Lakesha Haynie, the infant boy’s 28-year-old mother, has been charged with first degree murder in his death. According to autopsy results, Rajahnthon died of head fractures and blunt force trauma. His mother allegedly buried him in a shallow grave in the park last month.

But what’s particularly troubling about the crime is that Ms. Haynie had a history of child endangerment that should have been well-known to authorities. She had four other children taken away by the Department of Social Services over the past eight years, her parental rights terminated in at least two cases.

I have generally been skeptical about whether Mr. Ehrlich would seek a rematch against Gov. Martin O'Malley, on the grounds that Mr. Ehrlich would not get in a race he wasn't pretty sure he could win. But polling has consistently shown Mr. O'Malley with a lead of 7 or more percentage points, no matter what was going on in the national political climate. Mr. Ehrlich and Mr. O'Malley are both known quantities to the voters, and it's always seemed to me that it would be a tall order for Mr. Ehrlich, without the advantages of incumbency, to win. That said, the longer he's waited to announce his intentions, the more I began to change my mind. At this point, after he's let the entire Republican field clear itself out for him, how could he not run?

That's why the fact that the former governor steered clear of criticizing his successor in his speech to the Pikesville Chamber of Commerce today is so odd. According to Julie Bykowicz's report of the speech, the governor argued that legislators in Annapolis don't understand small business, and as evidence he mentioned the state's short-lived computer services tax and the fact that Maryland has not lowered its corporate income tax to match the level in Virginia.

But even without knowing what sanctions, if any, were meted out against the principal, Janice Williams of the Institute of Business and Entrepreneurship, it's pretty obvious that the district has failed to make an appropriate response in at least one respect: They have made no clear and unambiguous statement that what Ms. Williams did was wrong.

But it's not a sad story. The people ACORN was designed to advocate for certainly do need the help, but they deserve a much better partner than ACORN.

As early as today, a 2010 Census form will be arriving in your mailbox. If you fill it out and send it back in, it will cost the government 42 cents for a first-class stamp. If you don't, the government will send someone to your door, and that costs an average of $57 for every response. The Census Bureau estimates that each percentage point increase in the mail response rate to the census saves $85 million. In 2000, about 72 percent of Americans (and 73 percent of Marylanders) mailed back their forms; if everyone did it this time, the government would save $1.5 billion.

Why does the government go to such great lengths to conduct the census? It's actually required in the Constitution. The information the government collects on who lives where is the basis for the apportionment of congressional seats among the states, and within states it is used to draw district lines for federal, state and local elected offices. Without an accurate count, we cannot ensure that every person is given equal representation in their government.

But amazingly, the bill’s passage is considered far from a certainty. Last year, a similar proposal failed on the Senate floor by a single vote. Maryland can ill afford for that to happen again -- not when budget cuts have already forced major reductions in health care services.

That Maryland should be so hesitant to accept the tools the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene needs to go after Medicaid fraud is appalling. So is the possibility of opening a $20 million deficit in next year’s budget, which is what would happen if the measure fails to pass.

The problem with the law was not its basic concept or goals but the unintended consequences of its methods. We wound up with dumbed-down standards as states sought to maximize the number of students who met them; an obsessive focus on teaching to reading and math tests to the exclusion of other subjects; over-reliance on what kind of academic degrees teachers have rather than on their actual effectiveness; and an oversimplifed pass-fail system of measuring schools that failed to give parents or policymakers a good idea of which schools are working and which aren't.

President Barack Obama's approach to fixing the law rightly appears focused on retaining the goals of NCLB but refining the methods.

Such blatant theft would surely make the Sheriff of Nottingham proud. Taking so-called Highway Users Revenue from Baltimore and giving it to the counties is nothing short of stealing from the poor to benefit the rich. With a potential $2 billion deficit looming next year, state spending needs to be cut, but that doesn’t mean legislators should be harder on the city than local governments with fiscal problems nowhere near so dire.

There’s no question that Baltimore receives a disproportionate share of transportation funds under the highway users formula. Gov. Martin O’Malley has proposed the city receive $130 million of the $140 million total in the next fiscal year.

Such a lopsided equation dates from a day when the city had an overwhelming share of Maryland’s transportation assets. That’s less true today, although Baltimore still has far more and more expensive infrastructure to maintain than any county.

But over time, the accounting has developed a second purpose — as a modest form of revenue sharing. The definition of transportation has gradually expended so that the city has been able to use the money for such things as police, school crossing guards and trash collection along streets and alleys.

That’s not a sign that Baltimore’s transportation needs have lessened. Rather, it demonstrates how desperate its unfunded non-transportation needs have grown. City bridges and overpasses remain among the lowest rated in the state for structural integrity, but Baltimore also needs to maintain its funding for schools and police without raising Maryland’s highest property tax rate.

Cut the city’s transportation funds by $30 million and the city’s projected budget deficit grows to $150 million. To make up the added shortfall, Mayor Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake would need to either reduce services (leave 4,500 tons of trash on the streets and cut traffic patrols in half, for instance) or raise the property tax by 9 cents, an even more horrifying possibility.

But what truly adds insult to injury is that the $30 million would not be used to help balance the state budget but would be spread like so much pirated plunder from Ellicott City to Easton on counties that don’t face a fraction of the economic hardships and poverty of Baltimore.

That makes the proposal not only unwise but bordering on the immoral. Forcing the city to bear a greater burden of budget reductions will only undermine efforts to make the city less dependent on state aid in the long-term — even as hard-fought efforts to revitalize schools and neighborhoods are on the upswing.

There was a time when stealing so large a sum from the city would have been regarded as unthinkable, at least by Democrats. Not only because of Baltimore’s political influence (diminished by its shrinking population) but because preying on the less fortunate was considered beyond the pale even in the State House.

If lawmakers were serious about balancing the budget they’d be making the hard choices — addressing billion-dollar teacher pension contributions or unsustainable retiree health care costs. Or perhaps taking on the liquor lobby over the state’s embarrassingly low alcohol tax. But that’s probably too much to expect from predators who see far easier prey right under their noses.

Mr. Goldberger was right. The Supreme Court has found, correctly, that a commitment to the values of the First Amendment requires the protection of speech that is unpleasant, hateful, cruel -- even potentially violent at times.

That leads us to the case pitting Fred Phelps, leader of a tiny, fanatically anti-gay Kansas church, against Albert Snyder, a Westminster man whose Marine son, Matthew, was killed in Iraq in March 2006. Mr. Phelps claims that the deaths of U.S. soldiers overseas are a sign that God is punishing the United States for its tolerance of homosexuality. He and a small contingent of followers have held protests near service members' funerals around the country. They picketed outside Matthew's funeral with signs reading "God hates fags" and "Thank God for dead soldiers."

A federal jury in Baltimore awarded Mr. Snyder millions of dollars for invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress. An appeals court threw out the award on First Amendment grounds, and the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to take up the case this fall.

Our hearts go out to the Snyder family for all that they have endured. It must have been painful beyond imagining to go through the double anguish of first losing a beloved son and then having his solemn memorial ceremony tarnished by outsiders pushing a bizarre political/theological agenda.

But if the right to free expression is to have real meaning, it cannot be circumscribed on the grounds that such speech is hurtful or offensive. The fact is, Mr. Phelps and his band of fanatics followed the law. They stood on a public street and spoke their minds. No civilized person can like what they said or did -- but if our society is to remain civilized, their activities must be allowed. We hope the Supreme Court will agree.

Baltimore has an active and engaged tech community that is pushing hard for the project, but it is at a stage in its development that the attraction of super-speed Internet access could really make a difference. The attraction of such stellar Web infrastructure could quickly push Baltimore’s tech community beyond a critical mass and truly transform the region’s economy.

Second, Baltimore offers the opportunity to demonstrate broader applications for the Web of the future, principally at our outstanding medical institutions. Johns Hopkins Hospital would be a great place to showcase the potential for transferring huge amounts of data in real time for 3-D medical imaging and other applications.

Third, Baltimore is a city with highly concentrated poverty but also a new sense of momentum in the schools. Google’s support could go a long way toward bridging the digital divide and exposing students to the possibilities that could be opened to them through education.

Fourth, city and state officials are fully committed to making this happen. Mayor Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake just appointed a "Google czar" to head up the city's application, Tom Loveland, chief executive of the tech company Mind Over Machines. The mayor sees the project as a means of advancing both economic development and social justice and is ready to do what it takes to allow Google to quickly roll out its project. Mr. Loveland, who successfully led the effort to reverse a statewide computer services tax two years ago, has the experience necessary to bridge the gap between the government and tech communities and get things done.

And finally, we’re close to Washington. For the same reason that Baltimore is often the site for various federal pilot projects, it would be an ideal location for Google. The people who will make decisions that could affect the company’s ability to broaden this effort across the nation would be less than an hour's car ride away from being able to see it in action. Google notes in its description of the project that it’s been lobbying the Federal Communications Commission to consider new ideas for Internet access as it develops a national broadband plan, and having a community with the Web of the future right up the Baltimore-Washington Parkway would surely be an effective means of persuasion.

There’s no telling what innovation could be fostered by Internet connections that are as much as 100 times faster than what most people experience now, but Baltimore is poised to take full advantage of it. We could help Google show what’s possible, and Google could help transform our community.

It’s a bit like knowing the "amber waves of grain" of "America the Beautiful" came from your backyard, or that the actual "oceans, white with foam" mentioned in "God Bless America" happened to be located along the Ocean City boardwalk. The War of 1812 may not get the press of other U.S. wars, but you can’t attend a baseball game without hearing about that one inspiring battle.

But such pride in our role is getting stretched a bit far in Annapolis, where lawmakers would like to rewrite Maryland vehicle license plates to add this sales pitch: "Home of Our National Anthem."

The first problem is that the proposed slogan doesn’t make much sense. Maryland might claim to be the birthplace of national anthem or the home of Francis Scott Key, but home of the anthem? Is the anthem housed here? All four stanzas? (If so, rarely sung Stanzas 2, 3 and 4 deserve a break on their rent.)

Songs don’t have a single home, and if they did it would probably be at their publisher’s office or perhaps his copyright lawyer's. They live everywhere -- from theater orchestra pits to the iPod of the kid who cuts your grass. Maybe "birthplace" doesn’t fit on a plate, but that hardly justifies making it sound as if the anthem was kept under lock and key down by the Inner Harbor.

But there’s also the matter of Mr. Key famously writing the lyrics but not the tune. The anthem is set to an English drinking song. That makes Maryland home to the Frederick lawyer who did half the work. But again, such a lengthy explanation wouldn’t fit particularly well on the back of a moving car.

Has any of this deterred legislators? Not in the Senate, where the proposal was approved unanimously last week. Now it’s up the House of Delegates to show some restraint — and respect for American history and the English language.

Just because Maryland doesn’t currently have a slogan running between the bolt holes of its standard-issue license plates doesn’t mean we ought to have one, especially a version that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Like any proud parent of a 196-year-old that has gone off to accomplish great things, let us take pride in our role in the nurturing of the anthem -- but not still claim it as some kind of live-in dependent.

Mr. McDonnell gained national attention last fall when his opponent, Democrat Creigh Deeds, started making an issue of the Republican's thesis as a graduate student at Regent University, which, among other things, took a dim view of “cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators.” And as attorney general, Mr. McDonnell had held that only the legislature could extend legal protections to gays. That stance was similar to the one taken recently by current Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. He sent a letter earlier this month to public colleges and universities in Virginia advising them to remove any language from their discrimination policies related to sexual orientation, setting off an uproar on campuses across the state.

The executive directive seems to have largely quashed that, with campus officials and advocacy groups (other than the Virginia Democratic Party) expressing at least qualified support for Mr. McDonnell's action. It isn't everything one might hope for -- an executive directive is less than an executive order and does not carry the force of law. Furthermore, Mr. McDonnell has not acquiesced to calls from lawmakers and others to submit a bill that would codify the anti-discrimination policy.

But even if this step had modest legal force, it was backed up by a clear and sweeping affirmation of gay rights. Governor McDonnell wrote: "The Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution prohibits discrimination without a rational basis against any class of persons. Discrimination based on factors such as one’s sexual orientation or parental status violates the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution. Therefore, discrimination against enumerated classes of persons set forth in the Virginia Human Rights Act or discrimination against any class of persons without a rational basis is prohibited."

Although this was surely not Governor McDonnell's intent, it is hard to see how banning gay marriage would comport with that statement.

Why did Governor McDonnell take this step? Was it simply to quell the campus protests? Was it fear that the uproar would hurt Virginia's business climate? (Some students had begun a letter-writing campaign to persuade Northrop Grumman not to move its headquarters to Virginia because of Mr. Cuccinelli's letter.) Was it a genuine evolution of Governor McDonnell's beliefs? Whatever the case, he deserves credit for taking a step he didn't have to take.

The man who ended Ms. Dixon's political career has taken some of the evidence from the cases he built against her and posted it on eBay, with the proceeds going to a charity Ms. Dixon supported. But he's not doing this quietly; he's milking it for all it's worth. The descriptions of the items prominently mention their roles in the Dixon trial, and the red evidence tags are clearly visible in the pictures posted on the site. If there's any doubt about whether buyers are attracted to the items or to the hype, note that as of Thursday morning, the bidding for the Xbox 360 Ms. Dixon bought at Best Buy was up to $860, several times what a new one would cost.

The point of the exercise, Mr. Rohrbaugh said, was to make other politicians think twice about seeking gifts. "I hope it sends the message, 'You're going to be very embarrassed,'" he said. Sheila Dixon never seemed to be one given to embarrassment, but it seems likely that having her personal business aired in court and the press, being convicted by a jury of her peers and being forced to resign in disgrace from the office she worked her entire life to achieve would probably have been enough to do the trick.

It's understandable that the state would have retained the Xbox and a camcorder that Ms. Dixon bought with the gift cards and that it would now seek to dispose of them. But the rationale for selling the fur coats is less clear. The legal reason for why the state is able to sell them is simple enough -- Ms. Dixon agreed to surrender them as part of her plea deal. But what is the ethical reason? Although the manner in which Ms. Dixon got the coats -- she bought them with a gift certificate from her one-time boyfriend, developer Ronald Lipscomb -- was certainly unsavory, Mr. Rohrbaugh never contended that it was illegal. He charged her with perjury for failing to report the gifts on her ethics forms, not with obtaining them through theft, embezzlement or any other crime. Posting them on eBay as "Fur coat surrendered by Sheila Dixon" and "Mink coat surrendered by Sheila Dixon" smacks of piling on.

As for whether the sale serves as a warning to other politicians, another detail of Ms. Dixon's plea deal is likely to have more weight in the minds of the potentially corrupt: she kept her pension, all $83,000 a year of it, for the rest of her life. Mr. Rohrbaugh has said that he didn't think that legally he could have done much to strip her of that pension, and that if he had tried, it would have dragged things out for months or years. He's probably right about that. But the same logic that called for him to let the pension go for the sake of quickly restoring ethical leadership to the city also applies to his souvenir auction. Mr. Rohrbaugh has made his point that no one is above the law. Now it's time to move on. 

This year, a bill to update Maryland’s system based on economic data from this century overwhelmingly passed in the state Senate, 43-2, but its fate in a vote expected Friday in the House Judiciary Committee is unclear. Some lawmakers have questioned whether an update is necessary at all, and certainly whether it is appropriate to enact a bill that could mean higher child support payments for some parents during a recession. But those objections reflect a misunderstanding of Maryland’s child support system and of the effect the legislation would actually have.

Here’s how the system works. In Maryland, a typical household of two parents and two children earns $89,000 a year, or about $7,500 a month. The old guidelines assumed that such a family would spend $1,391 to raise the two children. That figure is divided between the parents proportionally to their income -- so if, say, the noncustodial parent earned 70 percent of the money, he or she would pay 70 percent of the expenses, or $974 a month, and the custodial parent would pay for the remainder.

But the new guidelines recognize that the prices of the goods and services necessary to raise a child have not risen in perfect proportion with each other or with household incomes for the last 22 years. Expenses for some things have gone up faster than others and now capture a larger share of houshold income than they did when the guidelines were established. Housing in Maryland, for example, is much more expensive than it used to be. And here’s guessing that a typical family spends more on Internet access and cell phones than it did in 1988. The new guidelines estimate that the same family now spends $1,563 a month to raise its two kids, a difference of $172.

Opponents of the legislation would argue that the bill will hurt the noncustodial parent by forcing him or her to increase monthly payments -- in our example by 70 percent of $172, or $120. That’s a 12 percent increase. But what they fail to appreicate is that the custodial parent is already incurring those expenses, but he or she is picking up the entire tab. In this case, the guidelines assume the custodial parent is spending $417 a month to raise the children, but because of the increases in costs during the last 22 years, he or she is actually spending $589, or 41 percent more than the guidelines assume. The custodial parent in this case makes 30 percent of the income but is bearing 100 percent of the increased costs.

Believe it or not, that counts as good news, at least in a relative sense.

The figures released Wednesday by the Board of Revenue Estimates are about the same as they were in the group's last report, in December, and that one was largely unchanged from September. None of the reports was rosy, but they did at least signal an end to a period in which Maryland's tax collections appeared to have dropped off a cliff. In fact, most of the write-down in expectations for the current fiscal year, 2010, can be attributed to the ill economic consequences of the major snowstorms of December and February, which resulted in lower-than-expected sales tax collections and lottery sales. The board optimistically assumes those events won't recur in fiscal 2011 and, thus, has left its estimates for that year steady.