Evil

"A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government," by Gary Wills. Simon & Schuster. 352 pages. $25."A Necessary Evil" could have been a very short book. Americans distrust government for the same reason that beaten dogs fear men with sticks, end of story. This immigrant nation, after all, is overwhelmingly peopled with citizens whose ancestors fled abusive governments (or religious authorities), and for many, experience with government even after clearing Ellis Island has been less than satisfactory.

Excerpt of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's speech on the war. The Arabic broadcast was translated by the Associated Press: When they exhausted all pretexts and covers, the aggressors and occupiers came with their black faces showing evil canine teeth and exposing their true nature as we used to know them and their intentions. You know, brothers, that our policy is to avoid evil, but when evil comes to us wielding its perfidious and destructive weapons, then an attitude of glory and jihad should be adopted, an attitude that pleases them as well as God. Thus today you, great Iraqi men and noble women and our brave armed forces, adopt that attitude.

A Baltimore-based advocacy group critical of the portrayal of a blind man on the ABC sitcom "Good & Evil" has called off plans to dump Lipton tea into New York harbor following an announcement by the beverage's parent company that it would no longer advertise on the show.But members of the National Federation of the Blind picketed outside the ABC offices in New York and Washington yesterday afternoon and last night in a continuation of a month-long effort to get the network to take the show off the air."

Even to speak of it in a serious way is to feel a bit like a rube, a yokel from some backwater where nobody ever heard of clinical depression, sociopathy or any of the other terminology we use to explain the cruelties human beings sometimes perpetrate. To ascribe such behaviors to something so vague and indefinable is faintly embarrassing. But it also feels unavoidable, given the awful anniversary we observe this week. Ten years ago Monday, two boys, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, walked into Columbine High in Littleton, Colo.

Come Halloween, costumed witches and goblins won't be haunting Bethel Baptist Church in Ellicott City -- the Rev. Bruce A. Romoser says they're not welcome.Instead, he wants children to dress as shepherds, angels and other biblical figures as part of an alternative, Christian-themed event known as "Hallelujah Night.""We don't want them to come as witches . . . Frankenstein . . . no kinds of evil costumes," said Mr. Romoser, who is concerned about what he sees as the emphasis on evil in some more traditional Halloween observances.

AUSTIN, Texas - Until a few days ago, it seemed there were only two ways we could possibly lose the war in Afghanistan at this late date. The first was if great numbers of Afghans starve to death this winter, thus canceling out the good we have done by getting rid of the Taliban and inciting a new wave of terrorists. The second would be an Islamist uprising in Pakistan, the overthrow of President Pervez Musharraf and war between India and Pakistan, thus rather more than canceling out any good we have done.

THE RAVENS play the Raiders Sunday for the American Football Conference championship, and, while I'll be rooting for Baltimore big-time, in the deep recesses of my soul a demented Other likes the team from Oakland. I checked again last night, and, unfortunately, the monster is not dead. Somewhere inside a mad scientist is yelling, "It's alive! It's alive!" Please, before you gather the torches and pitchforks and start hunting me down, allow an explanation. What I have - a lingering, juvenile affection for the bad-boy Oakland Raiders that goes back to the second Super Bowl - is something that afflicts a lot of guys my age. Ask around, and you'll find plenty of baby boomers who got attached to the Raiders back in the 1960s and 1970s - despite having a home team to root for - and who still think they're way cool, in an evil sort of way. I don't think this happened much around Baltimore.

I hope this column makes you sick. See, we'll be talking about Nazis, something many of us are doing lately. Indeed, just this week a fellow named Joseph e-mailed me about a caller he heard on a radio show. The man, vexed over health-care reform, likened President Obama to Adolf Hitler. Asked why, he said, "Hitler took over the car companies, then health care and then he killed the Jews." Said Joseph: "I almost swerved my vehicle off the road when I heard that." But the caller is hardly unique.

The father of a Baltimore toddler found dead in the front seat of a car in a remote area of a Northeast Baltimore industrial park Friday night has been charged with killing her in a crime a police spokesman decribed yesterday as "evil."Richard A. Nicolas, 31, of the 500 block of Orkney Road was charged yesterdaymorning with first-degree murder and use of a handgun in commission of a felony in the death of 2-year-old Aja Nicolas, said Agent Robert W. Weinhold Jr., a police spokesman."When you think of a child's innocence and how that child trusts a parent, it's beyond human comprehension how someone could commit such an evil act," Weinhold said.

For all the caffeine consumed onstage, Coffee With Richelieu never generates much of a buzz. Perhaps that's because while the actors sip espressos, a skim latte, a cafe mocha and more, the audience is given just a few watered-down ideas. Playwright Norman Allen has taken the old tale of The Three Musketeers and bumped it out, in the way that homeowners bump out a rancher that's charming and cozy but a bit too small for their growing family. In this case, what seems to be too small for Allen is 17th-cen- tury notions of good vs. evil.