After having read your editorial supporting Maryland's red light and speed cameras, I am forced to wonder how you, as journalistic heirs to the great H. L. Mencken, have so completely lost touch with the basic realities of the contemporary world ("The purpose of speed cameras," Dec. 27).

These devices have nothing whatever to do with any type of road safety. They were brought to us by a cadre of manipulative, lying, thieving politicians who were too cowardly to openly raise taxes yet desperate for revenue.

It constitutes a deliberate fraud and a polite robbery of the state's citizens. Your own paper has exposed such embarrassments as the shortening of yellow light intervals order to generate more tickets.

Those who disagree should consider this: If, for instance, there were a federal law mandating that all revenues from state or municipal speed cameras had to be turned over to charity instead of to government, do you honestly think there would be a single such device left operating in the entire country?

Drage Vukcevich, Gwynn Oak