Dictator

Governor O'Malley is determined to show off his power again by calling for a special session of the legislature. What a little boy he is. For him it's always "my way or the highway!" When will Marylanders learn that it is past time to turn these Democrats out? F. Cordell

Editor: In response to "Harford County Council passes resolution condemning state gun law" (May 15th, 2013): The article quotes a Harford County Councilman who questioned the objectivity of gun policy research at Johns Hopkins University because New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is a major benefactor.  I direct the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, and have been conducting research on gun policy for the past 23 years....

Hafez el Assad is the dictator's dictator: strong, long-lasting, and if not beloved, at least not reviled by his people.The leader of Syria, who will meet President Clinton in Geneva today, has been said to be comparable to Saddam Hussein, only smarter. There are many similarities, though the two autocrats -- are old and committed foes.The comparison is key to a question at the heart of today's Geneva summit: Is the United States making the same mistake by dealing with Mr. Assad that it made with Mr. Hussein?

Winter skiing, springtime on the links, summer sailing and autumn leaf-peeping - the weather forecast is the driving force behind the planning of many vacations. But when it comes to predicting the weather, WBAL meteorologist Tony Pann takes it all in stride. Pann grew up in the blustery, changeable climate of Chicago, and has since delivered the weather report for television stations in New York and Washington, as well as Baltimore. "I've seen it all," he says good-naturedly.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Until this week, the chief judge in Saddam Hussein's genocide trial had seemed to be just what the chaotic judicial process against Iraq's former ruler needed: He was stern, judicious, efficient and brisk, and court sessions were proceeding in a disciplined fashion. Then yesterday, Abdullah al-Amiri, a 25-year veteran of Iraq's judiciary, made a startling comment that dropped jaws inside the courtroom in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone and raised fresh questions over the fairness of the effort to bring Hussein to justice, telling the former dictator that he does not believe that he was in fact a "dictator."

THE MEETING of the People's Consultative Assembly of Indonesia, starting today, is the last chance President Suharto has to commit his nation to reforms to end its economic crisis, meet International Monetary Fund requirements, diminish his family's stranglehold on the national wealth and promise the people a better future. There is scant hope that he will.When the assembly winds up March 11, "electing" the military dictator to a sixth term as president and presumably his anti-reform crony, B. Jusuf Habibie, as vice president, it may be too late.

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - An appeals court in Chile has revoked the immunity from prosecution granted in 2002 to the country's former military dictator, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, reopening the possibility that he might be brought to trial for human rights abuses committed during the nearly 17 years he was in power. In a 14-9 decision, the judges rejected yesterday the arguments of Pinochet's lawyers that he is incapable of facing such charges because he suffers from senile dementia. The verdict was so unexpected that one of the lawyers who filed the request early this month to strip the former dictator of immunity, Juan Subercaseaux, described it as "a miracle."

COMALAPA, Guatemala - From behind bolted doors after dark, Vidalia Chali places blame for Guatemala's crippling climate of violence in an unusual place: the 1996 peace accords that ended the nation's civil war. "The criminals are taking advantage of the peace," said the peasant woman, 33, holding her 3-year-old daughter. "People say that since there is peace, the police can't do anything to them." That belief explains why Chali and others may be tempted to vote in today's presidential election for the firm hand of former dictator Efrain Rios Montt, even in this valley where 108 massacre victims were exhumed this year from mass graves, many of them dating to Rios Montt's rule in the early 1980s.

The judge presiding in Saddam Hussein's genocide trial shocked prosecutors and others with that comment, offered last week in the midst of trial testimony. The comments came one day after prosecutors demanded al-Amiri's resignation, complaining that he was too soft on Saddam. ?You are not a dictator. It is the people who surround a man who make him a dictator.? Abdulla al-Amiri

RASSIM AL-JUMAILI, 69 Iraqi comedian Rassim al-Jumaili, a veteran Iraqi comedian who left his homeland after the U.S. invasion and portrayed a sarcastic dictator in his final role this year, died of heart disease yesterday in Syria, where he fled in 2003, Iraq's Sharqiyah satellite channel reported. Mr. al-Jumaili's last role was in the series The Leader, which drew a large Iraqi audience during the holy month of Ramadan. In it he played an unnamed dictator. The series was believed to be a parody of the post-Saddam Hussein administration.

Perhaps you remember when Dr. Doom conquered the world. Or perhaps you don't. Sadly enough, even in this day and age, not everyone is comic book literate. Suffice it to say, then, that back in the 1980s, Marvel Comics published a graphic novel in which the villainous Victor von Doom achieved his dearest goal: to rule the world. And he made it a better place, too. Famine ended, the stock market climbed, crime fell, occupying armies withdrew, racial oppression vanished. Doom turned the planet into a paradise, and the only cost of his beneficence was free will.

The recent column by two law school professors urging President Barack Obama to "bypass Congress" by making law through executive orders is truly alarming ("Bypass Congress," Dec. 27). The Revolutionary War was fought for our freedom from the King of England who made arbitrary laws with no accountability, no restraints, no constitution. The system of checks and balances with three independent branches of government was designed to protect us from a president who would envision himself as a king who can do no wrong, who can by the "stroke of a pen" as the law professors say, make law according to his own personal whims.

Sometime this year, the BWI Marshall Airport fire and rescue department will begin billing people for ambulance rides to the hospital. The move, dictated by the General Assembly last year, follows a statewide trend to try to recover some emergency medical costs from insurance companies. Montgomery County, the state's most populous jurisdiction, began charging Jan. 1. "It's become pretty standard in the aviation industry and in EMS in general," said Paul Wiedefeld, the airport's executive director.

The "Unhappy Halloween, Hon" (Nov. 3) commentary by Michael Cross-Barnet was a scream. Like a Holy Roman emperor or a demented totalitarian dictator, it dictated what was appropriate free speech for all times and all places. It also chastised the owner of Cafe Hon for apologizing for a Halloween depiction of a white person with a black face only twice and not at least three times. Moreover, the writer actually spelled out in several sentences what it deemed as the only appropriate wording of a theoretical third apology by the Cafe Hon . And what was the Hon's verbal trespass?

The massive Sparrows Point complex changed ownership Friday for the fifth time in less than a decade, potentially its last sale as a steel mill. The new owners, redevelopment firm Environmental Liability Transfer and liquidator Hilco Trading, paid $72.5 million for property that sold for $810 million just four years ago. About 2,000 people worked at the mill before seller RG Steel idled it after filing for bankruptcy in late May, and they were...

Governor O'Malley is determined to show off his power again by calling for a special session of the legislature. What a little boy he is. For him it's always "my way or the highway!" When will Marylanders learn that it is past time to turn these Democrats out? F. Cordell

Gen. Andres Rodriguez,73, who ousted Paraguay's dictator in a 1989 coup and steered the country back to democracy, died of cancer Monday in Asuncion, Paraguay.He was dictator Alfredo Stroessner's right-hand man and commander of Paraguay's 3,000-man 1st Army Corps for almost three decades. He rebelled in 1989 and as many as 500 soldiers were killed. He went on to win the presidency in an election three months later and held office until 1993.Mr. Stroessner was sent into exile in Brazil, where he still lives at age 84.Diosdado P. Macapagal,86, the president who introduced the Philippines' first tentative land reform law, died of a heart attack Monday in Manila.

The Obama administration's continued indifference to the actions of the Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez is dangerous on several fronts ("Hugo Chavez compares his rival to Mitt Romney," July 23). President Barack Obama recently made the startling comment that Mr. Chavez poses no threat to U.S. national security. Yet the Venezuelan dictator has shown off Russian weaponry and Iranian drones and extended his country's hospitality to Hezbollah, which has been permitted to establish training camps on Margarita Island.

The Obama administration's continued indifference to the actions of the Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez is dangerous on several fronts ("Hugo Chavez compares his rival to Mitt Romney," July 23). President Barack Obama recently made the startling comment that Mr. Chavez poses no threat to U.S. national security. Yet the Venezuelan dictator has shown off Russian weaponry and Iranian drones and extended his country's hospitality to Hezbollah, which has been permitted to establish training camps on Margarita Island.

I have habitually and patiently read Thomas F. Schaller's column for some time now. His most recent ("An American recipe for class immobility," Feb. 21) warrants a response. First of all, I am hopeful that Mr. Schaller understands the fundamental differences between Scandinavian countries (with roughly 26 million homogenous inhabitants) and the United States (a nation of 310 million multi-ethnic residents). Let's not forget some salient political and economic differences: Denmark has one of the most stringent immigration regulations in the European Union.