Slip

When police carted Gordon Ragler and his wife away in handcuffs last year, neighbors thought the around-the-clock drug dealing in their Southwest Baltimore community had finally come to an end.But 13 months later, the Raglers slipped through a net carefully crafted by undercover drug officers and confidential informants. It didn't seem to matter that police conducted hours of surveillance of open-air drug sales or collected solid evidence to make their case: 50 bags of cocaine and a loaded semiautomatic pistol.

The arrest of three friends of the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing reminds us of the consequences of withholding information from investigators, lying or being an accessory after the fact for a friend or loved one. In other words, if the authorities are correct, "snitching" could have saved these three young men from facing criminal charges, international notoriety, and a future scarred by the cover up of their friend - a suspected terrorist....

Just in time for the return of spring and the boating season, the County Council last night gave marina owners a 50 percent cut in the slip tax.The council voted unanimously to cut the slip tax, which is assessed as a percentage of each docking or storage fee charged by a marina, from 10 percent to 5 percent.Marina owners have long complained that the tax places them at a competitive disadvantage with marinas outside the county because Anne Arundel County is the only subdivision in the state with such a tax."

A $1.5 million federal grant will help pay for rebuilding the downtown Annapolis City Dock, including upgrades to stormwater management controls to reduce frequent flooding. "City Dock is arguably the city's most important asset, and first and foremost, we need to be responsible stewards of the assets we have," said Annapolis Mayor Josh Cohen. An overall $12.5 million rehabilitation project for the dock involves stabilizing and rebuilding 700 linear feet of City Dock's bulkhead, as well as the stormwater measures and upgrading slips used by transient boaters who visit Annapolis.

The County Council unanimously approved a bill last night that will eliminate within two years a tax imposed on marina boat slip rentals.The legislation, which was sponsored by the seven-member council, will lower the 5 percent slip tax by 1 percent in July. The next year, the tax will fall to 2 percent and it will be repealed altogether by July 1997.At a hearing attended by about 150 to 200 marina owners and employees, Councilman Thomas W. Redmond Sr., the Pasadena Democrat who drafted the bill, said repealing the tax is an economic development initiative.

WASHINGTON -- The endorsement of House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt is but another stop on what seems to be Vice President Al Gore's inexorable march to the Democratic presidential nomination next year.Even before he has declared his candidacy in a formal way, the vice president has taken de facto control of all the party's machinery and won the endorsement of key players at all levels of the party. He is enjoying the kind of run experienced by Sen. Edmund S. Muskie in 1972 and by former Vice President Walter F. Mondale in 1984.

For the first time in his eight full major-league seasons, Wade Boggs did not finish in the top three in the batting race, did not bat at least .325, did not get 200 hits.The very unBoggs-like totals that the Boston Red Sox's third baseman brings to the American League Championship Series against the Oakland Athletics are a .302 average and 187 hits. After reaching base via hits or walks at least 300 times in each of the last five seasons and six of seven, Boggs reached just 274 times in 1990.

Members of an ailing marina industry last night urged the County Council for some economic relief in the form of a proposed 50 percent cut in the slip tax.Representatives of more than 50 commercial marinas in the county attended the hearing on the bill that would reduce the slip tax -- which is assessed as part of each docking or storage fee charged by a marina -- from 10 percent to 5 percent.A typical slip rents for about $2,000 a year, said Mitch Nathanson, a marina owner and member of a committee of county officials and marina owners appointed by County Executive Robert R. Neall that recommended reducing the slip tax.Steuart Chaney, owner of Herrington Harbor marina, noted that when the slip tax was first adopted 21 years ago all of his slips were filled and there was a long waiting list of new customers.

After weeks of tempest over a plan to move the last two crabbing vessels at City Dock, Annapolis Mayor Dean L. Johnson has orchestrated a game of musical boats to allow them to remain.City officials began talking in March about moving the boats of Charlie Meiklejohn, who has tied up at City Dock for 52 years, and his stepson, Alexander Parkinson, to make room for a 54-foot charter boat that would pay a higher slip fee, $500 a month vs. the watermen's $50.Meiklejohn, 68, was going to have to tie up 90 feet from his current spot, and Parkinson was to be relegated to Eastport.

"Chrysler doles out 26,000 pink slips" "More pink slips at high-tech firms" "The `pink slips' are falling like confetti" Read the headlines and it seems that just about everybody is being handed a pink slip these days. Everybody, that is, except Peter Liebhold. And he's feeling just a tad jealous. A curator at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History, Liebhold has spent more than a decade trying to crack a minor mystery of American business: Just what the heck is a pink slip, anyway?

With a confrontational streak of fire-red in his hair, Eli cannot help but be noticed when he shows up in an Iowa high school, an unwilling transplant from San Francisco, where his father recently died. Even as he draws attention to himself, Eli does not let people in easily, using a defense mechanism of glibness, mixed with snark, to keep them at bay -- starting with his mother. But Eli, the center of Daniel Talbott's affecting play "Slipping," which is receiving its Baltimore premiere from Iron Crow Theatre Company, cannot disguise the fact that he's a romantic at heart.

Don't write off Lakers Shandel Richardson Sun Sentinel It's still kind of hard to write off the Lakers. You have to think a team with Kobe Bryant, Steve Nash and Dwight Howard will at some point get things together. The Lakers will be the surprise team of the second half of the season because they simply have too much talent to miss the playoffs. We've seen it in spurts, now expect them to sustain it for long stretches. The key for them, just like every other team, is staying healthy.

Voter turnout in Maryland in 2012's general election dropped by more than 8 percentage points from 2008 but President Obama's vote percentage slipped much less than in  other states, according to the State Board of Elections. Unofficial figures show a turnout of 69.04 percent compared with the spectacular 77.63 percent registered in Obama's first election. But voting appeared to be off roughly equally among both Democrats and Republicans. Obama's support dropped a half point from 2008 -- 61.4 percent compared with the 61.9 percent he garnered against John McCain.

Johns Hopkins Hospital lost its coveted spot as the nation's top-ranked hospital for the first time in 22 years, edged out by Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital in the latest analysis by U.S. News & World Report to be released Tuesday. Hopkins still ranked No. 2, and marketing experts said falling one spot will hurt the hospital's ego more than its reputation. "They'll survive this, I'm sure," said Roger Gray, founder and partner of GKV, an advertising and marketing firm in Baltimore.

In a database with a lot of numbers, this one jumped out: $55,000. How on earth could a condo at the prestigious Ritz-Carlton Residences - where author Tom Clancy owns a sprawling multimillion-dollar penthouse - have an assessed value that low?  When we noticed that as part of our reporting of the Sun's Taxing Baltimore series, we went looking for more examples of developer-owned homes with bargain-basement property assessments. Two other clusters turned up close by along Baltimore's Inner Harbor: The handful of unsold Pier Homes at HarborView are assessed at $20,000 each, while the unsold Silo Point condos are assessed at $10,000 apiece.

Baltimore's property tax rate is high (that's one thing that everyone that owns a home or business in the city can agree on) so nothing makes the blood boil quite like news that someone has successfully avoided paying their fair share — except, perhaps, finding out it wasn't a case of avoidance so much as lax enforcement. That's what appears to have happened in the case of some of the city's priciest condos, as recently uncovered by reporter Jamie Smith Hopkins . Baltimore lost out on more than $10 million in property tax revenue over the last several years because some 200 luxury condos were assessed as if they were little more than holes in the ground.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. - Michael Phelps took a bow and then a flop, but finished in his accustomed position. The 37th annual Santa Clara International Invitational nearly got off to a disastrous start for the presumptive swim star of the 2004 Olympics. Phelps got a warm greeting during introductions for the 400-meter individual medley, then had his back foot slip on a slick starting block. Instead of extending into the water for the butterfly leg, Phelps used more of a jackknife entry borrowed from Captain Klutz, an old Mad magazine character.

THERE'S A NEW DANCE in town -- but this one is done at the wheel. Call it the "stoplight slip."It goes like this: Slow up in the lane of traffic, then come to a stop. Grind your teeth as the lead car holds everyone up to turn; then zip by the other jerks (illegally) on the right shoulder.Baltimore resident Chris Hart calls this maneuver "the nastiest traffic fad.""I have witnessed this stupid move four times in the last week in both urban and suburban settings," Hart wrote Intrepid One. "This careless jerk has to make a quick adjustment to get around parked cars on the right on the other side of the intersection or at least do some dicey moves to beat out the cars that are entering the intersection on green."

Hartford achieved a pair of firsts last season, capturing the school's first America East Tournament crown and qualifying for its first NCAA Tournament. The No. 19 Hawks appeared to take another step in that direction when they took a 5-4 lead on Maryland in the third quarter Saturday. But the No. 10 Terps responded with a four-goal run and ended the contest with another four-goal spurt. Hartford coach Peter Lawrence said the players proved that they can compete with top-10 opponents.

The football season is over. So is Groundhog Day. And Valentine's Day, too. But if any excuse for a party will do, don't forget that Mardi Gras is Tuesday, Feb. 21. And while it may be a little late to book your trip to the Big Easy, you can at least get a taste of it at our local Copeland's of New Orleans. The eatery took up residence in Columbia about 11 years ago and still draws its share of fun-loving folks who enjoy contemporary versions of regional Creole/Cajun fare, as well as more American food, like burgers.