Common Sense

I confess that I haven't read every article related to the use of restrooms by transgender people, but I need to make a few comments. If someone is a transgender female, I presume that this person will be dressed as a woman. If so, it is obvious to me that this person could not enter the men's room to go to the bathroom. In the ladies' room there are booths, and I would never have any idea of what goes on there. How could someone even know if it is being used by a male dressed as a female?

I found the editorial, "Europe's lesson for the GOP" (May 10) to be very interesting and somewhat perverted as it became a critique of the GOP for protecting rich people from paying taxes and not about fiscal management to avoid a crisis. I saw underPresident George W. Bushthe direction the United States was headed, and I felt that even he was spending too much taxpayer money. To lessen this nation's impending economic doom, I felt major belt tightening was in order. The Obama administration has not only horrified me, but also in my opinion it has prolonged the ordeal with its fiscal policy and Congress' rubber stamp.

I was very happy to see that additional development was barred at Green Spring Station and that common sense prevailed in our county's decision making. Anyone who travels through this intersection during the week days, especially rush hours, can tell you this is a failing intersection that it fully deserves its "F" rating. To those legislators who upgraded it as a "D" rating, I would suggest that without major improvements in place beforehand, any further development at Green Spring Station would overnight decrease its rating to a "F". For this reason, I believe the restriction that prohibits development only near "F" rated intersections should be expanded to include "D" rated roadways and intersections; this is only common sense, guys.

The tea partiers are enjoying their day in the sun, but coffee is the beverage preferred by most Americans, and we don't have time to gang up and holler and wave our arms -- we prefer to sit quietly with coffee in hand and read a reliable newspaper and try to figure out what's going on in the world. Great heaps of dead bodies are moved by front-loaders and dumped, uncounted, unidentified, into open pits in a stricken country while people feast and walk treadmills on enormous cruise ships sailing a hundred miles off the coast en route to the Bahamas and Jamaica.

Last week, a federal district judge in New York ruled that girls younger than 17 should be allowed to purchase the Plan B contraceptive pill over the counter. Unlike the Obama administration, Judge Edward Korman got this one right. The 2011 decision by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to restrict access for younger girls not only denied them a safe and legal means to prevent unwanted pregnancy but ignored all scientific evidence that supported its access. Emergency contraceptive pills, commonly known as "Plan B," are drugs that work to prevent pregnancy if taken shortly after sexual intercourse.

Maryland Comptroller Peter Franchot's recent letter to the editor stating his opposition to another debt ceiling increase says it all ("Maryland can't keep borrowing and spending," Jan. 4). As a "proud Democrat," Mr. Franchot writes, "my vote last month to oppose an increase in the state's debt ceiling wasn't based upon my party or philosophy, but on sheer common sense. " I've known all along that Democrats have no common sense, and now they've said it in print. R.A. Hausmann, Joppa

As a recent letter to the editor noted, studies have shown that a gun in the home increases the risk of suicide, murder and accidents ("Arming school employees only raises danger," April 7). As a footnote to all the media coverage about the massacre that occurred in Newtown, Conn., it should be noted that had Adam Lanza's mother taken the precautions needed and necessary to having guns in her home with an unstable individual having access to them, just maybe this terrible shooting would not have occurred.

Reading the area newspapers the last few weeks has been very confusing. On the front page of one it talks about funding the educations of illegal aliens while on the very same page it talks about defunding our Distinguished Scholars (that would be the legal students who worked very hard). If you turned to the next page you could read all about Maryland's great schools yet still find a chart showing the student groups who are being left behind and forced to take remedial classes in college just to compete (after graduating from these "great schools")

Given how the whole country appears to be super-polarized these days, an American learns to savor the times when fellow citizens on the right, the left and in the middle agree on something. This doesn't happen very much, but when it does, it's almost inspiring. I've only seen it a few times over all my years of watching local, state and national politics, and the one area of public interest that had, surprisingly, a lot of common ground was criminal justice. There's still disagreement over the death penalty, though polling suggests not as much as a couple of decades ago. But everyone agrees that the first order of business is public safety, protecting us from violent offenders.