As interpreted, this clause means that incarcerated individuals must receive basic medical care. That cost is included in the average amount of $22,000 annually that taxpayers pay to keep one person incarcerated in this country.
It doesn't seem fair that convicted criminals receive a basic right that law-abiding Americans do not have.
Linda Fleischer The writer is chair of the Community College of Baltimore County's Criminal Justice Studies Program.
Feral cats are a problem
To those proclaiming that "the cats did nothing wrong" in the case of the feral felines living outside North Baptist ("Church relents on feeding ban," July 19), neither do rats, mice or other vermin that roam the habitats in which humans dwell. Feral cat feces and the cats' potential as rabies carriers are enough to make them a nuisance and public threat. One can minister to humans and have compassion for animals without creating some artificial utopia where animals and all the potential problems they bring are brushed aside in lieu of some Disney-like falsity.
Cats, like mice, rats, foxes, squirrels, raccoons, opossums and the like are animals, not babies, and not equals to humans because there is a natural order.
As to these abundant feral cats, aren't the same people who feed and support the cats putting felines above the many species of animals who fall prey to them? Of course they are. That is what the natural order, the food chain, requires, and humans are at the top of it.
The solution? Take a cat home or be quiet and let property owners deal with nuisance animals the way that they need to best utilize their property.
Bill Burnham, Baltimore
No to single track
I couldn't believe that the city of Baltimore and MTA would even think to consider a single track as a compromise to developing the new light rail line ("Single-track minds," July 21).
All this does is delay the process of building something correctly the first time and instead forces the taxpayers to incur even larger costs. How is doing a job poorly and delaying costs a better solution to the controversy?
If the MTA had built the light rail system properly and effectively initially, all this current discussion would be nonexistent and we would have tons of people riding public transportation.
So, why not build the system correctly when you have the chance? Why defer costs that in the long run will only cost more in delays, bad public perception by riders and inflated costs due to deferred costs? It seems to me the right thing is to build it and do it correctly now.
Keith Carey
