People actually say this: Larry Hogan and the blame game

Now that Maryland has a Republican governor, it is a truth universally acknowledged that everything bad that happens in Maryland is his fault. No, you may not ask about Maryland's not exactly deep red legislature, its previous governors, local councils and executives, or things beyond politicians' control. Once, when I brought up the composition of the General Assembly with someone espousing that view, that person first appealed to ridicule and then pointedly refused to acknowledge that Maryland even has a legislature. I suppose that Hogan has been the absolute monarch of Maryland since the dawn of time.

In which a Washington Post writer states her conclusion and immediately demolishes it

Washington Post local reporter Julie Zauzmer presents her analysis of data on D.C. traffic accidents, including the following insight:

5. The numbers are in: Men are worse drivers than women.

This goes way beyond refusing to stop for directions. Men were the drivers in about 65 percent of all crashes in the study. There’s no way to tell, for the sake of comparison, exactly how many men and women are on the roads in Washington.

That is, she states her conclusion and then immediately explains why the data do not support it. Her conclusion would make sense if men and women drove the same amount — something that no one admits to believing. She is entitled to her own opinions about the relative driving skills of the sexes, but not to her own rules of statistics.

Someone in authority actually said this: DC council member on expanded townhouses

On the subject of "pop-ups," townhouses that have been renovated to tower over their neighbors, The Washington Post quotes D.C. council member Jim Graham:

“Supporters of pop-ups — other­wise intelligent people — talk about the need for Washington to respond to the great housing demand. That’s patently absurd,” Graham said. “This is about profit. It’s about the historic streetscape in the city. And it’s about, when will it end?”

What's patently absurd is the apparent disconnect between profits and the need to respond to housing demand. Market economies, how do they work?

Someone in authority actually said this: Baltimore police commissioner on teen curfew

The Baltimore City Council plans to impose one of America's toughest teen curfews. Some people question how workable it is:

“If adopted, it would make Baltimore’s daytime and evening curfews one of the most extreme curfews in the country,” said Sonia Kumar, ACLU Maryland.

Kumar sent a letter to the council saying enforcement of the curfew expansion encourages unnecessary police stops for young people.

“I can’t look at you and say, `You’re over 14; you’re under 14; you’re 15.’ And moreover, I can’t look at you and know whether you are on your way home from school,” she said.

Not everyone agrees:

But Police Commissioner Anthony Batts says he believes it’s enforceable.

“I think it’s fairly easy to see the difference in a 14-year-old, 13-year-old, 12-year-old,” he said. “And if this keeps them safe, I think it’s a positive.”

Fairly easy, my ass. When I did my undergrad at Johns Hopkins, Baltimore had a curfew for high-school kids, and I was routinely stopped, so you can guess how I looked when I actually was in that age range. I don't think I'm such a rare outlying data point; it's just a fact that people physically mature at different rates. If I may put it another way, if it's so easy to tell a person's age just from looking, how old was the person in this picture when it was taken?

Whose body is it anyway? DC Government and tattoos

Personally, I am not a big fan of tattoos, but I am also not a big fan of nanny-statism, including this example:

Some popular impulse purchases — tattoos and body piercings — could soon become less impulsive if District [of Columbia] health regulators have their way.

A mandatory 24-hour waiting period is among the provisions included in a 66-page package of draft regulations governing the “body art” industry released by the city Health Department on Friday.

So the city government wants to take a more active role in adults' choices over their own bodies? What could possibly go wrong? Besides, it's not as though either tattoo parlors or potential customers could go to Virginia or Maryland or to a hack in the underground economy.

We've always defended traditional marriage from Eastasia.

Opponents of marriage equality used to like to say that marriage equality had never passed a popular vote in the United States. After this past Tuesday's election results, people remarked that those opponents had lost that talking point. In another forum, I responded that the opponents would quietly slip that talking point into the nearest memory hole and find another one.

The same week, an anti-marriage-equality pastor, the Rev. Derrick McCoy, associate pastor of Hope Christian Church in Beltsville, said of Maryland's Question 6,

Although people do not agree with same-sex marriage, they were deluged with ads about equality, which does not truthfully represent redefining marriage.

So here's the new talking point: Yes, Maryland's voters approved it, but they were hoodwinked. No, you may not ask how Rev. McCoy knows so much about others' inner lives or what "truthfully represent[s]" Question 6 if not equality.

Bishop Harry Jackson tucks tail and runs (and in other news, water is wet).

Bishop Harry Jackson, known for bravely crusading against marriage equality in safe fora where no one will ask difficult questions, has backed out of a debate on that topic. His doing so has not exactly helped to overcome his reputation as an intellectual coward who tries to shield his statements from scrutiny as much as he can. One would think that he would fear the marketplace of ideas a little less, especially since the Almighty is supposedly on his side (Luke 21:15), but there you go.

I wasted my time did my civic duty.

Yesterday, we had the primary election for city council. Since I did not want any of the candidates representing me, I eliminated the most heinous to arrive at six only moderately heinous candidates. Besides, I sometimes think I have more effect by writing letters to the editor than by voting, as when the city shelved a potentially disastrous development plan after I had been the only one to crunch some key numbers.

Marion Barry is sorry you feel that way.

Presented without comment.

Next Maryland poll result: Water is wet.

A poll on Marylanders' attitudes toward same-sex marriage includes the following geographic breakdown:

• Baltimore city residents favor repeal of same-sex marriage with 49 percent opposing the law and 35 percent supporting it
• Montgomery County is the most friendly in the state to same-sex marriage with 58 percent supporting the law
• The Eastern Shore is the least supportive of same-sex marriage, with 72 percent wanting the law repealed

Given the strong correlation between level of education and support for marriage equality, the breakdown should surprise no one.

My neighborhood is unique, just like all the others.

Descriptions of neighborhoods, at least in the D.C. area, seem to be written out of a manual of form paragraphs. Residents of any given neighborhood will gladly tell you that their neighborhood has the feel of a small town, as opposed to the soulless suburban sprawl of that other neighborhood across the tracks. Who would like to guess what the residents of that other neighborhood across the tracks say?

Never mind that if all neighborhoods are unique in the same way, none of them are unique at all. Never mind either that by "small town," people typically mean "theme-park version of a small town for transplants whose closest previous exposure to small-town life was growing up in Queens rather than Manhattan." For example, my neighborhood, despite its vaunted "small-town" feel, has big-city attractions such as a wide variety of good ethnic restaurants and a gay-themed art gallery, things for which people do not normally move from big cities to small towns.

The re-remaking of the American urban environment

In Tysons Corner, Virginia — America's twelfth largest central business district and the classic example of an edge city — planners are planning to convert the suburban spaghetti road system into an urban grid. In decades past, however, urban planners saw the grid as the root of all evil and tried to convert urban street grids such as that of Southwest D.C. into cul-de-sac road systems befitting low-density suburbia. Progress appears to be chasing its own tail. It is a shame that something as slow and expensive to change as a street layout has to be so fashion-driven.

Maryland isn't New York.

In the wake of the passage of New York's marriage law, people are calling on Governor O'Malley to follow in the footsteps of Governor Cuomo. The people making that call need to remember one big difference between the political cultures of the two states.

As I noted yesterday, Cuomo managed to gain the support of Republican financial backers because of "their more libertarian views." Where is the libertarian streak in Maryland's political culture, and who is Maryland's Paul Singer, Cliff Asness, or Daniel Loeb? Applying New York's lesson to Maryland will involve more than a simple one-to-one translation.

Personal freedom in the blue states

The Mercatus Center at George Mason University has released its latest study on freedom in the 50 states. I will concentrate on personal freedom, which is the aspect of freedom at which liberals are supposed to excel, and which cannot be written off as an artifact of federal wealth redistribution. Even on personal freedom, the most "liberal" states do not necessarily do well.

Here are the ten bottom-ranked states for personal freedom:

41. California
42. Ohio
43. Hawaii
44. Delaware
45. New Jersey
46. Rhode Island
47. Massachusetts
48. New York
49. Illinois
50. Maryland

Note the number of heavy-hitting blue states on this part of the list. Maryland, whose residents fancy themselves to be the ne plus ultra of liberalism, ranks dead last. Virginia — surprisingly, in light of this state's dreadful past — scored slightly better than average, at 22.

More on New York vs. D.C.

One thing about New Yorkers that visitors from Washington tend to notice right away is a frankness about sexuality that much of the country lacks. A friend who has lived in New York since the seventies tells me that that frankness has been toned down since the seventies, but it is still there. In D.C., by contrast, no matter what happens on the back porch of the leather bar, we observe the polite fiction that we are all asexual and that the goddess has assigned us our sexual orientations solely as a social statement.

My friend also mentioned an aspect of growing up in New York, namely, exposure to viewpoint diversity. Such diversity has traditionally been anathema in D.C., although we see more of it as a more diverse crowd moves into the capital.

Poll on same-sex marriage in Virginia

A Washington Post poll purports to show that Virginians are almost evenly split on legal recognition of same-sex marriage — 47% to 43%, with a 3.5% margin of error. I am guardedly optimistic.

Polls show two other things: that people often lie to pollsters to sound more high-minded than they are and that asking the same question in different ways can greatly affect the outcome. Both factors may well be at play here. As anti-liberty social conservatives like to point out, the only poll that counts is the actual vote.

Still, I see hope. For one thing, a breakdown by age shows that support increases as age decreases; the poll numbers range from 73% for people 18-29 to 22% for people 65 and older. Same-sex marriage also enjoys strong support in Northern Virginia, which is growing relative to the rest of the state. Both facts bode well for the future.

I have two asides. First, the poll figures show a whopping 80% support among Virginians identifying with "no religion." Second, I wish that The Post had printed a breakdown by level of education.

William Donald Schaefer

The late William Donald Schaefer, former governor of my old home state, in my mind embodied everything wrong with Maryland's political culture: provincialism, a might-makes-right ethos, redistribution of wealth from the political have-nots to the political haves, the view that rules and responsibilities are for other people, "solving" problems by putting makeup on a cancer lesion, and the belief that government involvement is both necessary and sufficient for everything good. He would have made a wonderful villain in an Ayn Rand novel.

Rumors have long circulated that Schaefer was on the DL. Some commentators argue that he could have done much good by coming out. Nonetheless, I do not particularly want people like Schaefer playing for my team, as they would confirm the stereotype of LGBT activists as moochers and looters.

Maryland (2)

It's a good thing that Prince George's County has solved all of its problems, so that pastors from that county have the luxury of passing moral judgment on queer people who want to get married. For those who are unfamiliar with this area, Prince George's County combines the good public schools, low crime, and clean politics of the inner city with the cosmopolitan sophistication of suburbia.

Isn't there something in the Bible about motes, beams, and eyes, or about knowing every tree by its fruit? Oh, but those verses don't directly address homosexuality, so they need to be "interpreted correctly," or they were "meant for the church back then." Or something.

Finally, it's odd whose support our activists take for granted. I have spoken to LGBT activists who expressed genuine surprise upon learning that some of the biggest opposition to our rights came from African-Americans.

Maryland

The news from Maryland isn't the greatest, but let's put this into perspective. Maryland has traditionally been a socially conservative state and recodified its sodomy law less than a decade ago. The real news is not that the marriage bill failed, but that it came as close as it did to passing. If the 'phobes let their reality-deflector shields down for very long, they should realize what this means for their long-term odds.

Maryland's newspaper, my ass.

I've been following news on both the census and same-sex marriage in The Baltimore Sun, and one crazy-making thing about "Maryland's newspaper" is that so many reporters observe a blackout on news from the D.C. suburbs, which include Maryland's two most populous counties. That blackout renders some of The Sun's reporting surreal, as when the paper reports on student test scores in Maryland without mentioning Montgomery County. The Washington Post, which does not pretend to be a Maryland-wide newspaper, does a much better job of covering the Baltimore area.