Unspeakable

To the management of the Historic Inns of Annapolis, the incident in which a legislator was refused prompt service at the Maryland Inn was a mortifying lapse in customer service.But to Del. Melony Ghee Griffith, an African-American from Prince George's County, the rude treatment she received when she brought a black constituent to lunch at the inns' Treaty of Paris restaurant Wednesday afternoon was about as subtle as a "whites only" sign outside the Annapolis landmark.By yesterday, word of the incident was spreading through the House of Delegates, prompting leaders of the Prince George's County and Baltimore delegations to threaten to cease doing business with the inn and its sister properties.

Hellish, hated, fiendish from birth, sending small children screaming on sight. Evil should have but one loathsome face, and then perhaps we could recognize it, and contain it, and obliterate it. We could warn our children off. We could jail it and bomb it and revile it, because all of us would see it, and know its essence. Evil, however, proves to be clever. It is charming, and sometimes handsome and even eager to please. It loves opera and literature. Small children are happily dandled on its knee.

Jung Chang sees herself as the fabled child who voices the unspeakable truth that the emperor has no clothes.Ms. Chang, who left China in 1978 and now lives in London,believes that was one effect of her first book. And she says she'll play that role again with her next work.Her first book -- the widely acclaimed "Wild Swans," published in 1991 and recently released in paperback -- introduced many Western readers to the horrific details of China's 1966-76 Cultural Revolution by matter-of-factly recounting her own family's sad history.

BOSTON -- It is a story too terrible to tell, and it was taking place on a gray day along Cambridge streets where innocence and trust were stolen by two degenerate predators who allegedly kidnapped, killed, and sexually abused 10-year-old Jeffrey Curley.With the boy's body still somewhere under the Piscataqua River between Maine and New Hampshire, his name lived in every conversation in all the homes along Bristol and Hampshire streets."The two of them planned this," a detective was saying.

ANNAPOLIS -- Republican legislators have come up with a novel idea they think could improve the quality of legislation passed by the Democrat-controlled House of Delegates. They call it "debate."They think there is not enough of it in the House, and today they intend to propose a rule change they hope will encourage more debate.The problem, as the Republicans see it, is an unwritten but severely enforced House rule that they contend ties the hands of committee members once their committee passes a bill and sends it to the full House for consideration.

We should expect a horrific human toll from any exchange of hostilities between Iran and Israel ("Nuclear saber-rattling," Jan. 6). Steps toward avoiding that, such as your editorial call for an intricate U.S.-Tehran agreement, are morally well-intentioned. But it wouldn't disturb our rest if these were Buddhist monks developing nuclear power for Nepal. Why not? Because common sense says their benign intentions are trustworthy and they respect human life. The Tehran mullahs have rebuffed (to say the least)

In regard to Tavon White's lifestyle ("Alleged gang leader in poor jail conditions, his lawyer says," May 15), his attorney says Mr. White can confer with him for only an hour and only through a glass screen. In addition to that unspeakable atrocity, he only has in his possession a jump suit, one pair of underwear, shower sandals and a sheet for his bed. Aw, my heart bleeds for the worthless thug. Katherine Ambrose, Kingsville

MOST PEOPLE cannot fathom the horror of what Andrea Yates did to her children: drowning them in the family bathtub, one by one. Even chasing down the oldest one, age 7, in order to do it. And no one doubts that Andrea Yates is guilty - least of all, apparently, the Texas jury that convicted her of murder Tuesday after less than four hours of deliberation. But that jury got it wrong, because Andrea Yates is not guilty of being a murderer, she is guilty of being mentally ill. Virtually no one has doubted that Mrs. Yates is insane; the jail psychiatrist who interviewed her the day after the killings called her one of the most severely mentally ill people she had ever examined.

ON THE MORNING OF June 20, 2001, shortly after her husband, Rusty, left for his job at NASA in Houston, Andrea Yates drew a tub full of water in the guest bathroom and, one by one, held her five children face down in the water until they stopped struggling and drowned. She carefully placed the bodies of John, Paul, Luke and 6-month-old Mary on a bed and covered them with a sheet. The oldest, 7-year-old Noah, was the last to die. He put up a fight, and his body was left floating in the tub. Calmly, Andrea Yates called 911 and asked for a policeman to come to the house.

MORINA PASS, Albania -- Some wept in fear and rage. Others smiled in relief. And still others crossed a border with a deadness in their eyes that matched the desperation of their lives.This was the scene at the Morina Pass, along the Yugoslav-Albanian border, a lonely outpost where deliverance melded with heartbreak for ethnic Albanian refugees fleeing Serbia's war-ravaged province of Kosovo.Yesterday, refugees continued to make a crossing from war to safety, flooding through the Morina Pass on foot, in cars, on flatbed trailers towed by tractors, even a wooden cart pulled by two gray horses.