Tom Tomorrow on Target

His cartoon in your issue of April 4 is the single best incisive explanation that I’ve yet seen that explains what is wrong in a nutshell. President Obama and Team Maryland dropped the ball when they enacted the current Affordable Health Care Act without a public option. They did this also without enacting the jobs bills that were far more necessary to boot. What is needed now is a comprehensive health care bill that covers the entire population, cradle to grave, with the current VA Medical System as a good working model to emulate. Walter Reed Army Hospital was the exception to this very fine system and not the rule.

If the Supreme Court overturns the current legislation as unconstitutional, it can still be brought into effect via a constitutional amendment that will trump the court. Finally, the enemy of health care for all in the United States was, is, and always will be the rapacious, greedy, and unnecessary insurance industry. That will first have to be defeated root and branch right down into the ground. Bring it on!

Blaine Taylor

Towson

Totally Unbiased Praise

A remarkably insightful and well-written review! (“Darwin in Malibu,” Stage, April 4) In the play itself, you state that “the bishop stood in fierce opposition to Darwin’s . . . maintaining a strong belief in the biblical interpretation. . . . ” I have always wandered which biblical interpretation the “creationists” accept, since there are two versions of it in Genesis. Your review is an excellent review.

Avraham Amith

Baltimore

The writer is reviewer’s Sarenka Smith’s grandfather.

Written in the Stars (Or Something)

It seems that your first edition came out on May 27, 1977, and, despite a name change, you’ve endured successfully to date (35th Anniversary Issue, March 28). I understand why, as would Benjamin Franklin. Franklin timed the national birthday, July 4, 1777, to have the sun conjunct Venus and Jupiter and the brightest star in the sky—Sirius. Venus and Jupiter are astrology’s “benefics” and a giant, very bright star promises greatness.

The Soviet Union’s birthday star (Nov. 7 1917) is very dim by contrast. The Soviet Union—too red—went under but City Paper soldiers on. May 27-June 2 has the sun conjunct another giant, first-magnitude star—Aldebaran—which is called a “red” star but is actually pink. This is all perfect of course as you’re big (sort of), successful, and pink as all get-out. My birthday, June 29, conjoins a merely half-bright star—Alhena—that makes me twin to Gay Liberation (June 28, 1969). Seriously, about half of American marriages fail, yet in India—where all unions are vetted by an astrologer—95 percent of marriages go the distance.

Thomas L. Fox

Baltimore

Correction: Last week’s Static (April 4) incorrectly stated that a bill that would have granted tax breaks to nonprofit urban farmers was killed by a City Council committee late last year following opposition by the mayor’s office. According to Abby Cocke, environmental planner for Baltimore’s Office of Sustainability, the tax breaks would have been granted to conservation land and land trusts, not to urban farms. City Paper regrets the error.