Commentary

Early last week Ivan Bates was sworn in as the new state’s attorney in Baltimore City. His first announced change to the office once headed by Marilyn Mosby was to do away with his predecessor’s policy of not prosecuting low-level criminal offenses, such as marijuana possession and prostitution. Bates has made clear that prosecuting these types of cases will be discretionary rather than having a total ban on prosecution. We agree with this rational approach to prosecuting even what may appear to be minor crimes in the city. While we applaud Bates for this change to his office, we do encourage him to keep two units created by Mosby that are truly critical: the Sentencing Review Unit and the Conviction Integrity Unit.

When crooning about love, The Everly Brothers (under 50, it’s Google time again) reminded us that, “She always breaks my heart in two. It happens every time.” With apologies to Phil and Don, when it comes to crisis management, we could write our own song about those in power, “They always screw it up, they do. It happens every time.” The latest news that classified documents have been located at a number of private Biden locations is simply the latest reminder that our esteemed leaders get it wrong over, and over, and over again. And folks, it just ain’t that hard to get it right. Here are the facts: President Trump had classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. President Biden evidently stored documents at the Penn Biden Center at the University of Pennsylvania and in his garage next to his Corvette at his home in Wilmington, Del. That one would have been a great Beach Boys song.

The biggest story of the year — the story we should all be paying attention to — is the increasing power of artificial intelligence. Computer code can write itself, chatbots can generate academic papers, and, with a few keystrokes, a website can produce an image worthy to be framed on any wall. Everywhere we turn, AI is outputting text and images that mimic (and often surpass) humans’ abilities. There’s so much to be concerned about in these developments, especially in the realms of plagiarism and labor replacement, with artists and writers particularly worried about their job prospects drowning in the infinite sea of AI-generated graphics and essays. However, after taking stock of AI’s current limitations, I don’t think that artists and other creatives are in danger of extinction anytime soon.

I stood at the corner of Eager and Aisquith to regard the burned-and-broken steeple of a once-stunning East Baltimore church. I saw in the gaping wound the past and present — the decades of white flight from the old neighborhood, the diminished presence of the Catholic Church in the city and the loss of faith generally across the land. This mashup of history came from the gray sky over Aisquith Street, in the place where the steeple cracked apart in a fire caused by lightning in March 2020. No one has come to rebuild the magnificent steeple. Next door is the Institute of Notre Dame, founded in 1847, the Catholic girls school that closed a couple of months after the fire.

How depressing it was as someone who loves the Chesapeake Bay to see David Kelsey’s letter regarding the dying Patuxent River, juxtaposed against the Metro section article “Maryland Democrats have long to-do list” [both Jan. 11]. The Patuxent, located entirely within the state of Maryland, is one of many tributaries to the Chesapeake Bay. We can’t blame the utter failure to clean up the bay on any other state or entity — this river’s decay is a Maryland problem, 100 percent.