Free Republic

On a day when hundreds remembered six people killed in a fire many believe was set in retaliation for a mother's stand against drug dealers, politicians scrambled for ways to address Baltimore's crime problems and the failures of the state's criminal justice system. At an afternoon news conference, Mayor Martin O'Malley outlined a plan calling for enlisting 100 state troopers to help city police, increasing jail and prison capacity by sending some inmates out of state, and finding more volunteers to mentor city children. Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend asked Gov. Parris N. Glendening to lift a hiring freeze on...