Free Republic

ANNAPOLIS — Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. is pushing for broader income-tax increases and a last-ditch attempt at expanding gambling as lawmakers look toward a possible special session, but the House appears reluctant to embrace either proposal. Mr. Miller will meet Tuesday with Gov. Martin O'Malley and House Speaker Michael E. Busch to discuss the scope of a potential special session, during which the General Assembly likely would pass several tax and revenue increases to cancel out $512 million in cuts resulting from their failure to pass the increases at the regular session’s close. Mr. Miller is waging...

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley said Thursday he wants to call a special session for lawmakers to raise taxes and reverse $500 million in planned budget cuts but is waiting on House and Senate leaders to meet beforehand and work out a unified plan. During a day in which he conducted several radio and television interviews, the Democratic governor said he would call legislators back to Annapolis “a half-hour from now” but needs assurances that a special session will not include the bickering and gamesmanship that caused a revenue package to fall through Monday on the General Assembly’s last day, triggering...

ANNAPOLIS — The General Assembly adjourned Monday night after a chaotic closing session in which members failed to pass a set of proposed tax increases or a bill to expand gambling in the state. Lawmakers passed a balanced budget and hoped to pass accompanying bills raising income taxes and shifting teacher-pension costs onto counties, but they ran out of time before the assembly’s required midnight adjournment. The House attempted to extend the session by passing a resolution shortly before midnight, but the Senate did not address the measure in time. Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. said he was...

Gov. Martin O'Malley says he still hopes to convince the legislature to raise money for highway and transit projects — possibly by adding another penny to Maryland's six-percent sales tax and dedicating the extra revenue to transportation. In an interview with The Baltimore Sun, O'Malley conceded that his initial proposal to apply the sales tax to gasoline is dead in the General Assembly. But he said an alternative would be a delayed implementation of that proposal, with the sales tax not being applied until gas prices fell to a certain level. A second option, he said, would be to raise...

ANNAPOLIS — With just a week left in the 2012 General Assembly session, lawmakers have hundreds of bills left to consider. But only a handful of proposals will get most of their attention. The House and Senate still must approve a joint version of the state budget, which they are required to do before adjourning Monday. Legislators also will consider bills that would implement offshore-wind energy and set up a referendum on whether to allow table games and a new casino in Prince George’s County. A conference committee of House and Senate representatives got to work Monday on hashing out...

A state lawmaker who was a central figure this year in the drama over whether Maryland would approve same-sex marriage was charged Friday with stealing campaign funds to pay for her wedding. Charges brought by the Office of the Maryland State Prosecutor allege that Del. Tiffany T. Alston (D-Prince George’s) spent thousands of dollars of campaign contributions to pay for wedding expenses and for the salary of an employee in her law firm. In several instances, Alston wrote herself checks from the account of “Friends of Tiffany Alston” and then cashed the checks for personal use, according to the prosecutor’s...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Leslie E. Johnson resigned Tuesday from the Prince George's County Council, five days after she pleaded guilty to destroying evidence in a federal corruption probe.

Former Prince George’s County Executive Jack B. Johnson on Tuesday pleaded guilty to two felony charges involving thousands of dollars in bribes he solicited as part of a “pay-to-play” culture federal authorities say he fostered throughout his two terms in office. Johnson, who led Prince George’s from 2002 to December and was the county’s top prosecutor for eight years before that, entered his guilty plea in federal court in Greenbelt on charges of extortion and witness and evidence tampering. As part of the plea, he admitted accepting a $100,000 check from a county developer in exchange for securing federal funding...

A group of current and former Prince George's County school employees has filed a lawsuit against the school system, alleging that a principal engaged in systematic discrimination against white teachers and the African American teachers and staffers who came to their defense. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt on Monday, alleges that Angelique Simpson Marcus, the principal of Largo High School, has targeted white teachers because of their race, and the African American teachers and employees who stood up for them, since she became principal in 2007. The lawsuit alleges a pattern of name-calling, derogatory language and...

*snip* "Don't answer it," the county executive said, unaware that more agents were listening in. Johnson ordered his wife to find and destroy a $100,000 check from a real estate developer that was hidden in a box of liquor. "Do you want me to put it down the toilet?" Leslie Johnson asked. "Yes, flush that," the county executive said. But what about the cash? she asked - $79,600. Put it in your underwear, the county executive told his wife. She replied, "I have it in my bra" - which is where agents discovered the money after she answered the door.

<p>Jack B. Johnson, and wife, Leslie, were arrested Nov. 12 as federal investigators served search warrants at the County Administration Building. Each was charged with evidence tempering and destroying evidence. Just after 10:12 am Friday, Leslie Johnson frantically phoned her husband. Two FBI agents were at the front door of their two-story brick colonial in Mitchellville. "Don't answer it," the county executive said, unaware that FBI agents were listening in. Johnson ordered her to destroy a $100,000 check from a real estate developer hidden in a box of liquor. "Flush that," he said. And the cash? "Put it in your underwear." She replied, "I have it in my bra" - which is where agents discovered the money after she answered the door.</p>

Prince George's County Executive Jack Johnson, arrested in a corruption probe Friday, told his wife to hide tens of thousands of dollars in her underwear as federal agents arrived at his house to search for illegal payoffs from a developer, federal prosecutors have charged. Caught in an FBI sting taking a $15,000 payment from an unnamed developer Friday, Mr. Johnson later told his wife by telephone not to answer the door when two FBI agents came to their home, authorities said. The county executive, a Democrat who was previously the county's top prosecutor, then told his wife, Leslie Johnson, to...

Prince George's County Executive Jack B. Johnson was arrested at his home Friday morning by federal law enforcement agents, and he is tentatively scheduled to appear in court on federal charges later Friday afternoon. Johnson and his wife, Leslie E. Johnson, were taken away in handcuffs shortly before 1 p.m. Johnson, wearing a camel-colored suit and white shirt, did not address reporters' questions. Johnson, who is coming to the end of his term next month, is expected to appear in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt. Their appearances are scheduled for 4 p.m. and 4:15 p.m. The charges will be unsealed...

Kris Marsh's household doesn't have two incomes. But in Prince George's County, she is increasingly becoming the face of the black middle class. Marsh, a sociologist at the University of Maryland, moved to Bowie last year from Los Angeles, determined to live in a place she had always heard was the promised land for educated, successful African Americans. She bought a large, single-family house in a development where many of her neighbors are also single women. Prince George's residents personify many demographic and socioeconomic trends playing out among African Americans on a national level. In 2008, about half of the...

Travel along a two-block stretch of Central Avenue in Prince George's County, and you'll find a staggering 11 fast-food restaurants. For community activist Arthur Turner and state Sen. David C. Harrington (D-Prince George's), the strip is evidence of the proliferation of burger joints and Chinese takeouts in the county, especially in poorer, inner Capital Beltway communities. Pointing to studies that rank Prince George's residents among the least healthy in Maryland, Turner and Harrington want to limit new fast-food restaurants in the county, a far stricter approach than what has been enacted in such places as New York City and Montgomery...

The District and Prince George's County, long considered the region's most violent jurisdictions, logged their lowest homicide totals in years in 2009, with D.C. hitting a 45-year -low. The number of slayings last year in the District, once known as the murder capital of the United States, was 140, a 25 percent drop from 2008. Prince George's recorded 100 killings, the county's lowest in nine years. Montgomery and Fairfax counties also had significant decreases in homicides in 2009. But the drop in the District was unprecedented and significant for its size and its scope: Every police district in the city...

What interpretation of Islam influ enced Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan? As often before, the trail leads to the official sect of Saudi Arabia -- known as Wahhabism to most of us of who denounce it. Confronting the role of radical Islam here is not Islamophobic, but common sense -- and the first response moderate Muslims themselves will have. Hasan, though born in America, refused to have his picture taken with women -- an attitude distinct to fundamentalist radicalism among Muslims. The Prophet Mohammed cautioned his followers that when they go to live in non-Muslim lands they must accept the laws...

Greenbelt, a city that prides itself on its heritage as a New Deal-era social experiment, is finding its commitment to inclusiveness tested as two black candidates contend for seats on its all-white City Council in Tuesday's elections. Until this year, only two blacks had ever run for the council and none had been elected, even though blacks account for nearly half the 21,000 residents of the 6-square-mile city just outside the Capital Beltway, according to the most recent census estimates. Asians and Hispanics make up 20 percent. The disparity has caught the attention of the American Civil Liberties Union and...

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that Prince George's County violated the U.S. Constitution when it furloughed 5,900 workers in the last fiscal year, a decision that could force the county to repay millions in wages in the midst of a crippling economic downturn. The ruling, which the county plans to appeal, has the potential to upend a key Prince George's strategy for combating deficits. A county spokesman said in a statement that the decision would result in "massive layoffs" if it stands. "As a result of this [economic] crisis, the county made a difficult decision to furlough its employees for...

There were no angry mobs or Nazi SS symbols at a health care town hall in Maryland’s heavily Democratic 4th Congressional district on Thursday night, but the member of Congress in the spotlight did face some tough questioning from small but vocal crew of administration critics in the audience. (snip) Mark King of Germantown — who warned that the President is implementing socialist policies — compared himself and other administration critics to those who rallied against King George during the American Revolution. “If we just reflect a little bit, this is how the country got started — people came to...