Dan Rodricks

I have read the indictment against Trump. You should, too. You can find it here. While I had already concluded he was the worst president in American history, his conviction of the charges will forever end any doubt that he was also the most dangerous. Should Trump be found guilty — and we have to … Continue reading Trump’s defenders are willfully blind to the threat he poses

Before we move on, a story about Mike Young, who died on May 29, exactly 36 years and one day after what was likely the greatest game of his Major League career. It certainly must have been the game that Young savored whenever he reflected on his relatively brief time with the Orioles in the … Continue reading Mike Young’s greatest game

I hear and receive by email a lot of complaints about the Baltimore city government under the administration of Mayor Brandon Scott — that it has experienced too much executive turnover, that it seems too slow to react to problems, that it hasn’t done enough to stem gun violence and support downtown businesses. I agree … Continue reading Complaints about Baltimore’s squeegee guys drop significantly; angry letters to this columnist have tapered off, too.

Among the accomplished writers who came from Maryland was James. M. Cain, famously the author of "The Postman Always Rings Twice," "Double Indemnity" and other novels. (That's him in the photo above with actress Lana Turner in 1946 in a Hollywood restaurant.) Now comes news from the Associated Press that a never-published Cain short story, … Continue reading Discovered: An unpublished short story by James M. Cain

So that Memorial Day does not become “just another day off,” I decided to ponder its origin and meaning.  I heard a TV host say Americans will “celebrate” Memorial Day. I found that jarring. The person who wrote that into the MSNBC script picked the wrong verb. “Observe” would suffice because there’s nothing to “celebrate” … Continue reading The nation could use a Public Service Day, too.

In the process of reporting for my Wednesday column in The Baltimore Sun, I learned about (and made a donation to) the Maryland Market Money program, designed to reward food stamp recipients for choosing to buy healthy, locally grown food at farmers markets.My column is about Andy Harris, the state’s generally awful Republican in Congress, … Continue reading Incentivizing food stamp recipients to make healthy choices

I wrote about crimes against postal carriers in my Sunday column, under the headline, "Attention, bad guys, leave our postal carriers alone," because, as Rep. Kweisi Mfume says, for most of the baby boomer lifetime, robbing the mailman has not been a thing. There are certain people you just don't mess with, and the crime … Continue reading A special bond with our postal carrier

I remember certain things from 1973 -- my first car (a red Ford Galaxy); the Knicks upsetting the Celtics in the NBA playoffs; my first job on a newspaper (a summer internship with The Patriot Ledger in Quincy, Mass.), the Senate Watergate hearings, and Secretariat winning the Triple Crown in horse racing. I watched the … Continue reading Unforgettable: Secretariat and the reason why

The Baltimore Sun, whose pages have chronicled Maryland life and its institution for generations, whose reporters covered every government and conflict and glory of the city since before the Civil War, celebrates its 186th anniversary today. Much of what follows is a previously published history of the newspaper. Ever since Vol. 1, No. 1 rolled … Continue reading “Light For All,” 186 years later

This is how my Sunday column begins: If you gathered a million American mothers and asked them what the country needed, I bet this would be the consensus: More doctors, nurses and caregivers; better pay for teachers and social workers; affordable health care for everyone, including a holistic system for treating people with mental illness; … Continue reading America needs Big Mother Love