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Feb. 6 would have been Ronald Reagan’s 100th birthday. To honor him, this column celebrates that great champion of deregulation, that reinvigorator of the American economy, that believer in Adam Smith’s invisible hand: Jimmy Carter. Yes, Carter. It was the peanut farmer from Georgia who pushed the United States toward a market economy, not the one-time actor from California. Reagan certainly shared Carter’s vision on deregulation, embracing with bravado policies that Carter launched with grim solemnity.

It didn’t take long for Vicky Bullett to grasp Hagerstown Community College’s motto. “Stay close. Go far,” are words the school has built its reputation around. They are also the words Bullett is living by. Bullett, who went from Martinsburg High School star to one of the pioneers in women’s pro basketball in the United States, has returned to the area where it all started to begin a new chapter in her life — as an assistant coach at HCC. “I’m a homebody,” Bullett said after being introduced as the newest member of Marlys Palmer’s staff.

Ted Anderson spent the night of Oct. 15, 1986, crammed into a room with seven other cops in an out-of-the-way Virginia hotel. One officer spent the night in a bathtub and several lay on the floor. Anderson didn't sleep at all. Early the next morning, a Thursday, a caravan of about 100 police vehicles - including Anderson's - made its way up Interstate 81 into Martinsburg, where the largest drug bust in the town's history took place as most of the dealers were still sleeping.

martinsburg@herald-mail.com Lt. K.C. Bohrer, a 25-year veteran of the Berkeley County Sheriff's Department, started to tell a story about a case one of his co-workers is handling that involves heroin. Before he could delve into the details the co-worker, Sgt. Gary Harmison, interrupted him. "It all relates to heroin," Harmison said, stressing the word "all. " Bohrer, Harmison and Sgt. Russell Shackelford, members of the Sheriff's Department's Criminal Investigation Division, said that lately at least half of their time is spent working on cases related to heroin, which they said is becoming the drug of choice in the county.

A Sharpsburg man charged last week with illegal possession of firearms is a "doomsday prepper" who told an undercover Maryland State Police trooper about an underground bunker and surveillance cameras on his property, according to a charging document filed in Washington County District Court. Terry Allen Porter, 46, of 4433 Mills Road, Sharpsburg, was charged Friday with seven counts each of being a convicted felon in possession of a rifle or shotgun and possession of firearms after being convicted of a disqualifying offense, court records said.