Police drug sting makes community a safer place
The community of Bywater Mutual Homes Inc. wishes to express its heartfelt appreciation to the Annapolis City Police Department and the Anne Arundel County Police Department for their highly successful undercover drug sting in our community ("Impact of drug sweeps hailed," Feb. 1).
Their joint efforts led to the arrest of nine persons, none of whom were residents of Bywater, for various drug violations and one charge of possession of a handgun. Drugs, cash and eight vehicles were also seized.
Those arrested will be issued a notice banning them from future trespass on Bywater property. And we will make public any and all persons who persist in conducting illegal activity on our premises.
As we continue this ongoing struggle to make our community safe for our residents and their families, let's not forget those in other communities throughout Annapolis who are bombarded by illegal acts.
Let us work together to prevent the movement of these activities from one community to another. Residents, staff and other concerned entities have vowed to continue to use several crime-prevention tactics, such as the neighborhood watch program, to enhance the quality of life in Bywater.
Once again, we thank all who are helping to provide a safe environment for the families and visitors of Bywater.
Alma Cropper
Annapolis
The writer is president of the board of Bywater Mutual Homes Inc.
Sailing enthusiasts seek expanded coverage
In response to growing concern about The Sun's sailing coverage, I believe that it is not only important for The Sun to continue its sailing coverage, but increase it.
The world's biggest and longest-lasting ocean racing event is again coming to our backyard -- Baltimore and Annapolis -- next year.
In 1998, the event drew hundreds of thousands of spectators in Baltimore and Annapolis as well as one of the largest spectator fleets in the history of race-watching.
Many of these people, like myself, are active sailors on the Chesapeake Bay and beyond.
We read and respect The Sun and are very enthusiastic about seeing its coverage of sailing continue and grow.
Tucker Thompson
Annapolis
The writer represents Performance Sailing and Marketing.
Lee's legacy merits a place of honor
I question the sort of revisionist history columnist Matthew Buck must be teaching at the Gilman School these days ("Baltimore needs different statues," Opinion
Commentary, Jan. 31). But at the McDonogh School in the good old days, Paul Carre helped us understand that the War Between the States was not chiefly an anti-slavery crusade, but a deep social division over the question of the central government's authority to impose its will on sovereign states.
After anguished spiritual conflict, slavery opponent Robert E. Lee determined that his primary loyalty was to the Commonwealth of Virginia, rather than to the bureaucracy growing beneath the unfinished capitol dome.
Victors in a violent conflict usually claim the right to interpret its outcome as God's will, but honest scholars will admit that the burdens as well as the benefits of the Union's victory over the South haunt us to this day.
The failure of the industrial North, as well as the agricultural South, to achieve a true and just inter-racial society is only one among several tragic consequences of that war. And Lee was among the first and greatest of postwar leaders to turn from bitterness or profiteering to the education of a new generation of leaders who might build a better society.
At Lee's encouragement, his comrade in arms and peace, Col. William Allen, came to Maryland to be the first headmaster of the McDonogh School.
The school's purpose was to provide opportunity -- not for the liberal elite, but for the poor, mostly the orphans of that fratricidal conflict.
The legacy of Lee and Allen lives on in the institutions they nurtured.
To characterize such men merely as those who "fought on the wrong side of a 140-year-old conflict" and "left cities like Baltimore with a terrible legacy of racial segregation and division," or as "symbols" of "horrid crimes" of slaughter and "the enslavement and oppression of an entire people" is degrading slander, born of myopic obsession with today's politically correct formula rather than the broad perspective of balanced historical judgment.
Yes, let us have a statue as well as a boulevard commemorating the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., but let us not suggest that it replace the memorials to great men whom many of us honor for reasons far different from those Mr. Buck's column implied.
The Rev. Thomas W. Bauer
Pasadena
Sun should condemn Clintons' ugly exit ...
It is almost impossible to imagine the Clintons making a more disgraceful exit from the White House. First, there were reports that the Clinton White House staffers vandalized, through burglary, intentional destruction and graffiti, many office areas prior to their departure ("Bush aides say Clinton staffers left nasty mess," Jan. 27).
