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Gay man is victimized twice, by killer and state

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Baltimore Sun - By Peter Hermann - Jan. 18 (News Report) - He was shot in September 2008 while walking hand-in-hand with his longtime partner, Alex Chavarria, on Howard Street in Mount Vernon. Witnesses told police that a young man, previously overheard saying, "I'm going to kill myself a gay tonight," stopped to ask Footman a question or bum a cigarette, and then shot him twice. Baltimore police classified the shooting as a possible hate crime but have not made any arrests. Footman spent months at Maryland Shock Trauma Center, then at a rehabilitation center, then at home. In July, he returned to Shock Trauma for more surgery, and he died Nov. 9. Glen H. Footman, a true victim if there ever was one in Baltimore, died too soon to get any money from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board. And because Footman, 52, had no spouse and no dependents, there is no one for the state to give the money to. Footman and Chavarria, together for 13 years, could not marry in Maryland. And had they been legally wed in one of the few states that recognizes gay marriage, it is unclear whether Chavarria could receive compensation here. Maryland's attorney general is working on an opinion as to whether this state would recognize unions that are legal elsewhere.

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City judge rules against state in food stamp processing lawsuit

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Baltimore Sun - By Brent Jones - Dec. 14 (News Report) - A Baltimore Circuit Court judge ruled Thursday that the state has failed to deliver food stamps and medical benefits in a timely manner to thousands of Marylanders, and he ordered a corrective action plan to be filed by late January.

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Reviving an option

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Baltimore Sun - Oct. 04 (Editorial) - As discouraging as it was to watch certain members of the Senate Finance Committee treat the concept of affordable health insurance coverage as America's own Bolshevik Revolution last week, hope for a modicum of common sense in the U.S. Congress springs eternal. The battle over the public option isn't over yet, as there is at least one more card to play. As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has already promised, no matter what comes out of the full Senate, the health care reform bill approved by the House of Representatives will contain the public option. What happens in the inevitable conference committee is anyone's guess.

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CEOs paid more even as profits fall

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Baltimore Sun - By Jamie Smith Hopkins - Aug. 09 (Special Report) - Chief executives of public companies have long had a ready answer when criticized about high pay: It's all about company performance. That argument has been put to the test by the toughest financial environment since the Great Depression. If performance is the standard, many of the Baltimore area's top-earning executives seem to be on shaky ground. To see how last year's financial crisis and worsening recession affected pay, The Baltimore Sun analyzed the 20 companies in the metro area that paid their CEOs at least $1 million. Seventeen reported increases in their chief executives' compensation, even though just as many firms ended their fiscal year with lower-priced stock - substantially lower, for the most part.

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A neighborhood under the gun

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Baltimore Sun - By Scott Calvert, Julie Bykowicz - Aug. 02 (Special Report) - The 55 souls gathered at Faith Tabernacle Apostolic Church kept worshiping Sunday evening when a flash of light danced across the stained-glass windows. Just a police car responding to a call, they figured, a common enough sight in this part of East Baltimore. Probably nothing too serious. But a parishioner standing on the sidewalk knew something was very wrong. On the far side of Ashland Avenue, a crowd rushed from an alley screaming, "You shot? You shot?" The panic was understandable. A dozen people had just been hit by gunfire at a backyard cookout.

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Maryland's Donna Edwards: Emerging Leader, Liberal Maverick

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Baltimore Sun - By Paul West - Jun. 04 (Special Report) - Edwards believes the president is taking the U.S. in the wrong direction in Afghanistan. She argues that Obama has no plan for winning and no strategy for getting out. Congress "failed" its responsibility to challenge President George W. Bush's policies in Iraq, Edwards said in an interview. "And we can't make that mistake with President Obama."

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Paying for special ed

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Baltimore Sun - Apr. 28 (Editorial) - One of the most vexing and heart-rending decisions parents of children with disabilities must make involves what to do when the public schools aren't working for them. The federal Individuals With Disabilities Education Act requires local school districts to devote substantial resources to special-ed programs, and Congress and the courts have made it clear that every child has a right to a "free appropriate public education." But when the public schools fail to meet a child's needs, many parents seek help from private institutions - and hope the state will pick up the tab.

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Of trust and science

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Baltimore Sun - By Stephanie Desmon - Apr. 05 (News Report) - On a recent morning they knocked on Mary Ann Stoltzfus' door, the research nurse and her Amish helper, just as they have on so many doors over the years. They didn't call ahead - most Amish don't have telephones. They tracked down Stoltzfus the old-fashioned way: They asked her mother-in-law for the address when they ran into her. There were consent forms to sign, nosy medical questions to ask. The pair turned Stoltzfus' kitchen into a makeshift doctor's office, where nurse Theresa Roomet drew five vials of blood as the 40-year-old mother of six rested her elbow on the lacy tablecloth.

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Army medicine: Untested in battle

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Baltimore Sun - Mar. 29 (Special Report) - The U.S. Army has quietly altered or abandoned some of its more experimental medical treatments for troops injured in combat, as advances it once hailed as groundbreaking are foundlargely ineffective or perhaps even dangerous. Advanced battle dressings, a blood-clotting drug, alternative procedures for emergency blood transfusions - each was introduced early in the Iraq war, often with little evidence to support them beyond anecdotes or tests on animals. A few were adopted widely by civilian hospitals, based almost exclusively on accolades from the military. But an investigation by The Baltimore Sun reveals that military doctors and medics, and in some cases uniformed leaders, have rejected or curtailed use of many of the new devices and techniques as clinical experience and data from the war zone yield disappointing and sometimes troubling results.

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Using the 'T' word

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Baltimore Sun - Mar. 17 (Opinion) - a long-suppressed report by the International Committee of the Red Cross has surfaced to give the lie to those denials. The report's contents, presented to U.S. authorities in 2007 but made public only this week, describe in graphic detail officially sanctioned beatings, torture and abuse of prisoners in secret CIA prisons around the world that clearly violated U.S. and international law.

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Chicken growers face EPA crackdown

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Baltimore Sun - By Timothy B. Wheeler - Mar. 15 (News Report) - The Environmental Protection Agency has told Maryland's poultry farmers it intends to enforce for the first time federal pollution rules governing chicken manure - a crackdown that has surprised and angered growers while pleasing environmentalists who've long complained about agricultural runoff fouling Chesapeake Bay.

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Web site details black history in W. Md.

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Baltimore Sun - By Elizabeth Malby - Feb. 28 (Special Report) - Lorraine Wells was about to give up. More than 10 years of searching for clues about the now-deceased father she never knew while growing up in Cumberland had produced nothing. Then the 46-year-old Oakland, Calif., resident got a call from her brother Jeffrey, who lives in Cumberland, about a Web site that chronicles Western Maryland's black history. The Allegany County African American History collection comprises more than 400 images, includes information dating back 200 years - and was created by an amateur historian who happens to be white. Dozens of volunteers helped Albert Feldstein of Cumberland create the site. In addition to etching Western Maryland black history for the world to see, the site has enabled those who have moved away to reconnect with their past.

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Gang members turn themselves around

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Baltimore Sun - By Justin Fenton - Feb. 15 (News Report) - They know him as "Black," a convicted felon and longtime member of the Bloods street gang. He is leaning far back in a chair, under the only working light in a nondescript rowhouse in East Baltimore. He is talking about street life and hustling. And this group of more than 25 gang members and young men recently sprung from prison are hanging on his every word. "Bloods. Crips. BGF. Purple City," he says, rattling off the gang affiliations of the men in the room. He pauses. The room is still.

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History's biggest bailout needs disclosure -

Sat, 27 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Baltimore Sun - By Jay Hancock - Dec. 27 (Opinion) - Last week the government dispatched more of your money into the abyss. Through its "Term Auction Facility," the Federal Reserve lent banks $63 billion - nearly half the cost of the entire savings and loan bailout from the 1980s, or what it takes to fight in Iraq for six months. Who got the money? At what rates? What collateral did they put up? How will the proceeds be spent? The Fed isn't saying, and it's fighting attempts to shed light. The Treasury Department, distributing its own bailout billions, is almost as clammed up. Never has the country spent so much taxpayer money, so quickly, with so little disclosure. The bailout blackout threatens to match the information failure over mortgages and derivatives that caused this mess in the first place.

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Eager to vote

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Baltimore Sun - By Rick Maese, Scott Calvert, Nick Madigan - Nov. 01 (News Report) - The long lines that will wind around Baltimore polling places on Tuesday will include Sherris Moore, celebrating her 33rd birthday and voting for the first time. Moore harbors suspicions that her vote will not be counted but said there was never any doubt that she would take part in an election with so much history at stake. "It was no question," she said. "It was something that had to be done." The enthusiasm surrounding the presidential campaigns can be felt on street corners in the city, cul-de-sacs in the 'burbs and on either side of long country roads.

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Obama delivers TV tour de force worthy of JFK

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Baltimore Sun - By David Zurawik - Oct. 30 (Opinion) - I don’t think any presidential candidate has ever had as strong and wide-reaching a run on the medium as Obama did from the dinner hour to the midnight hour.

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Barack Obama: the last great TV candidate? We''ll see tonight

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Baltimore Sun - Oct. 29 (Breaking News) - Democratic presidential TV candidate Barack Obama is going to seem like he is everywhere on TV tonight thanks in part to a last minute flurry of interview bookings and media buys.

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Hannity all smiles and servility in Palin interview

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Baltimore Sun - By David Zurawik - Sep. 22 (News Analysis) - what viewers saw was a carefully staged display of partisan political theater -- from the executive-office backdrop to the non-stop stream of smiley-faced softball questions Hannity served up with great servility.

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'Throw the bums out!' -- say the bums

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Baltimore Sun - By Garrison Keillor - Sep. 11 (Opinion) - So the Republicans have decided to run against themselves. The bums have tiptoed out the back door and circled around to the front and started yelling, "Throw the bums out!" They've been running Washington like a well-oiled machine, to the point of inviting lobbyists into the back rooms to write the legislation, and now they are anti-establishment reformers dedicated to delivering us from themselves. And Giuliani is an advocate for small-town America. Bravo. They are coming out for Small Efficient Government the very week that the feds are taking over Fannie and Freddie, those old cash cows, and in the course of a weekend 20 or 50 or (pick a number) billion go floating out the Treasury door. It is a bold move on the Republicans' part - forget about the past, it's only history, so write a new narrative and be who you want to be - and if they succeed, I think I might declare myself a 24-year-old virgin named Lance and see what that might lead to. Paste a new face on my Facebook page, maybe become the Dauphin Louie the 32nd, the rightful heir to the Throne of France, put on silk tights and pantaloons and a plumed hat and go on the sawdust circuit and sell souvenir hankies imprinted with the royal fleur-de-lis. John McCain has decided to run as a former POW and a maverick, a maverick's maverick, rather than Mr. Bush's best friend, and that's understandable - but how can he not address the $3 trillion that got burned up in Iraq so far? It's real money; it could've paid for a lot of windmills, a high-speed rail line in Ohio, some serious research and development. The Chinese, who have avoided foreign wars for 50 years, are taking enormous leaps forward, investing in their economy, and we are falling behind. We're wasting our chances.

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Thinking green

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Baltimore Sun - Jul. 21 (Editorial) - In Maryland and across the nation, people are beginning to rethink the economic and environmental implications of America's dependence on expensive imported oil and are deciding to go green, in ways small and large. Last week, the state rolled out hybrid buses to begin replacing its polluting diesel fleet, and Gov. Martin O'Malley gave a nod toward joining Delaware in placing power-generating windmills off the Atlantic Coast. Meanwhile, Al Gore provocatively suggested that the nation can convert all electricity generation to wind, solar and other renewable sources within 10 years. Critics are mocking Mr. Gore's proposal as impossible to achieve. But compared to the alternatives - drilling for oil in now-protected areas offshore and in Alaska - the former vice president's plan or some equally ambitious mix of conservation and innovation offers the best chance to give the United States a brighter energy future and a cleaner environment. As T. Boone Pickens, a Texas oilman who is offering his own scheme to rescue America from imported oil, points out in television ads: "We import 70 percent of our oil at a cost of $700 billion a year - four times the annual cost of the Iraq war ... this is one emergency we can't drill our way out of."

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Salmonella signs point to peppers

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Baltimore Sun - By Jonathan D. Rockoff - Jul. 05 (News Report) - A likely source of jalepeno contamination is the water used to irrigate plants or wash peppers after they're picked, said Robert B. Gravani, a food science professor at Cornell University. One health official involved in the investigation said "loose ends" are keeping tomatoes under suspicion, but the official said they could be accounted for easily. The official said evidence is "piling up" that indicates that jalapenos are to blame.

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VP picks: Gore, or somebody like him

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Baltimore Sun - By Paul West - Jul. 05 (News Analysis) - One intriguing possibility, if Obama doesn't target a single state or try to amplify the change message: Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island. ... He's a Catholic with working-class roots (his father was a school janitor), a.... He's a West Point graduate and Army Ranger, with views that are right in line with Obama's. He voted against the 2002 Iraq war resolution and became an early critic of the way the war was fought while working to increase the size of the Army.... he's got a Harvard Law degree and spent time teaching at ...West Point). The two men are reported to have a good personal relationship.

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Attacks in Afghanistan grow in number, complexity, report says

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 05:02:09 -0700

Baltimore Sun - By David Wood - Jun. 28 (News Report) - WASHINGTON - After nearly seven years of war in Afghanistan, the Taliban-led insurgency is flourishing, the Defense Department indicated in a gloomy new report yesterday, saying the insurgents are likely to accelerate their attacks and expand into new regions in northern and western regions of the country. The Pentagon's assessment came as U.S. casualties in Afghanistan rose to 23 in June, the second-deadliest month for American forces since the U.S. invaded weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Attacks using improvised explosive devices, or roadside bombs, rose 35 percent last year, reaching 2,616 attacks, according to the report, which provided no other measures of violence or data from previous years. The report echoed previous grim assessments by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and others, including retired four-star Marine Gen. James Jones, about the lack of progress in the U.S.-led war and Afghanistan's deep-rooted problems of violence, extremism, corruption and narcotics.

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McCain has diluted his rare reputation

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Baltimore Sun - By Paul West - Jun. 15 (News Analysis) - John McCain once had the most powerful brand in American politics. He was often called the country's most popular politician and widely admired for his independent streak. It wasn't too many years ago that "maverick" was the cliche of choice in describing him. But that term didn't even make the list this year when voters were asked by the Pew Research Center to sum up McCain in a single word. "Old" got the most mentions, followed by "honest," "experienced," "patriot," "conservative" and a dozen more. The words "independent," "change" or "reformer" weren't among them. Voters have notoriously short memories, but it could be argued that McCain cheapened his own brand.

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White House threatens veto: Energy bill

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 06:09:33 -0700

Baltimore Sun - By Mark Silva - Jun. 10 (News Report) - Gasoline has passed $4 per gallon, on average - when first presented with the possibility that prices might reach that mark, at the end of February, President Bush said he "hadn't heard that.'' Now that everyone has heard the bell, congressional leaders want to do something about it. But the White House is threatening a veto of the response. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois and others - Patty Murray of Washington and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota - plan a press conference this morning in the Capitol with "a broad coalition of labor, environmental and citizens' advocacy groups'' to promote the proposed "Consumer First Energy Act of 2008,'' a bill sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and nearly two dozen other senators.

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