The Folly of ‘Consent’

The recent consent decree relating to ‘racial profiling’ by the State Police negotiated by the Glendening administration and accepted in modified form by Governor Ehrlich appears to put a nasty controversy to rest: one which united ‘hit and run’ politics and identity politics in one toxic package. Such decrees nonetheless raise serious concerns. Policing is […]

High School Science and Mathematics in Maryland: A Discussion

MR. GEORGE LIEBMANN (moderator): Roughly 10 of 35 respondents to Calvert’s survey of public college science and math professors referred in one way or another to the problem of recruiting and retaining qualified high school science teachers. The other comments were also very interesting. It is rather commonly put forth as part of an agenda […]

Counterpoint – ‘Civil Gideon’: An idea whose time has passed

A lawsuit seeks to accord civil litigants a constitutional right to state-paid lawyers like that guaranteed criminal defendants by the famous case of Gideon v. Wainwright. The test case is Frase v. Barnhart, a child custody matter which the Court of Appeals is to hear this October. Not one Marylander in a hundred knows about […]

The Baltimore Criminal Justice System: The Judges Speak

MR. GEORGE W. LIEBMANN: This is a symposium on the criminal justice system in Baltimore City that is jointly sponsored by three organizations: The Bar Association of Baltimore City, Maryland Business for Responsive Government, and the Calvert Institute for Policy Research. We are honored to have with us this evening four distinguished judges, Judge Charles […]

Voucher Politics

The condition of Baltimore’s schools, together with the fact that more than 40% of the parents of Baltimore schoolchildren applied for a limited number of private scholarships would suggest that Baltimore City is a jurisdiction politically ripe for the introduction of vouchers. Several Baltimore political leaders have lent their support to voucher proposals. In 1994, […]

Editorial: Time to Privatize Maryland’s Smart Growth Initiatives

In a likely preview of Republican proposals should the party win the Maryland gubernatorial election next month, its 1998 candidate for the U.S. Senate [sic], Baltimore lawyer George Liebmann, writes on a Baltimore Sun opinion page that the state’s current Smart Growth practice ”has reached its limits” and that the time has come to privatize […]

The “Pop Issues”

The late Spiro Agnew, no great statesman, once referred disgustedly to “the pop issues-acid, amnesty and abortion.” The first two are no longer with us as political issues, having now been replaced by ‘gun control’. Agnew’s point, however, remains valid: when candidates talk about abortion and gun control, it suggests that they have few serious […]

Baltimore’s Jarndyce v. Jarndyce

Your editor had a look at the federal case file in that most macabre of all cases, Vaughn G. v. Board of Commissioners, involving special education in Baltimore City.(84 Civ.1911 (D.Md.)),which has lasted for 18 years, created two new bureaucracies, cost an estimated $50 million,and provided a Special Master with a $200,000+ salary (To assuage […]

High School Science and Mathematics in Maryland: A Study in Failure

This is the first Calvert Institute study to be issued in 18 months, and reflects the work of a reconstituted Board and new Executive Director. The Institute intends to continue to reproduce in Maryland proposals for market-based reforms that have not received serious discussion, though its basic thrust will seek to promote better government by […]

Gambling in Maryland

The recent discussion of slot machines at race tracks makes it appropriate to focus on Maryland’s existing gambling enterprise: the lottery. Critics of gambling have done little to see to it that gambling revenues are distributed so as to compensate the jurisdictions in which they are raised, which are also the jurisdictions which suffer any […]