The police spy case in 12 little words

July 30, 2008

A word of advice to the Maryland State Police: When discussing the surveillance of anti-war and anti-death penalty groups in 2005 and 2006, use the quote below.

Recent columns

• He says. They say. But what went on?

  July 26, 2008

  The inmate claims officers at the Maryland Correctional Institute at Hagerstown tortured him physically and mentally, and then denied him the medication he needed to lower his high blood pressure.

• History captured in glory, shame

  July 23, 2008

  The nickname for athletic teams at Iowa State University is "the Cyclones." The nickname for athletic teams at the University of Iowa is "the Hawkeyes."

• Spying lessons fall on deaf ears

  July 19, 2008

  Why, shades of COINTELPRO!

• Obama flaunts dreaded 'r' word

  July 16, 2008

  Darn it, I knew I should have gone to Cincinnati.

• A lesson in using the right language

  July 12, 2008

  Ah, a columnist's dilemma: Which of two stories about Sen. Barack Obama should I do for this week?

• Memory full, delete password

  July 9, 2008

  Have you come down with it yet? Are you afflicted?

• Do right in prison, suffer the backlash

  July 2, 2008

  Talk about a Catch-22 situation.

• The real demons afflicting Douglass

  June 28, 2008

  Audie was the truculent guy, the one with the braided hair and grills in his teeth. About 25 minutes into the HBO documentary Hard Times at Douglass High, Audie pretty much summed up why the school named after one of the most erudite men of his or any century is having hard times.

• A new honor for an old wrestler

  June 25, 2008

  I "ran across" Lloyd Keaser on Sunday, but not, thank God, in the way Irv Johnson "ran across" Keaser 40 years ago.

• Murphy's gift was knowing people

  June 21, 2008

  Sub It Out" Murphy.

• Ending the war of black on black

  June 18, 2008

  To be a black male is to be always at war, and no flight to the county can save us, because even there we are met by the assumption of violence, by the specter of who we might turn on next."

• A long journey ending in manhood

  June 14, 2008

  It's a safe bet Ta-Nehisi Coates' father no longer thinks he's "a disgrace to the family name."

• At last, rule of law gets equal time

  March 22, 2008

  Former Baltimore police Commissioner Kevin Clark was fired on Nov. 10, 2004, when then-Mayor Martin O'Malley said that domestic violence allegations against Clark, while unsubstantiated, "distracted" the imported New Yorker from effectively doing his job.

• Bus case decision: Whom to believe?

  March 19, 2008

  Unique Curtis' testimony didn't help her five schoolmates, who were all found responsible yesterday for assaulting Sarah Kreager, who was punched, beaten and kicked in the face Dec. 4 and left lying in a gutter with one eye swollen shut and the socket broken in two places.

• N-word mystery in MTA bus assault case

  March 12, 2008

  Danny Williams is black. That's important to this story.

• A hero emerges in bus beating

  March 8, 2008

  Joyce King may well have saved Sarah Kreager's life.

• It's 'little dear' justice in city

  January 5, 2008

  The Nine Little Dears from Robert Poole Middle School accused in the attack on Sarah Kreager and others aboard a Maryland Transit Administration bus in early December were arraigned in juvenile court yesterday.

• Another bus ride, another outcome

  December 26, 2007

  On Tuesday, Dec. 4, Sarah Kreager, a white woman, was brutally beaten, allegedly by nine black teenagers on a Maryland Transit Administration bus in North Baltimore. Kreager's boyfriend, Troy Ennis, was also attacked.

• Her day in court far from satisfying

  December 12, 2007

  For six months, Anna Sowers had the sneaking suspicion that it would come to this.

• Hearing the sounds of silence at Mideast conference

  November 28, 2007

  Excuse me? What was that I didn't hear?

• 'Ethnomathematics' arrival adds to spin of multiculturalism

  June 29, 2005

  WHEN GOV. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. called multiculturalism "bunk" and "crap" about a year ago, you'd have thought, judging from the reaction of some folks, that he'd just taken out a lifetime membership in the Ku Klux Klan.

• Two cases show how vast our racial divide remains

  May 28, 2005

  HOW DID Marylanders end up with two poignant moments in race relations in just one week?

• In a street fight, you get street justice

  May 14, 2005

  IT IS NOT a crime to hate black people.

• Schiavo case turned conservatism on its head

  April 2, 2005

  NOW THAT Terri Schiavo has gone -- not peacefully, but as a national spectacle -- to her maker, we are left to ponder how conservatives trashed and savaged what was supposedly their own philosophy.

• Mfume might be glad to go, but the NAACP will miss him

  December 1, 2004

  KWEISI MFUME had that "Lyndon Johnson" gleam in his eye.

• 50 years later, gaps separate the races in our schools

  May 12, 2004

  SHANNON JOHNSON was born 32 1/2 years after the Supreme Court proclaimed "separate but equal" education unconstitutional on May 17, 1954.

• Students make sure their voices are heard

  March 10, 2004

  YOU HAD TO figure students at City College wouldn't take it lying down.

• An elected city school board might provide accountability

  February 18, 2004

  ON MONDAY, members of the Parent Community Advisory Board, among others, called for the resignation of the six Baltimore school board members who were around when the system's current money problems began to build.

• Police should follow crooks - not Bundley's paper trail

  July 30, 2003

  DO YOU feel safer yet?

• Fallen Marine's funeral brings home loss that's felt by us all

  April 6, 2003

  MICHAEL Waters-Bey stood only yards from the flag-draped coffin that held the remains of his only son. His son's only son stood beside him.

• Curran elaborates on letter seeking end to death penalty

  February 8, 2003

  MARYLAND Attorney General Joseph Curran was a trial lawyer for 23 years. He knows the mistakes the system can make. Boy, does he know.

• To murder victims' families, executing killers is justice

  February 5, 2003

  FREDERICK ANTHONY Romano remembers the night. More than 15 years later, he remembers it as if it happened within the last week.

• Few speak up for sniper suspects during latest terror

  October 30, 2002

  THE PROBLEM with this country is that people or things are never around when you really need them. Where, for example, are those danged "root-causers" in the wake of the recent sniper terror?

• A day to realize that no one has a monopoly on terrorism

  September 11, 2002

  TODAY IS the date that will live in even more infamy than Dec. 7, 1941. At least Pearl Harbor was a military target.

• Anger over police 'slush fund' a case of misspent outrage

  August 18, 2002

  JUDGING FROM the reaction, you'd think Baltimore police Commissioner Ed Norris had taken his wife on a three-week vacation in Paris, spent bundles on an elaborate shopping spree and paid for it all with the money from that "slush fund" that has residents of Payback City in such high dudgeon.

• With mess men have made, it's time to ordain women

  May 19, 2002

  OPEN LETTER TO Pope John Paul II:

• Timing of death penalty halt reveals governor's true motive

  May 15, 2002

  SO LET'S get this straight: On the evening of June 6, 1991, one Wesley Baker walked up to Jane Frances Tyson as she sat in her car. Tyson had just finished shopping in the Westview Mall. Her grandchildren, a 6-year-old boy and a 4-year-old girl, were with her in the car.

• Congress must help Bush round up all the suspects

  September 30, 2001

  WHAT'S THE difference between being held as a material witness and being detained without trial? Anyone? Anyone?

• America should be proud of Islamic influences

  September 26, 2001

  Gregory Kane

• Terrorist attacks bring out the good, the bad and the ugly in all of us

  September 23, 2001

  "IT WAS THE best of times, it was the worst of times." Thus begins Charles Dickens' classic, A Tale of Two Cities. He could have been describing America since the horrible day of Sept. 11, 2001.

• Standing up for America as criticism continues

  September 22, 2001

  THE AMERICA-bashing in the wake of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks continues unabated. Perhaps the most outrageous among them comes from, of all places, Kenya.

• Those cheering for terrorists live in short-sighted hypocrisy

  September 15, 2001

  "WE HAVE a big tent here," WOLB talk-show host and former Maryland state senator Larry Young is fond of saying. All opinions are welcome on his show: liberal, conservative, black nationalist, Pan-Africanist, progressive, socialist.

• College's racial diversity starts with effort at top

  February 18, 2001

  LA JERNE CORNISH stood at the front of her class, rolling the chalk in her hands as she waited for her students to respond to questions.

• Being loyal to Clinton a bad habit for blacks

  February 17, 2001

  CAN BLACK Americans find no fault with the now mercifully departed President Bill Clinton?

• For all that indignation, one outrage met by silence

  February 14, 2001

  THE SMOKE IS clearing. The fallout from everything that's happened the past six to eight weeks seems to be dissipating. Perhaps we can all think a bit more rationally. The events that occurred should have us all pondering: What kind of people are we?

• Cries of double standard trail mayor's Jessamy remarks

  February 11, 2001

  THIS WAS supposed to be the column in which I defended, kind of, Mayor Martin O'Malley against charges that he offended all black women when he delivered his public, profanity-laced tirade against Baltimore State's Attorney Pat Jessamy, who is black and female.

• Speaking of streaks, this one's even longer

  February 10, 2001

  THANK HEAVENS for Warren Schwartz.

• Officer's candor is ugly -- but revealing

  February 7, 2001

  OFFICER PAUL Hoke of the Baltimore County Police Department: a virulent racist, or simply an idiot?