Crack

The last man to take a horse to Belmont with a chance to snag the elusive final gem in the Triple Crown has some advice for Doug O'Neill. Stay true to the horse. "I think trainers going around asking other people what they should do, looking for how to handle it, that's stupid," Rick Dutrow, trainer of Big Brown in 2008, said in a phone interview Sunday. "It's got to be about your horse. Whatever anybody else did doesn't matter. You know your horse. " O'Neill, trainer of Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner I'll Have Another, has already disregarded common wisdom over the past three weeks.

The signs shout advertisements from the sidewalks: $1 crabs, day care open until midnight, cherry wood furniture and fresh starts after bankruptcy. They cover telephone poles and sprout up in medians, sometimes getting swept away by wind. And they really get under some people's skin. "It irritates me to no end," said Ed Bard, president of the Rockdale Civic & Improvement Association, who called fighting illegal signs "one of my passions. " Baltimore County code enforcement officials say they are cracking down on the common nuisance.

Deputed Testamony is 32-years-old. His dark brown coat is shaggy, and his biggest excitement is going into his paddock at Bonita Farm for three or four hours of grazing each day. He is a pensioner, an icon. The oldest living winner of a Triple Crown race. But when Billy Boniface looks at the horse in his paddock, he sees the striking colt that was born and trained at the family farm and raced to victory in the 1983 Preakness - the last horse bred or trained in Maryland to do so. "Oh my gosh, I still get goose bumps when I look at him and remember that day," said Boniface, who was 18 then and had just taken over the breeding operation at the farm.

A fellow named Joseph contacted me the other day. He's one of Baltimore's many drug addicts, still alive at 33, clean for once, and looking for a job. "I started smoking crack at the age of 14, shooting heroin at the age of 16," he says. "I am on parole and probation, and I can't find a job anywhere ... It seems like every time I get an interview, everything is great until they do a background check. I'm going to [violate my parole] soon due to non-payment of the [parole] supervision fees.

Tom opens calling it the "hardest fought season ever. " I'm not sure about that, but I will say that this is one with a lot of strong competitors, few loathsome personalities, and a satisfying final three. It starts with the pro dancers (the "real" pro dancers, not just the troupe) dancing to a song I would probably know if I were 20 years younger, but I'm not and the only 16-year-old in this house is a cat. At the end of the song, we get the pros walking the floor with their celebrity partners.

When Crack the Sky guitarist Rick Witkowski recalls the first time the band played Baltimore, his enthusiasm is palpable — as if the show happened just last night and not in the mid-1970s. "We walked into the club and got a standing ovation before we played one note," the 58-year-old remembers. "It was just really weird. People knew my name!" The West Virginia-rooted progressive rock act had been on a fruitless tour, supporting a pretty great debut LP that was receiving some of its most concentrated radio play in, of all places, Baltimore.

Regarding Baltimore schools CEO Andrés Alonso's handling of the cheating scandal in which test scores were altered by school personnel, when these devious practices became public the guilty teachers should have been charged with committing a crime, brought to trial and punished accordingly — through reductions of salary, probation or firing. Also, it is quite evident that these teachers had absolutely no respect for Mr. Alonso once they believed they could do as they pleased.

What is the matter with Maryland where the abuse of animals is tolerated? I am not a native of Maryland and am ashamed to say that I now live here. The reports of people abusing animals and the law doing nothing is appalling ("Task force works to end cruelty to animals," Oct. 12). Caroline Griffin, who is leading a Baltimore task force on animal cruelty, is trying, so let us support her with her request for three police officers dedicated to animal abuse. This must stop. It is criminal.

Police crack down on Frostburg binge drinking Maryland State Police say they are joining local law enforcement in a springtime crackdown on binge drinking in Frostburg, home to Frostburg State University. Capt. James Pyles said the effort began Friday and will continue through the spring. Besides increased patrols and visibility, police say they are collecting and analyzing intelligence on house parties held by unrecognized fraternities that are little more than drinking clubs.

An Abingdon man faces drug and traffic charges after police say he tried to flee a crash along U.S. Route 40 Wednesday and Harford County Sheriff's deputies recovered several grams of crack cocaine nearby. A deputy on Route 40 westbound near Abingdon Road tried to pull over a black 1993 Lexus about 9:15 p.m., according to a release from the sheriff's office, when the vehicle crashed into a barrier, hit a traffic sign and "went airborne" onto the other side of the highway. The Lexus hit a 2006 Honda Accord traveling east with four occupants, police said.

If you would like to open a bar or restaurant that sells alcoholic beverages on the Liberty Road corridor in Baltimore County, a liquor license will run you $2,000. About a 20-minute drive away, Joe's Crab Shack, a chain restaurant that's moving into the Hunt Valley Towne Centre, just paid $225,000 for its liquor license. The reason? An antiquated system that allots licenses by population in districts drawn decades ago and allows those licenses to be bought and sold on the open market.

In its own special way, my Xbox 360 let me know it was time for some spring cleaning this week. I could've danced with Bill Gates' minions and mailed in my system for service. Instead, like Sarah Palin, I went rogue.  Before we begin, let's get something straight: Microsoft didn't want me to do what I did to my Xbox. I had to break at least three different sticker seals that clearly stated that I was voiding any and all warranties by doing what I did. If you ever plan on sending your system to Microsoft for service or reselling it as a "pure" system, do not do what I'm about to describe.

Apprentice rider Sarah Rook , who missed nearly three months after breaking her left collarbone in a spill Jan. 5 at Laurel Park, made a triumphant return with a victory aboard Great Harbour ($7.20) in the seventh race on opening day of the spring meet at Pimlico Race Course . "I was locked and loaded with this one," Rook said. "I started getting back on horses about 31/2 weeks ago and feel really good. " Rook, 25, has bounced around the country in her quest to become a jockey.

In the prop department at Center Stage , crew members have worked themselves to the bone for their latest production. They had to create nearly 200 realistic-looking skulls and 400 femur, humerus and radius bones — not to mention pelvises — needed for the run of Martin McDonagh's bleak and brilliant comedy, "A Skull in Connemara," which closes next weekend. At each performance, two actors go through a pulverization ritual in Act 2, seizing mallets and laying waste to three skulls and a handful of other human remains sitting on top of a big wooden table.

For the better part of the past three years, Virginia enjoyed the rare luxury of knowing that the net on the defensive side of the field was filled by Adam Ghitelman. Ghitelman's nine-save performance in the national title game allowed him to ride off into the sunset with a NCAA crown - and left the Cavaliers with a decision to make regarding his successor. Coach Dom Starsia thinks he has found the right man in senior Rob Fortunato. “We feel like Rob Fortunato is the likely starter,” Starsia said.

City Councilman William H. Cole IV said Wednesday evening that his office told state assessors several years ago that they had mistakenly valued a large Federal Hill home as if it were a fraction of its true size. And Cole said others in the neighborhood had complained as well, yet the error was not fixed. "For whatever reason, this house has slipped through the cracks nine different ways to Sunday," Cole said during a hearing at City Hall. Assessment officials could not explain why the tips went unheeded.

The U.S. Attorney's Office approves reduced sentences for criminals who deserve them, but with the caveat that some crack cocaine dealers seeking early release from federal prison are violent. The Sun obscures the issue by claiming that federal crack guidelines led to convictions of "hundreds of thousands of petty offenders who were sentenced to long prison terms" ("Crack and the courts," Dec. 1). The truth is that only a few hundred Maryland drug dealers are eligible for sentence reductions.

THE future of America's cities is lying in isolettes in the neonatal intensive care unit of Bronx-Lebanon hospital.The bright room is filled with baby misery: babies born months too soon; babies born weighing little more than a hardcover book; babies that look like wizened old men in the last stages of a terminal illness, wrinkled skin clinging to chicken bones; babies who do not cry because their mouths and noses are full of tubes.Some of these babies' mothers are never coming back. The little boy born in June, the one who has had two operations, two major infections, and who has the enormous head and shrunken limbs of famine children, has had no contact with his mother since the cord was cut.A little girl is the second child born this year to one woman.

Employees from the U.S. Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Center (ECBC) recently afforded 24 high school students in Joppatowne High School's pre-engineering program the opportunity to experience real-world research and development processes conducted at ECBC. The group of juniors and seniors traversed a wide range of engineering career fields, and they were able to interact with subject matter experts that specialize in areas such as rapid prototyping, 3D laser scanning, and robotics detection.

With the Iowa caucuses just days away, the Republican crack-up threatens the future of the Grand Old Party more profoundly than at any time since the GOP's eclipse in 1932. That's bad for America. The crack-up isn't just Romney-the-smooth versus Gingrich-the-bomb-thrower. Not just House Speaker John Boehner, who keeps making agreements he can't keep, versus House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who keeps making trouble he can't control. And not just the GOP establishment versus the tea partiers.