Scandal

Maryland has seen more than its share of State House scandals, big and small. The latest involves Sen. Ulysses Currie, chairman of the powerful Senate Budget and Taxation Committee, who is being investigated for taking - but not reporting - money from a grocery store chain. Whether this stems from absent-mindedness, as Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller has claimed, or Senator Currie had some quid pro quo arrangement with Shoppers Food and Pharmacy remains to be seen. No matter the outcome of this case, the public ought to be concerned about whether Maryland lawmakers can be bought and sold like so many hothouse tomatoes.

WASHINGTON -- Congressional Democrats kept up their attacks yesterday on substandard care for injured soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center as they prepared for hearings on the issue this week. "If it's this bad at the outpatient facilities at Walter Reed, how is it in the rest of the country?" Sen. Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat, said on ABC's This Week. "Walter Reed is our crown jewel." In a letter sent yesterday to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Schumer called for the creation of an independent commission to examine conditions at all medical facilities treating military personnel and veterans.

Hiring practices allow new chances Sunday's column by Dan Rodricks unfairly criticizes the Archdiocese of Baltimore's actions and responses on the termination of a parish employee with a criminal record ("Church's `scandal' is others' kindness," Nov. 18). Mr. Rodricks paints a picture of inconsistent responses by the archdiocese to media questions about this employee. But he fails to mention that he named the employee in question when asking about his offenses. Because of privacy concerns, the church, like other employers, generally does not disclose such information about specific employees.

BUSINESS DOW +119.01 13,357.74 NASDAQ +31.06 2,596.36 S&P +16.35 1,473.99 SUN INDEX +4.24 347.40 NATIONAL Scandal embarrasses GOP At the start of the week, it was unlikely that many people outside of Idaho and Washington, D.C., had heard of Sen. Larry E. Craig. But after Monday's disclosure of a guilty plea in a men's-room sex sting, Craig became the target of jokes and a national embarrassment to a Republican Party facing an election next year. pg 1A Warner won't run in 2008 Republican Sen. John W. Warner of Virginia, one of the most influential voices on military matters in Congress, announced he would not run for re-election, paving the way for a battle between Democrats and Republicans to claim his seat.

WASHINGTON -- Whether it's a White House sex scandal, dogfighting allegations or a referee accused of betting on games, the rules are the same: Be candid, be reassuring and, most of all, get your message out before public opinion hardens. Just ask Mike McCurry, Lanny Davis, Frank Luntz and Robert S. Bennett. Together, these crisis management experts have steered politicians and corporations through such well-known scandals as the Monica Lewinsky investigation and the Enron collapse. Responding to a Sun request, the experts offered some pointed suggestions for sports leagues dealing with image-damaging allegations.

Kickbacks, conflicts of interest, multimillion-dollar out-of-court settlements, high-profile resignations and suspensions under a veil of shame - if only we could throw in an illicit affair. It's hard to believe we are talking about something as unsexy as student loans. Ninety percent of students who receive loans choose their lender based on their school's recommendation. In an age where students leave college with an average of more than $19,000 in loan debt, students should be able to count on their schools for impartial and helpful advice as they navigate a complicated and stressful process.

Bungalow Bill Clinton, Lady Monica, Linda Day Tripper, Polythene Paula and all the other fools on the Hill certainly got into a mess this past year.And paperback writers Andrew Morton, Michael Isikoff and George Stephanopoulos all did their best to cash in with their own sordid chronicles of the Clinton-Lewinsky saga.But last week's cover of the New York Times Book Review was surely the most artful statement on the incident so far. A parody of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover, it substituted scandal figures for the Fab Four and famous historical faces.

LONDON -- The Olympics have survived boycotts, world wars, terrorist murders and a fleeting association with Adolf Hitler's Third Reich.But can they overcome greed?That's the question facing the Games' guardians as they gather for watershed meetings next week at their opulent headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland.The International Olympic Committee is under fire over the bribery scandal in the awarding the 2002 Winter Games to Salt Lake City. With about a quarter of the committee's membership implicated in the vote-buying affair, the IOC faces a make-or-break week as it begins the process of reform.

SPARKS, Nev. -- At 12: 30 Sunday morning, in the hotel that is playing host to this year's Tailhook convention, the hallways were stone silent. A handful of pilots drank beer in a suite with the door open; two women passed by, without incident. As 1 a.m. neared, one of the men peeled off to bunk down for the night.This is what the Tailhook Convention looks like eight years after a sexual misconduct scandal that came to symbolize what critics said was an official tolerance for swaggering libido in the armed forces.

Linda R. Tripp, whose secretive recording of conversations with a former White House intern led to the impeachment of the president, was indicted yesterday by a Howard County grand jury on charges of illegally taping telephone calls.Of the three central figures in the scandal -- President Clinton, Monica Lewinsky and Tripp -- only Tripp has been charged with a crime.Tripp's lawyers immediately denounced the indictment, calling it a political prosecution, and many other people wished the case would end soon.

Maryland has seen more than its share of State House scandals, big and small. The latest involves Sen. Ulysses Currie, chairman of the powerful Senate Budget and Taxation Committee, who is being investigated for taking - but not reporting - money from a grocery store chain. Whether this stems from absent-mindedness, as Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller has claimed, or Senator Currie had some quid pro quo arrangement with Shoppers Food and Pharmacy remains to be seen. No matter the outcome of this case, the public ought to be concerned about whether Maryland lawmakers can be bought and sold like so many hothouse tomatoes.

News item: Tiger Woods announced Thursday that he'll play in this week's Accenture Match Play Championship, his first competitive appearance since undergoing knee surgery. My take: This is great news for all the real golf fans who have shown their solidarity with Woods by refusing to watch golf while he was rehabilitating his knee. News item: New steroid-related revelations continue to confront baseball superstar Alex Rodriguez, who had hoped to put the whole issue to rest with his public apology on ESPN and his news conference Tuesday at the New York Yankees' training complex in Tampa, Fla. My take: I'm trying to figure out just why Rodriguez agreed to have that mea culpa news conference, because it's beginning to look like he left out a lot of important details.

WASHINGTON - Jack A. Abramoff, the once-powerful Republican super-lobbyist, was sentenced to 48 months in prison yesterday for his role in a corruption scandal that rocked Congress and the Bush administration. U.S. District Judge Ellen S. Huvelle pronounced the sentence as a tearful Abramoff stood before her with his lawyers. The sentence was far below the 121 months that Abramoff could have received under federal sentencing guidelines but more than either the Justice Department or his lawyers had requested.

DETROIT - Mired in a sex scandal that crippled the governance of Detroit all year, the city's troubled mayor chose yesterday to walk out of office, rather than run the increasing risk of being heaved out. The tawdry drama of Kwame Kilpatrick, the once-promising 38-year-old mayor of the nation's 11th largest city, ended in a wood-paneled courtroom when a subdued Kilpatrick, after months of defiant claims of innocence, meekly pleaded guilty to reduced felony...

Real ID offers real protection In her column "Real ID, real problem" (Commentary, June 17), Cynthia Boersma, the legislative director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, rattles off the standard rhetoric against secure identification programs. She claims that the Real ID program calls for "a national ID card" and that it will involve "huge costs of time and money" and leave us with "less, not more, security." She conveniently fails to mention that the Real ID program - in addition to being a recommendation of the 9/11 Commission - was approved by Congress.

With the raid of Mayor Sheila Dixon's house, the complicated financial investigation that has bubbled through Baltimore news cycles for years officially jumped the local threshold. Political and public relations experts say this whiff of scandal will likely be an investigative cloud hovering over Baltimore's executive office, taking time and attention from pressing city business and potentially thwarting Dixon's agenda for progress. Though Dixon has not been charged with any wrongdoing and an investigation involving government contracts hardly tips the public's meter for salaciousness - as has, for instance, the sex scandal involving Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick - political watchers say it doesn't take being caught in a hotel room with a crack pipe, as Washington's Marion Barry was, to tarnish a city's reputation or to hobble its renaissance.

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- The foreign minister of Taiwan and two other top officials resigned yesterday over a botched attempt to win diplomatic recognition from Papua New Guinea, a scandal that has stirred public outrage against the outgoing government just two weeks before it is to step down. Taipei was embarrassed by the public disclosure that about $30 million, which had been intended for Papua New Guinea in exchange for its switching diplomatic allegiance from Beijing, had disappeared. While the resignations had little practical impact - the entire government leaves May 20 when President-elect Ma Ying-jeou is inaugurated - they underscore the depth of the scandal, the most severe during President Chen Shui-bian's eight years in office.

This was supposed to be an introduction. On his first papal visit to the United States, Pope Benedict XVI would celebrate a few Masses, give a speech at the United Nations, and let a nation that knew him by his reputation as the church's doctrinal enforcer experience his softer, warmer, more welcoming side. Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, plans changed. Shepherd One hadn't yet touched down at Andrews Air Force Base when Pope Benedict made his first comments on the sex abuse crisis that has shaken the Roman Catholic Church in America.

After three days in which Pope Benedict XVI has persistently addressed the scandal of child sexual abuse by priests, a top Vatican official said yesterday that the church is considering changes to the canon laws that govern how it handles such cases. The official, Cardinal William J. Levada, would not specify which canons were under reconsideration. But he suggested that they related to the church's statute of limitations, saying that his office has frequently had to judge allegations from years ago because the victims "don't feel personally able to come forward until" until they are more mature.

WASHINGTON -- Pope Benedict XVI began the first full day of his U.S. visit being serenaded by thousands of spectators at the White House and ended it with a sweeping speech to the nation's bishops in which he admitted that the sex abuse scandal was "very badly handled." President Bush invited the pope for an elaborate ceremony on the South Lawn, and then the two leaders privately discussed issues such as immigration and the Middle East. Thousands filled the streets of downtown Washington as Pope Benedict shuttled between events in the popemobile.