Theory

Time and time again I hear Republicans chatter about how horrible President Obama has been for the economy. One of their funniest gaffes is that Obama is a big spending, government-loving liberal. To put that in perspective: The average annual growth in federal spending under President Obama has been 1.4 percent. Compare that to George W. Bush's 7.7 percent, Ronald Reagan's 6.8 percent,George H.W. Bush's 5.4 percent and Nixon's 10.4 percent. (These figures come from the Congressional Budget Office, the Office of Management and Budget and Marketwatch.)

Is the American body politic suffering from an autoimmune disease? The "hygiene hypothesis" is the scientific theory that the rise in asthma and other autoimmune maladies stems from the fact that babies are born into environments that are too clean. Our immune systems need to be properly educated by being exposed early to germs, dirt, whatever. When you consider that for most of human evolutionary history, we were born under shady trees or, if we were lucky, in caves or huts, you can understand how unnatural Lysol-soaked hospitals and microbially baby-proofed homes are. The point is that growing up in a sanitary environment might cause our immune systems to freak out about things that under normal circumstances we'd just shrug off. Hence, goes the theory, the explosion in asthma rates in the industrialized world, the rise in peanut and wheat allergies and, quite possibly, the spike in autism rates.

T he problem of global warming is having its moment in the sun - thanks to factors including a new administration more open to climate-control initiatives; the ongoing Copenhagen conference on climate; new data on the accelerating rate of global warming; and new studies about the economic impact of doing what is necessary to reduce greenhouse gases. Not unexpectedly, such forces have produced reactionary push-back from those who criticize the science on global warming. And this push-back is producing alarming results.

SARASOTA, Fla. -- Orioles director of pitching development Rick Peterson pointed to the brightly-colored string that was strung just above home plate in front of catchers as minor league pitchers threw their first bullpens of spring on Monday morning at the Buck O'Neil Baseball Complex at Twin Lakes Park. “That's the .193 line,” Peterson said. Peterson, a former major league pitching coach with the A's, Mets and Brewers who is in his second season in the Orioles organization, loves to talk stats.

Why did columnist Thomas F. Schaller leave out the privileged John F. Kennedy as one of the presidents since World War lI who worked successfully on behalf of working-class Americans ("The virtues of a president with humble origins," Oct. 31)? Was it because Kennedy's example does not advance Mr. Schaller's liberal ideology ? It continues to fascinate me that the left - not to mention President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden - continues to take credit for what Seal Team 6 pulled off, but obfuscates the facts surrounding the murder of a U.S. ambassador by al-Qaida or similar terrorist group in Libya.

I agree with your headline, "For some, life can be sweeter with no car. " Unless, that is, one has to reach one's office or social engagement on time. I find it almost impossible to predict within an hour or so when I will reach any destination. Being too arthritic to bike and too crippled to drive, if I were still of employable age, I'd be out job hunting, fired yet again for chronic lateness. Baltimore buses are not the proverbial German trains; we can't expect true punctuality in city traffic, but at least half the time, MTA buses are late - not by 5 or 10 minutes, which seems an allowable delay, but by 20, 30, even 60 minutes or more.

As the current lawsuit over a 40-hour state workweek demonstrates, the kind of Band-Aid budgeting practiced by Governor Schaefer and the General Assembly at the last session works far better in theory than it does in practice.In theory, the state would require about half its 80,000 employees to work 4 1/2 extra hours a week as part of a plan to help keep Maryland afloat in the face of a shrinking state budget, without imposing substantial tax increases. In reality, however, the mandate requires that a group of people work what amounts to an extra 29 days, or five extra workweeks, a year -- without additional compensation.

Faced with the dilemma of the high number of girls in their early teens who are becoming pregnant, experts have come forward with a theory that these young mothers are responding to a pattern in human evolution that induces people growing up in extremely stressful circumstances to bear children early and often.The theory has received considerable attention and criticism.Drawing on sociobiology, the theory holds that teen-age mothers -- especially in America's inner cities -- are implementing a reproductive strategy that from an evolutionary viewpoint is a smart bet.Children who grow up in dangerous conditions, the theory holds, are primed to boost the chances of having their genes survive into the nextgeneration by choosing earlier sex, earlier motherhood and more children.

Over the years, I have formulated a theory about dining out that I'd like to share with you now. In fact, I've tested this theory all over this country and in other parts of the world. I've tested it in fancy five-star restaurants and chain eateries, in city bistros and country inns and crab joints up and down the Chesapeake Bay. If you follow my theory, you'll never be sorry. But if you don't, well, you'll regret it big-time. Then you'll think of me and slap your forehead and say: "Boy, I should have listened to that fat guy in the newspaper."

The federal judge presiding over a $5 million defamation case against G. Gordon Liddy said yesterday that the Watergate figure had built a strong circumstantial case to back his claims that the infamous burglary was tied to a call-girl ring. Chief U.S. District Judge Frederic N. Smalkin refused for a second time to dismiss the case being heard in Baltimore. But he said Liddy's accuser had presented little evidence to show that Liddy was reckless in promoting his alternate theory of Watergate without admissions from key figures.

Michelle Obama first showed up in them during the inauguration. Jessica Biel has worn them most of the year. Kerry Washington heated up the Golden Globes red carpet with them. And Rachel Zoe took Mercedes- Benz Fashion Week by storm with them. Lots of celebrities and A-listers seem to be sporting bangs these days. The look, of course, is not revolutionary. Hairstylist Tiki Spruill of About Faces Day Spa & Salon in Canton says the trend goes back to fashion icon Audrey Hepburn in the 1950s, giving the look both a classic feel and a fashion-forward sensibility.

In his new thriller, "The Third Bullet," novelist Stephen Hunter sets his sights on an American tragedy that's also the most famous gun mystery of all time - the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The questions surrounding the shooting as JFK rode in a motorcade in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, have never been fully put to rest. And the controversy is certain to intensify as the 50th anniversary of the assassination approaches this fall. As the novelist tells it, the decision to enlist his fictitious super-sniper, Bob Lee Swagger, to determine whether the gunman acted alone or as part of a conspiracy began as a joke.

Why did columnist Thomas F. Schaller leave out the privileged John F. Kennedy as one of the presidents since World War lI who worked successfully on behalf of working-class Americans ("The virtues of a president with humble origins," Oct. 31)? Was it because Kennedy's example does not advance Mr. Schaller's liberal ideology ? It continues to fascinate me that the left - not to mention President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden - continues to take credit for what Seal Team 6 pulled off, but obfuscates the facts surrounding the murder of a U.S. ambassador by al-Qaida or similar terrorist group in Libya.

Immediately after the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the nation's unemployment rate dropped to 7.8 percent in September, conservatives started attacking the agency for producing figures that sounded a little too convenient for the Obama administration. The most prominent doubter was former GE chairman Jack Welch, who tweeted shortly after the announcement, "Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can't debate so change numbers. " But he was hardly alone.

What happened to Chavis Carter? It is a pregnant question, potentially even an explosive one. Carter died of a gunshot wound to the temple on the last Saturday in July, but the question about his death has only grown louder and more urgent since then. It is beginning to gather national attention. So we need an answer soon, either so that suspicions can be put to rest and some imperfect peace achieved, or so that suspicions can be validated and some equally imperfect justice sought.

Are two of the left's most useful villains, Charles and David Koch, not quite as unredeemable as liberals believe? Could it be they might change their minds about climate change and admit that it is real? Richard A. Muller, a physics professor at University of California-Berkeley, says that, after years of paying for studies by global warming skeptics, the Koch brothers honestly want to get the science clarified. They helped fund Mr. Muller, who only three years ago doubted that the Earth was heating up to dangerous levels due to human activity.

TCThe Cold War was said to have ended with the fall of the Berlin wall, but the withdrawal of American, Allied and Russian troops from Berlin marks its real end, removing all foreign forces from Central Europe. President Clinton's speech at the Brandenburg Gate next Tuesday will end a 50-year American engagement in Central Europe that had no precedent, and which, one must surely hope, will require no sequel.The American and Allied units remaining in Germany are no longer there for Cold War reasons but as part of a common effort, in which Germany is a full partner, to institutionalize a new collective security against threats that can only be identified in abstractions: disorder, extremism, nationalism, national breakdown.

BERLIN -- Once at the center of the Cold War's last great propaganda battle, Jakob Segal now sits in his cramped high-rise, pondering why no one believes his theory that the AIDS epidemic was made in Maryland."

The brouhaha over Attorney General Eric Holder and the contempt of Congress charge brought by U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa is providing new evidence that the lunatics are running the Republican asylum. Mr. Issa, the California Republican who is chairman of the House Oversight Committee, would have us believe President Obama's assertion of executive privilege in the dispute -- "an eleventh-hour stunt," he called it on Fox News -- is part of a White House cover up of something much more sinister.

Time and time again I hear Republicans chatter about how horrible President Obama has been for the economy. One of their funniest gaffes is that Obama is a big spending, government-loving liberal. To put that in perspective: The average annual growth in federal spending under President Obama has been 1.4 percent. Compare that to George W. Bush's 7.7 percent, Ronald Reagan's 6.8 percent,George H.W. Bush's 5.4 percent and Nixon's 10.4 percent. (These figures come from the Congressional Budget Office, the Office of Management and Budget and Marketwatch.)