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Editor's note: Each week, The Herald-Mail invites readers to answer poll questions on its Web site, www.herald-mail.com . Readers also may submit comments about the poll question when voting. Each Sunday, a sampling of edited reader comments will run in The Herald-Mail. Last week's poll question was: Which team will win the Super Bowl? "Go Bears ... oh and impeach Bush and try the whole lot for war crimes. " "The Bears have it. Go Bears. " "I kinda slept through the season this year - since my team was having a not-so-hot year.

Security stepped up in Annapolis By LAURA ERNDE laurae@herald-mail.com Visitors to Maryland's State House, whether they be Girl Scouts or lobbyists, have been able to freely roam the halls of the legislature. continued "Citizens had the run of the place. Everybody would come and go as they pleased," said Sen. Donald F. Munson, R-Washington. But that was before Sept. 11. Now, all guests to the Maryland General Assembly are greeted by locked doors and metal detectors.

“I just read in Mail Call recently, someone complaining about illegally parked cars, especially the ones parked on the wrong side of the street, pointing in the wrong direction. Good luck getting that remedied. It'll take a long time, but if you work with the city police and the city council, it'll eventually stop. I had the same problem in my neighborhood, and it actually affected the school buses picking up little kids. You can imagine how ugly that situation was. But if you're patient and work with the right people and the authorities, you can get that situation fixed, if it's in your neighborhood.” - Hagerstown “Hurray for the NTSB's recommendation to ban all drivers' cellphone use. This needs to become law, since I find three out of five drivers constantly tailgate and (should)

Waynesboro native Steve Graham has a dog and cat at home, which is a far cry from the years he spent with 400 large exotic animals outside his bedroom window. On some of the nights he spent living at the Detroit Zoo, Graham would mimic the squeal of a tapir to answer one that cried out. The tapir, which resembles a pig, was just one creature within the zoo's 200 acres. Graham retired as director of the Detroit Zoo 20 years ago. On Thursday, he will share some of his memories during a Renfrew Institute program about the role of zoos in conservation efforts.

Magazine announces hottest stars under 25 NEW YORK (AP) - Who are the young stars of film, TV and music? Teen People's list of the "25 Hottest Stars Under 25" includes Alicia Keys, Ciara, Jessica and Ashlee Simpson, Jesse McCartney and Justin Timberlake. The list is featured in the magazine's latest issue, on newsstands Friday. Other stars making the eighth annual installment of the list: Jessica Alba, Britney Spears, Jake Gyllenhaal, Elijah Wood, Lindsay Lohan, Natalie Portman, Destiny's Child, rapper T.I. and the cast of Fox's "The O.C. " - minus Benjamin McKenzie, who is 26. Timberlake, 24, has been on the list five times since 2000.

Area makes strides in senior care To the editor: Last year the Maryland General Assembly approved the establishment of a program to move more than 300,000 Maryland Medicaid recipients into managed care organizations (MCOs) to receive their health care. This was done in an effort to provide better coordinated and cost effective care for those individuals receiving Medical Assistance. The taxpayers of the State of Maryland will save millions of dollars as a result of this legislation.

o If you like reading Tim Rowland, you'll love watching him. See what else Tim has to say Naturally, the swine flu and its potential to become a pandemic event is engrossing enough, but I'm particularly interested in the business side of the equation. It is reassuring that so many people see this flu not in terms of life or death, but in terms of dollars and cents. On Wall Street, for example, hospital and pharmaceutical stocks shot up on the news that the malady was spreading to other countries.

martinsburg@herald-mail.com Martinsburg, W.Va. - All but one of the charges filed against a Martinsburg woman in connection with a case involving three horses that had been stabbed were dismissed Tuesday when a plea bargain was reached. Julie Corbin Creswell, 44, pleaded no contest to one misdemeanor count of conspiracy to commit cruelty to animals in Berkeley County Circuit Court. She was ordered to pay a $250 fine and $120 in court costs. No jail time was imposed and seven other charges filed against Creswell - three felony counts of malicious maiming of an animal, one felony count of conspiracy to commit malicious wounding of an animal and three misdemeanor counts of cruelty to animals - were dismissed.

I was looking over the County Commissioners' budget and have become altogether convinced they are spending too much for lawyers, too much on the needy and too much for fox scalps. And if they don't get a handle on that blacksmith department, it will be the death of us. Perhaps I should mention in passing that the budget in question was for the year 1860 and that, printed in total, the entire document came to little more than half a newspaper page. Thanks to HCC professor Tom Clemens and a man in Oregon named Joe Bloom, we recently got our mitts on a cache of Civil-War era newspapers that were believed lost earlier this century.