Travel Day

No posting today, but I thought these links were interesting:

• The bill is coming due on global warming in Maryland:

Allstate Corp., one of Maryland's largest insurers, will stop writing homeowners' policies in coastal areas of the state, citing warnings by scientists that a warmer Atlantic Ocean will lead to more strong hurricanes hitting the Northeast.

The company will no longer offer new property insurance beginning in February in all or part of 11 counties mostly along the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. Existing customers won't be affected; a spokeswoman said Allstate intends to renew those policies even in coastal areas. It will continue to write new policies in Baltimore and Baltimore County.

[snip]

Allstate's change in Maryland is broader than a move by Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. two years ago to cap new business in coastal areas and not to write new business in two ZIP codes near Ocean City. Allstate's move will affect residents in Calvert, Dorchester, Somerset, St. Mary's, Talbot, Wicomico and Worcester counties and parts of Anne Arundel, Charles, Prince George's and Queen Anne's.

• It looks like the long-delayed Inter-County Connector will be delayed yet again:
  

  Four environmental groups and a Montgomery County couple filed lawsuits yesterday arguing that federal transportation officials approved the intercounty connector project before adequately studying the highway's effects on wildlife and public health.

  The two federal lawsuits -- one filed in the District and the other in Maryland -- also allege that the federal environmental review did not meet legal requirements to consider other east-west transportation options. Building mass transit and improving local roads, among other measures, would cost less, do less environmental damage and combat traffic better than an 18-mile road cutting across Montgomery and Prince George's counties, the complaints say.

• This seems awfully weird, and a little Machiavellian, even:

  Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley gave his longtime political nemesis an early Christmas gift yesterday when he single-handedly pushed to raise State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy's annual salary by nearly $83,000 - instantly making her the city's highest-paid employee.
  
  But the raise - which will boost Jessamy's base salary from $142,055 to $225,000 - might have been more backhanded than benevolent, the latest and perhaps most bizarre twist in a years-long struggle between two of the city's most powerful personalities.
  
  At the Board of Estimates meeting, O'Malley justified the nearly 60 percent raise - significantly higher than the 6.5 percent increase recommended by his finance department - by saying Jessamy has "a very, very tough job. This jurisdiction has the biggest challenge of any in our state."
  
  He later tipped his hand, ever so slightly, to what might have been the real motivation behind the unexpected move: encouraging others to run against her.
  
  "I don't think we've had a competitive race for this very important job since 1983," O'Malley said before the board voted to approve the raise. "Shouldn't that tell us something about how difficult this job is?"

What have you found on the Internets today?