History

I'm not saying that Jean Marbella deliberately tried to mislead readers in her recent column ("In all these sex scandals, see a double standard," Nov. 18) in which she implied that Bill Clinton had been impeached because he had had a sexual affair with a female intern in The White House. Nor am I saying that she tried to excuse his outrageous behavior by asserting, "...there's no shame in being a stud. " Truth be told, however, President Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives for committing perjury before a grand jury, and for obstructing justice.

When I saw the article on the front page of your newspaper about Negro Mountain ( "Controversy over 'Negro Mountain' reveals urban-rural divide," Feb. 21), I thought it was a joke! Are you kidding me? Enough is enough! You can't change history, only learn from it. And hopefully you don't let the bad things repeat themselves. We need to stop using the race card. I can't believe that anyone can find the name offensive especially when you know the meaning behind it! What an honor!

While reading G. Jefferson Price's column ("For Israel, it's different this time," Nov. 20), I was reminded of the quip "learned nothing, forgot nothing" describing a reactionary French royal family. Mr. Price displays the same distorted views toward Israel he showed 35 years ago when he was The Sun's Middle East correspondent, intervening events not budging his attitudes. According to Mr. Price, Israel "acts with impunity" against Palestinian Arabs and Lebanon. Unmentioned are thousands of Israeli casualties, two Arab uprisings, withdrawals from Gaza, Lebanon and major portions of the West Bank.

History is not a Hallmark card. Sometimes, history breaks your heart. I know this because I have often recounted history in this space, tales of black men and women bought and sold, cheated and mistreated, maimed and lynched. And whenever I do this, I can be assured of e-mails and calls of chastisement. I still remember one of the first, an earnest lady who pleaded with me to leave this history behind. Telling such tales, she said, could not help but make black people resent white ones.

I had to laugh at Mark Ryan's letter about George W. Bush claiming that "the man woke up every morning and tried to do what was best for all Americans" ("Bush will be lauded by history," April 30). Lying to get us into a war to try to finish what his daddy couldn't, which resulted in the deaths of so many U.S. soldiers, wasn't doing what is best for all Americans. It was what was best for himself. Also, Mr. Ryan's remark that "Mr. Bush will go down in history rated far better than the presidents before and after him" is wishful thinking.

So you lived through the great snow of 2010. But will you remember it by anything other than a blinding snapshot of white? "All of this will be ephemera and will disappear unless there's some effort to collect it and institutionalize it," said Maryland archivist Edward C. Papenfuse, who's pushing for an electronic archive. "It's very important from the standpoint of understanding community history." Not to mention personal history. People across the Mid-Atlantic are Tweeting, Facebooking, photographing and recording the storm - Snowmaggedon?

The Sun would seem to favor raising taxes especially for the Transportation Trust Fund ("A silver lining," April 12). But would the transportation fund need additional money if governors past and present had not been allowed to raid it to cover their spending? Tell us how much was taken from the fund in the last 6 to 10 years. Would the amount start with a "B"? Vivian Vann, Glen Burnie

Always, there were those lovely old country estates and gracious manor taverns with roaring fireplaces, but in the old days fine dining was associated with the city. Not so anymore. Now, there are more compelling reasons than ever for diners to cross county lines for a good meal. The 50 best county restaurants in Howard County, Anne Arundel County and Baltimore County is a mix of the old and the new, destinations for special occasions and joints for Monday night suppers, the chef-driven and crowd-pleasing.

With great interest I read Frederick N. Rasnmussen's piece on "Chills at sight of United States' return" (March 12) I'd like to add a personal comment. Not only were I and my young wife privileged to be on that maiden voyage from New York to LeHavre, France -- it was our honeymoon trip -- but a substantial number of young German students shared that privilege. Just a few years after the conclusion of World War II, the U.S. Congress passed a law according to which young Germans and Japanese, members of the major defeated nations in World War II, were invited to spend a year at U.S. colleges and universities, essentially to learn about the American way of life, about American democracy, all of this at the expense of the American tax payer.

T exas Sets a Dangerous Precedent The Texas State Board of Education recently recommended sweeping alterations for the textbooks it buys, casting American history in a more conservative light. As Texas is the largest single consumer of textbooks because of the nature of its statewide book ordering system, its standards are adopted by the publishing companies, and thus any changes it makes are made to the textbooks that 80 percent of American students read. The changes are typical of Fox News/Glenn Beck extreme-right bias, which is to be expected from a board dominated by ultraconservatives.