Obama failed at religious forum

John McCain and Barack Obama answered questions in an evangelical forum. Are their answers important?

Article VI of the U.S. Constitution states “…no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” But it says nothing about a voluntary test. And who can tell what a candidate really believes anyway? They might worship ants for all we know.

– takei

The forum or person asking the questions hardly makes a difference at this point. The point really is how miserably Obama performed. He looked very amateurish and dare I say very non-presidential. He couldn’t even answer honestly a question on abortion saying it was “above his pay grade.” The only response from his campaign on his performance being less than stellar was that McCain cheated. This guy wants to be president?

– shawn7282000

John Edwards admitted he had an extra-marital affair. Are politicians more prone to such failings?

So another politician cheats on his wife. Not very original. Mr. Edwards could at least have claimed Ms. Hunter was secretly an alien who seduced him with her home planet’s atmospheric spices. Though to be fair, it hasn’t been conclusively proven that she’s not an alien.

– takei

Should Maine Yankee be reopened?

Maine Yankee had approximately the same capacity (800 MW) as the new windmill proposal for The County described in the Aug. 16 edition of the BDN, requiring some 400 windmills and a lot of land. As is the case with every power plant, there always has to be spare generating capacity available to keep the lights on if a generator has to be shut down. Nuclear power plants run basically 24 hours a day 365 days a year, pausing only for refueling and routine maintenance. …

These power plants are online providing power close to 90 percent of the time at full capacity. Wind power is rarely available at full capacity, requiring a larger amount of backup generation for those periods of little wind. This is an added, rarely mentioned cost of wind and solar power. Additional generation must be built to cover the lower availability of these sources. To meet the reliability level of an 800 MW nuclear plant would probably require the installation of not 400, but more like 800 windmills. And these would have to be well scattered over the country so lack of wind in one location would be compensated by windier conditions elsewhere.

– georgeary

Look for ClickBack questions posed in Tuesday’s editorial column, or post your own at the ClickBack page at bangordailynews.com.