Ignorance

When a warrant for his arrest arrived at his mother's house, Bryan Bookman went to the district court in Essex to clear up the matter. "That's when I was handcuffed and shackled, right on the spot, like I was a common criminal," said Bookman, who didn't have the money to post bail and spent the night in the Baltimore County Jail in Towson. His crime? Failure to show up in court for a small claims case. Debtors' prison, where people are incarcerated for owing money, seems like something out of another century.

The drumbeat for weeks has been that $85 billion in across-the-board federal spending cuts known as the sequester would be so horrendous for the economy that lawmakers in Washington would be forced to compromise by the March 1 deadline. When no deal was reached, not only did the stock market shrug it off, but the Dow Jones industrial average of 30 blue-chip stocks soared to new heights. On Tuesday, the Dow blew past its old record of 14,164.53 from Oct. 9, 2007, and continued to climb, ending the week at 14,397.

Dr. Ben Carson deplores the moral decay in our society and argues that we are less civilized than we used to be ("Remarks vault Carson into the political arena," Feb. 18). I doubt, however, whether Dr. Carson would prefer to be living several generations ago when an African American was not even admitted into a venerable institution like Johns Hopkins, much less appointed to head one of its divisions. It was through the efforts of many individuals and groups, including progressive Democrats that he is now criticizing, that achieved this remarkable progress in our society.

In his recent State of the State speech, Gov. Martin O'Malley said, "Our story, Maryland's story, is the story of better choices and better results. " This is certainly the kind of high rhetorical flourish we have come to expect from state leaders during legislative session time in Annapolis. Mr. O'Malley's rosy rhetoric reminded me of another former governor who harbored presidential ambitions: Ronald Reagan, who once said, "Facts are stubborn things. " In assessing the economic health of our state, I'm inclined to focus on the facts.

A couple of years ago at Slate , Farhad Manjoo posted a little rant about people who insist on typing two spaces after a period, even though in our age of computerized proportional type it is not only unnecessary but contraindicated. The article proved to be so successful at what H.L. Mencken liked to call "stirring up the animals" that Slate republished it last month . The recent results were equally gratifying. Though somewhat more literate than the "your a moron" comments one commonly encounters on the Internet, the responses nicely match intemperance with ignorance.

What an ignorant, dishonest and pathetic response to Sandy Hook today from the National Rifle Association. As a media critic, I will limit myself to the disingenuous attack on the media from Wayne LaPierre, chief executive of the organization. Of course, it's a shameless attempt to avoid accepting any responsibility by his organization. But in the interest of a sane discussion about media violence -- rather than the demagogued, crazy-right-wing-paranoid speechifying of LaPierre -- some social science research, facts and context need to be presented.

Neil Simon's column on the new U.S.-Russia trade law could not be further from the truth when it states that Sen. Benjamin Cardin has "catapulted human rights atop the international agenda ("Cardin stands up for rights," Dec. 12). Senator Cardin talks about freedom and democracy for everyone except the Palestinians, who have been suffering under a brutal Israeli occupation for 45 years. They have been victims of land and water theft, home demolitions, targeted assassinations, mass arrests, torture and a blockade of Gaza that is strangling the civilian population.

In her latest column, "Maryland's debt bomb" (Dec. 5), Marta Mossburg cites a report by the State Budget Solutions that Maryland's "pension obligations to state employees are about $48.2 billion. " Ms. Mossburg and other critics of defined benefit plans continue to make such erroneous assertions by calculating public pension liabilities using economic assumptions and financial theory that comport with neither historical experience nor accounting standards endorsed by the Government Accounting Standards Board, the Government Accountability Office, or any other credible accounting or actuarial authority.

This weekend, The Sun ran a story that looked at how the hiring and tenure of a temporary employee--who faces sexual abuse charges and was found to have misrepresented himself and his credentials--aligned with the district's temporary employee policies. The Sun has been reporting on the story of Shawn Nowlin, who officials say posed in a series of capacities at Hazelwood Elementary/Middle School, including the school's therapist, since Sept. 2011. You can find that coverage here.

Op-ed contributor G. Jefferson Price III ("For Israel, it's different this time," Nov. 20) alleges that "Israeli leaders have consistently obstructed and resisted arrangements that would have brought a dignified peace to the region. " As in 2000 and 2001, when with the United States, Israel offered Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat a West Bank and Gaza Strip state with eastern Jerusalem as its capital in exchange for peace - but he refused and launched the second intifada? As in 2001, when Israel and the United States repeated the deal, but Arafat continued the terror war?