“Lunatics, lepers, felons, foreigners, and college professors shall not...”

Maryland’s governor Paris Glendening is standing testimony to the urgent need for a constitutional amendment barring college professors from running for elective office in this country. He is, very temporarily one trusts, chairman of the National Governor’s Association from which podium he constantly lectures America’s civic officials about Maryland’s ‘smart growth’ policies of transit in place of roads, denser planner development, infill not sprawl etc. Maryland, he says, is leading the charge in the war on ‘sprawl.’

Every person forced to sit through a Glendening sermon should be given the following factoids from the 2000 census: Of all the 243 cities recognized by the US Bureau of the Census, Maryland’s premier city, Baltimore City was 243rd in population growth 1990-2000. It lost more population - 85k - than any other city in the country. Nine percent! At the same time those awful outer suburbs around the city of Baltimore (Anne Arundel, Baltimore co, Carroll, Howard and Harford) that the smart growth policies of the Glendening admin have supposedly been restraining saw all of the region’s growth – 250k extra,16% up. When this fatuous and preachy windbag returns to academe the students’ loss can only be the citizens gain!