The Baltimore Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • A15

TUESDAY, JANUARY 5, 2016 NEWS THE BALTIMORE SUN 15 Schools must offer healthy lunch options ties that have more liquor stores than markets that sell healthy drinks. Like most urban communities across the country, Baltimore is full of what is known as "dead food zones" and "food deserts." Many families report that they have to take upward of two buses just to get to a market with healthier options. This issue of obesity comes at a huge cost to our economy. Obese adults spend 42 percent more on health care than those who lead a healthier lifestyle. Sedentary adults pay $1,500 more a year in health care costs than those who are active.

Studies show that an investment of $10 per person on physical activity and nutrition education would lead to a savings of $10 billion in health care costs. That would lead to a return on our investment of $5.60 for every $1 spent, and Medicare would save more than $5 billion annually. As a former AU-American linebacker at Perm State and four-year NFL veteran, I know the value of a healthy diet Not eating and drinking the right foods can leave children sluggish, lazy and uninspired. As an advocate for Sugar Free Kids Maryland, I know how important it is to give our ldds quality options. A statewide coalition established in 2014, SFK advocates for more access to healthier food and drink for Maryland youth through education and policy changes.

In May, Baltimore City Councilman Nick Mosby introduced a resolution to hold an informa- tional hearing regarding Sugar Free Kids and the effects of sugary drinks on our body and the community. In the coming months, Councilman Mosby is expected to introduce a bill to the Baltimore City Council that would require all advertisements for sugary beverages to contain a warning label, stating the health risks associated with consuming the product The legislation would also authorize City Health Commissioner Dr. Leana Wen to impose penalties for non-compliance. Passing such legislation would be a tremendous victory, but only a small step in the right direction for a system where big businesses are profiting off the poisoning of our children in their schools. Much more must be done.

School meals need to, once again, be cooked in the schools. We need to make healthy options more readily accessible. We need to change the culture in schools so that we can get to a point where booster clubs don't only sell sodas at sporting events. We desperately need affordable, clean, safe drinking water in communities that have no other choices. We need truthful marketing that explains the dangers of the products that we might consume.

We can do all of this and more in Baltimore. We just need to do it together. Aaron Maybin should is the founder of Project Mayhem and an advocate for Sugar Free Kids Maryland; his email is Aaronmm762003yahoo.com. By Aaron Maybin ur lads are being poisoned every day in their schools. It's not from lead paint or pipes, but by the food and drinks being served to them the cheapest to make and deadliest to eat and, in some instances, the same food fed to the inmate populations in our state prisons.

These foods and beverages are loaded with sugar, carbohydrates and harmful preservatives that allow them to be frozen or sit on shelves for months or even years at a time before being served to children. Any ldd not eating a packed lunch in school is likely dining on recipes ripe for diabetes, heart disease and obesity some of the biggest health issues facing our country today. The Institute of Medicine attributes 20 percent of the nation's weight increase between 1977 and 2007 to the consumption of sugary drinks, including soda, sugar-added juices, flavored waters and teas, sports drinks and energy drinks. Sugary drinks contribute more calories and added sugars to our diets than any other food or beverage, and daily consumption is strongly linked to higher childhood obesity and Type 2 diabetes rates. Such conditions are especially prevalent in communities with little access to healthy alternatives.

Some children in Baltimore City have more access to sodas than they do to clean water during the school day. When they leave school, they return to communi- Let the Porter case jurors speak By Mark R. Weaver ased on the reporting from The Sun, Marylanders now know that Baltimore Circuit Court Judge Barry Williams strongly suggested to jurors in the trial of William Porter, one of six city police officers charged in connection with the death of Freddie Gray, that they not speak publicly about the case after its conclusion. While the judge is admirably trying to balance the interests of a fair trial with free-speech rights, he appears to have gone too far. One juror was quoted by Sun reporters as saying, "I would very much like to talk about my experience as a juror," but she feels obligated to follow the judge's suggestion to abstain.

She need not feel so compelled. As a magistrate, I've presided over hundreds of criminal cases. I know the burden of trying to be fair to all sides while keeping an eye on the often-complicated rules of evidence and criminal procedure. It's a daunting challenge. And given that there are more trials of Baltimore police officers coming, a responsible jurist must make rulings that will protect the ability of prosecutors and defense attorneys to empanel juries who can review these cases fairly.

But, even with those factors in mind, there's little or no chance that allowing the Porter case jurors to speak publicly will bias future trials. Many members of the public know more about what happened during the trial than the jury, given that jurors were barred from reading news coverage. Their commentary may provide insight into what happened in the jury room, but it can't offer new evidence that could taint future trials. Jurors only considered evidence that was first reviewed and permitted by the judge. If jurors were to share their thoughts of that admitted evidence, the revelation might be interesting, but it still wouldn't affect the ability of future juries to bring an open mind to the trials of the remaining officers, since the evidence the jury weighed was already in the press.

Yet the merits of allowing jurors to speak publicly go far beyond the fact that it won't hinder the work of future juries. It's a matter of constitutional law. Courts have often ruled that a judge may protect jurors from press harassment and limit or even bar reporters from contacting them after a trial. If that were the extent of Judge Williams' order, it would likely withstand constitutional review. The judge also probably has the ability to protect the jurors' identities from public release.

And in a few states (not Maryland), jurors can't be paid to write a book about the case for at least 90 days after being dismissed. However, if jury members want to speak out, be interviewed or even blog about their experience, they have a First Amendment right to do so. To the extent the judge has chilled their ability to speak, he has exceeded his authority. It's well-settled by the U.S. Supreme Court that most of the individual rights in the first 10 amendments to the Constitution are "fundamental," meaning they can only be abridged when government has a compelling interest to do so.

And when such a compelling government interest exists, the proposed government action must be narrowly tailored to advance that compelling interest. How does this apply to the Porter case jurors? In the case of the fundamental right of freedom of speech, the law disfavors a judge from prohibiting speech that may occur in the future, such as a juror posting a Facebook update about the deliberation. These "prior restraints" of speech are almost never permitted. Indeed, given that it could potentially take months or even years to try and retry all of the defendants, it's unimaginable that an appeals court would allow even a permissible prior restraint to last that long. So what's the solution? Judge Williams should enter his instructions to the jury as part of a journal entry.

This is the written public record of what a judge has done. He could balance the interests of this case with a short declaration making it clear that, while jurors may decline to speak publicly about the case, those who wish may indeed speak out. The result will permit future trials to be fair, while giving an already skeptical public a fuller sense of transparency about this important case. Mark R. Weaver has served as a magistrate, prosecutor and spokesman for the U.S.

Department of Justice in a legal career spanning 25 years; he now teaches a class dealing with the legal and ethical issues surrounding high-profile trials at the Ohio State University College of Law. Twitter: MarkRWeaver. SPENCER PLATTGETTY IMAGES The rise of Donald Trump in the political polls last year drove home the disgust voters feel toward mainstream politicians. 2015: a year to regret Last year saw a return of terrorism, political partisanship and an unhappy electorate America between white police officers and black citizens, suggesting a new phase of racial unrest may be in store for the country's major cities. Most of all, the year marked a major disintegration in the public mood.

There was deep internal disaffection from the historic American optimism to an atmosphere of partisan hate and anger toward the whole political process, leading to a wave of hostility and distrust affecting both political parties. Within the Republican Party especially, a developing showdown between the traditional establishment of older, relatively centrist figures, and younger, upcoming doctrinaire conservatives was tearing the Grand Old Party apart Cultural differences regarding race, religion and sexual mores pulled it more rightward than ever, as new voices drowned out the old and propelled outsiders into the political arena, with mostly destructive influence. To hordes of Americans, politics was perceived more than ever as a dishonorable and corrupt endeavor propelling non-politicians like real-estate tycoontelevision celebrity Donald Trump, soft-spoken retired neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson and former corporate executive Carly Fiorina onto the national political stage. Their emergence spurred a host of experienced officeholders at the national and state levels, most of them confirmed conservatives, to enter the race for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination.

No single establishment or moderate figure yet surfaced around whom the old guard could coalesce to combat the outsiders. One early entrant, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, son of one former president and brother of another, raised an impressive campaign treasury but proved to be a halting and unimpressive candidate. In short order, Mr. Trump, with a highly unorthodox, self-aggrandizing manner, managed to mesmerize hundreds of thousands of angry andor disillusioned voters to his banner, grabbing and holding a commanding lead in the major public-opinion polls.

Many establishment Republicans warned first that Mr. Trump could never be nominated and then could never be elected. But they were unable by the end of 2015 to advance one of their own, or even a conservative, new or old, to join to derail the reckless, uncouth intruder. At year's end, there was much talk of the demise of the Republican Party itself unless an alternative to Mr. Trump could somehow materialize.

Through all this, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton managed to weather minor political squalls, seemingly en route to nomination over a surprisingly popular bid from democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, forecasting the GOP's worst nightmare: another President Clinton in 2016. Looking back, the Republicans appeared to have gotten the worst of it, while Democrat Obama had only a year left to produce a legacy worthy of the efforts he undertook in this era of partisan political combat and global turmoil. Jules Witcover is a syndicated columnist and former longtime writer for The Baltimore Sun. His latest book is "The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power" (Smithsonian Books).

His email is juleswitcovercomcast.net. By Jules Witcover long, 2015, and don't let the door hit you on the seat of your pants on the way out On second thought, let it give you a good strong whack. Here are some of the odious things the year brought us: First of all, a return of terrorism, abroad and at home, in Paris and San Bernardino in addition to those gruesome Middle East beheadings by agents of the emergent Islamic State. In Europe, there was the return of the Cold War and Russian imperialism. Former Soviet henchman Vladimir Putin's brazen seizure of Crimea in 2014 is still unchallenged, and his dreams of restoring the Soviet Union to its former superpower stature were sustained through 2015.

At home, there was a yearlong stagnation of the legislative process on Capitol Hill, as President Barack Obama continued to knock his head into Republican obstructionism and deep personal animosity toward him. At the same time, internal GOP dissension drove House Speaker John Boehner from office, though with a faint flickering of hope in a pledge from successor Paul Ryan to break the legislative logjam A struggling President Obama, having finally put the worst of the Great Recession he inherited behind him, was now weighed down by the continuing warfare in the Middle East that seven years earlier he had vowed to end, or at least extricate American from. Domestic tranquillity was shattered by continuing gun violence, particularly seen in an epidemic of street clashes in urban DOONESBURY BY GARRY TRUDEAU WHAT? NO, I JUST HOPE ALL WORKS 23 MOM, ARB YOU SURB THERE HA5NTBEEN SOME-MISTAKE? MOM.IUIAHT YOU TO HAVE HALE OF IT, OKAY? NO, NO, I ABSOLUTELY INSIST! 50! THAT'S CERTAINLY A REMARKABLE LOTTERY PRIZB, SIR. THEY SAY MONEY CAN REALLY CHAN6E PEOPLE. OKAY, 60, BUT THAT? MY FINAL.

OFFER! THAtS VERY GENEFOUS OF YOU, uui ruK. JUU: What Maryland thinks Should Martin O'Malley give up his bid for the presidency? Yes 89 No 10 Not sure 1 (771 votes, results not scientific) NEXT POLL: Should President Obama take executive action to curb what he's termed a U.S. "epidemic of gun Vote at baltimoresun.comvote (i tii 4..