And another thing …

After enduring several days of ridicule from everyone from local wags to town officials to members of Congress, the Army Corps of Engineers finally admitted it goofed when it built a flood-control project for Fort Fairfield that did not take into account the annoying habit water in northern Maine has of freezing in the winter. As for rectifying its mistake, the corps proposes that Fort Fairfield pay roughly one-third of the additional cost, to be taken from a refund due the town on the original work. To err is human; to take full responsibility, beyond the corps’ job description.

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Elsewhere in the world of bad ideas, here’s how the Ohio Supreme Court ruled on a constitutional challenge to state’s motto, “With God all things are possible,” and its use on state buildings, documents and stationery: The biblical quotation itself does not violate the separation clause as long as it is not attributed to its source. Sweet Anonymous, what kind of thinking is that?

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It’s Week 2 of the NCAA Tournament and, for those who failed to pay proper attention during Week 1, here’s a quick primer on the game of basketball, courtesy of some the nation’s finest college coaches (a few of whom actually make less than a tenured Nobel laureate). It’s the Big Dance and you’ve got to step up at crunch time if you want to be a Cinderella. Giving 110 percent is the bare minimum, whether at the charity stripe or in the paint. It all comes down turnovers (or, some say, to who wants it more). There’s no “I” in “‘team.” But there is in “cliche.”

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More sports news. Viewership of the XFL, which NBC hyped as super-tough football with a pro-wrestling manners, has plummeted since its opening in February – the Nielsen rating of 1.6 for last Saturday’s game was the lowest ever recorded for a prime-time program in the entire history of television. It’s also, coincidentally, the average number of points scored per game and the job expectancy, in days, of the NBC exec who dreamt this one up.

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Two of the most intriguing bills ever taken up by the Maine Legislature suffered setbacks in the committee this week, but got enough votes to guarantee full floor debate. The committee vote on a bill to ban circus elephants went 9-3 against, with members apparently swayed by the suggestion that it was driven by supporters of out-of-state animal-rights extremists. The bill to put a nickel deposit on filter cigarettes went down 11-2, that effort led by in-state supporters of disgusting, germ-infested litter.