Editor's notebook

AN INSPIRATION - Local civil rights leaders and an Annapolis alderwoman, Sheila Finlayson, were among those who went before the county school board last week to ask that a school be named after Philip L. Brown, who died earlier this month at age 100.

This is an excellent idea, and one we hope the board considers.

It would be impossible to overstate Brown's influence on students during his decades as a teacher and administrator in county schools. He spearheaded the 1938 lawsuit that affirmed that the county's African-American teachers had a right to the same salaries as their white counterparts - one of the cases the U.S. Supreme Court drew on roughly 15 years later, when it outlawed school segregation.

After retiring, Brown turned to historical research and writing, producing his book "A Century of Separate But Equal" - a definitive history of the county's blacks-only schools.

Brown was a community leader and an inspiration, and it would be fitting for his name to be on a county school.

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AMNESTY - Give some credit to state Sen. Ed DeGrange of Glen Burnie: While many lawmakers are better at coming up with ways to spend state money, he sponsored a bill last session that has so far gotten the state at least $4.5 million.

The measure set up a temporary amnesty that offers tax delinquents a chance to square their accounts; if they agree to a repayment plan, there are no civil penalties and they'll have to pay only about half the interest that would normally be expected.

As of early last week, about 2,400 people had accepted the offer.

You can point out - with perfect justice - that the state can't draw from this particular well too often without undermining tax enforcement. And a projected gain of between $5 million and $10 million is hardly going to eliminate a projected state deficit running into the billions.

Still, it's money the state wouldn't otherwise have - and DeGrange and the other legislators who saw it his way deserve plaudits for it.

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HUCKSTERS - Diseases may come and go, but we'll always have quacks and hucksters. And now these folks have the Internet at their disposal as a quick way to reach the gullible and the scared.

As the Associated Press noted last week, thanks to the swine flu the Internet is crawling with offers of air "sterilizers," photon machines, mysterious vitamin supplements and even face masks.

Anyone who thinks a face mask will protect him against a virus wasn't paying much attention in high school science class.

In some cases these preventive measures are just a repackaging of junk sold during the SARS scare.

Federal officials have sent out warning letters to the promoters of more than 140 swine flu-related products. Meanwhile, as they wait for vaccine to be available, people can do just as well by washing their hands frequently and thoroughly, using hand sanitizer, sneezing into crook of their elbows - and not using their money to enrich Internet scammers.