Free Republic

The House of Delegates has approved a bill to permanently ban natural gas fracking in Western Maryland. The bill passed by a vote of 97-40. The 97 votes is 12 more than the minimum of 85 needed to override a veto from Governor Larry Hogan. That majority was important to the chairman of the committee hearing the bill in the Senate. The chairman of the Senate Education Health and Environmental Affairs Committee, Joan Carter Conway of Baltimore City, says she won’t bring the bill to the Senate floor unless lawmakers have enough votes to override a possible veto from Governor...

A century-old statue of a Confederate soldier that stands outside a Maryland courthouse will be moved to private property. Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett said in a news release Tuesday that the county will cover the cost to relocate the bronze statue from the courthouse in Rockville to White’s Ferry, a docking site on the Potomac River named for a Confederate general. …

A Maryland county prosecutor has been sentenced for indecent exposure and disorderly conduct after authorities say he performed sex acts in front of a hotel room glass door, in full view of tourists. News outlets report Cecil County State’s Attorney Edward Rollins III submitted his resignation Monday. […] A judge gave Rollins a suspended jail sentence, 18 months supervised probation, 100 hours community service and fined him $1,000. He will also have a mental health evaluation. …

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — After being robbed a handful of times in the past few months, one Baltimore coffee shop is no longer accepting cash to stop the robberies and keep their staff safe. Nowadays, many people don’t carry cash in their wallets day-to-day, and at Park Cafe in Bolton Hill, cash payments are no longer on the menu. “We’re not going to accept cash anymore,” said Park Cafe & Coffee owner David Hart. “I’m going to take that out of the equation.” Park Cafe was robbed five times from October to January. While the armed suspect is now behind bars,...

An attorney for a man convicted of taking part in sniper shootings that left 10 people dead in the Washington area is asking a judge to toss his life sentence because he was convicted as a juvenile. In a motion filed Friday in a Maryland county court, public defender James Johnston argues that Lee Boyd Malvo’s mandatory life sentence is illegal because the U.S. Supreme Court determined such sentences are unconstitutional for juveniles. …

President Obama’s clashes with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may cost him a membership at an exclusive golf club, sources said. Obama is looking to join the elite Woodmont Country Club in Maryland once he becomes a private citizen. But members of the mostly Jewish club are at each other’s throats over whether to accept the golf-loving president, with many saying he deserves to be snubbed for not blocking an anti-Israel vote at the United Nations, according to the sources.

A spokesman for Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh says the city and the U.S. Justice Department have reached agreement on a consent decree that will require the city to reform its police department. “Negotiations are done,” Anthony McCarthy said Wednesday. “The final document has gone to the principals” to be signed. Attorney General Loretta Lynch is expected to speak on community policing Thursday at the University of Baltimore Law School, as well as meet with community members, law enforcement and other local officials. …

A former aide to Baltimore’s mayor has been charged with making illegal contributions to the mayor’s campaign, prompting officials on Monday to cancel his planned swearing-in ceremony for a vacant seat in the Maryland House of Delegates. Gary Brown Jr., a Democrat who was a legislative aide to new Mayor Catherine Pugh when she was still a state senator, has been charged with six counts of election law violations, State Prosecutor Emmet Davitt announced. Brown had recently been nominated to the House vacancy. Prosecutors allege that Brown, who worked on Pugh’s campaign, deposited $18,000 in cash between Jan. 13, 2016...

Some good news for Chicago: It's no longer the bedbug capital of the nation. In its annual ranking, released Tuesday, pest-control services provider Orkin said Baltimore tops its annual list of the top 50 cities for bed bugs. Chicago had been the center of bedbug action for four straight years. The list is based on data from the metro areas where Orkin performed the most bed bug treatments, both residential and commercial, from Dec. 1, 2015, to Nov. 30, 2016. Chicago ranked third this year. Baltimore moved up nine slots to No. 1, marking the first time it has made...

The number-two Democrat in the House, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland, has published several statements which are strongly critical of the Obama administration’s betrayal of Israel at the United Nations. Before the vote was cast at the UN, Hoyer urged the President to exercise America’s veto power against the anti-Israel resolution: The resolution, as proposed, seeks to place responsibility for continued conflict fully on Israel and ignores violence and incitement by Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority and Hamas leaderships. Any workable and long-lasting solution to this conflict must come about through direct, bilateral negotiations, and this resolution undermines that...

Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Thursday stepped up the pressure on Baltimore officials to reach a deal with the federal government to overhaul the city’s police practices, saying “the ball is in the city’s court” to conclude negotiations soon. Lynch, who took office in April 2015 as riots roiled Baltimore after the death of a black man in police custody, said she intends to return to Baltimore in January to give an update on efforts to reach a court-enforceable consent decree. Her statements seemed intended to publicly push Baltimore toward a resolution and appeared to reflect disappointment in the pace...

A Maryland high school teacher has been disciplined after encouraging students to “have fun” writing a slave song for an assignment as part of a lesson on abolitionist Frederick Douglass. […] Principal Andrew Cockley wrote in an email to parents Dec. 7 that the assignment was linked to a lesson on “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.” Cockley says the activity was culturally insensitive. …

A Maryland city has cleared what could be the last obstacle to its plan to rid the City Hall courtyard of a statue of the man who wrote the 1857 Dred Scott decision affirming slavery. Frederick’s Historic Preservation Commission voted 4-1 Thursday to allow the removal of the bust of Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, and a nearby bust of Maryland’s first governor, Thomas Johnson, who owned slaves. City officials say both will go to nearby Mount Olivet Cemetery, where Johnson is buried. …

A Maryland man posing as a police officer turned his lights and sirens on behind a real police officer, officials said. John Vincent Angelini, 51, of Baltimore, was arrested Wednesday after Montgomery County police said he trailed an off-duty detective driving on the Intercounty Connector in an unmarked car. The detective was headed eastbound on the ICC near Georgia Avenue about 8:15 p.m. Wednesday when he saw a car alongside him. It was a Ford Crown Victoria that looked like an unmarked police car, police said. The driver of the Crown Victoria then slowed down so that he was behind...

Three gunmen shot and wounded eight people including a 3-year-old girl on an east Baltimore street Saturday night, police said, adding the suspects fled and the victims were all expected to survive. The shooting erupted outside some rowhouses about 8:30 p.m. after the three armed men converged on the group from different points, Baltimore Police Commissioner Ken Davis told The Associated Press. Davis, who went to the scene, said the shooting was a premeditated act of retaliatory violence in response to a Labor Day weekend shooting in which a person was fatally shot and two others were wounded, including a...

The Baltimore County Board of Education on Tuesday voted 6-5 against closing schools for two Muslim holidays when they fall on school days. According to the Baltimore Sun, the Muslim community had advocated for more than a decade to close Baltimore schools on the Islamic holidays of Eid al-Adha and Eid al-Fitr. The vote followed a heated discussion among school board members as dozens of Muslims waited in the audience. The results of the vote prompted shouts of “Injustice!” by some in attendance, and the board had to call a five-minute recess before continuing. …

Baltimore police officers routinely discriminate against blacks, repeatedly use excessive force and are not adequately held accountable for misconduct, according to a harshly critical Justice Department report being presented Wednesday. The report, the culmination of a yearlong investigation into one of the country’s largest police forces, also found that officers make large numbers of stops — mostly in poor, black neighborhoods — with dubious justification and unlawfully arrest citizens for speech deemed disrespectful. Physical force is used unnecessarily, including against the mentally disabled, and black pedestrians and drivers are disproportionately searched during stops, the report says. The Justice Department released...

Lawsuits filed by Baltimore police officers against Baltimore State Attorney Marilyn Mosby must be dismissed, according to the law. The United States Supreme Court ruled that prosecutors acting within the scope of their duties in pursuing criminal prosecution are immune from civil suits.The role of a prosecutor in a criminal case is to seek justice and represent the People of a given jurisdiction against a person charged with committing a criminal offense. This is exactly what Marilyn Mosby did when the officers involved in Freddie Gray’s death, which the medical examiner ruled a homicide, were indicted by a grand jury....

Authorities say a Thurmont, Maryland, man has been charged in a pipe bomb explosion that damaged a local police department vehicle. Officials said Saturday that 22-year-old Kyle Rutger Mueller is charged with four counts of possession of a destructive device, two counts of malicious destruction of property and one count of reckless endangerment. Officials say the pipe bomb with black powder residue and nails exploded about 12:30 a.m. Wednesday, damaging a marked police SUV parked in front of an officer's home on Clark Avenue. No one was hurt. Police told News4 a Burger King receipt left in a bag of...

On Wednesday, Mosby was back in front of the cameras where she made extraordinary shocking allegations against the Baltimore Police Department, again. A defiant Mosby refused to take any accountability for her rush to judgment in charging the six police officers just over one year ago. Instead, she chose to blame the Baltimore police investigators for her inability to sustain a single criminal charge against the accused officers. Mosby accused investigators of intentionally trying to harm the state’s ability to bring charges, even going so far as to claim investigators committed a felony by manufacturing evidence in the case. Yes,...