Psalm 119:97-104

⁹⁷ Oh, how I love your law!
I meditate on it all day long.
⁹⁸ Your commands are always with me
and make me wiser than my enemies.
⁹⁹ I have more insight than all my teachers,
for I meditate on your statutes.
¹⁰⁰ I have more understanding than the elders,
for I obey your precepts.
¹⁰¹ I have kept my feet from every evil path
so that I might obey your word.
¹⁰² I have not departed from your laws,
for you yourself have taught me.
¹⁰³ How sweet are your words to my taste,
sweeter than honey to my mouth!
¹⁰⁴ I gain understanding from your precepts;
therefore I hate every wrong path.

Reflection:

A good GPS system can navigate you into or out of some remote spots.  If the GPS says, “Right turn ahead in 200 feet…ding, ding…turn right,” and we follow the directions, we make it to our destination.  For the writer, King David, God’s word was all he needed to navigate life.  He thought about the Word, read it, heard it, and obeyed it.  He was immersed in the goodness of the Word. He even declares his love for God’s Word and how sweet the Word is, sweeter than honey.  God has given us His Word to guide His people to live each day, to help us remain close and near to Him and in His presence, so that we might taste the sweetness of the Word each day and in each situation.

Response:

Like King David let’s listen, read, and obey God’s Word and experience the sweetness of it and in light of who the Lord is in our lives, let our desire and response be to love Him and His Word more and more.

WYPR’s Sheilah Kast interviewed UMBC political science professor Roy Meyers today on “Maryland Morning,” discussing the Maryland state budget. The Maryland General Assembly convenes for their 2012 session this week. As they review the first version of the 2013 state budget, they’ll need to begin reckoning with a deficit over $1 billion.

Meyers discusses the options for filling this budget gap, including one-time savings, tax increases and spending cuts. He also notes the difficulties associated with state budgeting at a time of uncertainty regarding Congressional tax policy decisions and global economic trends. Meyers explores the issue of balancing the general fund by transferring money out of the Transportation Trust Fund and other dedicated sources in a web extra.

Update: The political fact-checking site PolitiFact also consulted Meyers this week on the Obama campaign’s assertion: “Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, and Newt Gingrich all say they would cut foreign aid to Israel — and every other country — to zero.” Meyers suggested that the campaign misused the term “zeroing-out” and that the statement is “misleading, to say the least.”

A new Associated Press report on Maryland state lawmakers planning to run for Congress in 2012 includes insight from UMBC professor Donald Norris, public policy chair and director of the Maryland Institute for Policy Analysis and Research. Some of the candidates are Republicans seeking to unseat Democratic incumbents, with the logic that GOP voters may be motivated to come to the polls in 2012, particularly if the DREAM Act and same-sex marriage are on the ballot.

“I think a bunch of it is wishful thinking,” said Norris. “My sense is that people like O’Donnell and Jacobs are mistaking a national mood that is anti-Washington for a mood that is anti-Ruppersberger and anti-Hoyer, and I don’t think that that mood exists in Maryland.”

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UMBC political science professor Thomas Schaller has published a new commentary in the Baltimore Sun exploring presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s positions on the hot-button issues of abortion rights and the individual mandate for health insurance. In “Rick Santorum’s moral flexibility,” Schaller suggests that the politician has changed his positions on these issues over time not due to personal reflection, but “in the interest of party cohesion.”