Vague

AUGUSTA, Ga. -- Jack Kemp, the Republican vice presidential nominee, yesterday blamed the "worsening situation" in Iraq on President Clinton's "vacillation" and failure to state clear objectives in the Persian Gulf."

Circuit Judge Dennis M. Sweeney today found Anne Arundel County Executive John Leopold guilty on two counts of misconduct for using his executive security detail for personal and political gain. Reports of his sexual escapades and urinary malfunctions have filled the public with disgust. I've attended every day of the trial. Most remarkable for me is the vague law on which the indictment against Mr. Leopold was based. Maryland's state prosecutor based his case on Mr. Leopold's general fiduciary responsibility to the public rather than the violation of clear, specific rules.

The state's highest court has struck down Frederick's curfew, ruling that its wording, which is identical to Baltimore's curfew law, is too vague to be constitutional.The Court of Appeals decision Friday may trigger a legal challenge to Baltimore's year-old law because the ruling warns that a municipality may be liable if it uses an unconstitutional curfew to detain juveniles, legal experts said."What it means is any municipality, like Baltimore, that continues to enforce a curfew that could be unconstitutional is doing so at its own peril," said Deborah A. Jeon, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union.

I agree with letter writer Fred Pasek's warning about "vague promises," but this applies to all politicians, Rep. Paul Ryan no less than President Barack Obama ("What Ryan actually said about that GM plant," Sept. 6). Mr. Ryan vaguely promises to preserve Medicare for future generations with schmaltzy references to his mom and grandmother, while his policies clearly eviscerate the program. So much for "vague promises," eh? And anybody who thinks Mr. Ryan was on the up and up with his narrative about the plant closure is surely in denial.

"Where are you going," Melisande asks of the older man who has found her lost, alone and frightened in a dark wood and asks her to come with him. "I don't know," the man says. "I'm lost, too." In a way, these lines from Claude Debussy's only completed opera, "Pelleas et Melisande," define the mysterious drama that follows. Everyone in this haunting work is lost; some know it, some don't. By the end, Melisande, on her death bed, says, "I don't know what I know." She's not alone. Some audiences are frustrated by the vagueness of "Pelleas et Melisande"; they crave clear-cut characters, motivations, denouements -- and more direct music to delineate those elements.

HELENA, Mont. -- Montana's one-of-a-kind daytime speed limit -- written in law as whatever speed is "reasonable and proper" and widely interpreted as wide open -- has been struck down by the Montana Supreme Court, prompting fears that the lack of even the vague limit will lead people to drive at breakneck speeds.In a 4-3 ruling on Wednesday, the court said the law was unconstitutionally vague and did not give drivers fair notice of what speed was fast enough to be illegal."The court held that based on speed alone you cannot cite somebody because they don't reasonably know what speed will violate the law," Beth Baker, Montana's chief deputy attorney general, said yesterday.

WASHINGTON - The National Security Agency intercepted two brief messages on Sept. 10 that warned that some kind of event would happen the next day, but the agency did not translate the messages until Sept. 12, a senior intelligence official said yesterday. The messages said in Arabic: "The match begins tomorrow," and "Tomorrow is zero" day. They were detected by the Fort Meade spy agency as its satellites and computers eavesdropped on phone calls and electronic messages worldwide. Intelligence officials cautioned, however, that the messages were so vague that even if the NSA had translated them before the attacks Sept.

WASHINGTON -- Charging toward a showdown on the Senate floor, the White House formally responded yesterday to the House articles of impeachment, contending that they are unconstitutionally vague, illegally worded and completely false.But the president's lawyers declined to file motions that might have delayed the start of opening arguments, scheduled for Thursday."We believe the public has had enough of this," said Joe Lockhart, the White House spokesman. "We're at the final stage of this process, and we can do it two ways: We can do it fairly and expeditiously, or we can do it fairly in a process that's open-ended and takes months and months."

Richard W. Vague, the Texas lender who built Wilmington, Del.'s First USA Bank into the biggest credit-card company in the world, has quit in the wake of disappointing earnings and a consumer revolt.First USA's owner, Chicago-based Bank One Corp., said Vague quit "to pursue other interests." Chairman John B. McCoy said it was Vague's decision.The resignation was announced late yesterday, after Bank One's disclosure that its third-quarter earnings dropped because First USA posted flat profit instead of the rapid growth it had previously projected.

At a 7th District congressional forum in Randallstown this week, each of the 19 candidates who showed up had two minutes to tell the public about his or her background and platform.Most of the more than 150 people in the placard-cluttered audience already had their minds made up, however; they appeared to be campaign workers and volunteers for one candidate or another.Then, three questions were posed to each candidate -- one on crime, one on the controversial Moving To Opportunity federal housing program, and the last on education.

In Umar Farooq's recent letter concerning Occupy Baltimore ("Occupy Baltimore: The Sun doesn't get it," Oct. 10), he states that The Sun's reporters wouldn't understand the concerns of the protesters. On the contrary, I believe that a reporter for the Sun would understand them all too well. The lament that the janitor who sweeps the stands after a football game makes too little money is nothing new. There's a mechanism by which the wages of that janitor can be raised, and that would be to raise the minimum wage.

Here's a request from a frustrated voter to all public servants: Will you please be specific? I'm supposed to make informed decisions based on the information public officials provide. But where is that data? What's the address of the Medicare facility they intend to close? The department in the Pentagon where the ax will fall? The name of the government contractor whose contract will end, and the state where his business is located? Tell us exactly what should be stopped and where.

Baltimore's gun offender registry is unconstitutional, a Circuit Court judge ruled Friday, calling into question one of the city's signature programs against gun violence. Judge Alfred Nance said the Police Department had "failed or refused to comply" with establishing clear regulations for the registry, which required people convicted of gun crimes to provide addresses and other information with the city every six months for a period of three years. The city judge also called the program, created in 2007, "unconstitutionally vague and overly broad.

Kenneth D. Perry, accused of fatally shooting two women 12 years ago — one through the top of her head as she likely begged for her life, a prosecutor said — took the stand in his own defense Monday but gave vague and confrontational testimony. The sole exception was his answer to whether he had killed his former girlfriend, LaShawn Jordan, in her Reservoir Hill apartment on July 10, 1998. "Hell no," he replied. Asked if he had killed her friend, Kelly Bunn, who was pregnant, he said, "No. " Perry, 45, who was testifying against his lawyer's advice, invoked his constitutional rights and objected to a prosecutor's question as though he were an attorney.

Even the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, heavily backed by unions, has a detailed plan to cut state pension liabilities that are billions of dollars underfunded. The proposal includes raising the retirement age for state employees and requiring more worker contributions. The Republican candidate would go further, not only delaying retirement and making employees pay more but replacing traditional pensions with a 401(k)-like plan for many new government workers. The two talked repeatedly and in some depth about pension solutions in their televised debate.

Stick together in small groups. Avoid political demonstrations and large crowds of fellow Americans. Call your parents to let them know you're safe. The directors of study-abroad programs at Maryland universities spent Monday morning e-mailing hundreds of students about these basic precautions after Sunday's European terror alert from the U.S. State Department. "In this case, there is nothing specific, so it's really hard to go beyond the general recommendations we usually give," said Andre Colombat, Loyola's director of international programs.

Los Angeles. THE DEBATE over a proposed law is usually simple. One side wants to ban smoking in restaurants. The other side doesn't. One side wants a higher sales tax. The other side doesn't. One side thinks a bill is good. The other side thinks it's bad.Sometimes, however, the debate gets more complicated. The bill itself -- what it says, what it would mean -- becomes the issue. Its language is vague, or complicated, or both. In such cases, the debate changes from a discussion of issues to a competition for trust.

This was for Jeff Stone, for Bill Scherrer, for all those who suffered through the most embarrassing series in Orioles history.The year was 1988. The opponent was Minnesota.0-19. 0-20. 0-21.Only four current Orioles were with the club back then, but no matter. What goes around comes around. The Twins had won 15 straight, but last night they never had a chance.Their starter was Allan Anderson -- the same guy who beat the Zer-O's the day they set the AL record for consecutive losses, back when no one confused "21" with blackjack.

The predictions of big gains for the GOP in November's elections have brought on inevitable comparisons to the Newt Gingrich-led Republican revolution of 1994, and those comparisons got stronger today with the House Republican leadership's release of its "Pledge to America," an obvious echo of the "Contract with America" of 16 years ago. But if the "Pledge" is an echo of its predecessor, it is a weak one. Putting aside the question of whether the...

Nearly two months into the environmental disaster triggered by BP's massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, President Barack Obama made his first-ever address from the Oval Office last night in an effort to convince Americans that the government is doing enough to protect coastal areas and the livelihoods of residents threatened by the crisis. He sought to convince the public that the federal government is and has been in control and that BP will be held financially responsible, but the weakest part of his speech was the most important: the call for the United States to reduce, and eventually eliminate, our dependence on oil. Although he devoted the conclusion of his speech to the topic, he offered no more than an admonition that the nation must reduce its addiction to fossil fuels and an offer that he's open to suggestions for how to do so. The first order of business for the president appears to be convincing the public that he is in charge.