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Five years ago, we chastised the Maryland General Assembly for attempting to single out one retailer, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. , with a law requiring the company to spend more on health benefits. That mandate was eventually struck down by the federal courts. Well, here those Maryland politicians go again. Baltimore City Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke this week introduced a measure to require the city's largest retailers to pay their employees a "living wage," (currently about $10 an hour)

Four years ago, when Maryland legislators approved what became known as the Wal-Mart bill - a mandate that would have forced the retailing giant to either pay a minimum amount for employee health benefits or a hefty penalty to the state - it was derided by the company as both bad public policy and illegal. The latter objection proved to be true. It was thrown out by a federal appeals court as a violation of federal law that limits states' ability to regulate employee benefits. But the reasoning behind the proposal was sound: If companies are to compete on a level playing field, how can some be burdened with the obligation of providing increasingly expensive health care insurance while others are not?

A Baltimore police officer and his wife were charged in the attempted theft of more than $1,100 in items from a Wal-Mart store in Owings Mills this week, authorities said yesterday. Store security guards stopped the officer, Robert H. Gordon, 44, and Daniella Gordon, 40, outside the store after watching them leaving with the items, Baltimore County police said. The couple had purchased about $150 worth of goods - mostly household items such as cleaning supplies, clothing and food - and tried to hide other items beneath the ones they had bought, according to Bill Toohey, a Baltimore County police spokesman.

First came Wal-Mart's decision to push for lower prices for compact fluorescent lightbulbs, those swirly, energy-efficient alternatives to the incandescent ones. Then, it started offering redesigned milk jugs that, by decreasing storage and delivery costs, also will reduce energy consumption. And, most recently it announced a new emphasis on stocking its stores with more produce grown locally rather than shipped from longer distances. Suddenly, Wal-Mart is getting harder to hate. Could Wal-Mart, dubbed Sprawl-Mart by its detractors, actually be turning into a friend of the Earth, a foe of excessive energy consumption and even that trendiest of utter feel-goodliness, an actual locavore?

A state judge in Minnesota has ruled that Wal-Mart Stores, the discount department store chain, violated state laws on rest breaks and other wage matters more than 2 million times and as a result could face more than $2 billion in fines. The judge has threatened to impose a $1,000 penalty for each violation. The judge also ruled Monday that Wal-Mart owed $6.5 million to 56,000 current and former employees because of contractual violations, including a failure to give workers promised rest breaks at least 1.5 million times.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will pay $250,000 to a pharmacy technician who suffered a disability resulting from a gunshot wound and was subsequently fired from one of its Harford County stores, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced yesterday. Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart failed to accommodate technician Glenda Darlene Allen and then unlawfully fired her from the Abingdon store because of her disability, the EEOC said. Allen, who had worked as a Wal-Mart pharmacy technician at another store in Aberdeen since July 1993, was shot during a robbery at another job in 1994.

City officials recognized Wal-Mart yesterday for the company's support of a "Housewarming for the Homeless" drive to assist families who used to live under the Jones Falls Expressway. The Baltimore-Washington stores donated more than $28,000 worth of materials to the campaign, filling a tractor-trailer with such items as refrigerators, mattresses, sheets, blankets, pillows, shower curtains, lamps, bulbs, pots and pans, plates, cups, utensils, toiletries and cleaning supplies, according to city officials.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, is getting back into the Christmas spirit. Two years ago, the discount chain substituted the word holiday for Christmas references and encouraged greeters to do the same, in line with other retailers' removal of Christmas from advertising and stores. Now, after criticism from religious groups, the Bentonville, Ark.-based merchant for the first time has brought Santas into its 3,407 stores. And, after an experiment at a few locations last year, the retailer has set up a Christmas Shop in 1,500 of its outlets.

Let's face it: We like big things in this country. We like big cars, big houses, big burgers we can stuff in our big mouths and Big Gulps to wash 'em down. We like big TVs, big malls and big sales. Who gets excited about a regular sale anymore? Now it has to be "THE BIGGEST LABOR DAY SALE EVER! DON'T MISS THIS SPECTACULAR EVENT!" Sometimes, even big won't do. Sometimes we need bigger than big. Super-sized, that's what we need. Like a pizza the size of a manhole cover, with 27 toppings and 10 pounds of cheese injected via cooking syringe into the crust, the biggest, thickest, gooiest pizza in the whole world.

A robbery at a bank inside an Ellicott City Wal-Mart store Wednesday has Howard County police searching for a quiet thief who showed no weapon. The robber, described as black, in his mid-30s, 5 feet 10 inches to 6 feet tall, weighing 180 pounds, with slight facial hair and wearing a beige baseball cap and a long-sleeved beige shirt, entered the store in the 3200 block of Ridge Road and approached a Provident Bank teller at 12:48 p.m. He demanded cash,...