Columns

Given his five minutes to explain why he wanted to replace Daryl Jones on the County Council, Michael Wagner took a seat at a table and told the sitting councilmen:

“I had no thoughts of running for the council. I really didn’t have an idea of the process. So people approached me and said ‘Why don’t you fill Daryl’s term?’ I said, ‘What’s the deal?’ and they told me, and I sort of remembered from the other two times you went through it. So I put my name in.”

Commentator Michael Kinsley defined a “gaffe” as a politician inadvertently revealing what he or she really thinks. First lady Katie O’Malley recently committed a big one.

In welcoming remarks to the 24th National Conference on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Equality in Baltimore, O’Malley — who moonlights as a District Court judge — asserted that the same-sex marriage bill failed in the General Assembly last year because, “some cowards prevented it from passing.”

For over a century beginning in the early 1800s, Hall United Methodist Church served Freetown and the adjoining communities of Marley Neck and Elvaton.

No other church existed in any of these communities, so most African Americans worshipped at nearby Mount Zion United Methodist Church, Magothy. They journeyed by foot, by horse or by horse and buggy.

It’s as if Daryl Jones never existed.

His name disappeared Monday morning from the county website, his photo replaced by an outlined white rectangle.

A week ago, the other six members of the County Council declared that Jones would no longer be a member as of the day he reported to federal prison to serve time for a misdemeanor tax crime.

Even though Jones should have left the council, the way it happened was disturbing.

In a nation of laws, elected officials should be removed from office only through an established legal process.