Purple fever and Obama mania temporarily overshadowed the budget gloom Friday at the State House. Little will happen there Monday and Tuesday as many officials head to Washington for the inauguration and festivities.
Ravens jerseys were all over the House floor Friday, and Speaker Michael Busch, D-Anne Arundel, donned one as well. Gov. Martin O’Malley, who was showing purple at the mansion, had trouble living up to his promise to light the capitol dome in the Ravens’ color, which didn’t happen till Friday night.
“It’s turned out to be harder than I expected,” he told reporters. Apparently the filters to cover the spotlights were blocking too much of the illumination.
Staying home Del. Curt Anderson, D-Baltimore, is a surprise stay-at-home for Tuesday’s inauguration. The city delegation chairman campaigned in 12 states for Barack Obama the past year and spent $10,000 of his own money in his travels. He met Obama seven times and had been with the candidate at big rallies. “Every time it was like a historic experience,” Anderson said, so “I’ll be happy to watch [the inauguration] on television.”
At the age of 10, Anderson witnessed the 1961 swearing in and inaugural parade for John F. Kennedy in Washington, still a segregated capital then.
“All the black folks were on one side of the street,” Anderson recalled, and as Kennedy was being driven in the parade, the new president was waving at the whites on the other side, causing Anderson’s mother to call out: “Hey, Jack, we voted for you, too.”
The president turned, sheepishly as Anderson recalls, and began waving to the blacks. He was proud of his mother speaking up to the president of the United States.
“It was one of those moments you remember the rest of your life,” he said. “I was interested in politics ever since then.”
Now even the White House is an equal housing opportunity.
Calling on Jesus The Maryland Senate each morning opens with a prayer offered by clergy from many denominations and faiths. The Senate clerk’s office sends the ministers, priests and rabbis, invited by their local senators, a brochure titled: “When you are asked to give public prayer in a diverse society.”
The brochure from what used to be called the National Conference of Christians and Jews says public prayer “can become intentionally divisive when forms or language exclude persons from faith traditions different than that of the speaker.”
Inclusive public prayer, the conference advises, “uses universal, inclusive terms for deity rather than particular proper names for divine manifestations.”
The big problem, as you can probably guess, is getting Christian ministers to stop invoking Jesus or praying in his name, as Bishop Darnell Easton, of Bethel Way of the Cross Church in Calvert County, did twice on opening day.
Most priests and ministers observe the guidelines, but a few don’t. The slip-ups became such a source of controversy in the House of Delegates in past years that outside clergy no longer offer the prayer, only members of the House, who stick by the rules.
Sen. Anthony Muse, pastor of a huge Ark of Safety Congregation in Upper Marlboro, worked around the problem this past year by invoking every name of the deity he could think of and even acknowledging in his prayer those who call on no deity at all.
We’ll see how Obama’s selected clergy handle the diversity issue Tuesday.
No change for Mooney O’Malley is trying to round up support again to abolish the death penalty, even mentioning the possibility of putting the issue on the ballot as he did with slots. Sen. Alex Mooney, the swing vote in the Senate committee, told The Examiner Friday that little had changed in his thinking about the death penalty. The Republican from Frederick County still wants to see the death penalty for murders in prison, terrorists and traitors, a compromise those wanting total abolition can’t abide. Mooney has yet to read the report of O’Malley’s commission on the death penalty, which split 13-7 after months of study.
Carter squawks Busch made some shifts in committee assignments Friday, including removing Montgomery County Del. Charles Barkley from his Appropriations subcommittee chairmanship.
But the only delegate loudly squawking about the moves is Del. Jill Carter, who actually kept her seat on the Judiciary Committee. Carter, D-Baltimore, said that leaders have taken away her subcommittee chairmanship and she won’t be allowed to be chairwoman of any work groups, as she has on Tasers and gangs. She also won’t be included in the “back room” where informal decisions are made on legislation. She will have “no power, no voice,” she said.
“What was the crime I committed?” Carter asked. “They can’t tell you that.”
Carter’s crime is of the political kindergarten variety, insiders say: Does not play well with others.
