Maryland
updated
9:20 p.m.
Maryland Juice presents an exclusive multimedia "debate" between Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, State Senator Rob Garagiola, businessman John Delaney, and former Delegate Robin Ficker. Now that the national Republican Party has admitted that Rep. Bartlett is in trouble , the nation is focusing on this race. Two readers also report that the Garagiola and Delaney campaigns are now busy in the field ( see ...
Maryland Juice - 5:23 p.m. - 7 clicks 
UPDATE: Here we go again. Republicans are proposing cutting government workers so that we can prop up defense spending. Maryland Juice in Dusseldorf, Germany BACKGROUND : In case you couldn't tell, this week activists on both sides of the marriage equality debate started to throwdown for a showdown on the issue. Sorry for the erratic posting schedule this past week --...
Maryland Juice - 12:48 p.m. - 7 clicks
Karren Jo Pope-Onwukwe co-chairs Prince George's County's Action Committee for Transit . She also serves as a Maryland Democratic National Committeewoman. Today she has a worthwhile blog post about President Obama's health care plan and Black History Month on the DNC blog . Sorry DNC -- Maryland Juice is going to violate your intellectual property and cross-post this: Karren Jo Pope-Onwukwe ...
Maryland Juice - 9:01 a.m. - 9 clicks
UPDATE: A Maryland Juice reader reports that the Susan Komen Foundation has just released an apology. The AP reports : "'We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women's lives,' a Komen statement said." [ Sign Petition: Stand with Planned Parenthood ] Maryland Juice has heard gobs of recent news cover...
Maryland Juice - 8:10 a.m. - 9 clicks
Great communities come from the shared local culture of its residents. But as the City Paper notes this week in an article on local rock schools , we don't always make it easy for kids to participate. In the story, a teenage band from Bethesda called The Black Sparks are thwarted in their attempt to organize a concert series in a local community center: Erickson helped Ray set up th...
Just Up The Pike - 6:40 a.m.
UPDATE: It looks like Maryland Juice pulled the trigger too quickly on stating that Del. Nic Kipke and a former House GOP Aide deleted their Facebook pages. Brian Griffiths from the Red Maryland blog mocked my error on Twitter : I'll ignore the fact that he called my intelligence into question after incorrectly spelling the word "hear." (Also, cut me some slack, I was blogging ab...
Maryland Juice - Thu 2:10 p.m. - 14 clicks
Site plan for Glenmont MetroCenter, a now-aborted proposal to redevelop the Privacy World apartments in Glenmont. The MoCo Planning Department's beginning work on a new plan for Glenmont , and they'd like your help, says this press release : What to do with the Glenmont Shopping Center and its surroundings? That is one of the questions residents, business owners and those who freque...
Just Up The Pike - Thu 5:41 a.m.
Today, Maryland Juice received an email from former Delegate Saqib Ali announcing his campaign for Montgomery County Board of Education. A few hours later, anti-immigrant anti-immigration organization Help Save Maryland followed-up with their own email. We present both messages below: Having trouble viewing this email? View it in your browser. ...
Maryland Juice - Wed 8:06 p.m. - 12 clicks
UPDATE : See correction to this article . Yesterday, Maryland Juice published a very special photo gallery titled "Republican Family Values." Our gallery featured several photos from the Facebook page of Delegate Nic Kipke, a defender of "traditional" marriage. Today, his Facebook page has disappeared off the face of the Interwebs: We hear there may be more to this story tha...
Maryland Juice - Wed 8:06 p.m. - 14 clicks
I was fortunate enough to attend the Lesbian and Gay Journalist Association convention in Philadelphia in August. One of the more eye-opening sessions I attended was "Ethical & Legal Considerations of Coverage of HIV Criminalization Cases." Even as cynical as I feel I've grown I am still surprised when my own naïveté can still catch me off-guard at times. I remembered the hysteria...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Wed 10:03 a.m.
Former Post architecture critic Benjamin Forgey once said "there are so many bad buildings in Silver Spring, it’s a hard place to do good." Nonetheless, some architects and developers are trying to do better here. Last month, ground was broken on Eleven55 Ripley , a new residential complex in the Ripley District, located west of Georgia Avenue in downtown Silver Spring. With a mix o...
Just Up The Pike - Tue 7:23 a.m.
Two months ago, some school librarians started a petition on the White House We the People website. The threshold for getting the President to view and respond to a petition is 25,000 signatures. We barely got 10,000 last time. I think our failure was a combination of general apathy about school libraries combined with the frequent outages on the We the People website. Most people I know who t...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Sun 1:28 p.m.
The highlight of last week's War on Voting was South Carolina's Attorney General Alan Wilson claiming that 900 dead people voted in "recent" elections in his state based on data from the DMV. The South Carolina legislature, of course, jumped on the claim. Remember, the Department of Justice has blocked South Carolina from implementing a voter ID bill passed last year under the Voting Righ...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Sat 1:27 p.m.
I was taken aback by the responses to Tuesday's post on the Millennial generation (today's twenty-somethings) and affordable housing, both here and on Greater Greater Washington , where it got 176 comments as of last night. The comments I received could be organized in one of three categories: 1) People who think I'm being "entitled" and/or "whiny" in calling for an increase of reasonably-pr...
Just Up The Pike - Jan 26
Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley As he had promised, the Democratic governor of Maryland, Martin O'Malley, has introduced legislation that would legalize same-sex marriage in the state. A legalization law introduced last year passed the state Senate but hung up in the House of Delegates over some of its language, especially that regarding religious freedom in the matter: O’Malley said he...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Jan 24 - 2 clicks
Urban centers like downtown Silver Spring are drawing Millennials, but many of them are being priced out. I belong to the Millennials , the largest generation in American history, with 80 million members. Sometimes called Generation Y or the Echo Baby Boomers, we're about to finish school and enter the workforce en masse . Many of us will stay in or move to the D.C. area . But my gen...
Just Up The Pike - Jan 24
It's wrong to put civil rights up for a vote. Oh well. There are potentially going to be a lot of wrongs come November, 2012. What's a few more? How much would YOU pay for a marriage equality ballot initiative? You probably read about The Washington State Senate today getting its needed 25th vote for marriage equality, and that the Washington State Assembly should hav...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Jan 23 - 4 clicks
There is a bill in Baltimore County, MD, that would stop discrimination against transgender people . But the usual opponents of such protections are out in force, spreading unfounded fear-mongering rumor as if it were truth in attempts to protect their right to discriminate. Anita Schatz, who said she survived a rape more than 40 years ago when she was 18, said she and other wo...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Jan 23 - 2 clicks
Leonard Greenberg developed these buildings in Bethesda. And he'd do the same in Wheaton if given a chance. While County Executive Ike Leggett wants to give developer B.F. Saul $40 million of public funds to build on public land in downtown Wheaton, one developer's been building here with minimal help from Montgomery County. His name is Leonard Greenberg, and since the mid-1980's, his...
Just Up The Pike - Jan 20
Draft site plan for the redevelopment of the Metro bus turnaround and Parking Lot 13 in downtown Wheaton. In yesterday's Gazette , County Executive Ike Leggett says the only way to revitalize downtown Wheaton is by giving $40 million in public funds to developer B.F. Saul, which already has the rights to build on several county-owned parcels in the area: “Don't bemoan the fact that...
Just Up The Pike - Jan 19
Contact Rep. Steny Hoyer's office ASAP and often. I just called and they couldn't tell me how he intends to vote; they only took my personal info and said they will contact me when they know. Considering what a weak progressive he is, he will need a lot of prodding to get to the people's side of the issue. Let's get started pushing all of Maryland's congresspeople to the correct side. Rep. Ste...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Jan 18 - 8 clicks
Last month, County Councilmember George Leventhal wrote an op-ed in the Gazette asking whether new development accommodate small businesses. One way to help small businesses is by providing low-cost work spaces. The Solaire, a new apartment building in downtown Silver Spring, will include "live-work" units. Rendering and plan courtesy of the Montgomery County Planning Board. The Sola...
Just Up The Pike - Jan 17 - 9 clicks
In my last blog entry posted a video about how Occupy Baltimore helped defend Lila Kara against her home being foreclosed on by Deutsche Bank. The Sheriff was scheduled to arrive on January 10 between 10 a.m.-noon to start the eviction process. The Sheriff was a no-show and both Occupy Baltimore and Lila Kara won that battle. Sadly, one day later the Sheriff and the eviction movers arrived a...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Jan 14
As some regular DKE folks may know, I am a (lonely) advocate for retrocession as the solution to the reprehensible disenfranchisement of the District of Columbia. I attend university just miles into Prince George's County across the state line; I currently work part-time in downtown Washington, D.C. To my way of thinking, D.C. is just too small to be a state, but it's too big and too integral to...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Jan 13
Want the scoop on hot races around the country? Get the digest emailed to you each weekday morning. Sign up here . Leading Off : • CA-31, CA-08 : It was no surprise, but it's still big news: Rep. Jerry Lewis announced his retirement from Congress on Thursday, the third California Republican to do so in less than a week. Our full post analyzing Lewis's decision can be found at Daily K...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Jan 13
Awesome . Former Prince George’s County State’s Attorney Glenn Ivey has decided not to challenge Rep. Donna Edwards in the Democratic primary in Maryland's 4th district. In a statement, Ivey cited financial woes as the reason behind his decision. "With the April 3rd primary fast approaching and the ever increasing costs of Congressional campaigns sky-rocketing; it would take a very sub...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Jan 11
Several new apartment buildings are being built in downtown Wheaton, including the Exchange at Georgia Avenue and Reedie Drive. Last week, the Gazette reported on an "apartment boom" in Wheaton, where hundreds of new rentals will be built in the coming years. That's great for Wheaton, whose small businesses will benefit from having more people living in the area, walking around an...
Just Up The Pike - Jan 11
Downtown Silver Spring - HDR Time Lapse Preview from Tolu Omokehinde on Vimeo . If you follow JUTP on Facebook or Twitter , you've probably already seen this. (And if you don't, please consider it! You'll get links and news that doesn't always make it to the blog!) Tolu Omokehinde and Nick Grossman, students at Montgomery Blair High School/staffers for Blair's student newspaper ...
Just Up The Pike - Jan 11
Two days ago I shot a video of an Occupy Baltimore rally protesting the planned eviction of a Baltimore resident named Lila Kara by Deutsche Bank. (You can see the video for the last rally in my last blog entry.) Today I came back to Baltimore to see if this poor woman was going to be evicted. The good news: the Sheriff who was going to carry out the eviction failed to show up. So Lila Kara st...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Jan 10
>Since I last visited the Occupy Baltimore site at McKeldin Square on November 26, 2011, that group was suddenly evicted from that site (like so many Occupy movements in other cities around the U.S.). Unlike the other groups that attempted to reclaim their former camp sites, Occupy Baltimore is trying a different tactic. Rather than focusing on camping outdoors in public spaces, they are ta...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Jan 9
Whether to gin up support for the Purple Line , or to remind folks it's still being planned, the Maryland Transit Administration created this awesome video. I can't think of another piece of public transit, new or existing, as adorable as the Purple Line looks in this clip. My favorite part? A brief cameo from Chompy the shark, shown in his natural state hanging from the Discovery Buildi...
Just Up The Pike - Jan 9
UPDATE: A very nice gentleman named Vic Seested sent an e-mail to Post reporter Katie Shaver (who then forwarded it to me) calling us both out for our blatant ignorance of local history: your article in the post today-destination unknown has to be one of the worst researched i've read in some time. you had the misfortune of not getting up from your desk and from talking with some rea...
Just Up The Pike - Jan 7
Transgender people have historically had little or no protection under federal and state anti-discrimination statutes. Occasionally, this exclusion is made explicit, as under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, which specifically states that its anti-discrimination protections do not apply to transgender people. More often, there is no explicit exclusion, but the courts interpret th...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Jan 6
I wrote my first Kos diary about a week ago about my husband, Dr Milad Pooran. He’s running for Congress in MD-06, but he’s been deployed on a military medical mission until the end of January. You can read that diary here , but several commenters asked for updates. Here’s my first update, below the jump. ...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Jan 6
While new retailers are beginning to fill the empty spaces at Westfield Wheaton Wheaton Mall Wheaton Plaza , one new vacancy has appeared. PacSun , the purveyor of surf and skate wear who came to the mall as part of Westfield's $140 million renovation seven years ago, will close January 30. When I visited the mall a few days before Christmas, the store's wi...
Just Up The Pike - Jan 6
People who get into elected office seem to look for ways to make decisions outside the public meeting process. It just "seems to happen" no matter what their personal position on government transparency might be. (Some of us suspect this is due to excessive reliance on lawyers, whose position on whether a meeting should happen in public can be at odds with the public's opinion.) One chronic is...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Jan 6
A same-sex marriage bill failed by a narrow margin in Maryland last year, but the fight for equality hasn't ended in the state. Now, unions are getting involved. In the video above : “At 1199 SEIU, we support working families, not just certain families,” Ezekiel Jackson, an organizer for health-care workers in Maryland and the District, says in the video, in which he dons a Baltimore Oriol...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Jan 5
Burtonsville Day, one of the many things we love about Burtonsville. Burtonsville's been going through some tough times in recent years, and I admit I've been a little hard on the place lately. To provide some good news, Burtonsville resident and Boston native David offers this guest post explaining why he moved here. And for more things we love about living in East County, check out ...
Just Up The Pike - Jan 5
It's been a busy year for East County. A lot of good, or at least generally positive, things happened: - Results from the 2010 Census showed that Montgomery County is now majority-minority , with whites making up just 49% of the population. Though we aren't a fully-integrated community , our diversity is something to be proud of. - After decades of controversy, we finally saw the opening of ...
Just Up The Pike - Dec 31
I've been home in Silver Spring for a week now, most of which has been spent Christmas shopping and doing a lot of driving. While I expected a lot of car traffic, I've been pleasantly surprised to see bicyclists everywhere I go, even on big, fast suburban highways. I've biked regularly for a year and a half now, happily pedaling around Philadelphia and the District, but I haven't enjoyed my f...
Just Up The Pike - Dec 27
For the past two weeks, I've been in the basement of Penn's Fine Arts Library, working on my final project for my Urban Design Studio, eating takeout food two meals a day and sleeping an average of five hours a night. For the past two days, I've been scooting around Greater Washington hastily completing my Christmas shopping, eagerly cutting off drivers from Rockville Pike to Tysons Corner in sear...
Just Up The Pike - Dec 22
The voting happens on http://impact.aol.com/... . For the price of a few seconds and a click, can you help? "AOL Mail" & "AOL Impact" have set up a web-vote to choose 3 of 10 nonprofits for a $10,000 grant. According to the web page, “sign-in using your email, Facebook or Twitter account. Vote every day for your favorite non-profit before polling closes on December 31.” In Kent County...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Dec 19
If You're Not at the Meeting, You Have a Right to Understand What Went On Anyway Minutes, including the summary of what went on in a closed session, have to have enough detail so someone can read them and understand what was going on. There are any number of ways a public body, like county commissioners, can violate the law with their minutes. You have to wonder what it is that makes gover...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Dec 16 - 15 clicks
A new rendering of LifeSci Village. Last week, Montgomery County selected local developer Percontee to turn Site 2, a former sludge treatment plant in White Oak, into LifeSci Village, a $3 billion mini-city designed to compliment the Food and Drug Administration's new campus and a new Washington Adventist Hospital . Despite a series of sexy new project renderings released by Percon...
Just Up The Pike - Dec 13 - 16 clicks
Rep. Donna Edwards represents Maryland’s Fourth Congressional District. She is the first African American woman from Maryland to serve in Congress. Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) supported her bids to unseat the incumbent in 2006 and 2008—the former a narrow-loss, the latter a resounding victory—and in her 2010 re-election campaign. She is a member of the PDA Advisory Board, and a leader...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Dec 9
States have been busy finalizing their redistricting plans, and SSP Labs (a division of Daily Kos Elections) has been busy just trying to keep up. Today, we bring you four more states - Hawaii, Idaho, Maryland, and Michigan. If you need a visual reference for any of the maps, just check the proper link in the new-and-improved condensed table (we've added Nevada, and as always, don't forget Tex...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Dec 7
Voter suppression disgusts sensible Democrats and Republicans alike, but will it sell Bob Ehrlich's new book to Red Meat Republicans? Former Maryland Gov. Bob Ehrlich (R), who lost his comeback bid last year by 14 points despite the Tea Party tsunami, isn’t the first failed Republican politician to simultaneously cash in on the right wing junk book circuit and the unregistered lobbying ...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Dec 7
From David Moon at Maryland Juice : After nearly six months of debate, County Executive Ike Leggett's controversial youth curfew proposal appears to have died. Today, the County Council voted 6-3 to table the proposal, and immediately voted to table an alternative loitering proposal as well . . . There was a little bit of procedural drama prior to the votes, however. Councilmember Hans Riem...
Just Up The Pike - Dec 6
Paul Schurick ( WBAL ) There's mythical voter fraud, and then there's this . BALTIMORE—A Baltimore jury has convicted a political aide to former Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich of conspiring to suppress black voter turnout during the 2010 gubernatorial election. Paul Schurick was found guilty Tuesday of four counts, including conspiracy to violate state election laws and attempting to in...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Dec 6
Moving Park and Planning here won't help Wheaton much. County Executive Ike Leggett says the best way to kick-start the revitalization of downtown Wheaton is by moving the Park and Planning Commission there. Will government offices be enough to get the ball rolling? Past experience says it's unlikely. In October, the Commission received a $200,000 grant to study moving its offices. It...
Just Up The Pike - Dec 6
UPDATE: Our friend Matt Johnson from GGW explains what control cities actually are and how the names of certain places end up on highway signs. Before the InterCounty Connector opened two weeks ago, I've wondered what the exits along the new highway would be called, since much of its route through East County goes through places that are called "Silver Spring" . Over Thanksgiving we...
Just Up The Pike - Dec 5
The recently passed Congressional district map for Massachusetts. In the days after the retirement of the liberal lion of the House, Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, a barrel of ink was spilled proclaiming this the clearest sign yet of impending doom for the Democrats in 2012. A typical angle was the one that was employed by an old hand in the political journalism game, Jules Witcove...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Dec 4
Just now, the County Council's Public Safety Committee voted 2-1 to reject County Executive Leggett's proposed teen curfew . This isn't really a surprise, because two of the three councilmembers on the committee are Phil Andrews (D-Rockville) and soon-to-be Council President Roger Berliner (D-Bethesda), who both oppose it. The third, Councilmember Marc Elrich (D-At Large), seems sympathetic ...
Just Up The Pike - Dec 1
One of the vendors at the Flower Avenue Holiday Market, running through December 24 in Long Branch. I'm swamped with schoolwork this week, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention my visit to the Flower Avenue Holiday Market last Saturday. As our guest blogger Amanda Kolson Hurley wrote last week , Silver Spring residents Christopher Lancette and Won-ok Kim started the Flower Avenue Holiday...
Just Up The Pike - Dec 1
When last we left the intrepid Test Tube Phoenix, he'd just be denied the unemployment that was going to be keeping him alive and insured, and he was looking to go down hard. Martyrdom wasn't outside the realm of possibility. But not too long after he wrote his last journal, he got the call from his Congressman's office: Unemployment was granted. He had his stay of execution....
DailyKos (Maryland) - Nov 30
I'm happy to show others our artwork--- Adding to what I wrote before about our artwork--- I'm in the process of updating our website hubbardsfinearts.com and would like to also include some of my encaustic paintings (mixed media painting in wax.) I have several of my encaustic paintings on my ovationtv page: http://community.ovationtv.com/... (would like to add photos to the diary, but ...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Nov 29
Having visited Occupy DC's site in person a few times and having visited the similar group Stop the Machine's site once, yesterday I decided to check out the other city that currently have an Occupy movement in order to compare the two. While Occupy DC have been generally on good terms with the police there, Occupy Baltimore is a different story. City officials want Occupy Baltimore to sc...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Nov 28
Hi everyone, I go Towson University. President Obama went to the oregon state basketball game against my university. ...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Nov 27
I know I said I wasn't going to post today (what with the whole being with friends and loved ones thing), but I couldn't resist. Here are a few things I'm thankful for this year: "Things I'm Thankful For" lists . Our friends at Greater Greater Washington are giving thanks for urban blessings today. I didn't add any because I don't currently live in the D.C. area, but I guess I'm thankful for...
Just Up The Pike - Nov 24
I'm currently trying out the ICC as I go home to East County for Thanksgiving. Posting will resume Monday, unless I get bored. If not, I'll see you next week. Happy Thanksgiving! Kids goofing off on Bethesda Avenue in downtown Bethesda. We assume that kids belong in the suburbs, where they've got yards to play in and great schools to learn in. But it's not a foregone conclusion that ...
Just Up The Pike - Nov 23 - 3 clicks
Rove spoke last night in Shriver Hall at Johns Hopkins University. About 10 minutes in, people started to mic check Rove. “Mic check? Mic check! Karl Rove? Karl Rove! Is the architect? Is the architect! Architect of Occupy Iraq! Architect of Occupy Iraq! Architect of Occupy Afghanistan!” JHU's newspaper also covered action outside the event: A small group of protesters gathered in f...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Nov 16
It's a concept you may or may not have heard before: the enlargement of Delaware to become the state of Delmarva by federating with the Eastern Shores of Maryland and Virginia. The Delmarva Peninsula, the name of which is a portmanteau of Del aware, Mar yland, and V irgini a , is often considered to be a culturally distinct region, with some ambivalence toward the inclusion of Delaware's larg...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Nov 7 - 3 clicks
See bottom for explanation. I'm a Facebook fan of one of my favorite radio stations, and this afternoon they posted a tornado warning for a few counties in the DC area. This piqued my interest (what a surprise), so I went to the radar to look. No warnings. Not even any rotation. I checked the NWS and a few other sources. No warnings. I looked at the warning archive. No warnings sin...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Oct 26
Before you read, please inform Baltimore City via the mayor , and the city council that you support Occupy Baltimore and also to your elected officials , especially if you live in Maryland. The City of Baltimore issued a list of demands to Occupy Baltimore (OB) earlier this week. Some of the conditions put forth by Rec and Parks were : • no more than two campers, occupying one tent, can...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Oct 26
It is time for Mayor Rawlings and the entire City Council of Baltimore to know that the whole world is watching. Occupy Baltimore is facing eviction unless they concede to the city's demands - if they do that, they basically are no longer an occupation. The Occupiers are damned if they do and damned if they don't. This is from a press release posted today by Occupy Baltimore: Occupy Baltimor...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Oct 25
Rain has returned to #occupybaltimore, gentle but persistent, all is wet, all is glistening. The climate is fittingly gloomy, as the clouds of faux scandal have now arrived as well. I'm not going to link to the article because, frankly, Andrew Breitbart wants people to link to his websites. He makes money on clicks, and that is why he publishes the drivel he does. So, needless to say, we've been...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Oct 19
I received an email today about the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) from a friend who is a school librarian in Prince George's County. This year the Prince George's County library program has been drastically cut. Most of the elementary and middle school librarians now serve two or even three schools with no aides. This means that the libraries are only open for students one or two...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Oct 18
From the Washington Post .... the latest on the redistricting effort: A supermajority of Maryland’s state Senate passed Gov. Martin O’Malley’s redistricting plan Tuesday, sending the measure to the House of Delegates, which could take a final vote as early as Wednesday. The 33-to-13 vote was not without drama, however. At the height of a forceful debate, Sen. C. Anthony Muse (D-Prince Geor...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Oct 18
With the publication of this diary, the DK Elections sidebar will be completely made up of Maryland maps (sorry to bump off your diary, KingofSpades--it was great!). Hopefully making everyone sick of Maryland redistricting will force those bastards in Annapolis to just hurry up and get it over already. Anyway, this map is a response to feedback that a map drawing MD-01 into PGCo would have troub...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Oct 14
I'm pretty sure we're going to fill the DKE sidebar to bursting with Maryland diaries, and this will be the third I've contributed in as many days. But it's so much fun! I decided to draw a 7-0-1 this time, leaving a district winnable for a moderate-to-conservative Democrat like Frank Kratovil or James Mathias while having seven safe districts for liberal Democrats elsewhere in the state. I te...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Oct 13
"A Republican Maryland" or "Because shouldn't we see if all the DKE sidebar dairies can be Maryland maps?" A Republican gerrymander of Maryland wouldn't have to shoot for only a 4-4 split, which is quite easy, when a 5-3 split is reachable with a bit of luck. The five Republican districts in this map are all at least R+5 but importantly also smash the existing Democratic districts to pieces ...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Oct 13
Had a day free last Saturday (10/8/11) and I wanted to go to Occupy Baltimore (OB) to be a citizen journalist, hence this diary entry. Spent the time holding signs at intersections, sitting at workshop discussions, providing some agenda items, and talking to others there. Thanks to everyone who I interviewed and for supporting OB. And sorry for shaky camera and some quiet audio. Believe...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Oct 13
It appears that Martin O'Malley has settled on only trying to get 7 Democrats out of Maryland. His proposed map would turn Andy Harris' district into a Republican vote sink that we probably would have lost even in 2008. However, things don't have to be this way. We can make Harris' district winnable for us while making the other seven incumbents plenty safe and satisfying Donna Edwards' BS whini...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Oct 13
Just south of Ocean City, Maryland lies the 37 mile long barrier island of Assateague - a narrow, ever-changing landscape of dunes and marshes that protects the shoreline of southern Maryland and northern Virginia from the worst of the Atlantic Ocean's ravages. Assateague and its nearby island of Chincoteague are probably best known around the world for the wild ponies that have lived there si...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Oct 13
Well, I'm a Republican, and after seeing all of these Democrat Maryland maps here, I'm cross posting my Republican gerrymander from RedRacingHorses.com. You can draw a somewhat solid 3-1-4 (R-S-D), but I tried to max out competition here. Other than that, there's not much to be said... If I wanted to make MD-08 uglier by running it into Columbia, I may have made Roscoe's seat a little less Ob...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Oct 13
Since so many are doing 8-0 maps I thought it would be fun to do a Republican map. 1-OB-41 MC-56, Blue, Safe R, 2-OB-43 MC054, Green, Safe R, 3-OB-44 MC-53, Purple, Safe R, 4-OB-53 MC-44, Red, Lean D 5-OB-91 MC-7, Yellow, Safe D, 66 black 6-OB-84 MC-14, Black, Safe D 59 black 7-OB-71 MC-27, Cyan, Safe D 8-OB-71 MC-26, Light Purple, Safe D ...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Oct 12
We have some smart mappers here. But one thing I haven't seen much of are 8-0 maps of Maryland that don't involve throwing parts of Prince George's County into an Eastern Shore–based district, an aspect of the dearly departed "Option 2" that led to it being abandoned by Gov. Martin O'Malley's redistricting advisory committee. I endeavored to draw such a map. Like my most recent 7-1 proposal, i...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Oct 12
The 2010 Census data files were screwing up for me, so I used 2000 with 2008 election data. Anyway, I used new pop. estimates, so it shouldn't be that different. It looks nicer than the governor's proposal, allows Edwards to increase the black population to 60.6% black VAP, and allows Cummings to be at 55.7% VAP and 68.7% Obama. MD-01 is now 53.2% Obama, MD-02 is 56% Obama, MD-03 i...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Oct 12
A common assumption in Maryland redistricting maps is that MD-01 is to be based in the Eastern Shore. This map rejects that assumption and takes a different tack. None of MD-01 at all is in the Eastern Shore. Instead, MD-01 is redrawn as an entirely new district in Central Maryland. Official proposals have split the Eastern Shore, so its clear that keeping the Eastern Shore in one piece is not...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Oct 12
What should have been a slam-dunk process has turned into yet another minority vs. white food fight full of recrimination, ugly innuendo, and suggestions of an unholy alliance between black Democrats and white Republicans in the legislature to block Gov. Martin O'Malley's planned 7-1 congressional redistricting map. Among Rep. Donna Edwards's "concerns" (and I put that in quotation marks becau...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Oct 11
OK … this is my third diary on this subject in three days. It appears there are a lot of competing interests within the Democratic Party and I just wanted to see how a map can be drawn that satisfies all those concerns, namely: - Keep all incumbent Democrats happy by giving them new districts with plenty of their existing constituents and ones that are Democratic enough where they don’t ...
DailyKos (Maryland) - Oct 10
Get Involved: support progressive candidates and issues If you live in the Montgomery County Maryland area–or support our efforts here–please join the Montgomery County Progressive Alliance. MCPA is local, independent coalition of organizations. MCPA organizes debates, forums and other events to inform the public and advance understanding and progress in Montgomery County. MCPA will en...
Montgomery County Progressive Alliance - May 13 - 4 clicks
