Innocent Bystanders

THE news is seething with unanswered questions. Why, for instance, is the government willing to raise taxes on tobacco but not on alcohol to finance a national health program? Surely booze matches smoke as a health menace, doesn't it? Is it because the anti-smoke lobby has muscle while the temperance lobby has none? Or because pols of both parties fear the booze lobby's power to anger millions of beer-sodden televiewers?Speaking of the health program, why are lawyers (namely, both Clintons and most of the Congress)

City police say the 19-year-old woman who was killed in a triple shooting outside a Better Waverly deli Saturday night was an innocent bystander, and the men who survived the incident are not cooperating with investigators. Tanise Ervin graduated recently from W.E.B. Du Bois High School and was an employee at a fast-food restaurant, family and friends said. She hoped to attend Coppin State University in the fall to study nursing. She lived with her mother at Serenity Place, an apartment building on Gorsuch Avenue.

Billy Winebrenner, the Middle River youth who died Sunday after being shot during a Labor Day robbery at the service station where he worked, is but the latest victim of an epidemic of handgun homicides that is sweeping Maryland and the nation. In cities and suburbs, law enforcement authorities report a rapidly escalating level of gun violence that could make 1990 one of the bloodiest years on record.A recent Justice Department study revealed that some 639,000 Americans are threatened annually by offenders armed with handguns.

An exhibition at a New York museum celebrating the Abraham Lincoln Brigade - a band of left-wing, largely communist American volunteers who fought against Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War about 70 years ago - is criticized by anti-Stalinist historians for its hagiographic bias. That was in March. An article co-written by a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of J. Robert Oppenheimer suggests that former State Department official Alger Hiss was not a Soviet spy in the 1930s after all. In it, another State Department functionary is posthumously identified as the spy - although he is obviously innocent - and the article is contemptuously (and justifiably)

City police are investigating a string of homicides in the past two days, the most recent of which occurred yesterday evening in Southwest Baltimore.Police said Byron Reed, 16, of the 100 block of S. Morley St. was fatally shot about 6 p.m. in the 700 block of Yale Ave.About 3:45 p.m. yesterday, 19-year-old Jermaine Wright of the 2300 block of Odell Ave. was shot to death during an argument near his home. Police arrested a 17-year-old male suspect in that case.Six people have been killed in the city since 1 p.m. Monday, when police discovered the body of Charles Frank Brannon, 56, who apparently was stabbed in his bathtub in an apartment complex in the 2300 block of Winchester St.Officer Sabrina V. Tapp-Harper, a police spokeswoman, said he was the resident maintenance worker.

It's "what did they know and when did they know it?" time for the tobacco industry in Washington.That favorite question of congressional investigators is becoming especially painful for tobacco peddlers. Evidence keeps cropping up that major tobacco companies knew at least a decade ago and probably three decades ago how harmful cigarettes were to smokers' health. Yet their chief executive officers and at least one top researcher persist in testifying that they have no reason to believe tobacco is addictive or can cause fatal illnesses.

Most of the 3,200 workers at the Baltimore General Motors Corp. plant were laid off today and the plant was shut down after negotiations failed to end a strike at a parts plant in Lordstown, Ohio."

"As to delay, sufficient manpower is a prerequisite for controlling potentially dangerous crowds; the speed with which it arrives may well determine whether the situation can be controlled. In the summer of 1967, we believe that delay in mobilizing help permitted several incidents to develop into dangerous disorders, in the end requiring far more personnel and creating increased hazards to life and property." -- Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, 1968.The public safety establishments in Los Angeles, Sacramento and Washington had every reason to be prepared for trouble in Los Angeles if the police officers charged with beating Rodney King were acquitted.

WASHINGTON -- The situation in Kosovo is rapidly taking on the dimensions of a disaster -- militarily and politically.The principal victims are the innocent bystanders -- in this instance, the tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians driven out of their homes.But one tangential added casualty of the disaster in Kosovo may be President Clinton's last shred of credibility as a national leader. It is clear that the president failed to understand the basic rules of political conduct of foreign policy written by the American experience in Vietnam a generation ago.The first rule is that no foreign adventure can be sustained without U.S. public support.

TIFFANY SMITH died last week at age 6, another young victim of the war raging in Baltimore's streets. Tiffany was doing what kids have done for decades in the summer in the city -- playing on the sidewalk in front of the house, enjoying the cool of the evening air.She was caught in a cross-fire, as two men exchanged shots in a Wild West battle. There is speculation that the fight had something to do with drugs. That's a pretty good bet.Drug turf wars dominate the streets of this city, at least the streets where poverty runs rampant.

LAUREL, Del. - When a neighbor came to Iris Weston's door yesterday to say her son, Jamell, was lying in the street, her first thought was that he had had a seizure. "I got there, he was laying in blood," she said. After walking his 6-year-old nephew to the bus stop yesterday around 8 a.m., Jamell Weston, 24, was returning to his mother's apartment when the shooting began. He tried to run, his mother said, but he didn't get far. A gunman - wielding a 9 mm handgun and wearing a bulletproof vest - shot him in the face.

After a chase that ended in an hourlong standoff on the side of a road on the outskirts of Westminster early Sunday, state troopers say, they tried to cajole, shock and stun Earl W. Delker Jr., accused of threatening to kill his estranged girlfriend, into surrendering. But nothing worked, they said. Not verbal commands. Not pepper spray. Not even beanbags, which hit with the force of a major-league baseball pitch. The tense standoff ended when shots were fired at troopers. In fear for their lives, the troopers fired back -- not to kill, but to incapacitate -- hitting Delker in the torso and right arm. He is under state police guard at Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where he is in critical condition.

After a chase that ended in an hourlong standoff on the side of a road on the outskirts of Westminster early Sunday, state troopers say, they tried to cajole, shock and stun Earl W. Delker Jr., accused of threatening to kill his estranged girlfriend, into surrendering. But nothing worked, they said. Not verbal commands. Not pepper spray. Not even beanbags, which hit with the force of a major-league baseball pitch. The tense standoff ended when shots were fired at troopers. In fear for their lives, the troopers fired back - not to kill, but to incapacitate - hitting Delker in the torso and right arm. He is under state police guard at Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where he is in critical condition.

IN RICHMOND, Va., where zero tolerance and Project Exile make justice unforgiving, Joseph Quarles drew five years in prison last week for public urination. More or less. Quarles stepped out of a car last August to relieve himself on a city street. When police arrested him they found a .22 caliber Jennings pistol and heroin residue on a dollar bill. As any lawyer or professional drug dealer in Virginia's capital can tell you, the gun on this 19-year-old father of two (with another on the way)

WASHINGTON -- The situation in Kosovo is rapidly taking on the dimensions of a disaster -- militarily and politically.The principal victims are the innocent bystanders -- in this instance, the tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians driven out of their homes.But one tangential added casualty of the disaster in Kosovo may be President Clinton's last shred of credibility as a national leader. It is clear that the president failed to understand the basic rules of political conduct of foreign policy written by the American experience in Vietnam a generation ago.The first rule is that no foreign adventure can be sustained without U.S. public support.

City police are investigating a string of homicides in the past two days, the most recent of which occurred yesterday evening in Southwest Baltimore.Police said Byron Reed, 16, of the 100 block of S. Morley St. was fatally shot about 6 p.m. in the 700 block of Yale Ave.About 3:45 p.m. yesterday, 19-year-old Jermaine Wright of the 2300 block of Odell Ave. was shot to death during an argument near his home. Police arrested a 17-year-old male suspect in that case.Six people have been killed in the city since 1 p.m. Monday, when police discovered the body of Charles Frank Brannon, 56, who apparently was stabbed in his bathtub in an apartment complex in the 2300 block of Winchester St.Officer Sabrina V. Tapp-Harper, a police spokeswoman, said he was the resident maintenance worker.

After a chase that ended in an hourlong standoff on the side of a road on the outskirts of Westminster early Sunday, state troopers say, they tried to cajole, shock and stun Earl W. Delker Jr., accused of threatening to kill his estranged girlfriend, into surrendering. But nothing worked, they said. Not verbal commands. Not pepper spray. Not even beanbags, which hit with the force of a major-league baseball pitch. The tense standoff ended when shots were fired at troopers. In fear for their lives, the troopers fired back -- not to kill, but to incapacitate -- hitting Delker in the torso and right arm. He is under state police guard at Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where he is in critical condition.

After a chase that ended in an hourlong standoff on the side of a road on the outskirts of Westminster early Sunday, state troopers say, they tried to cajole, shock and stun Earl W. Delker Jr., accused of threatening to kill his estranged girlfriend, into surrendering. But nothing worked, they said. Not verbal commands. Not pepper spray. Not even beanbags, which hit with the force of a major-league baseball pitch. The tense standoff ended when shots were fired at troopers. In fear for their lives, the troopers fired back - not to kill, but to incapacitate - hitting Delker in the torso and right arm. He is under state police guard at Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where he is in critical condition.

Media showed biasAs a Muslim American, I am appalled at the way the news media treated the Muslims immediately after the bombing in Oklahoma City.The fingers were pointing and the stereotyping machine was at full speed to condemn and demand retribution. Many of the so-called experts were heard convicting the "Islamic extremists" of causing the bombing.As the facts started to point to others for committing this terrorist act, the same news machine and its experts fell into a deep silence.The same people so eager to blame Muslims for this act have, by their silence, reflected the ugly racist attitudes now directed against Islam and Muslims by the news media.

It's "what did they know and when did they know it?" time for the tobacco industry in Washington.That favorite question of congressional investigators is becoming especially painful for tobacco peddlers. Evidence keeps cropping up that major tobacco companies knew at least a decade ago and probably three decades ago how harmful cigarettes were to smokers' health. Yet their chief executive officers and at least one top researcher persist in testifying that they have no reason to believe tobacco is addictive or can cause fatal illnesses.