Penn National

boxing Part of E. Eager Street to be renamed Mack Lewis Way A portion of East Eager Street will be renamed "Mack Lewis Way" on Tuesday at 11 a.m. on the corner of North Broadway to honor legendary city boxing trainer Mack Lewis, who died last month. An open house and reception hosted by Lewis' family will be held immediately after the ceremony at 901 N. Bond St. (The Mack Lewis Gym). Laurel Park Six to vie for $50,000 Juvenile Filly Championship today Six two-year-old fillies are entered in today's $50,000 Maryland Juvenile Filly Championship at Laurel Park.

The Maryland Racing Commission and the horse community are right: The Maryland Jockey Club, MI Development and Penn National have no commitment to racing ( "Preakness at risk," Dec. 1). MID, a real estate firm, just wants to commercially develop Laurel Park. Penn National just wants to protect its casino at Charles Town and maybe get another casino by threatening to end Maryland racing. Success at Laurel would threaten these interests, so no wonder it is failing. Racing dates belong to the state.

The future of Laurel Park was further clouded Tuesday, after the racetrack's minority owner said it still supports plans to eliminate live horse racing there. Penn National Gaming, which owns 49 percent of the Maryland Jockey Club, the umbrella group for Laurel Park and Baltimore's Pimlico Race Course , had agreed to a plan to significantly curtail the club's horse-racing operations. Then Frank Stronach, chairman of Jockey Club's parent, MI Developments, reversed course in an interview with The Baltimore Sun this week, saying he would work to save the tracks.

Penn National Gaming, the owner of the Hollywood Casino Perryville, said Thursday that it would consider selling the Cecil County facility so it could develop a slots parlor at Laurel Park in Anne Arundel County. Executives at the Pennsylvania-based gaming company are counting on voters in Anne Arundel to defeat the Cordish Cos.' plans to build a casino at Arundel Mills in next month's referendum. They are also counting on Maryland to reopen the bidding process for the slots license there.

Did Martin O'Malley forget in which state he is running for governor? Last week the governor said, "I don't think we should be bullied into accepting slots at the mall. " ("Thousands drawn to opening of Maryland casino," Sept. 30.) Who is the bully he is referring to? The Maryland-based Cordish Cos., who were selected fair and square by the O'Malley-appointed independent slots licensing commission? The Maryland teachers, police and fire fighters campaigning for Question A because Mr. O'Malley's government cannot otherwise fund their vital services?

Penn National Gaming, which operates the slot machine casino that opened last week in Cecil County, is free to support a campaign against construction of a similar parlor in Anne Arundel County, Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler said in an opinion issued Tuesday. The Cordish Cos., which cannot build at Arundel Mills unless county voters approve the plan in a referendum next month, had asked the Maryland Lottery Commission to levy "substantial fines" against Penn National for helping to fund a group that opposes the project.

Shortly after 8 a.m., a dollar was lost by a member of the general public in a legal slot machine in Maryland for the first time in more than 40 years. The moment probably lacked some of the satisfying drama one associates with slot machines — a quarter dropping into a slot, an arm being pulled, clicking reels; all that has largely been replaced by casino credits, push buttons and electronic displays. But the occasion was an important one nonetheless. After a decade and a half of debate, the opening of the Hollywood Casino in Perryville meant Maryland has finally joined most of its neighbors in expanding gambling to shore up its finances.

Penn National Gaming expects to open Maryland's first slots casino in Cecil County by the end of the month, as officials appeared to be more certain Tuesday that they would not be delayed by a pending ruling from Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler's office. Eric Schippers, a spokesman for Penn National, said the company was working to open the 1,500-machine Perryville casino on Sept. 30 — the date the company had publicized. The company last week said that it might push back the opening as state regulators examine whether the gambling giant inappropriately interfered with another company's efforts to build a casino in Anne Arundel County.

On behalf of Penn National Gaming, I write to express my continued disappointment with this paper's strident editorial support for the Cordish Companies' proposed slots parlor at the Arundel Mills Mall, despite the broad-based overwhelming local citizen opposition to the proposal. In your latest opinion piece ("Hardly 'free' speech," Sept. 17), you go so far as to describe our constitutionally protected right of political free speech as a laughable matter. Yet, ironically, The Sun has fought to protect First Amendment freedoms for 173 years — I suppose the question to ask is, for whom?

Penn National Gaming is in the entertainment industry, so perhaps the company is going for laughs of late. Its latest claim — that a state commission's concerns over Penn National's efforts to quash slots machines at Arundel Mills Mall is a violation of their First Amendment rights — can't be serious. Company officials must believe they can play Maryland taxpayers for chumps. On the one hand, Penn National holds a profitable license to operate a 1,500-machine slots parlor in Cecil County.