Don’t give permission for Mosby to travel

Don’t let former Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby off the hook (“Marilyn Mosby permitted to attend BBQ held in her honor while on home detention,” Sept. 3). She is trying to creep back into society, but she has a sentence to fulfill for her wrongdoings!

— Helen Lacy, Baltimore

Ravens are part boring, part diva

The Baltimore Ravens are boring (“Ravens vs. Chiefs season opener a ‘tone-setter’ that ‘everybody is going to be watching,'” Sept. 5).

Coach John Harbaugh is boring, too.

And quarterback Lamar Jackson is a diva.

— Grenville B. Whitman, Rock Hall

Voters can’t trust Hogan on abortion rights

Thank you, Lt. Gov. Aruna Miller, for accurately capturing the high stakes of Maryland’s U.S. Senate race (“Abortion rights won’t be safe with Hogan in the Senate,” Aug. 25). As Miller points out, electing former Gov. Larry Hogan would almost guarantee Republicans take control of the U.S. Senate. And if one thing Republicans have shown us time and time again over the last few decades — and last few years especially — they’ll use whatever power they have to restrict abortion access as much as possible, potentially even banning it nationwide.

I don’t buy Hogan’s claims that he wouldn’t help Republicans crack down on abortion rights. His election alone would empower U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, the author of a nationwide abortion ban, to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee and ram through judicial nominees who don’t support reproductive freedom. Hogan himself says he won’t consider a judicial nominee’s position on abortion as a litmus test if elected to the Senate. And it recently came out that Hogan called former President Donald Trump’s U.S. Supreme Court nominees “incredible justices” right after they helped overturn Roe v. Wade.

Historically, Hogan’s track record has been in opposition of abortion rights. He vetoed legislation in 2022 to expand access to abortion, withheld millions of dollars that same year to train medical professionals to provide abortion care and refused to sign legislation protecting Maryland’s Planned Parenthood clinics from national Republican efforts to defund them. For the first four months of his Senate campaign, Hogan wouldn’t even say he supports codifying Roe v. Wade.

Voting for Hogan means voting for a Republican takeover of the Senate. That’s disqualifying enough, but Hogan’s record opposing abortion rights should discourage any Marylander who values freedom from voting for him.

— Diana Emerson, Baltimore

Real protesters, the kind with courage, don’t wear masks

As I’ve been reading about the protest at our universities over the war in Gaza, it brings back memories of the last protests we had at all the universities across the nation (“UMD made tough, but right, call on Oct. 7 rally,” Sept. 5).

One thing I noticed is that there were a lot of people wearing scarves or masks to cover their faces which they felt kept them anonymous and gave them the courage to so easily bring violence into the protest because they hid their faces. Wearing a mask gave them the false courage they would not normally have to do the things they would not normally do because they thought they could get away with it.

I think if they want to have any Palestinian protest, or any protests on college campuses, face masks shouldn’t be allowed. That would drastically cut down on the anonymous violence that you see at all these protests because people are wearing masks and think they can carry out violence and disruption without being identified.

If they want to act like violent disruptors at a peaceful protest, let them do it without covering their faces so everybody can see who they are. It’s so easy for them to act in a bad way when they feel nobody can identify them.

Have some real courage and protest without a mask. If you want to get violent, then show your face and do the jail time that comes with it. I think there should be a law that says faces can’t be covered during protests. That will cut down on a lot of the disruption and violence going on in these protests.

— Jeff Rew, Columbia

Another school shooting, another hollow response

Another school shooting? Ho hum. When nothing was done to change America’s gun laws after 20 children, just 6 and 7 years old, and six adults were murdered at Sandy Hook in 2012, it was crystal clear that America has chosen guns over their children. So stop with the vigils and the praying and the hand wringing. The hypocrisy is astonishing if you aren’t also working to get military weapons out of civilian hands.

— N.L. Bruggman, Jarrettsville