrowly out-polled New York Yankees manager Buck Showalter to win an award that can only help his uncertain contract situation.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People remains millions of dollars in debt. An accountant's report, expected to document how some former leaders lived like kings at members' expense, is still pending. And the central question has yet to be resolved -- can the oldest and most revered civil rights organization in the nation prove itself relevant in today's world?So, let's not celebrate the resurrection of the NAACP just yet. The group's 64-member governing board took a painful yet necessary first step toward rebuilding its credibility Saturday, when it voted to replace its embattled chairman with Myrlie B. Evers-Williams, the widow of Medgar Evers, an NAACP organizer who was murdered in 1963.

What in the world is happening in Maryland's State House? Did they change the brand of bottled water or clean the ventilation ducts?Sanity, of all things, has suddenly descended on the state capital. Cooperation has replaced confrontation. Deep wounds are beginning to heal -- slowly. Gov. William Donald Schaefer has emerged from a dreadful seven-month funk. The bitter winter-spring hostilities have ended.House Speaker R. Clayton Mitchell last week decided to stop playing autocrat; Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller suspended his war of words with the governor, and Mr. Schaefer left on Friday for the Far East with a slight smile on his face.

The woman who says she represents North American Power is not telling the truth about the benefits of buying electricity from her company. "You can save up to 10, 15, 20 percent of your bill, depending on your usage," she says in a telemarketing call to my house. But the rate she eventually quotes is only about 7 percent less than the standard price offered by Baltimore Gas & Electric — something the average customer would have no way of knowing. And of course the percentage savings won't vary even if my "usage" goes up to that of a steel mill.