F. Scott Fitzgerald was “HOT” before and after my time. I know two ladies who “adore” his writings on the Jazz Age, which he helped to name. They are respectively 25 and 50.

The lieutenant governor stopped here on Saturday; it was a part of his announcing formally that he will run for Maryland’s top job. He is a Democrat, which means he won’t carry the county in 2014. But the rest of the state?

My progress from Redneck child to the man sharing a White House window with the vice president’s lady began with a long drive down the length of Louisiana. In those days bayou ferries connected unpaved country roads. I was bravely four, but my mind’s eye rolls up "snapshots" from the ride that my mother never believed I could recall.

In the mid-1840s, Frederick erected a girls’ boarding school, which was later used to start a women’s institution, now known as Hood College, before its move out to Rosemount Avenue, its present location. The building, Winchester Hall, is now the county government’s seat.

The only medal I earned during my almost seven years in the Army that didn’t come automatically was what is casually referred to as “The Green Hornet.” The Army Commendation Medal was not routinely handed out, as became the case subsequently. I received it in the castle at Hoechst, Germany in 1952.

“People who own guns feel so threatened; they think their guns are going to be taken away from them; it’s a bunch of bologna,” said Jeannette Bartelt on her way out of the Urbana Regional Library Saturday. She was quoted in a front-page story in The Frederick News-Post.

Never mind discussing the press coverage, the real question is why the two American citizens chose to set off the bombs in Boston at the end of the marathon celebrating Patriots’ Day? Some three were killed and almost 180 people were wounded, as you’ve heard.

National Republicans must look no further to examine what went wrong last November. Mitt Romney was their latest victim. Whomever Democrats name their candidate will triumph in 2016.

Sports writer Shirley Povich became an idol while I was stationed at Fort Myer, and read his columns in The Washington Post. As readers know, my first post-Army job was at the newspaper. But the movie “42,” seen Tuesday, convinced me my marble idol had feet of clay.

The GOP’s suicide has my mind enthralled. Two more splendid examples surfaced in recent days. The Republican National Committee unanimously passed a resolution reasserting its opinion against same-sex marriages, flying in face of Americans’ opinion.

The scene this morning at State House was vacantly empty, compared with early hours since January 9. Sometime Monday, certainly late, the General Assembly 2013 adjourned. Both the Senate and the House of Delegates passed resolutions declaring they intended to get together sine die—“without day.”

Their names were on Wednesday’s News-Post front page. In a desperate grab for 2014 votes, Frederick Delegates Michael Hough and Kathy Afzali tried to “water down gun legislation.” They failed abjectly. The Democratic-controlled chamber flatly rejected their proposals.

It hasn’t reached the point where the handsome Weimaraner spouts the poetry of his famous name-progenitor; but in other ways I receive compliments on North Market Street in our twice-daily routine.

On January 20, 1953 – slightly more than 60 years ago – I carried The Washington Post Chief Cameraman Art Ellis’ equipment for Dwight Eisenhower’s first inauguration. Those days printed media around the world used Speed Graphics, bulky but reliable.

You may have been shocked more than I was. After all, the local “Good Ole Boys,” I’ve written about extensively. More inured as a journalist, my system was still unpleasantly surprised Saturday by The Frederick News-Post headline: “No criminal charges in movie theater death”

As a life-long practitioner of journalism – back to the day when the word itself was “fancy” – I know that media were never objective, at least on their editorial pages and commentators.

Pope Francis will be officially installed today; in the church’s calendar, St. Joseph’s Day. In New Orleans, in the middle of Lent, St. Patrick’s joins this as a “feast” day when all cares and pledges can be forgotten.

As if they have nothing more important on their plates, Annapolis’ senators and delegates are rife-filled with motions on a single breed; they mean to outlaw pit bulls, as too dangerous for adults to own; a peril to children.

Not for the first time, there’s a movement afoot to change the name of Washington’s staunch NFL subsidiary, to something else, less offensive to American Natives. Only real Indians didn’t start the movement.

More than several letters-to-editor to the local papers glowingly supported the Board of County Commissioners’ President Blaine Young’s quest for Maryland governor. He’s parlayed a WFMD radio host into a political career.

The wedding notice came in the form of an Evite. Khalil wanted to inform me he was marrying Hadou Samih from Morocco; in Arabic, the Maghreb. You’ve seen his name before in TheTentacle.com.

As politicians are wont to do, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (NV) misspoke; he corrected himself later. But the impression was stamped on the national conscience, aided by the media. The Democratic leader said: Sandy was worse than Katrina.

Chuck Jenkins was introduced to me years ago as the chairman of Frederick County Republican Central Committee. His day job consisted of being a detective in the sheriff’s department. In 2006, he decided to have a go at the big banana’s chair. I supported his ambitions both early and late.

Lisa Blanche bought lunch at the new Philly sandwich place, one block down from my North Market Street yellow door. As usual, we talked of family matters; she mentioned a daughter was born on March 7. “Oh, a Pisces,” I responded.

Local Grand Old Party members insist on shooting themselves in the feet. With Randy McClement sitting in City Hall – and carrying weight with his incumbency – they have pronounced their self-imposed handicap.

Several people wore ashes on their foreheads Wednesday when Goethe and I took a stroll in downtown Frederick; they reminded me of the New Orleans I grew up in. This followed Mardi Gras when more than the French Quarter went crazy in celebration.

Former Frederick Mayor Jeff Holtzinger was heard from last week. Ex-County Commissioner – and now state delegate, Galen Clagett told The Frederick News-Post late Thursday his hat was definitely in the ring; saying his official announcement would come Monday.

It hardly produced sonic booms in downtown Frederick. The news was not carried in the local paper. But still American lives could be expended in the near future.

My Friday TheTentacle.com column was based on Del. Michael Hough’s quote to the local newspaper. Over a couple of days, on my own, I learned Galen Clagett is running for mayor of Frederick – no thanks to The Frederick News-Post!

Galen Clagett’s photo appeared on the local newspaper’s front page last Friday, above the headlines. In no way fame-shy, he still could not have liked the publicity. Later in the day, Alderman Karen Young was long scheduled to announce her run for the top office in City Hall. Mr. Clagett and Ms. Young are Democrats.

The president appeared together with his withdrawing Secretary of State on “60 Minutes.” Recorded Friday in a CBS studio, the weekend media talk and writings attracted the largest audience possible. The publicity was gilding the lily.

The House Republicans voted this week to delay the next fiscal cliff. They voted to raise the debt ceiling without demanding the administration cut spending wholesale. They are postponing the inevitable.

Behind North Market Street's yellow door, above the stairs to the second floor, hangs a White House Christmas card; mechanically signed by the President and First Lady. Their names are not Barack Hussein and Michelle Obama, but Lyndon Baines and Claudia T. Johnson.

The next crisis on Capitol Hill looms over the debt ceiling. Republicans insist on spending cuts from the Democrats. President Barrack Obama dug in his heels; thinks they should be separate legislative issues.

Returning from Berlin in January 1949, the Cold War blazed hot with the Airlift. While still in the Army, I enrolled in Georgetown College. Announcer’s duties with The U.S. Army Band left most days free.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) made the lead story in Wednesday’s New York Times. He announced a legislative program to further tighten the state’s already strict firearm laws. This was Mr. Cuomo’s response to the Newtown (CT) massacre.

When I was growing up, at both McDonough and Holy Cross, there were no classes to celebrate an event that happened 198 years ago. The Battle of New Orleans was on January 8, 1814.

Abraham Lincoln was not the first Republican presidential candidate. The honor belongs to Gen. John C. Fremont, a more radical emancipator of slaves than Mr. Lincoln. From the outset, the GOP started out fundamentally ideological. It’s been that way all of its history.

Moving to Frederick can be traumatic. This is such a friendly city. The old buildings radiate comforting warmth. "Good morning" is freely offered and returned.

I fall in love every day. There are eyes I cannot resist; eyes that flirt and beckon for affection. Some are bold and some are shy. Eyelashes flutter, and I am lost again. It happens every day.

All weekend, holding strong through Monday, the subject was kicked to death. Not literally. The topic captivated preachers of all religions, momentarily merging the faiths. The National Rifle Association, the chief lobbyist for weapons manufacturers, had mud on its collective face.

Atakan Ilmazy brought a rug to go over the carpet he provided me. Goethe chewed an edge. My oldest Turkish friend met the Weimaraner earlier.

The words in the headline were spoken by conservative columnist and talk-show hostess Ann Coulter. She said them in context of raising taxes for the super-rich. Right wing commentator Bill Krystal opined it wouldn’t “kill the country” if millionaires paid more to the IRS.

Two weeks from today Kim Dine takes over as head of the U.S. Capitol Police. His replacement as Frederick City police chief is Capt. Tom Ledwell, as “acting” chief, while the city conducts a national search to find someone to install permanently.

Added to the usual chaos in my bald head, confusion entered by the official announcement that the Board of County Commissioner is accepting bids to sell or lease the Citizens Care and Rehabilitation Center and Montevue Assisted Living.

The fall of Egyptian dictator Husni Mubarak was welcomed by me, since I was convinced the former general assassinated Anwar Sadat, who was another general. The selection of Muhammad Morsi I hailed as the first time voters got a real choice.

According to a poll quoted by the former Republican Del. Don Murphy, Frederick County Commissioners President Blaine Young appears to be a shoo-in for the next GOP gubernatorial candidate.

Aldous Huxley’s book title “Eyeless in Gaza” accurately describes the United States’ position in the nine-days-old conflict. Some 150 Palestinians lost their lives compared to only five Israelis. The announced cause was rockets coming out of the strip.

Next month Frederick City’s Police Chief Kim Dine goes back to the neighborhood he knows very well. This time he will be an insider.

There’s a Biblical phrase in the Gospel of Luke: “He hath put down the mighty from their seats and exalted those of low degree.”

Barack Obama didn’t win. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan lost. The combination turned voters off. Vice President Joe Biden’s name on the ticket verified the chief executive was a true Democrat, despite his color.

In response to the bitter tone of the campaign concluded this week, my friend Ted Delaplaine came up with thoughtful words on voting day.

One week ago downtown streets were empty. Battens were hatched down for Superstorm Sandy. Goethe and I took a single walk on North Market, instead of the usual pair. The Weimaraner’s sources of biscuits were locked up with the stores’ doors.

Republican readers may be happy to know Tuesday column will have nothing to do with the 2012 presidential election. Closer to home, there are other candidates and issues.

Next Tuesday – God willing – the nation goes to the polls. In all my years, this has been the strangest political year ever. I don’t recall so many employers trying to tell their employees to vote for the Republican slate – and bathing in the publicity.

A Weimaraner lives in Pushkin’s domain. The English pointer went to eternal sleep two weeks ago. Although no dog can replace the English pointer, Goethe makes the house with North Market’s yellow door less empty.

Congressional Speaker Thomas ‘Tip’ O’Neill once said all politics are local, this year more than usual. In two weeks, on your ballot, you will discover charter’s back.

Both the father and brother of slain Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens asked that the Benghazi attack that took his life be declared off-limit in the fierce presidential wars. Another mother of an ex-Seal turned bodyguard also killed in the consulate made the same request.

Colleague Harry Covert’s complaints expressed in his Friday TheTentacle.com column (“Books: Frederick’s Endangered Species”) found a veritable host of agreers.

Based on the first debate, national Republicans declared they’re back in the White House. We’ll see. Moving right along, the City of Frederick elects the mayor and Board of Aldermen next November.

GOP candidate Mitt Romney clearly won the debate with Democratic President Barack Obama. The odds were in his favor. He acted like a shining white knight or the great white hope. In despair, Americans in 2008 voted the first African American into the White House.

Driving away from the familiar West Side veterinary building, I was overwhelmed by the empty back seat. For the better part of 14 years, Pushkin was watching what I did. The last six months or so, the English pointer was content to lay his head on the old car’s leather.

Four years ago Barack Obama swept into the White House on a flood of passion. This fall most noticeable of all is anger, which actually started on January 20, 2009, the date Mr. Obama was sworn in.

You get a chance to follow Clint Eastwood’s words. On Election Day, November 6, the following will appear on your ballot.

John L. “Lennie” Thompson no longer occupies a Winchester Hall office. But still, being Lennie, he’s making political noises anyway, amplified across the top of The Frederick News-Post Sunday front page.

Commissioner Billy Shreve has clear blue eyes, constantly darting about, looking for answers to unposed questions. At a board meeting Tuesday, according to the local paper’s story, he commented: “Maybe it’s better to sell this at a loss and move somewhere else.”

By midnight seven weeks from today, the 2012 presidential election figure to be history – except for absentee ballots. Not soon enough for me.

Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three American security guards were the latest U.S. casualties in the war on Islam declared by President George W. Bush, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks commemorated Tuesday.

Southern Saturdays fell under a ritual; Friday night high school football was followed by afternoons in Tulane Stadium, and then a quick zip via Airline Highway to Louisiana State University stadium.

In successive weeks, we have witnessed both the current four-year political orgies, in which the two parties celebrate – most of all – themselves.

From now until November 6 – National Election Day – both Republicans and Democrats are guaranteed to have eyes on the Middle East: Will Israel seize this countrywide distraction to attack the new nuclear facility in Iran?

On the seventh anniversary of Katrina Wednesday, Hurricane Isaac had deprived the city where I grew up of electricity to 157,000 homes. New Orleans is in much better shape than it was before 2005 with an injection of about $14 billion in federal funds to fix damage done by Katrina and upgrade the system.

We’ve reached the stage of the 2012 presidential campaign where high prejudice clouds all topics – like the question of revenge on the former Confederacy and Democrats after the Civil War.

The musical “Damn Yankees” I saw three times during the 1950s, when several nights a week saw me trudging faithfully to Griffith Stadium. I thought that was only way I would see Washington bring home the world championship away from New York.

While Egypt’s new chief of staff studied at Carlisle’s Army War College, Brig. Gen. Sedky Sobhy wrote a thesis on the Middle East, including a scolding about this country’s lopsided support of Israel.

Any fascination I had for gambling was squelched the summer’s weeks spent as a “mark-up boy” in a French Quarter “bookie joint,” as I wrote earlier. Bookmaker Lloyd Baumer carefully detailed the odds against bettors to my 15-year-old mind.

Mitt Romney’s choice for the second spot on the national ticket of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan excited most of the GOP. Mr. Ryan was hailed as uniting all of those who registered Republican.

Attributing errors in Frederick News-Post daily stories to outside sources, or the reporters, strikes me as bush league; in my early days on The Washington Post staff, we had to verify the facts. The editor fairly accepted the responsibility for what appeared in print. The News-Post page I appeared on for 20 years is a screwed-up mess.

The deaths last week of singer Tony Martin and author Gore Vidal impressed me with how few people I know still walking around.

It’s our turn! We are the latest Western Christian nation to screw-up the Muslim Middle East. You can blame it somewhat on oil, but it’s not wholly responsible.

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley called the General Assembly back to Annapolis next week. The only item on the legislators’ agenda: Gambling!

Many in Frederick County now face the reality I bowed to months ago. Mostly Republicans, they signed petitions to cancel the congressional re-districting. They have their last opportunity on November 6.

We are angry. Americans have turned once again to unreasoning bigotry and always illogical prejudice. It’s happened before. In panic four years ago, we voted in the first African American president. Immediately, Barack Obama came under merciless assault – primarily because he is black.

Congress demands 10 years of tax records from anyone seeking a presidential cabinet position. Every national candidate has released his IRS statements for all his income-earning years. Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower established the model.

The Gazette’s Katherine Heerbrandt brought to the community’s attention that Washington’s Kim Dine has spent 10 years as chief of the Frederick City Police. Charles Main headed the department when I moved here in early 1983.

The odds-on favorite to grab the Maryland 2014 Republican gubernatorial spot has strong ties to Frederick County; his father lives here. I don’t mean State Sen. Ron Young, but former Prince George’s County Executive and Congressman Larry Hogan.

The other morning some of my right-wing Republican good friends were talking about the national political race, and I was along. Their dialogue easily fit in the category of anti-Obama. These are colleagues; there was no trace of racial bias.

Past 20th Century attempts to revolutionize American society were incendiary, to say the least. I missed Prohibition. My memory of the failed Noble Experiment was tinged by the man who married cousin Madie, like an aunt to me. The Northern Louisiana stockyard-dealer presented hands that were really claws, burnt off by drinking canned heat.

The Great Depression was the probable cause. As I was growing up, New Orleans’ 4th of Julys were not filled with festivities as compared to tomorrow’s happening in Frederick’s Baker Park. The cost of fireworks could pay for a meal, complete with high taxes, which we blamed on carpetbaggers.

My home for almost 30 years, Frederick has never gracefully accepted my opinions as expressed in columns that stretch back to Thanksgiving 1984. Efforts to fire me from The Frederick News-Post started early. Opponents succeeded momentarily; I was invited to come back. My News-Post absence forevermore came from my resignation.

Summer arrived Thursday. The political campaigns sharpen toward November. For the life of me – boy and man, taxpayer and journalist – I have never heard the language that permeates the nation’s broadcast and print media and the Internet these days.

Cairo’s military commanders shrug in repugnance at Douglas McArthur’s parting thought; the once-Supreme Commander in the World War II Pacific lamented retiring with the lyrics of a barracks song: “…old soldiers never die; they just fade away.” Why should the Egyptians take the advice?

The same fierce exponents of an individual’s constitutional rights feel justified in going into anyone else’s bedroom. Their intrusion comes in the name of a twisted morality.

This week the Catholic Archdiocese of New York ordained a single priest. The Rev. Patric D’Arcy was not born in this country; his Irish ancestors immigrated to Canada. Desultory attendance attends the practice of all of major Western religions, except Islam – which may be why there is such an ingrained fear of Muslims.

Not like Carl Sandberg’s Fog that sneaks in on cat’s paws, muggy heat landed with a bang on the weekend. There was nothing subtle about the sweat that bathed my baldhead and ran down the chest beneath my shirt.

In November we’ll get another chance to vote on a county charter. On January 10^th my TheTentacle.com column (“Later Than Needed”) spelled out the sad fate of the 1991 attempt.

Presidential elections come in less than two weeks, in Egypt. The overwhelming number of Americans is betting against the Muslim Brotherhood; they are flatly afraid and ignorant of Islam, by their own choice. In their minds, they prefer disgraced President Hosni Mubarak’s last prime minister. They are wrong!

The United States, Britain, France, Germany, Bulgaria, Australia, Spain, Italy and Canada gave three days’ notice; they kicked out Syrian diplomats. They put in economic sanctions against Damascus. They reacted to the torn country’s latest massacre, again in the area of Homs.

It was no surprising statement. In earlier spring his regular Thursday TheTentacle.com column prompted my March 20 reply: “No, Blaine, No!” A week later the Board of County Commissioners president announced he was forming a committee to explore the possibility.

Approaching Memorial Day finds the Baltimore Orioles in first place in the American League. And at the same moment the Washington Nationals cling atop the National League, in their see-saw battle with the Atlanta Braves. I’m checking the standings daily, some hours more frequently.

The House of Representatives awarded its seal of approval to the slaughtering of young Americans in Afghanistan. The 303 triumphant members were not all GOP members, but the victory must be chalked up to the leadership of Speaker John Boehner (R., OH), who cannot be held accountable for 113 opposed.

Frederick today becomes the focus for many worldly eyes. The powerful G-8 is meeting at Camp David, near Thurmont. Sheriff Chuck Jenkins strongly advises avoiding the upper reaches of the county, north of Frederick City. He’s seldom wrong. This time, Chuck’s right on the money.

That was the headline above a full-page ad one week ago in The Washington Post. Several hundred years ago expressing such an idea publically would lead to the whipping stocks. Heresy against Rome would lead to necks cut by a sword – before the Reformation.

A survey published this week shows that 92 percent of Americans oppose war in Afghanistan with only eight in favor. The longer the situation lingers; the more the support wanes. There have been jokes: Would the last one out turn off the lights?

While brandishing aloft their expertise of the U.S. Constitution, America’s right-wing politicians ignore its Bill of Rights. They are so stuck in the 18th Century that – to them – the world must seem flat. Their blatant crusade against same-sex marriages and abortion particularly appalls me.

Men and women who run Frederick County classrooms currently are so desperate. They would take food, medications and shelter from the community’s most vulnerable people.

The name of the Shenandoah Valley town long vanished into the recesses of my aging brain. The place’s disremembered hotel comes to mind because of the local situation that plagues Frederick County Public Schools, namely the local union’s call for “working to contract.” This has provoked stories in the media.

There broke a story this week of another example of ex-Mayor Ron Young’s foresightedness. He has shaped Frederick into the city Pushkin and I live in now. Fortunately, he found a second career in the Maryland Senate.

There have many press complaints – including mine – about how American parties have turned radical. For my sin, I must say “mea culpa.” It’s the very essence of politics: promise anything to win the people’s favor. All over the world. Elections don’t have to be at stake. “Uneasy the head that wears a crown” is not a recent saying.

We didn’t start the Space Age. The Soviet Union threw Sputnik beyond the earth’s gravitational field and competition began.

A Frederick News-Post front-page story last Wednesday reminded me of the phrase; it came from an earlier, longer article. Reporter Blair Ames wrote about the terrible state of downtown, where English pointer Pushkin and I live – in an almost 300-year-old house.

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum’s withdrawal from the GOP presidential primary leaves former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney as the favored nominee, as droned into our minds by commentators.

Marion Barry popped up in the news last week? Which leads to the inevitable question: When has he not been in public view? At least, not since 1965, when as a TV9 reporter I covered the People’s Election to protest the District of Columbia’s lack of voting rights.

Mike Miller lost and won this week. Protégé Rob Garagiola was skinned by John Delaney; the Maryland Senate majority leader was handed his head by about twice the Democratic voters as he attracted. The Senate president did all he could.

Behind North Market’s yellow door sits a shiny school bell awarded me by Maryland teachers’ union for services rendered to the cause of higher pay for women and men in the state’s classrooms. Their salaries in those days started at less than $15,000 a year.

Board of Elections director Stuart Harvey packed up all his paraphernalia and paraded down Taney Avenue, on the way to Winchester Hall. Thursday finished the early 2012 primary voting, as delightfully summed up by colleague Norm Covert in his Wednesday TheTentacle.com column.

Sunday the Maryland Ensemble Theatre almost busted apart from energy and creativity. The MET opened a version of Sophocles’ “Antigone” written by Reiner Prochaska and shaped by director Julie Herber.

Florida neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in late February. If my former Washington Post colleague “Simeon Booker” (Friday, March 23 column) were still alive, the country’s ears would have pricked up right away.

The Washington Post newsroom remained segregated by gender, even after Simeon Booker broke the color barriers; women remained cloistered in a space guarded by a fence.

In his regular Thursday column on TheTentacle.com, Frederick County Board of Commissioners President Blaine Young informed readers of his aspirations for higher office. What he said exactly:

As Tuesday pointed out, Republicans seem headed for the fate that led to Abraham Lincoln’s election, establishing the party on the American political scene.

David Gray called Blaine Young “a damn liar” Thursday in Winchester Hall. Scarcely polite language even between politicians. The name-calling came during a bristly conversation on which employees must serve at the pleasure of the Board of County Commissioners.

While I didn’t expect objectivity from Simon Sebag Montefiore, I wasn’t prepared for such a Zionist 500-page tract. The real surprise for me came in the realization of how few years Jews have ruled Jerusalem.

Age has little to do with it. I see political rhetoric running in the gutter. When it comes to party, it’s bipartisan. Three matters are on my mind.

The Washington Post first published the report. Bethany Rodgers pulled a save for The Frederick News-Post. On the “local front page,” inside the paper, her story ran with the headline: “Earnings missing from Garagiola’s financial disclosures.”

The Board of County Commissioners agreed and proclaimed English as the official language in Frederick County. In all Maryland, this is the single jurisdiction where that’s true.

GOP overconfidence started before Barack Obama was sworn-in. At first I attributed it to racism. Then I remembered Harry S Truman, the man from Missouri – and very white.

While most Marylanders don’t recognize his name, Sheldon Adelson promised this weekend to back GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich with another $10 million. The Las Vegas casino owner forced Frederick’s Sen. Charles Mathias to drop from the 1986 elections.

Before starting to write this column, I stepped over to the love seat: Pushkin failed to climb to his favorite sleeping cushion. My attempt to help he rejected vigorously; at least we have reached the point – after 13 plus years – he no longer feigns to bite me.

Barack Obama caught hell at Washington’s Conservative Political Action Conference this weekend. That’s not news. But Saturday the right-wingers scoffed at the president’s shift on birth control insurance, away from the position the Tea Party is founded on.

Nobody expected it, especially Donald Trump. On Tuesday the week before, the super developer popped his buttons at the Nevada GOP presidential primary victory, claiming his late endorsement of ex-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney made the sterling difference.

Maryland Senate President Mike Miller is a piece of work. I’ve observed him since he climbed into the “upper chamber” top seat in 1987. The electoral process that year was my introduction to how brutal state politics can be.

The Times of London reported this week: “The U.S. military said in a secret report the Taliban, backed by Pakistan, are set to retake control of Afghanistan after NATO-led forces withdraw from the country, raising the prospect of a major failure of western policy after a costly war.”

Over the weekend – on the eve of today’s Florida Republican presidential nomination primary – both Sarah Palin and Herman Cain endorsed former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich.

For three nights this week I worried about putting my best friend “down.” Since we two live alone behind downtown’s yellow door, this would have left me grief-struck and bereft. But Pushkin recovered from whatever “ailed” him.

Democratic candidate Tom Hattery’s mean attitude had much to do with pushing him away, from me and the electorate; that was 20 years ago when the thought of Beverly Byron losing was almost unthinkable. Mr. Hattery’s primary win was at least shocking to many.

Reporter Katherine Heerbrandt earned my professional admiration over the long years in Frederick; we were colleagues on the local newspaper. Her most recent journalistic coup must not pass unremarked upon.

Never in my over 28 years writing about Frederick politics can I remember when an elected freshman official has been so unrelenting and noisy – some say obnoxious – as Kathy Afzali.

Conservatives scoff at the Occupy Wall Street protesters; others have difficulty dismissing them, and the various signs of discontent in this republic. In fact, the disparity between the highest incomes and the average earners has never in our history been wider.

Colleague Norm Covert picked me up for the annual party of TheTentacle.com’s publisher/editor John Ashbury. He and wife Gaile live in Thurmont, far from my Market Street’s yellow door.

No matter how hot about Washington’s football team, few fans know the name of the West Virginia man who bought the NFL’s Boston Braves, in 1932.

“I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.”

Moving to Frederick can be traumatic. This is such a friendly city. The old buildings radiate comforting warmth. "Good morning" is freely offered and returned.

Mumbles remain, but they are no comfort to the Republican faithful.

I fall in love every day. There are eyes I cannot resist; eyes that flirt and beckon for affection. Some are bold and some are shy. Eyelashes flutter, and I am lost again. It happens every day.

Whatever else he promised; Barack Obama celebrated this weekend the campaign pledge to exit Iraq – with 82 percent approval from local residents who voted in The Frederick News-Post daily poll.

You may have missed the week’s stories. Palestine was accepted as a full member of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, costing UNESCO 25 percent of its budget: 22 from the United States and 3 from Israel.

We’ve seen this before, recently. More noisily. The Arab Spring started in February with Tunisia and Egypt. My October 25 TheTentacle.com column commented on the “Islamic Autumn” that followed. Now comes the Russian winter.

Three milestones in my long life started Monday with Washington’s Shakespeare Theatre Company’s production of “Much Ado About Nothing.”

Word on the Frederick “street” has U.S. Representative Roscoe Bartlett’s chief of staff fired. While technically resigned, Harold “Bud” Otis was given no choice.

Georgia’s Newt Gingrich made column fodder with his 1994 Contract with America, which helped him achieve the Speaker of the House of Representatives and spotted him high up on the list of presidential possible successors, next to the vice president. Ohio’s John Boehner holds the job now.

The holidays flood Market Street. When Pushkin took me for a Thanksgiving stroll, there was nobody in sight. Stores were not open downtown. Few cars prowled about.

There is no Thanksgiving in Egypt. But with elections scheduled Monday, Cairo’s Tahrir Square was filled with noises, gunshots and tear gas and, most of all, people. The Square was not the birthplace of Arab Spring, but its best known symbol.

There’s what passes as peace in the Frederick’s OK Corral, otherwise known as City Hall. The rumored deal to give the cops everything they seemingly wanted was killed by the Board of Aldermen last Friday. Local taxpayers no longer dwell under the menace of the boys and girls in blue swaggering and flaunting, showering tickets about like the flowers in May?

Republicans to the core, my mostly political friends disdained the Occupy Wall Street protests from the get-go. That was long before disorderly and sanitary issues caused city governments to shut down the gathering sites, especially New York’s Zuccotti Park, where the movement first came into public view through the media.

As a survivor of more than 50 years in the press wars, I remember very well the Joseph R. McCarthy followers’ criticisms of Herblock. If you swore allegiance to the junior senator from Wisconsin, The Washington Post editorial cartoonist provided ammunition for your complaints; when it came to Post news stories, not so much.

As noted before, the present political mood is “Throw the bums out.” Next-door Virginia epitomizes the national trend. Reacting to Democrat Barack Obama’s 2008 moving into the White House, in the three votings since his inauguration, the Old Dominion elected Republicans to all the top state jobs: governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general, in 2009.

To put it simply: the Maryland Ensemble Theatre’s version of David Mamet’s “American Buffalo” is the best production I’ve seen in Frederick. It’s in the running for the best production I’ve ever reviewed and that includes Broadway, the Kennedy Center, Washington’s National Theatre, Arena Stage and Washington’s Shakespeare Theatre – since 1965 when I first sat on the aisle as a critic.

It had to be coincidence. The nation’s 20th Century’s grand experiment in legislating morals wound up in the Great Depression. Being born one year and six days before Wall Street’s historic crash (October 24, 1929), I vaguely remember Prohibition’s last hours. I had an uncle whose hands were permanently crippled from his thirst for canned-heat.

Friends wonder why I’m not caught up on 2012’s presidential elections. From my years in Washington, I learned to wait and see who the national party conventions nominate. Recent months can only convince me of the experienced attitude.

As the community knows, I had an 83rd birthday last week. Pushkin’s came July 9. He was 13, which means the English pointer is my senior, figuring one dog year for seven human years. We are both old and gimpy, as I point out to people when we take our daily promenades on North Market Street.

President Barack Obama announced last week a total pullout of American military forces from Iraq; our allies, by and large, have pulled up stakes. National, state and community surveys demonstrated that more than three-of-four participants agreed. The one-quarter missing was divided between the “I-don’t-knows” and those fiercely opposed to the withdrawal.

Really at stake during the Arab Spring was Islam. The word means subjugation to the will of the One God, Allah in Muslims’ holy book – the Quran. The Western World has been flabbergasted as the people have toppled governments in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. I remain astonished.

Out of Mark Anthony’s mouth, Shakespeare wrote: “Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.” Gov. Martin O’Malley did not say those exact words, but in gerrymandering the 6th Congressional District of Maryland the effect was the same. (By the way, “Havoc” was a military command in the Bard’s day, equivalent to “Attack.”)

Kansas City Bishop Robert Finn’s grand jury indictment was not announced until Friday; he’d been out of town, visiting the Vatican, doubtless receiving encouragement from the Curia. Jackson County (MO) prosecutor Jean Peters Baker may have feared the cleric would remain on the Tiber River cosseted by the Roman Catholic Church.

Iranians plotting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington?

Stuart Harvey is a hero; he runs the county’s Board of Elections. I’ve mentioned the name before and always in a positive sense.

Virginia Democrats may be howling more than Maryland Democrats! Since the house with the yellow door sits on this side of the Potomac, I don’t know. Many of my local friends who wear blue are beside themselves — their favorite position. The cause of their woes comes every 10 years when state legislatures are required to reshape congressional districts.

Spending a couple of days at the Frederick Community College’s Jack B. Kussmaul Theatre was richly rewarding. Saturday evening brought the Fredericktowne Players’ production of “Inherit the Wind, and Sunday afternoon’s pianist Hyperion Knight knocked me into the aisle.

There’s a mistake in political language, which makes next year’s presidential elections more meshugganah, crazy in the Yiddish that I learned in the Catskill Mountains. In the primaries, there can be no best man or woman; that will be determined only November 6, 2012.

This city has shirked away from biting the law enforcement bullet for years, as illustrated in the first of this two-part series.

Nearly 27 years ago, when I wrote my first Frederick column, ex-State Trooper Bob Snyder ran the sheriff’s department. To say he was extremely political is to compare North Pole’s annual snowfall to Miami’s.

An event at the local mosque reeked of unreality; it was staged on the 10th anniversary of 9/11’s slaughter of about 3,000 American Christians, Jews and Muslims. I assumed the event’s timing was in commemoration of that dreadful day. I could not have been more wrong.

Former Illinois U. S. Senator Charles Harding Percy, 91, died Saturday, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. His passing was announced by daughter Sharon Rockefeller, wife of the current West Virginia Democratic senator and former governor.

To start the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Silver Anniversary, Michael Kahn selected David Ives’ rhyming version of a 1708 French farce. Many Americans have never seen the format which closely resembles pie-in-the-face vaudeville.

Many local residents were astonished when they learned the Fraternal Order of Police insisted City Hall should raise property taxes to pay the member cops off. As readers know, the boys and girls who wear badges on their issued-blue costumes already make an average $20,000 more than other municipal employees.

In addition to the nearly 3,000 lives taken on September 11, 2001, all Americans suffered the loss of constitutional rights for the sake of a federal bureaucracy that was really responsible, in the first place, for the attacks.

With a major GOP presidential debate on-tap Wednesday evening, defying Mother Nature, Labor Day kicked off the 2012 election year. Rep. Michelle Bachman disturbs the gender of the inevitable Best Man scenario. Meanwhile former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin hovers, not far from the action.

Irene’s only property damage at my yellow-door house was in the patio; a garden statue fell on its nose in the corner, bruising plants.

Reminiscent of the search for Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, triumphant rebels are beating Libyan bushes, looking for Muammar Gadhafi; when they find him, they announced the 40-year dictator will stand trial and probably be executed, following the example in Baghdad.

The 6.0 earthquake hit Market Street while Pushkin and I took our early afternoon walk; we had just returned from West Frederick Veterinary Hospital for the English Pointer’s biweekly acupuncture. None of the places I’ve lived in has a reputation for tremors; Tuesday’s was my very first.

WHAG-TV’s Tim Wesolek first brought attention to the stuttering going on over the Harry Grove Stadium. In the latest episode of the confusing situation, Alderman Carol Krimm’s motion to declassify the meeting’s minutes received unanimous support from the board. Still the confusion lingers on.

The summer’s best-selling hardcover and paperback book was transformed into a hit movie comes right out of the culture that produced me; the segregated South was dominated by women, a matriarchy that ruled a male-fronted culture – frequently in government and commerce, as well as personally. That’s how it was when I was growing up.

The West Side Manhattan I lived in was frequently startled by my “Good mornings,” especially enthusiastic when I attended the St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, on 69th street. The responses were what I expected from busy, jaded New Yorkers. The Frederick News-Post column for New Year’s 1984 is repeated annually on TheTentacle.com.

In my Tuesday’s column I made a big mistake. I know better. “America’s Worst Week” should have been “The World’s Worst Year.”

The week past is easily the worst in American history – certainly in my long lifetime – crowned by the useless murder of 30 young men who were this country’s best of the best.

Easily, the only thrill of the dreary, repetitive debt ceiling debate this week Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Gifford presented. The almost killed congresswoman left her Houston rehabilitation hospital room to vote to end the stalemate that posed the possibility of the government reneging on debts due.

Mad dogs were the terror of the summers during my Southern childhood, before universal vaccine and the prosperity wrought by World War II. Loved pets forced to be abandoned by the Great Depression hooked up with already wild packs.

Even after Norwegian police posted Anders Behring Breivick’s picture on the media, a right-wing, anti-Muslim friend cautioned that I should not “assume” Islamists were not involved in last Friday’s horror.

Popsicles are my personal prescription for the hottest days I’ve experienced in my 80-plus years. Being brought up in New Orleans, and my time spent in Egypt, simply didn’t prepare. Pushkin’s walks are relegated to mornings and late afternoons. The laid-back English pointer confirms Noel Coward’s “only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.”

The Frederick Board of County Commissioners was going too fast. That’s what I tried to say in my June 24 TheTentacle.com column (“Winchester Hall’s New Start”). There was a crying need to bring taxpayers into the loop in the rush to privatize so many county departments and jobs.

Frederick’s Fraternal Order of Police brought out their big guns for a press conference. In fighting for public support for their raises by any name – a step increase, in this case – they blasted City Hall for not increasing the property tax.

Over the years Frederick Alderman Karen Young is noted for plain-speaking. In the confusion over a new cop contract, Ms. Young was quoted in the Frederick News-Post: “In 2003, the police department budget was 29 percent of the General Fund. It will be 35 percent of the General Fund…WITHOUT THE PROPOSED STEP INCREASES.” (The caps were in the published quote.)

The deluge that flooded North Market Street outside my yellow door Friday was preceded by joy among my right-wing friends. Their petition efforts were a success.

The neighborhood pub, Olde Towne Tavern, almost directly across North Market from my yellow door, offers cheap hamburgers on Tuesday.

Retired Frederick police official and current Alderman Kelly Russell argued in favor of her former colleagues in the ongoing contract negotiations, of course.

The most boring Fourth of July happened to me when I was eight. A well-meaning, older friend decided I must learn the pleasure of fishing. The most exciting? I narrated a concert before the Washington monument for a crowd of 150,000.

Washington’s Shakespeare Theatre officially debuted Ethan McSweeny’s dynamite version of “The Merchant of Venice” on Sunday. STC Artistic Director Michael Kahn produced it last in 1999. The program notes that of all the Bard’s plays the work takes second seat only to “Hamlet.” I had never seen it before.

Barack Obama cannot win.

Frederick’s Board of County of Commissioners is new; it was sworn in a little over six months ago, on December 1, 2010.

While seemingly no one paid attention – but the victims and themselves – the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops recently announced the ongoing abusive scandals were a product of the 1960s’ sex revolution.

Little changed in Paris between the World Wars: when I first went there sidewalk cafes still adorned the Champs Elysees, as they had when composers Igor Stravinsky and George Gershwin waved from tables to their strolling friends.

The media flurry over New York Rep. Anthony Weiner barely ruffled a hair in my beard. The pregnancy of his high-profile wife might save his seat in Congress, at least at this writing. National commentaries exercise themselves violently over a victimless “crime.”

Is there any other topic? Yesterday’s forecast promised a hundred degrees and with humidity to match. Knowing I was brought up in New Orleans, people sometimes ask, “Does this make you homesick?” The unequivocal answer? No, not hardly.

The profuse apologetics for Israel’s performance in 1967’s Six Day War seek to derail attention from the sometimes brutal occupation of the West Bank; it’s lasted 44 years.

The Frederick News-Post’s Wednesday front-page ran the headline: “Hispanic father, son demonstrate drive to succeed…” Quickly the story reveals that Guatemalan Victor Arevalo and son Jorge Perez did not start the business.

Washington Shakespeare Theatre is offering a seldom glimpse into the world according to London’s Harold Pinter. Artistic Director Michael Kahn has mounted a generally admirable, “Old Times.” It’s been almost 40 years since I first reviewed the play.

In last Tuesday’s column, I wrote how I professionally wait for newly elected officials to make their mark.

The worst single tornado in recorded history struck Missouri at the beginning of the week. Joplin was next-door to Camp Crowder, where I spent another spring.

The Board of Commissioners’ swearing-in happened a little over five months ago; I was there.

In the basement of the old Francis Scott Key Hotel, a true metamorphosis has taken place. After shaky starts, attention must be paid to the Maryland Ensemble Theatre for the professionalism of their productions.

Reports from my native South mention the huge Mississippi River deluge of 1937; I witnessed that. Living with my grandparents in Wynne, I was eight-years-old and New Orleans city-ignorant. The following quote is from my memoir, “A Redneck’s Progress:”

Mutterings and complaints from City Hall informed me that Alderman Kelly Russell continued her bullying ways that many found offensive when she was a police official.

Monday’s Washington Post front page ran two stories; inside, a column, an article on SEAL Team 6 and even a cartoon drawn after Osama bin Laden was killed. The New York Times was more restrained: reviews of books about the Special Forces team.

Pushkin turns the human equivalent of 91 years on July 9, a little over two months from now. He was born in 1998, twelve weeks before I turned 70.

The world almost universally praised Barack Obama for accomplishing the elimination of Osama bin Laden in a little more than two years, accomplishing a feat George W. Bush failed to pull off in eight years.

Government’s inner-workings have never caught my fancy, maybe because I’m an old-fashioned Democrat, following closely Thomas Paine’s wisdom: “That government is best which governs least.”

A Cairo judge ordered the removal of Hosni Mubarak’s name and signs from all public places, including privately owned stores. Pharaoh Tutankhamun underwent the same treatment; he was murdered to boot, not unlike Anwar Sadat.

In the first place, when Don Schaefer decided to abandon Baltimore City Hall to run for the State House in Annapolis, in 1986, my Frederick News-Post column opposed him.

The county legislation delegation breakfasted with the Chamber of Commerce last week. The main dish was charter.

France’s ban against Muslim women wearing a face veil went into effect Monday. I’m flabbergasted that this was made into an anti-Islam move.

TheTentacle.com Editor John Ashbury related once again a conservative asking why he publishes my “liberal” columns. He answered, as always: he believes in free speech as set forth in the Constitution’s First Amendment. I agree.

The low turnout Tuesday in Thurmont was in some ways inexplicable. The commissioners took their budget show to the northern part of the county.

A preacher threw a Quran on his Florida barbeque grill two weeks ago.

President Barack Obama’s taking heat from all sides, progressive Democrats and retrogressive Republicans.

If you want an evening laughing your guts out, get on down to the old Francis Scott Key Hotel where M.E.T.’s Tad Janes has staged a knock-your-socks-off “Boeing Boeing.”

Directly I turned on my computer Wednesday morning, I learned Elizabeth Taylor had died. I remembered a glorious conversation we had. But that’s not when last I saw her.

After French jets led the coalition in attacking Libya, neither The New York Times nor The Washington Post was able to locate Libya’s Muammar Gadhafi. And their reporters looked.

As the legislative session winds down, I must express admiration for the performance of “rookie” State Sen. Ron Young.

When I was a freshman at Georgetown, Republican Sen. Joseph McCarthy launched his version of a crusade against communists.

Winter couldn’t have been worse behind my yellow door on North Market Street. My age takes much of the blame. Some friends didn’t help.

My first Frederick column on sexual assaults in the Roman Catholic Church appeared 20 years ago. It was in defense of Archbishop Joseph Bernardin whom I knew in Washington.

Much of my thinking time recently, as TheTentacle.com readers know, has gone to the anger underlying politics.

In the tens of thousands of words I’ve read or heard since revolution came to Libya, there’s been no mention of attempted assassination plots against Egypt’s late president Anwar Sadat by Muammar Gadhafi.

As all proper headlines must, this one was written to seize the attention of people uninterested in Muslims to the point of ignorance that feeds bigotry. That’s the main reason for prejudice.

After November voting swept him into Winchester Hall, Board of County Commissioners’ President Blaine Young announced he would not seek re-election. Injured hearts – and purses – seem to ensure that he will sit home four years from now.

Employing the FBI’s $800,000 grant, the Academy of Science’s National Research Council investigated the anthrax case that resulted in the suicide of Bruce Ivins.

In recent days, endless chatter and opinions about Egypt’s future induced in me a condition known as ennui, defined in Merriam Webster: “feeling of weariness and dissatisfaction.”

After waiting long hours, the huge crowds in Cairo and Alexandria were on their way to Friday evening prayers when Hosni Mubarak’s recently selected vice president announced, in a single sentence, the regime was dead.

After keeping the protestors in Tahrir Square and all over Egypt waiting all Thursday evening and amid rampant speculations that he would step down, Hosni Mubarak refused to budge. Newly appointed vice president Omar Suleiman confirmed his boss was not leaving.

Friday is the deadline for Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, set by leaders of the pro-democracy forces that filled Americans’ and the world’s television screens for over a week.

The top story Tuesday from Cairo centers on the “million men (and women)” march that organizers called for. With CNN continuously running in my Frederick home, I duly noted that besieged President Hosni Mubarak appointed a new cabinet, and last evening he finally offered dialogue with opposition leaders.

Sunday demonstrations in Cairo coming into my Market Street home, via CNN, brought buildings and sights familiar from when I lived in Egypt. Muhammad Anwar Sadat still slept in the presidential mansion.

Although we are of different political persuasions, Blaine Young is my political son. I understand him more fully than his real father, as I discovered in conversation with new state Senator Ron Young. His stepmother, Frederick City’s president pro tem Karen Young, doesn’t accept Blaine at all.

Alex Mooney’s victory in Annapolis last week was buried in The Frederick News-Post. His triumphant ploy received further obfuscation by the local editor in charge of headlines: “PIPKIN REPLACES BRINKLEY AS SENATE MINORITY WHIP.”

Washington’s Camelot started 50 years ago Thursday when John F. and Jacqueline Kennedy moved into the White House.

Six years ago no one I knew doubted GOP gubernatorial candidate Robert Ehrlich’s running mate was selected chiefly because of his color.

When Broadway hit – later a movie – “Great White Hope” premiered at Arena Stage, I was the only Washington critic wowed by the show; moving to New York’s Alvin Theatre mine were the quotes on the billboard out front.

The furious ranting cited in Friday’s column (“Less Perfect Union,” January 7, 2011) claimed blood Saturday in the savage wounding of Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. The state’s highest ranking federal judge, John Roll, and five others were killed.

Never in American history have voters been as furious as they were in the last two national elections; if anything, Frederick County citizens in the November races were even more ticked off.

There are no tears left. For young men needlessly slaughtered in Iraq and Afghanistan, the tears are all exhausted. My sorrow deepened with the invasion to take Baghdad, as I wrote. The military-industrial complex, today’s gods of war, had their way.

You know, Billy Taylor died Wednesday. Tributes were all over the media. Many editors awarded his passing a front-page niche, including his “hometown” Washington Post.

Moving to Frederick can be traumatic. This is such a friendly city. The old buildings radiate comforting warmth. "Good morning" is freely offered and returned.

Under the ex-Nazi Pope Benedict XVI, the Holy Roman Catholic Church has reverted to the Inquisition that burned covert Muslims and non-public Jews, principally because they prospered in Spain’s Islamic empire. Even worse, pregnant women are now the target.

These observations appeared in my Frederick News-Post column the December sleigh bells-bedecked horses pulled wagons through downtown streets; a spectacle that had disappeared several decades before. It was also the season when my column first appeared.

Rushing to exit the Capitol for America’s High Holidays, the U.S. Senate once again put on national display what politics is really about. I’ve never been able to find the genius who described the game-playing as “the art of compromise.”

Never tied to a partisan point of view, I’ve always considered charter to be the best of all possible forms of government for Frederick County.

Bob Ehrlich broke Maryland Republicans’ hearts. By way of expiation, in choosing a chairman for the state GOP, they rejected running mate Mary Kane and chose rightist radical ex-Sen. Alex Mooney.

Since 18, I’ve been an admirer of Voltaire’s satirical “Candide,” converted into an operetta by composer Leonard Bernstein and author Lillian Hellman, more than 50 years ago.

Chuck Jenkins’ swearing in happened without me; I saw him afterward at the ceremony for the new commissioners. I wasn’t invited.

Mike Sponseller picked me up early. He wanted to sit on the front row to cheer the new Board of County Commissioners; he had more than his share of troubles with the old ones.

Winchester Hall acquires four newly elected commissioners Wednesday; David Gray was the single county ruler who was approved by voters before.

Mike Kurtianyk sighing over cutting grass so late triggered memories of another Thanksgiving Friday. My “columning” in Frederick began that day, in 1984.

The raging anger in political debates leaves me perplexed, as readers know very well.

Following up on Tuesday’s column (“Real Devil”), I hailed the election of New York’s Archbishop Timothy Dolan, on Wednesday’s TheTentacle.com as the president of the national bishops’ conference for a sign that America’s Catholics were free of the Vatican’s power-sucking into itself.

Over 20 years writing a column for The Frederick News-Post, I came to know consummate professions, devoted to journalism with a passion.

Despite all the Vatican’s attempt to impose autocratic papal rule on the international Roman Catholic Church, and this country in particular, American bishops remain defiant.

About 100 Roman Catholic prelates and priests gathered over the weekend for sessions on exorcism, by way of prelude to the annual fall conference of American cardinals, archbishops and bishops in Baltimore that started Monday.

Elected primarily on the basis they will slash the budget in all sorts of – but unspecified – ways, Frederick’s new Board of County Commissioners will be sworn-in in three weeks; minus two days.

Alex Mooney’s first jaunt in Annapolis was signally disturbing. The state senator’s cavorting with Del. Joe Bartlett earned from my columnist’s view the label of Katzenjammer Kids.

Democrats had their hats stuffed down their throats Tuesday! It’s happened before.

You may have missed the story. The gates to St. Peter’s were locked Sunday to keep out priestly sexual abuse victims from  the United States, Italy, Britain, Ireland, Australia and other countries.

Going into the weekend before Tuesday’s election, The Frederick News-Post contained several surprising items – even in a political season when surprises can be expected.

Much more high-camp than scary, “Dracula” weighs in as the best production I’ve ever seen in Maryland Ensemble Theatre history, stretching back for nigh onto 13 years.

All pundits, observers and every media account predict dire disaster for Democrats next Tuesday.

TheTentacle.com readers know Eddie Fisher’s death hit me hard; he was two months and eight days older. At least he made to 82, as I did yesterday. I’ve said before to everyone around, more people in my life are underground than walking around on this earth.

In the hurly-burly of life these days, you almost certainly did not notice how hard-line Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week tried again to break the back of the stalled negotiations with Palestinians.

Last week’s column, “Anger Divides These United States,” dealt with the political arena. From my aged perception, a considerable portion of the electorate faces November voting blinded because of unreasoning anger.

A stained-glass window, at some expense, stands in the Winchester Cathedral, the church of the British Army Royal Rifles; it comes to mind again because of the latest awarding of the Congressional Medal of Honor.

In counterpoint to the Tea Party rally on Washington’s Mall in late August, various organizations, especially the N.A.A.C.P. and labor unions, showed up Saturday.

They were not yet married. But Eddie Fisher’s fifth wife booked him into Hershey Park a dozen years ago. Penetrating Ruth Lin’s isolation bubble to protect the singer, her brother ushered me into Eddie’s dressing room, for what turned out to be the last conversation, with my Army best friend.

Over the years since Army Band days, Eddie Fisher and I played a now-and-again role in each other’s life, notably one morning in Milton Berle’s suite at the Essex House, loaned to my friend. At the time, I was in New York on National Symphony business.

The New York visits were timed not to interfere with our regular band duties. I emceed the concerts; he sang on "pops" programs. Every once in a while, accompanied by a seven-man Army Band combo, Eddie’s popularity enabled him to stroke his fans in the Washington area, especially at Walter Reed Medical Center.

In the band auditorium, a skinny private first class shook my hand; he came unheralded and unknown – at least to me. His slow smile was charming, almost juvenile. Hugh Curry introduced us. By his side, a bald man named Milton Blackstone, his manager, smiled. The soldier was Edwin Jack Fisher, a South Philadelphia boy; drafted at the point his career took a dramatic upturn.

Benedict XVI’s gall exceeds even the Yiddish word “Chutzpah.” The latest example ended Sunday when he retired from London to Rome’s Vatican City.

“Extremism in the defense of liberty…Moderation in the pursuit of freedom is no virtue.” Sen. Barry Goldwater (R., AZ) defended his conservatism in the 1964 presidential race against incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson.

In the Great Depression’s worst days, as war storms blew up over Europe for all the world, American writer Stephen Vincent Benet wrote “The Devil and Daniel Webster.” The allegory’s most famous line, “Neighbor, how stands the Union?”

“On His Blindness” was written by John Milton, an English poet surpassed only by William Shakespeare. Too bad Ludwig van Beethoven was only a great composer; but he spoke another language.

The last time I reported on a massive throng gathered around the Reflecting Pool, in front of the seated marble Abraham Lincoln, it was the first major anti-Vietnam demonstration that eventually led to toppling Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency.

In a version of my native Louisiana patois, the above phrase translated into standard English says: Letting people do anything they please accomplished little.

“The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.”

William Butler Yeats

In last week’s columns, I sought to explain, with relevant examples, how politics relate directly to how politicians act, beyond their words.

For coming up 26 years, some in this community think many of my columns are about politics. They are wrong.

Monday’s New York Times: Gen. David H. Petraeus began his campaign to convince the public that the coalition can succeed, saying he had not come to Afghanistan to preside over a “graceful exit.”

Captivated by their romantic image of Imperial Rome, people can forget the Italian peninsula before Christ came into the world was home to a brilliant, doomed republic. Julius Caesar put an end to that.

Both The New York Times and The Washington Post front pages this week reminded that our Middle Eastern forces are scheduled for drastic reductions at this month’s end.

As my fellow Democrats can attest: Partisanship is not a big thing with me.

The Frederick News-Post headline had it wrong: “PATTERSON RUN FOR BOE SPARKS FEUD AMONG CANDIDATES.” It was a spitting contest between two immature, unqualified candidates.

In the new millennium’s second decade, it must be observed: Bigotry survives and thrives. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) notched a new blow over the weekend for the very principle it was organized to fight.

Over the past two weeks America was properly appalled by the public crucifixion and immediate restoration of Shirley Sherrod. I’ve read literally thousands of words related to the fired agriculture department Georgia director.

Dan Schorr was not my buddy. We met when he joined CBS in 1953. The network’s bureau moved to Broadcast House a year later when the building opened.

In my blood run both Choctaw and Chickasaw tribes; my maternal grandfather’s French family settled in the Natchez Trace. I’m not a blue-eyed Cherokee – the object of scorn to Native Americans.

The final straw for me was the British hedge fund manager’s saying Sunday that Barack Obama should be “shorted:” Wall Street-speak for finished off.

Last week I exchanged Email with the priest whose plight plunged me into reporting the tribulations of the Roman Catholic Church, some 43 years ago.

Wondering how any puppet show could win three Tony awards, to find out I wandered into the 7th Street theatre for the Washington Shakespeare Company for Friday’s opening night.

In this Board of County Commissioners’ swan songs there is a frenzy to get done items postponed and neglected in the past.

It’s entirely possible that so many candidates filed for elections in recent years, I don’t remember.

He appeared in my life when he was a black-and-white butterball, only 12-weeks-old. Today he reached 12-years-old.

Editor and Publisher John Ashbury attached to Fridays’ TheTentacle.com the list of filed candidates for state and county races, since before most of us felt a political urge, one way or another.

Mingling again at the GOP’s Barley & Hops First Friday night, I realized that most of my best friends are Republicans. They regard me as wild-eyed and totally liberal. They might put up with me because of my bald head and gray beard.

As Congress broke for the Fourth of July holiday, “Fiddlin’ Bobby’s” Senate seat sat empty, bedecked with funereal colors and adorned, it was pictured, by white roses.

Belgian police raided Catholic files and wound up holding the bishops of Belgium in custody for hours. They were seeking to unearth records on church clergy who sexually abused youths.

By coincidence, when President Harry S Truman fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur, in 1951, Army duty took me to the U.S. Military Academy.

Patience came to me, as I older grow. Maybe it’s a natural tendency to slow things down in the twilight years.

The morning after the presidential speech from the Oval Office a black friend called, totally upset. He had been listening to TV commentators.

Rocky Mackintosh had a column Monday. He more or less replaced Rick Weldon on TheTentacle.com.

Attempting to assert themselves as powerful, the main media keep tripping up. The cacophony from New York and Washington newsrooms has a weird cast.

Monday while going into Safeway, the radio said Helen Thomas resigned from her last post, as a Hearst Syndicate columnist.

The international community’s bowels are in an absolute uproar because of Israel’s mortal raid Monday night on a flotilla that had the announced purpose of breaking a blockade that kept 1.5 million people ill-nourished, lacking suitable housing and with the barest of medical care.

Let me prepare you for the exciting happenings taking place on-stage at Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theatre. “The 39 Steps” is nothing like anything I’d ever seen.

We cope with the first day of summer; but not astronomically speaking. Swimming pools are officially open and it’s okay to wear white. Not because I said so.

On the issue of the Gulf spill, my right-wing friends appear, at least, capable of hypocrisy. And yesterday’s demonstration of how to cap a runaway oil well makes little difference.

Pictures of oil-soaked birds do not remind me of my Louisiana boyhood, but a Washington television assignment.

By contesting incumbent state Sen. Alex Mooney, Ron Young guarantees a fight that gives no quarters. They openly detest each other.

There may be a plot to the Maryland Ensemble Theatre’s “Planet Claire.” Because of the laughter, approving applause and whole lot of dancing going on, I never found it.

The lack of activity to unseat state Sen. David Brinkley is encouraging; it is also a tribute to the low key that he brings to the job. Although of different political persuasions, David attracted my admiration long ago.

One night, some four weeks back, the English pointer and I adjourned up the stairs and instead of waiting in the middle of the bed; he sprawled on a stuffed quilt given by my second best friend. Knowing the cushioned comfort he napped on in the library, she didn’t want to take a chance of his sleeping on the bedroom floor that is covered with an Oriental rug and pad, and that’s it.

When the English pointer bounces me out for the daily stroll, I take great pride in how Pushkin handles people and other critters. He has down pat the principle “don’t bother me and I’ll leave you totally alone.”

In Iraq, the Bush White House was caught between two juggernauts.

Readers know that I am not a harsh critic of President Barack Obama, in general. What sticks in my craw – and endangers my fellow Americans – is the senseless, useless and too expensive war in Iraq and Afghanistan he continues to support.

One of the greatest compliments accorded to words was delivered by a GOP opponent of Chuck Jenkins; he was a man of great connections, in solid with the county’s good ol’ boys. I wrote columns informing voters of the problems he would bring, including his wife.

The New York Times was dragged through pitch-hot coals for reporting on the Catholic Church sexual scandals. The paper has been accused of conducting a campaign of vilification and vituperation against Pope Benedict XVI.

My GOP friends may find difficulty in believing that I wear no party brand on my bald head.

There was simply no way for Barack Obama to reply point by point the barrages of fault-finding in his first months. In the first place, some of the points took more of a reply than words, as the president showed.

My first job out of the Army was with The Washington Post, not as a reporter but a copyboy; sort of an apprentice journalist. With a wife and not-quite two-year-old boy, the G.I. Bill did not cover our expenses. At the time, my plan was to finish the University of Maryland and return to law school in New Orleans.

Everything political is subject to analyzing to a fare-thee-well – and beyond. The very worst example that comes to mind is how Scott Brown’s election was a cruel and costly blow to the president.

Richard Goldstone is a distinguished South African jurist, so distinguished he was asked by the United Nations to conduct an inquiry into what really happened when the Gaza Strip was invaded by Israel.

Some of my best friends had a rollicking time Thursday, speaking and ranting against Washington, the White House and the current resident. If you’re read my columns, I have made crystal clear my opinions on all three.

In a play Washington’s Shakespeare Theatre Company opened last weekend, the writer is publicized as the French tragedian Pierre Corneille; “The Liar” is listed as his only comedy. But Monsieur Corneille publicly proclaimed he had lifted the idea from Spanish-American Jose Ruiz de Alarcon.

When “The Phantom of the Opera” first played before my reviewer’s eyes, some 25 years ago, at the Kennedy Center, it earned a negative notice. Looking at the show, opening night at Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theatre, I was shocked to find how wrong I was.

In proclaiming April a Confederate history month without mentioning slavery, Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell was right, but for the wrong reason.

Frederick Republican friends introduced Michael Steele when he was running for lieutenant governor, in 2002; I found him diffident and very intelligent. He had a warm smile. Robert Ehrlich headed the ticket.

First it should be established the Maryland Ensemble Theatre operates in the basement of what was once the Francis Scott Key Hotel. It’s possible to argue that some of the bedroom antics upstairs must have moved downstairs.

The “pope story” sprouted longer legs than I supposed; Easter Sunday it developed a definite hitch in its giddy-up that promises to stretch people’s reactions into Memorial Day, or beyond. And the resulting media attention. It is no longer about sexual abuse; it now has to do with the basic structure of the Roman Catholic Church.

You may remember Marvel Comics’ Clark Kent, a mild and diffident dude who honed from afar after Lois Lane, a fellow reporter at The Daily Planet. He was totally different after stepping into a phone booth and emerging as Superman. Something like that took place before our very eyes to the present resident of the White House.

You might think the Vatican’s role in sexual scandals is the result of an eager-beaver press, intent on bringing down the Roman Catholic Church. That is neither true nor necessary.

In these social and political circles, my attitude is apparently peculiar. While the left cheers and the right fulminates – or worse – I do neither. Blame it on my years spent in Washington, when various motions and movements threatened the civilized world, as we know it – “but waking no such matter.” (The quote comes from a Shakespearean sonnet the last line of which goes: “In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.”)

John “Lennie” Thompson probably got it wrong again! As usual. He may have thought his motion for Frederick County to secede from the state has historical precedence. Legendary Jones County did not withdraw from Mississippi during the Civil War. Never happened. The phrase, “The Free State of Jones,” was casually tossed around way before what my ancestors called “The War for Southern Independence.”

*Friday is a day off from Lent, particularly in New Orleans where St. Joseph’s feast day is celebrated by tables loaded with food.

The snow finally vanished from my patio. It took seemingly weeks and weeks to be gone. For much of the past winter, as I remember now, Pushkin could not get enough purchase with a foot to bound into the usual area, in the farther corner, where he did his “business.” It felt like forever since the paving blocks and asphalt had last appeared in plain sight.

The story told after the last great mob riots in Washington was that Gino Barone had the single white face that could walk unscathed through the arsonists and looters. The occasion for the riot was the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

The world was warned that results of the Sunday Iraq elections will be along when they’ll be along: in days or in weeks; the way things go in that part of the world. Everything, they believe, depends on the One God, a literal translation of Allah.

On Wednesday The Washington Post published: “A defiant D.C. Council Member Marion Barry told a packed Baptist church in Southeast Washington on Tuesday night that despite the decision of the City Council to censure him and strip him of his committee chairmanship, he doesn’t plan to fade away…,’’ the former mayor told several hundred supporters. “They may take my committee chair. They can’t take my dignity.”

New Orleans detectives rode Aunt Kate and me to a restaurant where crabs and oysters were free for anyone buying beer. In my case, it was Barque’s root beer, once a local drink made and bottled on the Mississippi Gulf Shore. (The Coca Cola Corporation did me and all the other displaced coonasses a great favor when it bought Barq’s lock, stock and barrel of caffeinated root beer.)

The lovely musical about my father’s native state set Broadway on fire. “Oklahoma” was not only a record-breaking hit; it also set the pattern for shows that followed. “In the Heights” looks ready to pull off the same trick.

He was president of the Board of County Commissioners when I started writing a Frederick column. The first time I essayed into local politics came the last spring before he was unceremoniously dumped in a run for the House of Delegates.

Shakespeare’s history is not to be trusted. He remains true to his profession as storyteller, feeling free to fudge on petty details; sometimes he manages whopping lies, as long as the ending comes out to accord with factual truths. Washington’s Shakespeare Theatre Company has a pair of doozies currently running in repertory: Richard II and Henry V.

Unlike movie stars and rock musicians, Tiger Woods’ celebrity does not rest on his popularity; quite the contrary. There’re a number of tournament ticket buyers who put up money with the hope they were on hand when the golf champion crashes. It’s a verity of every human endeavor, especially true of minorities.

Upon Frederick’s Charles “Mac” Mathias’ death, I reported the surviving Charles “Chuck” Percy was left alone; the judgment came from my reporting days on Capitol Hill. Both senators were victims of the GOP rush to cleanse its ranks of moderates in Congress. They were not alone, but two Republicans I knew and interacted with.

Certainly next December will end the political career of John Leonard Thompson. God willing! Acting the jerk consistently, the commissioner tarnishes consistently Frederick County’s good name; fortunately other officials act to clean up his messes.

My hometown’s Saints made out last Sunday; they beat Archie Manning’s son, who was brought up in the Garden District. Peyton’s father quarterbacked for the New Orleans team during the voodoo bad beginnings. Sunday, the TV rating set a 106.5 million record in this country; that beat out the 1983 last show of M*A*S*H.

Winter flirts with New Orleans; it plays peek-a-boo, hide-and-seek. When the sun glares with blinding intensity and clouds stay out of the way, some January days demand no more than shirt sleeves.

His exact age I’ve never known, but I think he was 12 or 13 when we met: sitting on a Winchester Hall bench beside his mother, waiting for election results. His father was again roaring to victory that night. City Republicans had a hard time finding anyone to run against him. Ron Young was the longest serving Frederick mayor in modern history.

Somewhere in the Constitution, I guess, the Founding Fathers equated companies and corporations with the rights of American citizens; I don’t know where. Still it must be there. Otherwise the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) overstepped its authority.

Charles “Chuck” Percy now stands alone. Together with Frederick’s Charles “Mac” Mathias, they once fought against polarization within their Republican Party. I knew them in Washington from reporting on Capitol Hill.

Many voices – including mine – were raised against Democrat Martha Coakley’s indolent campaign in last week’s loss to Republican Scott Brown; they bumped heads in Massachusetts’ special election for the late Sen. Edward Kennedy’s seat. On further thought I find she was no less guilty than the majority of Americans who swept Barack Obama into the White House.

Coming one day before Barack Obama’s first anniversary as president, Tuesday’s TheTentacle.com column anticipated the big object lesson held up by both parties:

Barack Obama marks his first anniversary in the White House tomorrow. Ironically, the first major test of his administering the nation’s problem comes today in the election for the late Ted Kennedy’s senate seat.

Give Michael Hough credit: When asked by The Frederick News-Post how his position differed from Charles Jenkins on illegal immigration, he said: “I don’t know that we’d vote differently on the issue.”

When Alex Mooney’s political fuzz still rested on his cherubic cheek, I took to calling the state senator “My littlest Fascist,” to the point he replied: “I don’t like that.” To which I answered: “Please stop acting like one, Alex.”

Some five years ago, in August, I was caught in Turkey when an attempt on an airliner occurred using fluid from the suspect’s shaving kit; that was when the feds proclaimed a limit on liquids brought on board.

It may be fashionable to criticize new Mayor Randy McClement for giving Frederick city employees Christmas Eve off; I don’t buy that line. Drawing from my corporate experience, nothing gets done in offices that date. Take that back: emergencies are sometimes handled – and that’s it.

Moving to Frederick can be traumatic. This is such a friendly city. The old buildings radiate comforting warmth. "Good morning" is freely offered and returned.

His name does not come to mind, nor his party; a man observed the anger on today’s Capitol Hill is greater than the Civil War run-up when congressmen beat and struck each other. In at least one case, a legislator was “called out,” invited to duel for words said on the floor.

These observations appeared in my Frederick News-Post column the December sleigh bells-bedecked horses pulled wagons through downtown streets; a spectacle that had disappeared several decades before. It was also the season when my column first appeared.

Pushkin and I live in an about 250-year-old house; built entirely of logs down to its foundation, walkers-by can’t see that. The front on North Market Street was added in the early 19th century, sometime before pocket doors were invented. The older part was then covered with bricks to match the new addition.

The Frederick News-Post published this week the story: On his way out the door, new ex-mayor Jeff Holtzinger “signed off on legal action against Frederick County to appeal an ordinance requiring developers to abide by strict school capacity requirements on newly annexed land.” The quote comes directly from the front-page piece.

It was a lark week for the president. Not only because he picked up his Nobel Peace Prize, more importantly there were signs the economy was on the mend. He and I continue to come apart on the issue of the Afghanistan war that was initially botched when his predecessor abandoned the mission, to take on Iraq.

This nation seems to lurch from celebrity crisis to celebrity crisis. When there is none, the media declare a scandal and plunge ahead on telling people more than we want to know, particularly when previously unknowns pull off an outrageous trick on the establishment. We’re not talking about Tiger Woods, of course.

Before my next TheTentacle.com column appears, City Hall goes through its shakeup, ordered by voters. This does not include Jeff Holtzinger; the current mayor, on his own, decided four years were enough. He’s being replaced Thursday by fellow Republican Randy McClement. This is not the way things were supposed to work.

The anniversary of an important event in my life was published in the History column of all three papers I read daily. It was 55 years this week that the U.S. Senate cast out Joseph R. McCarthy for “conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute.” Less than two years later, in early May, I was the Washington reporter to cover the political eulogies his last day in town.

When the president of the United States talks to the nation tonight, I will not be listening. One chief reason I backed so enthusiastically Barack Obama was his campaign pledge to remove American forces from the Middle East. In addition to everything else, including his endorsing George W. Bush’s wars, Sen. John McCain was simply not my political tea.

It has been nearly 44 years since I first sat on the aisle as a critic; although reviewer might be more appropriate. Because of working on television (Washington’s Channel 9), the number of words was limited to maybe 250. Switching to print, the amount doubled but still not enough to nit and pick aspects of the production and the people in it.

With its rich tradition of Mardi Gras, I must report it was the only holiday publicly celebrated. In my New Orleans childhood, while there were balls in the weeks before Fat Tuesday, attendance was limited to Krewe (club) members. Things really came apart the weekend before Ash Wednesday when out-of-towners poured through the railroad stations; air travel was still in the future. But Thanksgiving couldn’t be celebrated in a more subdued manner.

Winchester Hall changed the rules again. Unable to keep the tax base invested in three properties Frederick agreed to annex, county commissioners voted 4-1 to bar development based on school spaces available. Charles Jenkins was the lone vote not to tinker with owners’ rights.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Before history dawned, tribes killed killers for revenge. Has mankind abandoned the “eye for an eye” mentality? We offer three current examples, including Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.

That’s how Marlene Dietrich sang it. “Berlin remains Berlin after all” may be the closest translation I can make in English. I lived there years before the Wall went up; the 20th anniversary of its fall was celebrated around the world yesterday, setting off memories in me.

It was a surprise. Young people were walking around the local movie theatres with pasteboard and plastic festooning their wrists. A guy when asked where he was going responded: “The Michael Jackson movie.”

She certainly has a way about her. The sometime saloonkeeper and Irish gift merchant that came up from Washington to attend Mount St. Mary’s and decided she liked what she saw. Jennifer Dougherty has been a heavy factor in Frederick’s elections the last eight years.

On this voting day in the city, I can almost envy Pushkin; the boy Pointer will sail through the whole democratic process unaffected. He might be inconvenienced by accompanying me to the basement of Evangelical Lutheran Church on East Church Street. Although his shank is long and his beard grizzled, he always finds admirers. No sweat.

You may have missed the latest survey: a majority of Americans said they no longer have confidence in where their country is headed. As usual sixty-five percent disapprove of the performance by Congress. At the same time, the president’s personal rating held steady at 56 per cent – in the Wall Street Journal/NBC paid-for measurement of the national mood.

You read the column’s head right. The Maryland Ensemble Theatre is retelling Robert Louis Stevenson classic story in playwright Jeffrey Hatcher’s version; no longer is a case of schizophrenia limited to a single individual. Mr. Hatcher took “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” and spread the latter’s evil among four actors, including a woman, Karen Paone.

Let me confess up front that I have been to no candidate forums and was fed stories that proved no more than flimsy rumors. This does not make me unusual in the community. What sets me apart from two-thirds of my fellow registered voters? I plan to hike over to the Evangelical Lutheran polling place next Tuesday.

Although the Frederick City political shoot-out comes in less than two weeks, my mind fixes first on next year’s races – for the Board of County Commissioners. Having watched their brazen attempt to dictate annexation to City Hall, they maintain fierce lockstep behind board President Jan Gardner.

First, maybe I should explain mitzvah. Literally a blessing; it involves no requisite words or accoutrements. It is usually a deed done for someone else. Normally, it meets a need, not realizable normally. So when I say Topol’s Tevye amounts to a mitzvah for Baltimore’s Hippodrome Theatre, I should say, it’s for the audiences flocking in the next two weeks to witness “Fiddler on the Roof.”

My professional observing of Frederick politics started in 1984, right after I voted locally for the first time; I moved here from Washington only the year before. Working as a member of the White House press corps did not prepare me for the move, in any way.

The Frederick News-Post’s Meg Tully reported this week: “The Frederick County Commissioners voted 4-1 Tuesday to call for a special election for those who live on those properties as one more way to delay or stop the much-debated annexations.”

I’ve warned you about Michael Kahn before. The artistic director of Washington’s Shakespeare Theatre Company continues to make stage classics work by inserting shtickla the writer could not have imagined. He’s done it again in “The Alchemist,” by Ben Jonson.

Kai Hagen and John L. “Lennie” Thompson cannot count on me; I will not sign the petition putting on the ballot the question of annexing three properties. And the same answer goes to the other commissioners.

The Washington Post and The New York Times have changed their tune. Both powerful newspapers bellowed intense “jingoism” at Iraq’s invasion. They thoughtlessly went along with what in columns I called an expression of national egotism. You wouldn’t know it if you read either paper today.

I don’t remember that there were several thousand marching; I could be wrong. Among the numerous people who poured out that October Saturday in 1983 were my then-wife, her 88-year-old father and me. The weather was decent; I can’t recall details. But it didn’t rain that day, nor was it beastly hot.

TheTentacle.com readers know that I valued my friendship with Walter Cronkite, begun because we shared space in Washington’s Broadcast House, when the building was going up. Over the years we both tended the relationship; on his part, by taking my calls immediately; no matter what was going on at CBS.

One of my friends named John is a staunch Republican to the point where we rarely talk about politics. Just days after the city’s primary elections the News-Post published allegations and rumors that attempted to link Democratic mayoral candidate Jason Judd with ACORN; my friend’s disgust was so strong that he threatened to cross party line and vote for Mr. Judd.

I was wrong. Let me make clear before commenting on Afghanistan. I tend to lump the mountain nation with Iraq; as they were indeed in the administration that withdrew nine months ago. But in his campaign speeches Barack Obama carefully differentiated.

After Frederick City primaries last week, Republican friends insisted on talking about how Democratic winner Jason Judd’s chances were doomed in November, saying the Democratic winner would get his butt whipped when everybody could vote. There was also comment along the line his working for a union makes him anathema to local citizens.

Jennifer Dougherty’s defeat Tuesday resulted not from a single cause but a number of political crimes, all of them self-inflicted. One by one, she managed to offend her fellow Democrats – from Ron Young to Andrew Duck and all the faithful in between. All by herself, she managed to make seeking office tediously boring; primarily because of the way she inevitably lost – time after-time.

During my New Orleans childhood, street vendors walking along beside colorful horse-drawn wagons peddled bananas for “ten cents a dozen, two dozen for fifteen cents.” Why so cheap? They paid nothing.

This morning my schedule calls for an early exercise session, the first step in rehabilitation. My right knee was replaced yesterday by orthopedic surgeon Robert Fisher. X-rays showed the connection had been reduced to bone-on-bone, all the cartilage lost.

The last time I rubbed elbows with Sen. Edward Kennedy was at Roger L. Steven’s graveside 11 years ago; he came to bring personal and family condolences to the family and their closest friends. They were close even before Mr. Stevens built the Kennedy Center and was its first chairman.

Friends have heard me say I know more people below ground than those walking around on the face of the earth. My disappeared numbers increased this week by two. Bob Novak and Don Hewitt were no back-slapping buddies – but we worked together.

Signs in so-called friendly and allied nations once blatantly demanded: “Yankees, Go Home!” I was surprised when I first saw it, and confused. In my younger days, I had far more confidence Washington will always act in Americans’ best interest. Well, more or less.

Whatever the topic, the reaction is rage. In some circles the mention of “abortion” brings heated words. The state of the economy launches tirades. But I’ve never seen the furor erupted by President Barack Obama’s hopes to reform the national health care.

With astonishment, two different friends said to me this week that they were surprised to hear me talking about movies with Bob Miller (WFMD 930AM). I was surprised. Bob and I have chatted mainly about films – but all sorts of things – on his Morning News Express for more than several years.

The United States Supreme Court has a new associate justice. Despite GOP hard-core opposition, Sonia Sottomeyer was sworn in the day after the Senate approved her appointment, 68-31. On Thursday, the Senate passed the “refill” of “Cash for Clunkers,” 60-37. Republicans lost both times.

If the gods smile, as many as 20 percent may vote in next month’s Frederick City primary elections. Four registered voters will walk by every one that marches into the voting booth. Fellow columnist George Wenschhof puts the blame on the system that created Frederick’s stand-alone elections.

Any American who can see or hear knows exactly who are the “uppity negro” and the “racist pig.” That’s how each is described by radical elements in both camps. Their names may not be remembered. Their professions are: Harvard professor and Cambridge Police sergeant. The reality will probably offend more Henry Louis Gates, Jr., than James Crowley.

Various groups have protested to the media how Hollywood advertises its product to the public; the G, PG, PG13, R and NC-17 appraisals have been found lacking. It seems today that before allowing a child to go off to a moving picture, parents should see the picture first.

To emphasize the new importance America’s current president gives to the war we had been told was finished, The Washington Post prints separately the names of those lost in Afghanistan; they were once “lumped in” with Iraq. Saturday’s edition published Germantown’s Rodrigo A. Mungula Rivas among the other dead soldiers. He was 27.

Every candidate for the September 15 Frederick City primaries has been rustling around doors; not necessarily mine. Old Towne Tavern and the Democratic headquarter are across the street. With two tattoo parlors and three head shops in the block – and mine the first-single family dwelling from the Square Corner – a candidate should have sanity checked for working this block.

Over the weekend the biggest news came from the death of Walter Cronkite, and his CBS glory days. He shot to fame covering John F. Kennedy's assassination, as all the weekend's reporters and commentators said. He and I had a nodding acquaintance before he traveled to New York and took over my early Channel 9 slot, opposite NBC's "Today."

Since moving up from Bethesda, 26 years ago, I have lived in old houses. I'm grateful for the things accomplished by the Historic Preservation Commission (HPC) and its predecessor, the Historic District Commission (HDC). But given the vacancy created by half the panel resigning, Mayor Jeff Holtzinger should reform the panel's mission. Its decisions can be absurd.

The numbers are intimidating: 20 candidates are contesting for five seats on the city's Board of Aldermen. That turns out eleven Republicans and nine Democrats. Most names ring no bells. With exactly nine weeks before voters march into the booths, many who filed can count on only their families and friends stepping up for them.

Heave a great sigh of relief: Tuesday's primary election deadline has passed. Now we'll have no more speculation about Republican Alan Imhoff running again for the mayor's office. He lost an earlier race but he was a Democrat then. (In the next column, we'll discuss the aldermanic elections.)

Resigning as Alaska's governor may have been the smartest move by Sarah Palin, a politician noted more for smarts than intelligence; it cheers her fans and confounds her enemies, including those in the media. Journalists have criticized their colleagues – never themselves – for being too hard on the ex-vice presidential nominee.

The orgy of fireworks came late to the Independence Day celebration, long after my youth. A gathering on July 4th to see a brilliant display of pinwheels and rockets may have been the rule in Philadelphia, but it was unknown in New Orleans and the surrounding South. Maybe because Confederate Fortress Vicksburg fell to Union forces on that date? More probably, the costs of the shows.

Two celebrity deaths this past week brought an outpouring from the general public and the people who knew them. Farrah Fawcett's dying was both documented and expected. She bowed out with great grace. Although she came a great way professionally from the tousled-hair "Charlie's Angel" in the poster, she earned her greatest review on the manner of her passing.

Most media eyes-and voices-have been devoted to Iranians this week and they deserve the attention. However, Iraq simply cannot be ignored. Both countries are Muslim and bereft of any democratic tradition; that's what the fighting is about in Baghdad and Teheran.

When I first looked on actor Stacy Keach from a reviewer's seat, his white beard was fake. He played Wild Bill Cody in Arena Stage's "Indians," a somewhat bitter analogy for the very bitter protests against the raging Vietnam War. We were young men in our prime. Now the white beards are very real, on both sides of the lights.

Twenty six years ago last March I moved into what was then called the Historic District, which was bound on the north by 4th Street; since that's where my house faced, the commission could only tell me what to do about the front; the rest of the place was unregulated.

My blood boiled this week at a pair of dirty shots; their targets were County Commissioner Charles A. Jenkins and Fredericktowne Players' "Annie" director Samn Huffer.

Donna Kuzemchak was never known for demure behavior. She was a fiery acolyte during ex-Mayor Jennifer Dougherty's term; understanding the measure of the woman she supported, she scarcely raised a peep directly against the boss lady. She did not start Jeff’ Holtzinger's four years as a happy camper, which everyone understood.

On stage at Baltimore's Hippodrome Theatre until a week from Sunday is a Tony Award winner for Best Musical. "Spring Awakening" is all about sex, not simply among teenagers but all human beings. It is a 21st Century production that provides the question, answered in "Hair" 40 years ago.

There goes Donna Kuzemchak again. Reaching for votes in the Democratic primary, Ms. Kuzemchak wants people to believe there was “corruption of implementation of those retirement plan changes.”

The tone was different but the words were mostly the same we've heard before. The president traveled to Cairo University Thursday for what was billed as his administration's pronouncement on the Middle East. A White House spokesman announced in advance there would be little new; he was right.

A brand-new U.S. citizen emerges from the courtroom waving his legalizing papers exuberantly. He hits a passerby on the nose. The man knocks him down. The new citizen protests: I am an American and have the right to celebrate. The passerby replies: Your right ends where my nose begins.

Keep it simple, stupid. The translation for K.I.S.S. has not been around all my life; it certainly applies when it comes to politics. All that most voters in the September Democratic primary in the City of Frederick will probably know, going into the booth: Karen Lewis Young is married to Ron Young.

He brought the muffins. Jeff Holtzinger showed up for coffee Tuesday morning with a Dunkin' Donuts bag in hand. We sat down at the old farm table to drink our New Orleans' coffee and chicory. It was a standing invitation; he called Friday to say he would accept.

Most readers know that I wrote a column for the Frederick News-Post for over 20 years. During that time the publisher and editor was George Delaplaine. Judge Edward Delaplaine was his uncle, an author and prolific reader of catholic tastes, but there was one subject that turned him off.

A considerable portion of the American public seems curious that ex-Vice President Dick Cheney developed into the Great Defender of the recent administration. I am not. During the eight years George W. Bush sat in the Oval Office Mr. Cheney ran the nation, especially in financial and foreign affairs.

Somehow entertainment became a negative word in the theatre. Maryland Ensemble Theatre could change that. "And the World Goes Round" makes a case for evenings that are entertaining, not uplifting, carrying messages or making the world a better place.

Once upon a time, as all good stories begin, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne epitomized theatrical royalty and this was in the era when the Barrymores were the first family of the stage. Noel Coward's chief claim to that company was that he was a kind of industry jester.

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and I did not agree; her political strategists said she could win the governor's race by concentrating her efforts (and expenditures) after Labor Day. She tried, and had her head handed over by Republican Bob Ehrlich.

In the fat years – and we've had more than several recently – budget time takes on the tenor of holiday dinners fed by someone else. Local politicians get to say "You're welcome." A lot. Particularly to the Board of Education.

Vatican hypocrisy couldn't be clearer than in the reaction to Notre Dame inviting Barack Obama to address this year's commencement and receive an honorary degree. This president's "mortal sin," in church critics' eyes, derives from his support of abortion rights and for embryonic stem cell research.

It seems to me calmer on the domestic front, for all the noises and agitation aimed at Barack Obama. Keeping his cool, his trademark, has helped the nation to settle down.

Kim Dine was a stranger until ex-Mayor Jennifer Dougherty hired him to run the Frederick Police Department. We did not rush into each other's arms. I was a noted critic of his new boss. After experiencing predecessor "Ray" Raffensberger's need to manipulate, I took a wait and see stance.

Former colleague Katherine Heerbrandt hit John "Lennie" Thompson a mighty whack in her Wednesday News-Post column. At the same moment she was feeding the county commissioner's constituency their favorite dish: Publicity.

At the end of his first 100 days on the job, a significant poll indicates President Barack Obama receives approval from an overwhelming majority of his fellow Americans. Sixty-three percent voted in his favor, 36 percent did not, in a survey paid for by The Washington Post and ABC-TV.

Aside from her declaration on City Hall steps, ex-mayor Jennifer Dougherty seems to have disappeared. What a difference from her recent campaigns!

"State of Play" opened this weekend; the film will be discussed with Bob Miller on his WFMD "Morning Express" Friday. Its’ message about modern newspapering burns in my mind and cannot wait another three days.

The story made all the papers: Washington Post, New York Times, etc. In Frederick, the News-Post slapped it across the front page: "Tea Party" Brews on Tax Day."

Chazz Palminteri had 'em rolling in the aisles Tuesday. The Hippodrome Theatre brought his "Bronx Tale" to Baltimore. To say the one-man show was an opening night smash would be understatement of the most egregious sort.

One survey shows 21 percent of respondents object to the name (Bo) the Obama girls have chosen for their new Portuguese Water Dog puppy. Of course, it's plain dumb for any survey to ask. But, good grief! – one in five object to the name!

As "everyone" could clearly see, Jennifer Dougherty was going to have another go for the only office she won in a fair election. Equally the nose on my face could not be more obvious than Commissioner John "Lennie" Thompson's hunger to better himself.

Last Friday in this space, I alerted readers that the ex-mayor's campaign would concentrate on incumbent Jeff Holtzinger, a Republican. Jennifer Dougherty and all her claque mean to ignore her Democratic primary opponent, Jason Judd.

The day Thomas Stearns Eliot died my boss at WTOP made a visit to my office. Lloyd Dennis told me to sit down and then informed me about the great man's passing. He was right. I was 35 and devastated although I never met Mr. Eliot.

On March 18, the gap between St. Patrick's and St. Joseph's days, New Orleans keeps on partying, defying the church calendar to celebrate three days off from Lent. Green beer flows into red wine.

By reading her sycophantic newspaper columnists, it's easy to see the shape of Jennifer Dougherty's current campaign for mayor; there were three others. Only one run for City Hall succeeded.

Mother Nature and government frequently disagree. Washington told us clocks must be turned back February's last weekend. A sure sign of Spring? The season doesn't begin until three weeks later.

That semi-apology appeared in The New York Times. The rest of the headline narrowed the impact considerably; the admission came "In Letter to Bishops."

While being amazed in Baltimore's Hippodrome Theatre Tuesday night, the thought occurred: In my 40-plus years reviewing I've never seen a smoother musical show. Put simply: "Riverdance" has it all!

As a non-Republican, I find amusing the recent rhubarb within the GOP party over Michael Steele.

Early on I addressed him as "my littlest fascist." Alex Mooney asked me once why I said that. My reply: "Because that's what you are."

Only The Frederick News-Post's announcement that it was "suspending" its Monday edition competed; over the weekend there was intense talk about the probability that ex-mayor Jennifer Dougherty will run for her former office again. Everyone acknowledges she could be a tough foe.

Frederick’s Mayor Jeff Holtzinger formally announced he's in and city aldermanic President Marcia Hall says she's out. There's no way Jennifer Dougherty can easily sit out Frederick elections this fall.

From the start, Washington's Shakespeare Theatre Company production of Lope de Vega's "Dog in the Manger' grabbed my attention in a way no other play has, not recently.

What the audience got Sunday night was the most focused Oscar presentations I can recall. That's said with a straight face, although I suffered through a paean montage of romantic movies and other bits I flatly did not understand.

Does no one now remember that the out-going Bush Administration extracted $700 billion to pour into banks? The Democrats had the numbers to block. They didn't. They recognized the nation was in financial crises. There were questions, of course. There should have been more.

Executive Director Ray Cullom first spotted "Pluck: The Titanic Show" at the annual Edinborough Comedy Festival last summer. The three-"man" show opened at his Bethesda Theatre over the weekend and will hang around until March 7, three Saturdays away.

This city holds elections this autumn. At that realization, many registered voters went back to sleep. They are not kept awake by the various and sundry rumors and gossips floating around. Most simply will not show up at polling places.

Two months before Franklin Delano Roosevelt swept into the Oval Office, on a voter tidal wave, a bill was offered to the Senate that would distribute to the public one trillion dollars in "funny" money meant to disappear when the crisis was over. Supporters called it "self-liquidating, negative interest money."

It's been a while since we looked in on the Maryland Ensemble Theatre (MET). A cast member suggested I see "Almost, Maine:" I was there for opening night. Julie Herber didn't steer me wrong, which is consistent with what I know about the finest actress in this part of the world.

The Associated Press broke the story on Chicago's cathedral fire the same day the Vatican was reporting a readmitted "bishop" could not be let back into the church, not unless he disavowed his view the Holocaust was not an official act of the Nazi regime.

As readers know when faced with startling turns in life, I turn to Shakespeare. The column's title is taken from "Richard II" and is part of a speech in the third act:

As some readers recall, for the past several years I have worked on a book, a collection of memories from my colorful past. Recently I have written on the Eisenhower era. After two hitches in the Army, I started my civilian career on the general's first inauguration day. I was already married with child; future attorney Thomas Moore Meachum born in 1951.

You've heard and read about the calamitous state of America's newspaper industry; it has been firmly fixed on the availability of numerous competitive news sources on the cable channels. Nobody dares to broach the possibility the venerable medium may have done itself in.

Evidence suggests the national Republican Party is on the ropes. Again. George W. Bush's departure from office marks a nadir for the GOP comparable to Herbert Hoover's. In both instances money takes the major blame. Bush's White House avoided, like the plague, the word "depression." But it's here.

God willing, the so-called cease fire held through last night. And Israel and Hamas limited themselves to the minor infractions that have consistently occurred since they stopped shooting. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared victory and began to pull his armed forces out. Hamas claims it won by surviving. They both are right. And wrong.

No one probably remembers I called for peace when Jennifer Dougherty and George W. Bush first took office. I suggested they be given the chance to do their jobs before judgment was passed. I supported their rivals in the elections.

It's easy to remember my first day on The Washington Post. It was January 20, 1953. Ike's first Inauguration found me as the Post copy boy assigned to carry the paper's chief photographer Arthur Ellis' camera equipment; news photogs still toted around Speed Graphics. I loved being an insider in the big event.

Frederick and its citizens should erect a new statue on the City Hall lawn. George Wenschhof earned it.

Once there was a Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem. The men who founded it wore a huge cross from their shoulders down to their knees. Many did not always do Christian things. They judged the natives as infidels. They killed many. Random cruelties were allowable on those worthless. That was anybody who did not bow to the cross. They moved right in.

Moving to Frederick can be traumatic. This is such a friendly city. The old buildings radiate comforting warmth. "Good morning" is freely offered and returned.

Sir Harold Pinter may not have been the leader of Britain's "Angry Young Men" playwrights and novelists, but he was certainly the most prominent. He died last week, on Christmas Day.

These observations appeared in my Frederick News-Post column the December sleigh-bell-bedecked horses pulled wagons through downtown streets; a spectacle that had disappeared several decades before. It was also the season when my column first appeared.

This was written the first Christmas after I started my Frederick column; that was in 1984. It was revived over the years because of requests from mothers and ex-mice; some could now be mothers in their own right.

Her ballet slippers are probably lost; discarded with other no-longer-useful items when the family moved out of the White House and back to Georgetown. When the sightseers and gawkers proved too much, her mother settled the small brood in New York; the brother was too young to recall the details. While alive, his memory must have remained tattooed with impressions, including faces.

Among all presidents, George W. Bush appears the champion; he whistles in the dark best. The old expression may not be used much these days; it means making noises to scare possible boogey men away.

My position on illegal immigrants differs slightly from Sheriff Charles "Chuck" Jenkins' and, of course, County Commissioner John "Lennie" Thompson's.

If there's anything wrong about the Shakespeare Theatre Company's production of "Twelfth Night," I simply didn't catch it. This is the most consistently comedic I've seen of any of the Bard's comedies.

You might not remember Eric Shinseki's name. Among Army troops he's mildly infamous for ordering all ranks to wear berets. He's now been named by the incoming administration as Secretary of Veterans Affairs. That could never happen while Richard Cheney exercised power in the vice president's office.

"Chorus Line" opened Tuesday at Baltimore's Hippodrome Theatre. That should be quite enough for anyone who knows the slightest thing about theatre; they should rush to buy tickets for the show that ends a week from Sunday, on December 14. It lasted 15 years on Broadway and was brought back for a two-year revival that spawned the national tour visiting Charm City. This is a true stage icon.

"Cry havoc" forms the first part of that "Julius Caesar" quote and that might make a bitter title for the electoral cycle that starts right after the looming holidays. Shopping malls aside, I do not count Thanksgiving as the leading edge of Christmas.

A vacuum resulted from the political retirement of the most powerful Good Ol' Boys. Rushing in to fill the space was a female cabal led by Del. Sue Hecht. When did I first discover that reality?

This year marked a quarter century that I resided in Frederick. Someone who arrived later cannot possibly imagine the changes made. Most from the visionary and long-time city Mayor Ron Young. He created Carroll Creek development and modernized downtown streets from the horse and buggy days.

A good friend from New Orleans called the other day; he works for Holy Cross where I started as a boarding student when I was nine years old. The dormitories were ripped up more than 20 years ago by Hurricane Betsy; nobody lives there these days.

What a delightful idea! Baltimore's Hippodrome Theatre decided to bring in for the holidays "Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical."

While George W. Bush's order to invade Iraq made headline news, the several papers I read cast the real outcome somewhere in the back pages.

Three months after Franklin Delano Roosevelt was sworn in as the first Democratic president since Woodrow Wilson, Oklahoma-born comedian Will Rogers said on his weekly radio show: "You've got to be optimist to be a Democrat and you've got to be a humorist to stay one." Mr. Rogers was also quoted: "I belong to no organized political party – I’m a Democrat."

Jennifer Dougherty's loss record for elections stands four-to-one after Tuesday's drubbing by Rep. Roscoe Bartlett. The only time she won, incumbent Mayor Jim Grimes shot himself in the foot. Repeatedly. When she tried for a second term, her own party dumped her; the first mayor in modern times to be defeated in a primary.

In the middle of the Clintons' primary struggle to take away the people's nomination of Barack Obama, I threatened to resign from the Democratic Party if they succeeded. Between them and their cohorts they had the means in their grasp.

Today arrives as Boxing Day for Christmas and Ash Wednesday for Mardi Gras. Take your pick. The presidential campaign for all intents and purposes ended yesterday. The number of voters who might be persuaded by last minute exhortations is certainly miniscule.

A Frederick businessman – and fellow Democrat – this week told me a story about the former mayor. Failing to be heard with orders that city workers should not show up at his place, buy sandwiches and drive away, Jennifer Dougherty proceeded to patrol his parking lot.

Readers may recall I take a certain pride in making up my mind well in advance about election personalities and issues. Not always, helas! This resolution on slot machines remains unresolved for me. I suspect I'm not alone. Please allow me to point out personal problems.

Read the name again: Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan. General Colin Powell did, carefully. He noticed on the corporal's Arlington Cemetery marble grave marker the Purple Heart and Bronze Star. There were also the crescent moon and the star, sacred to Islam.

Unless you join the apparent throng voting early, the presidential election takes place two weeks from today. A fortnight, as the British sometimes portray the time. With that in mind, I turned on the last presidential "debate." I should have read a book instead.

Exactly 10 years ago today Pushkin walked into my life. Correction: the 20-pound black-and-white butterball waddled down North Market Street. I was sitting on the porch of the house that many people think I still live in; waiting for Sharon and others to pack up antiques for Lady on Skates' Richmond operation.

One week ago in this space ("The Republic in Danger") I wrote: "With the core of the nation's financial structure in shambles, at stake these next four weeks is the very governmental itself. Never have these United States needed strong leadership more."

Kvetching remains part of reading these reviews. After some 40 years on the aisle, I do not expect to change soon. On the other hand, there still exists insufficiency of downright joy on stage; I'm not talking about giggles and guffaws, but evenings (and matinees) that send people dancing and singing into the good nights.

The Bush Administration has not posted signs, not yet, welcoming the Taliban back to Afghanistan. But all the signs and indices are there.

With the core of the nation's financial structure in shambles, at stake these next four weeks is the very governmental system itself. Never have these United States needed strong leadership more.

The only times fellow TheTentacle.com columnist Rick Weldon and I disagreed were when he stepped in the mud pie of partisan politics. Didn't happen often. He was not the sort of human being to give up reason for the sake of one party or the other. Especially in Maryland.

Tuesday's opening at the Hippodrome Theatre brings to Baltimore a show that's still running, if not so strong on Broadway. A cast member's father confided the two-week closing notice has gone up on the New York hit. Pity! But out in the hinterland we have this wow! touring company with us.

Other people said Pushkin is Downtown Frederick's best known celebrity. He also runs high in the best-loved category. Every time the English pointer hits the sidewalk, his fans appear. They start conversations when their heads reach my knee level.

Coming out of the Fredericktown movies Wednesday I was greeted by the voice of the commander-in-chief. George W. Bush informed me and all Americans that his financial rescue proposal would save the lives we cheer. It was a clunker of a speech.

The Harvard of the West is the catch-phrase prized by California's Stanford University. By whatever name, a recent survey designed and supervised in the school's Palo Alto academic laboratories is, by any standard, the dumbest thing I've encountered going back through nearly 60 years in journalism.

For its first offering of the new season, the Shakespeare Theatre Company reached for a guaranteed crowd-pleaser. "Romeo and Juliet" always sells tickets especially when produce in the STC's high tone and éclat. To add a dash more frisson, Director David Muse, and his long-time artistic partner Michael Kahn, decided that when casting, this show would follow the Elizabethan pattern.

The latest White House military pin-up vigorously protested the administration's hard-core policy toward the Middle East. Instead of calling for more and more young men and women to become cannon fodder, Gen. David Petraeus said: "You don't kill or capture your way out of an industrial strength insurgency."

The phone rang; it was my Texas "child." Knowing my penchant for working mornings, he guessed correctly that I had not seen television that day. He had been watching a national trauma that changed the world. It was seven years ago yesterday.

Sunday readers of The Frederick News-Post and The New York Times should not have been surprised. The investigation of the Fort Detrick anthrax incident is still very much alive, despite declaration of its death by the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. Following politics rather than proof, Jeffrey Taylor officially closed the case.

Reading Sunday's Frederick News-Post, you could believe Frederick's ex-mayor Jennifer Dougherty, in selling her self-named restaurant, made a great sacrifice for the public good. She told reporter David Simon: "I don't want to look back and say I wasn't 100 percent committed to the race."

David Brinkley stopped by for coffee. He received a yawn and nod from Pushkin, who proceeded to his usual spot in the library. The English pointer and the state senator knew each other from earlier encounters. David and I headed for the patio. This was last week, during the brief hiatus from the overbearing humidity.

Columns on the government's monumental faux pas in the Fort Detrick anthrax scandal have caused people to ask if the fort's research scientists, particularly Bruce Ivins, were friends or acquaintances. None is.

At first glance, Joe Biden seems everything that Barack Obama is not. In the first place, the presumptive Democratic candidate for the White House was but 12 years old when Delaware sent his ticket's number two to the U.S. Senate. He was sworn in early 1973.

A curious, downbeat week, by any standard. If you recall that Capitol Hill effort to rename "French fries," there might have been some success. Republican legislators were wroth up over Paris's failure to take Washington's marching orders and line up the Tricolor beneath the Stars and Stripes. The issue was an arbitrary and capricious decision by "the leader of the Free World" to invade Iraq and not bother to submit the issue to the United Nations.

A chance encounter. While Pushkin and I were taking a downtown stroll, an impossibly young captain out of the Point four years and returned recently from the Middle East. His USMA graduate-father along and a pretty wife; she wanted to talk to the pleased English pointer. She and Pushki retreated just beyond the conversational range.

The evil in John "Lennie" Thompson's soul became public when he prolonged a hearing past midnight; he knowingly kept children up who wanted to sleep. But their mothers desperately needed a school and a place to worship. But they were only Muslims and mostly foreign-born. They were, however, legal residents.

The Bruce Ivins tragedy starkly revealed the trashy shape of America's media. Print and electronic alike, they have become modern versions of Greek playwright Aeschylus's Eumenides; the Furies of ancient Rome, they resound still in the Yiddish phrase: Kein eine horah. "Not one listening" is a prayerful cautionary against the 40,000 beasties that always hover waiting to strike all those who earn praise.

Not only the greasepaint was missing Wednesday from the justice department's dog-and-pony show. The Federal Bureau of Investigation's crew left behind their costumes. U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Taylor lacked the red bulb on his nose. The performance would have been hilarious except a Frederick man wound up dead.

The apparent suicide of a Fort Detrick scientist was the weekend's conversational rage. Everyone knows someone who knows someone – that’s how it went.

Someone please explain when two candidates are in a race, why do we call our choice the "best" man? According to various faiths and sects, the only certifiably best man wound up crucified in one form or another.

Both presidential candidates are in agreement: We are losing the war in Afghanistan. That's not what they say of course: We must shift troops from Iraq to take care of unfinished business in Afghanistan. I hope I managed to get that straight.

Fortunately for me, the state of county and city remained tranquil for months; only minor whoopdeedos. County Commissioner President Jan Gardner deserves praise for her good job keeping John "Lennie" Thompson from mucking up the public order. And that's great news.

As readers know, Bob Miller has me on his Morning News Express (WFMD*930AM) to talk about films and plays. We chat every Friday shortly before nine, when his program ends. This is why I can be spotted hanging around movie theatres.

A great deal of ruckus happened in the national media; the chuckling and tsk-tsking came over that New Yorker cover. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, please go back to your computer war game.

In the 25 years my writings have appeared in local media, I have become accustomed to being measured for a virtual coffin. My publisher for most of the time, George Delaplaine, put up a strong shield around the News-Post's right to print diverse opinions, including mine.

The New York Times reported early this week:

BAGHDAD – Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Malikli publicly confirmed Monday his government was leaning toward a short-term security pact with the United States instead of a broader agreement that would last for years.

No one gets bored faster with the nitty-gritty of politics. My frequently criticized "impatience" comes into play. Once a candidate captures my approval, the game is over. There was one exception I recall.

Frederick's Fourth of July festival ends with cascading fireworks over Baker Park. People's awe and sighs complete the package. No more sparklers and individual acts of setting off banging are out.

Saturday mornings around my house normally are rest times. The three newspapers stuck through my door receive careful perusal. There are mornings when Pushkin receives pushing onto the patio and we both pile back in the sack. I listened to Blaine Young's Frederick’s Forum only now and then.

In the best of all Jennifer worlds, her opponent for the Sixth Congressional District election this fall would be dead. She and her cronies talk of incumbent Roscoe Bartlett as if were long buried. He isn't. To the lady's continuing surprise, the Frederick congressman insists on proving he's alive and well, displaying superb sense.

Reasonable doubt exists that most readers do not know that a week ago 50 Shiite Iraqis died in a tremendous blast, engineered by al-Qaeda Sunnis. In the same forgotten category: Afghanistan's Taliban seized and held a series of towns and villages.

She danced while others simply walked. Parts of two days I spent with Cyd Charisse; the night belonged to her new husband, Tony Martin. He did all the talking, as I recall. She satisfied herself with smiles and a quiet but fiercely radiated warmth.

Iraq was never about military success; the war has always been a political mess: unwinnable at its best. That truth trumped all American pretensions from the start. But U.S. deaths settled down to a point when the casualties could be tolerated by the public. More or less.

Admittedly there are people who get all out of shape over color. There are probably as many for whom human plumbing counts. For all the ranting by media gurus, neither the one candidate's gender nor her opponent's African roots had much to do with the Democratic primary's outcome.

Before I spell out my personal thoughts. There's a serious problem at the Bethesda Theatre these nights and matinees. The audience laughs so hard, so frequently and so loud. I had trouble hearing Bryan Fogel and Sam Wolfson. Fortunately, not all the time.

After Iowa the handwriting stood firm and clear: Hillary Clinton will not be the next president of these United States. As far back as February, that's what my TheTentacle.com column said.

Never mind those dewy-eyed impressions. They are based chiefly on this governor's youthful good looks. Singing with his Irish band didn't hurt. But Martin O'Malley practices old-fashioned machine politics.

On recent warm days, my thoughts have gone back to another May: I was then a reporter for The Washington Post. Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy had breathed his last labored breath on May 2, 1957, at Bethesda's Naval Medical Center. Like everyone else at the paper, and many in the nation, his death electrified our memories.

It took place in front of Joe Cohen's cigar store; the one with the walk-in humidor - although these days not a lot of folks walk in. Uncle Joe, as he is called, also maintains a bench against his North Market Street window.

The war does not take up very much time on the presidential campaign trail. Emphasis rests on the economy. In rooting around for the causes of the recession, few politicians will finger the real culprit. It is, of course, the war, stupid.

Much has been made in recent politics about gender, nationally and locally. The chase for the Democratic presidential nomination has been reduced to the candidates' personal plumbing. For the thrill of seeing a woman elected, Hillary Clinton's supporters are prepared to use any weapons at hand.

The trickle of Berlin Airlift stories this week did nothing to persuade that I am not old: 60 years ago on June 24 the first Gooney birds rambled down the runway at Rhine-Main Air Force base. I was living in a nearby castle.

In last week's Shakespeare Theatre Company's review of "Julius Caesar," I touched on why American directors and producers are loath to do repertory. Even plays by the same author can demand actors create a differently separate persona; in effect, that instills a schizophrenia that does not entirely go away no matter how long productions run.

            As we were told on yesterday’s Frederick News-Post front page, the Walkersville council plans at its next meeting (tomorrow) to take up the question of designating English as the town's official language.

Bill Clinton and his Democratic Party cohorts "knew" his wife had the presidential nomination sewed up. This explains their launching an imperial procession planned and financed only until early February's Super Tuesday. Through their experience-hardened eyes, the junior senator from Illinois was a minor distraction, at best.

With no research details at hand, I still believe "Hamlet" is the most frequently staged Shakespearean work; the lead has much to do with my "fact." The tale of the Melancholy Dane is a star vehicle after all. Shakespeare contrived the tragedy in his later years and it abounds with parts various players can get their teeth in, as the saying goes.

"The Color Purple" musical arrived on Baltimore's Hippodrome stage the night after the Rev. Jeremiah Wright staged his amazing performance of ego gratification at Washington's National Press Club.

When the county commissioners overwhelmingly rejected the notion of adopting English as Frederick's official language, I could but stand and cheer. The proposal came from Charles Jenkins, and I have no reason to doubt his motives.

Reading closely the Pennsylvania Democratic primaries this week, it's difficult to see why the Clinton camp is in such a joyous uproar.

For a little shy of 25 years, Josef Ratzinger furnished John Paul II a strong base. While the ebullient Polish prelate toured the outside world, kissing earth and babies by the score, the man who would become Benedict XVI tended to inside chores.

It's hard to know where to put the blame, on government or the web of businesses caught up in the current economic crises. That word is plural, in case you read "crises" quickly.

After the cardinals' votes are counted, a white plume from the Sistine Chapel tells St. Peter's Square and the world "We have a pope!" "Havemus Papam," in Latin, once the customary language within the Vatican's walls.

Lurking in newspapers' back pages, correspondents report there are riots along the Nile over the scarcity and cost of bread. For Egypt's millions of poor, it is not simply "the staff of life." Those flat loaves are life itself.

Much to my surprise, "Smokey Joe's Cafe" enchanted and George Clooney's new flick did not.

The legislative process, state or federal, frequently invokes the image of grass growing; it is generally long and tedious, unmemorable. The real trick for a journalist comes from watching out for "moles," the bills that work slightly undercover, like the fuzzy critters.

Charlton Heston and I met a couple of times in Washington. He went to testify before a congressional hearing, something about the American Film Institute.

"Columning," as this racket is sometimes called, relies totally on other people's mistakes, usually politicians. They are naturals because they wield public power. And distribute the public purse.

Despite administration strategy to keep the war in Iraq out of sight, the official image formed over the past five years busted out in the open last week. The accompanying text confirmed the road to peace had made another violent turn. Those surprised belonged to the administration's Coue faction.

The phrase is not mine. Playing off the title of one of Sen. Barack Obama's books, New York Times' columnist David Brooks strung the words together, which is why they're set in quotes. Running counter to the newspaper's endorsement, he both opposes and doubts Sen. Hillary Clinton's White House quest.

A REVIEW

Shortly after Jack Kennedy's inauguration, I moved to New York, taking residency at the now-vanished Hotel Dauphin. By chance, the rooms assigned me had once been part of the suite of legendary Broadway producer David Belasco.

If you still wonder what the Psalm meant by "Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the world," you obviously didn't visit Walkersville's Calvary Assembly of God church this Easter weekend.

The bulls generally linger out of sight. Wall Street bears lord it over the markets these days, especially for the Bear Stearns kind of traders, as you know.

Farmers once took as an article of their agricultural faith that dogs and cats should not be permitted in the house but left to hassle the outdoors cats and other varmints.

Geraldine Ferraro's withdrawal from the Clinton campaign drowned in the flood of news generated by the New York governor's resignation. Elliot Spitzer accepted the inevitable. The lady was altogether another case.

Sweeping aside the short-neck, no-growth mentality promoted chiefly by newcomers, will someone please explain why Frederick's Board of County Commissioners insisted on penalizing taxpayers again by their erratic logic?

Pundits and people alike figured the Democratic presidential primaries would be all over after last month's "Super Tuesday." But today we face another Tuesday that shapes up even more "super."

My opinion on the subject is known. It was formed in part by stupidities like the Walkersville resident warning the town would become a new Mecca. At issue was the request by a splinter Islamic group to put up a mosque and convention center. You know the story.

George Bernard usually precedes the headline's "Shaw," as if the three words are irretrievably wed. The famous playwright receives as handsome a homage as he's ever been awarded currently at the Shakespeare Theatre Company. As you will read, I was thoroughly delighted with "Major Barbara," which opened at Washington's Sidney Harman Hall this week.