Documents

Barry H. Landau, the once-esteemed collector of presidential memorabilia, was sentenced seven years in federal prison Wednesday for stealing thousands of historic documents from archives and libraries in Baltimore and up the East Coast. The 64-year-old was also ordered to pay roughly $46,000 in restitution. No sentencing date is yet set for his 25-year-old accomplice, Jason James Savedoff, who, like Landau, has pleaded guilty to theft of major artwork and conspiracy charges. More than 10,000 “objects of cultural heritage” worth more than $1 million - including letters signed by George Washington, John Hancock, John Adams, Karl Marx, Marie Antoinette and Napoleon Bonaparte - were recovered from Landau's Manhattan apartment, according to court records.

The Fast and Furious controversy that is finally being reported to the public by the liberal, pro-Obama administration media reminds me of how a similar episode unfolded that ultimately caused Richard Nixon to resign his presidency because of critical information that he did not want to make public but was forced to by the Supreme Court. One wonders whether Attorney General Eric Holder and maybe President Barack Obama have similar critical information about Fast and Furious that if made public would jeopardize their jobs.

Most Americans probably haven't given much thought to the botched gun trafficking investigation by theBureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosivesknown as "Fast and Furious. " What they do know are probably the most embarrassing details - agents lost track of 2,000 guns that were allowed to "walk" in order to investigate higher-ups in a drug cartel, and two ATF weapons were found at the scene of a 2010 shootout in which a U.S. Border Patrol agent was killed. But this week, the matter is threatening to evolve into something much larger.

The six suspects arrested in a federal sting in Hampden on Thursday planned to kill a co-conspirator in a robbery who was actually an undercover ATF agent, according to court documents. Unbeknownst to the suspects, the robbery plot was a ruse - part of a series of Baltimore operations set up by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in recent months. For the second time, gunfire erupted in a public place as authorities moved in for the arrest, this time in the 3300 block of Clipper Mill Rd. Charged in the case are Tracey TheraldineÖ Betters, 20; Blake Aristotle Betters, 23; Brandon Harris, 20; John McLaurin, 22; Aaron Walker, 23; and 18-year-old IsiahÖ Benjamin.

Public records show that employees of Anne Arundel County Executive John R. Leopold improperly accessed databases to gather information on at least three people on an "enemies" list, the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland said Tuesday. One of the so-called enemies was Lewis Bracy, a recently retired National Security Agency police officer and community activist who has not previously been associated with Leopold's alleged dossiers, according to the ACLU, which obtained the records through a public information request to the state.

When Baltimore City Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke visited Abbottston Elementary after news broke that the school had cheated on state testing for students in 2009, she despaired because she never believed Principal Angela Faltz, whom she had known for decades, could cheat her children or her community. "But there was nothing to be done about it at the time," Clarke recalled in an interview Friday. "I was able to give Dr. Faltz a hug, and then we never saw her again. " Now, after lengthy investigations, Faltz and Assistant Principal Marcy Isaac have been recommended for reinstatement, with full back pay, by independent hearing officers.

In a blow to the Baltimore school system's crusade to hold principals responsible for suspected cheating in schools, independent hearing officers have recommended that two administrators who were removed from Abbottston Elementary should be reinstated amid a flawed investigation and a lack of credible evidence provided by the school system. In documents obtained by The Sun this week, the hearing officers raised critical issues about how the system went about establishing fault on the part of the school's administrators.

Joanna Sullivan knows what she saw Saturday night as she and her husband peered through the window of their home overlooking Patterson Park - more than 20 youths involved in a "melee" on the tennis courts. But police statistics and incidents reports won't show that any such incident took place. The reason points to a disconnect between residents' experiences with crimes and longstanding police policies. The incident occurred at about 9 p.m. on the Patterson Park tennis courts.

Gov. Martin O'Malley has long promised that Baltimore and the Washington suburbs would each get a new light-rail line and that the Red Line and its Purple counterpart outside D.C. could be built at the same time. But state financial documents recently submitted to the Federal Transit Administration show that O'Malley's promise, to the state's most populous regions, will be difficult — if not impossible — to keep. The General Assembly's recent rejection of the governor's proposed gas tax hike makes it increasingly likely that the state will have to choose to build one line before the other, state and local transportation officials say. With no new tax revenue dedicated to transportation, finding the money for even one of the light-rail lines will be difficult, the officials say. The state hoped to begin construction on both lines in 2015, with the 14-mile Red Line — which would ultimately run from Woodlawn to the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center — opening in early 2021 and the 16-mile Purple Line opening between Bethesda and New Carrollton by late 2020.