Attorney General Steven Rowe has advised the state’s department of education and public schools that the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing parents in Cleveland, Ohio, to use tuition vouchers to send their children to religious schools does not apply in Maine. For now, Mr. Rowe is correct. Read More
The driver of a Mister Softee truck in Hartford, Conn., will face assault and breach of peace charges for allegedly attacking a regular critic of the music coming from his truck’s loudspeakers, according to The Associated Press. More specifically, the assault charge is for allegedly attacking the critic… Read More
What is most remarkable about the debate over a drug benefit for Medicare is that after five years of talking about this issue and widespread agreement that Medicare has not kept pace with changes in medical treatment, the various proposals remain so far apart. Not only are the… Read More
By all accepted measures by which programs receiving taxpayer money are judged, Experience at Sea is a keeper. Put simply, it saves money and it works. One year is, of course, too short a time for a full assessment, but this innovative foster care experiment… Read More
A recurring post-Sept. 11 sidebar is criticism of the State Department for its kid-glove policies regarding Saudi Arabia, particularly the shocking Visa Express program and the failure to even politely object to the captivity of American women held against their will there by Saudi husbands or fathers. A… Read More
The United States regularly urges diplomatic solutions to difficult international issues no matter how many decades of talks may be required – witness the Koreas, Northern Ireland, Israel. But no one expects the Bush administration to negotiate with Saddam Hussein. This is partly because the Iraqi leader has… Read More
When applying for a first job, it is important to make a good first impression. That means, for one thing, dressing appropriately. If a Maine woman can’t afford a new outfit, fortunately she has a place to go for help: Well Suited – “Clothing That Works” – has… Read More
It is likely that no one in the American fishing industry can remember a time when a federal fisheries policy of individual transferable quotas (ITQs) was not part of the theoretical discussion on how best to manage ocean resources. With a congressional moratorium on ITQs due to expire… Read More
One of the great puzzlements of this age of battery-powered gadgets is that, despite a good half-century of amazing improvements in gadgetry – from toys to telephones and beyond – there has been precious little improvement in the batteries that power them. Rarely has the need for a… Read More
John Wallach once suggested marketing Maine as “The Peace State,” to recognize the achievements of such people as George Mitchell, Ed Muskie and Samantha Smith. The founder of Seeds of Peace, who died this week from lung cancer at age 59, could have added his own name. His… Read More
In May 1990, Old Town High School chemistry teacher George Powers described to Education Commissioner Eve Bither an imminent shortage of science teachers in Maine, based on conclusions from a recent meeting of the Maine Science Teachers Association. Mr. Powers said the reasons for the… Read More
Maine has regularly catalogued and extolled the benefits of going to college, from financial to societal to the sheer joy of discovering a rewarding area of study to pursue for the rest of one’s life. And Maine residents have responded, a little bit. More young people are likely… Read More
Maine’s Department of Human Services, which oversees the state’s Medicaid program, figures generic drugs saved patients and, therefore, taxpayers about $15 million last year. Even more savings from using generics – more than $20 million – are expected this year. A U.S. Senate committee’s strong support yesterday of… Read More
Like a two-gun Texas sheriff striding into a crooked prairie town, President Bush told the business and financial community Tuesday to clean up its act or he’d do it for them through new regulations and strict prosecution and punishment for white-collar crime. Tough words, but… Read More
The world knows of Stephen and Tabitha King as authors; Maine, particularly around their home of Bangor, also knows of them as philanthropists. Their latest gift of a pool – a series of pools, really – is both extremely generous and will be appreciated by local kids and… Read More
The legal system is not just to be fallible, but to be particularly fallible when it comes to the poor, who rely on the court system for competent counsel, and sometimes fallible with tragic results when death is the imposed penalty. Federal District Judge Jed Rakoff of New… Read More
On July 10, 1962, a Boeing Thor Delta rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral. On its tip was a 34-inch diameter, 171-pound sphere. The next day, July 11, the sphere with the Space Age name Telstar 1 flickered to life and the age of global satellite communications was… Read More
What most of Maine needs more of, according to Richard Florida, Carnegie Mellon professor and author of “The Rise of the Creative Class,” is a rising creative class. It takes creativity to attract creativity, says Professor Florida, and just as he was being interviewed about his new book,… Read More
Congress begins debate this week on President Bush’s proposal to create a Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security. This is an enormous undertaking – at last count, some 180 different agencies, bureaus and offices will be involved, more than a dozen House and Senate committees have jurisdiction – and… Read More
Education Commissioner Duke Albanese recently expressed his displeasure at several news stories, including in this paper, because they used the word “fail” in referring to 19 schools in Maine. The stories used “fail” because a press release from the U.S. Department of Education said, “Public schools that fail… Read More
President Bush last week cited the 25th Amendment to the Constitution when he turned over the powers and duties of the presidency to Vice President Dick Cheney while undergoing a colonoscopy. Actually, the amendment says only that “whenever” the president declares himself unable to function the vice president… Read More
The rest of Maine should listen carefully to the results of a meeting scheduled July 17 in Portland over whether supplying heroin addicts with an antidote to overdosing would reduce the number of drug deaths in that city. Whatever is decided on this issue in Portland will influence… Read More
A guest commentary on the op-ed page last week drew jeers and only a little support when its author proposed run-offs for his party’s primaries as a way to choose a candidate who has the support of the largest interest groups within the party. But there are additional… Read More
A group of dedicated health specialists met again this week to fine-tune its plan to encourage every school in Maine to get rid of sodas, chips and other non-nutritional items. They have put together an information packet warning against soda and chips as major causes… Read More
What better place to start restoring the idea of corporate responsibility, thoroughly trashed on Wall Street of late, than with returning the “polluter pays” idea to the Superfund cleanup program? The absence of this mechanism already has slowed work at 33 highly contaminated hazardous waste sites nationwide and… Read More
When in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God… Read More
Peacekeeping in Bosnia can go on without U.S. troops, which may be removed by the White House because the United States was not granted immunity from prosecution through the new International Criminal Court. The more important question is how Americans will contribute with military or humanitarian international support… Read More
The contradiction of people producing large amounts of traffic and pollution so that they can escape into the fresh air of a national park has been noted so often that it barely deserves further mention, except that Acadia National Park and its many friends have actually done something… Read More
The federal court ruling that the “under God” part of the Pledge of Allegiance is an unconstitutional government endorsement of religion has sparked widespread concerns, including whether the “In God We Trust” motto on U.S. currency may be targeted next. Given Corporate America’s financial scandals and they damage… Read More
The impending shutdown of Amtrak has been averted by an 11th-hour deal between the national passenger rail service and the U.S. Department of Transportation. It is entirely in keeping with the 31-year history of Amtrak that this crisis is resolved in a way that may only add to… Read More
Maine traded one bunch of problems for another when it approved term limits for state legislators in 1993. The effects of inexperience in leadership have been noticed since the limits took effect in 1996. But two UMaine professors have now looked further down to the committee level and… Read More
Next time you take a boat ride out to Islesford in the Cranberry Isles, see if you notice any change. It’s the seagulls. They’re gone. Most years, scores of the gulls – black backs and herring gulls – glide around the dock area looking for… Read More
The expected gap between revenue and spending may change some between now and January when the Legislature starts working on Maine’s next budget, but it won’t change enough to erase the roughly $650 million to $750 million shortfall currently expected. Now is not too soon for lawmakers to… Read More
The arrivals of two air routes to Maine this week were hopeful signs in a state transportation network that needs all the hopeful signs it can get. The key for Maine to continue this kind of good news, however, is to ensure the routes are used. Read More
Prudent policy makers sometimes make lists of the reasons for and against a possible course of action. President Bush and his national security team have been giving us reasons for going to war against Iraq: Mr. Bush says Saddam Hussein is “a bad guy.” What’s more, he says… Read More
Fires rage out of control in the West, rampaging from national forest wilderness to the outskirts of cities. Hundreds of homes are destroyed, tens of thousands of firefighters are at great risk. In the midst of this devastation and danger, there is broad agreement that the problem is… Read More
Two United States Supreme Court death penalty decisions within the last week have settled two important constitutional issues: Executing the mentally retarded is cruel and unusual punishment in that it holds culpable those otherwise deemed incapable of informed decision; allowing judges to impose the death sentence violates the… Read More
The Clean Power Act, a Senate attempt to bring some sanity to coal-plant regulation while encouraging new sources of power that do not cause the nation to collectively choke, is leagues better for the environment than the White House’s Clear Skies proposal and is especially important for the… Read More
In his two major speeches on the Middle East, April and Monday, President Bush has said with more clarity than any predecessor has that a peaceful future for the region requires democracy. In fact, two democracies – one Israeli, one Palestinian – living as neighbors, wary but respectful… Read More
A straw man is a weak argument set up for the sole purpose of refuting it. A weak argument against a health-care system might be called a straw patient. Monday in Bangor a group called Treatment Access Alliance arranged for a straw patient to ride along with a… Read More
There’s something special about living on an island. Just ask anybody who lives in one of Maine’s 14 year-round island communities. Failing that, just ask a mainlander who knows anybody who lives on an island and who has given up trying to get a word in edgewise. Read More
Congratulations to Mary Anne Alhadeff for being chosen the next president of the Maine Public Broadcasting Corp. A former resident of Kittery, her impressive resume includes experience at New Hampshire Public Television. She was CEO of Prairie Public Broadcasting and has received numerous awards, including an Emmy, for… Read More
Meetings of the G8 (the old G7 plus Russia) have become in recent years little more than festivals of symbolism. Representatives of the world’s strongest economies (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, plus Russia) pose for photographs in some great city or… Read More
The announcement last week by Purdue Pharma that an abuse-resistant form of its powerful painkiller OxyContin may not be ready for several more years is profoundly discouraging news for Maine, a state reeling from addiction to what is commonly called Downeast heroin. For those who would lead the… Read More
First off, Gov. King’s plan to fix this year’s half of the state’s two-year, $180 million (give or take) budget shortfall is not, despite the governor’s assertion, free of broad-based tax increases. Three unpaid furlough days for state employees are nothing less than a tax increase of several… Read More
There’s a great and honorable tradition about disaster at sea: Women and children first, and the captain goes down with the ship. For Enron, it’s been just the opposite. Kenneth Lay and the rest of the top executives paid themselves an average of $5 million apiece as the… Read More
Just about everyone has heard of the dangers of dying from auto accidents or homicide or diseases of the respiratory system or liver. Stroke, as a killer, beats them all and, after cancer and heart disease, is the third leading cause of death in Maine. But many people… Read More
Despite the stampede of corporate scandals in recent months, the ruined portfolios and pensions of hundreds of thousands of Americans and the clear signs that increasing numbers of investors have little faith in the integrity of the financial markets, Congress has been painfully slow to respond. If Arthur… Read More
A U.S. Department of Education report released last week ranked Maine as having some of the lowest standards in the nation for teacher certification. So low, in fact, that Education Secretary Rod Paige singled Maine out for a scolding in his remarks that day at a national conference… Read More
An American mother’s dispute with Saudi Arabia points up the difficulty of partnering with a backward dictatorship. Pat Roush’s divorced Saudi husband kidnapped their daughters 16 years ago. She has been campaigning ever since to get them back. But U.S. authorities defer to the Saudis, and Saudi Arabia… Read More
Monday was the 30th anniversary of Watergate. That “third-rate burglary” thwarted in the wee hours of June 17, 1972, uncovered, among other repulsive things, the obscene influence of money on politics and led, in the way that good can come from bad, to a strong campaign-finance reform law… Read More
Sixteen people have been arrested in Warren, property has been damaged, obscenities shouted, push has come to shove and threatens to reach clobber. All over a short stretch of country road. Specifically, a short stretch of Route 1 between Warren and Thomaston in Knox County. Read More
Sometime before their August recess, the Senate must decide whether to proceed with decades-old plans to store high-level nuclear waste in a central location or abandon billions of dollars in research and leave the radioactive waste at more than a hundred sites around the country. It is time… Read More
Before the United Nations world food summit opened June 10 in Rome, undeveloped countries held little hope of progress in ending hunger because, they said, developed countries still clung to failed policies of the past. Developed countries predicted failure as well, only with the policies of undeveloped countries… Read More
The pharmaceutical industry has dozens of lawsuits from states coming after the record-setting $875 million government settlement against TAP Pharmaceutical Products for sales and marketing practices. The industry’s marketing generally has gotten so extreme that a growing number of doctors nationwide are refusing gifts to promote products. Congress… Read More
Dear Donna: We hear your cheerful mechanical voice out of Caribou every day, giving us the weather prediction and sometimes a thunderstorm warning. Your voice on the National Weather Radio is a welcome improvement over Perfect Paul. He was state of the art when he started four years… Read More
With the elections in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District past the primaries, voters can focus attention on just two candidates, Democrat Mike Michaud and, barring a surprising recount, Republican Kevin Raye. Both are to be congratulated for their hard work to get this far, and both have an opportunity… Read More
The conservative view that states should be free to make their own decisions regardless of what the federal government wants has led four members of the Supreme Court to condemn the trend and some liberal groups to fret about the potential loss of civil rights. But if the… Read More
The Fourth of July is America’s birthday; today, June 14, is the birthday of the American flag. It was on this date in 1777 that the Continental Congress adopted Betsy Ross’ design for a national flag. “Resolved: that the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternate… Read More
Whether lawmakers return to Augusta this summer or wait to face a shortfall in January, they will be looking for a source of revenue to help pay, among other things, steeply rising health care costs. And they will look, illogically enough, at the Fund for a Healthy Maine,… Read More
Eighteen months and thousands of hours of research and testimony after the incident, the General Accounting Office has concluded its investigation into the mess left by Democrats when they were forced from the White House in January 2001. The GAO is now able to state conclusively that somewhere… Read More
Where were the directors of Tyco International when its chairman and CEO, L. Dennis Kozlowski, was buying all those Renoirs and Monets for his Manhattan apartment and pretending to ship them to New Hampshire to avoid paying $1 million in New York sales taxes? He denies the charges,… Read More
The arrest Monday of a man allegedly plotting to build and explode a “dirty” radioactive bomb was somewhat like the presumed impact of such a device – a stunning moment followed by aftereffects yet to be revealed. The stunning moment confirmed the worst post-Sept. 11… Read More
Democrats and Republicans in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District certainly need no prodding to get themselves to the polls today. With six and four candidates, respectively, these races could well be decided by narrow margins; citizens who just can’t fit voting into their Tuesday schedule may find themselves on… Read More
The 17 recent deaths from drug overdoses in southern Maine are personal tragedies for those who risked their lives with heroin or other drugs and they are public tragedies because the deaths expose what the state does not know about drug abuse. In this case, for instance, it… Read More
These new arrivals are not the summer visitors, whom we mostly love. They are the black flies, which we almost entirely hate. Charlene Donahue, a forest entomologist at the Maine Forest Service, doesn’t like them in her eyes or mouth but isn’t otherwise bothered by… Read More
The Senate this week is expected to vote on spending a relatively small amount of money – $15 million – that could have a large effect on the nation’s nuclear-weapons program and on international treaties. A proposal to research a nuclear bunker-buster, cut earlier but saved in the… Read More
In less trying times, President Bush’s plan to consolidate dozens of federal agencies and offices charged with various aspects of guarding against terrorist attacks might be seen as a bold exercise in rearranging bureaucrats. Previous government reorganization plans have come and gone with scant visible result, a record… Read More
The excessively covered trial of Kennedy relative Michael Skakel, found guilty Friday of the murder of Martha Moxley, brought renewed attention to a controversial Maine school, with charges about practices and conditions there serious enough to require the state to review the school’s licensing. The Elan School in… Read More
Senate Republicans want a Medicare prescription drug benefit this year. Senate Democrats want one, too. Money – some $350 billion over the next decade – has been set aside to pay for a benefit. Two plans, one from Senate centrists and one from moderate Democrats, are ready to… Read More
Saying that Yasser Arafat appears to have little or no control over Islamic Jihad in no way lessens the hideousness of the most recent attacks in Israel, in which 17 Israelis, including 13 soldiers, were killed Wednesday when a bus was bombed. But it should change Israel’s response,… Read More
Radical anti-abortionists have hit a new low. A network of photographers in at least 24 states have been hanging around clinics that perform abortions and taking pictures of women as they arrive or leave. Within days or even hours, the pictures appear on a Web site operated by… Read More
House and Senate intelligence committees opened their secret investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks Tuesday with two high-profile decisions: The investigation will expand to examine the government’s response to international terrorism as far back as 1986; the secrecy offered by Room 407 of the Capitol, soundproofed and sealed… Read More
It began early this year as a bit of ethical housecleaning by Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chr?tien. With as much discretion as possible, several members of his Liberal cabinet have been let go, demoted or reassigned amid allegations of patronage and conflict of interest. It… Read More
“Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy.” – Vice President Dick Cheney, April 2001 googletag.cmd.push(function () { // Define Slot var slot_sizes = [[300,250]]; var new_slot_sizes = []; var has_banner =… Read More
Second District Democrats are fortunate to have candidates who are strong on the economy or with labor, on women’s rights and civil rights, on the complex issue of health care and the simple injustice of underfunding education. And they are especially fortunate to have a candidate who is… Read More
One of the first acts of Congress after September 11 was the $10 billion airline bailout package. With their attention keenly focused by the attacks, lawmakers rightly determined that the addition of terrorism to recession could force many airlines into bankruptcy and cripple the economy. Read More
Shame on FBI Director Robert Mueller for stamping “classified” on a memo from a loyal but critical agent in Minneapolis. But good for the agent, Coleen Rowley, for courageously laying out the facts of FBI’s Washington officials’ obstruction of an investigation of early signs that Osama bin Laden’s… Read More
The best way for the Republicans to defeat an extremely popular Democratic candidate for governor while preventing an independent from draining away votes is to choose a well-spoken business person with legislative experience and appeal well beyond the party. That person is Peter Cianchette, who as a state… Read More
Republicans in Maine’s 2nd District no doubt want to send to Congress someone who fully understands the urgent problems facing the region and who has a long record of working hard to develop intelligent, specific and doable solutions. They also want to nominate on June 11 someone who… Read More
Longtime legislator Peter Mills referred in an op-ed piece this week to Maine’s “start-and-stop government,” in which an antique tax engine is run hard until it breaks down, is patched at great expense of people and programs and then run hard until it breaks down again. He suggested… Read More
Voters who do not belong to a political party may think the June 11 ballot has nothing for them on it. In addition to local issues, two state bonds equaling more than $63 million are on the table, promising school repair, research investment and job growth, now and… Read More
It was an impressive sight to see the American and Russian presidents, standing together in a gilded Kremlin hall, pledging a joint campaign against world terrorism and acclaiming the “Treaty of Moscow” they were signing as a major new step in arms control and the prevention of the… Read More
It’s been about a month since Gov. King announced the “completely unexpected” discovery that his state revenue forecasters were off by about $180 million. Since then, the governor’s been putting together a comprehensive, carefully conceived plan to address the shortfall: the Appropriations Committee has been briefed; legal opinions… Read More
Congratulations to Bangor High School for being the latest school to be recognized nationally for the excellent work of students, faculty and staff. The announcement last week that the high school had been chosen among the U.S. Department of Education’s 172 Blue Ribbon Schools was an honor for… Read More
Indian troops are massed along the Kashmir frontier, ready for what Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee calls the “decisive battle.” Pakistani troops are massed along to other side of the frontier, abandoning for now the fight against al-Qaida. Both states are rattling their nukes; Pakistan is conducting highly… Read More
The reversal late last week by U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler of her April 26 order imposing harsh commercial fishing restrictions in the Northeast came as a great relief to the New England fleet. It also should come as a great relief to all citizens who see the… Read More
Though much of the media and too many members of Congress have decided that a crisis in Social Security they made so much of a year or more ago no longer matters, problems with the system persist because there was no agreement on a solution. The problems are… Read More
When Pennsylvania wanted to keep college graduates from leaving, its governor asked 30 college students to brainstorm ideas as part of the state’s Stay Invent the Future program, which offers, in addition to one of the best web sites around, lists of the best businesses to work for,… Read More
Long before sales and sports and the three-day weekend, Memorial Day was a day of mourning. Turning grim Civil War battle experiences into something lasting and inspiring, Gen. John Alexander Logan set aside May 30, 1868, “for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves… Read More
One obvious but compelling lesson Maine may conclude from the latest batch of Census numbers measuring income is that a rising tide does not lift all boats. Southern Maine is wealthier than a decade ago and much of the northern two-thirds of the state is in much deeper… Read More
Back in those dark and noisy days of arguing whether wild Atlantic salmon should be listed as an endangered species in eight Maine rivers, opponents claimed that the federally protected fish would become the mythic spotted owl of the Down East region, bringing its economy to a standstill. Read More
The U.S. Department of Transportation announced Tuesday it is unalterably opposed to commercial pilots carrying firearms in the cockpit as a protection of last resort against hijackers. Rarely has a straightforward decision been so poorly explained, so ineptly justified and so certain to prolong a controversy that should… Read More
A proposal for a major expansion for Maine’s technical-college system would nearly double enrollment, cut tuition cost to national levels, spend millions of dollars on renovating buildings and hire more advisers to help students steer their academic careers. What will be talked about most, however, is its change… Read More
With the House’s approval last week of welfare reform, the question of whose welfare is being helped most has been answered by Rep. Tom Allen, who reports that the federal government will shed itself of some $11 billion in costs currently covered under the ’96 reform. These are… Read More
Reports circulating in Washington as President Bush heads to Europe about a private outburst by the president indicate how he is regarded by some allies and how close he has brought the nation to war with Iraq. A prominent German industrialist who recently visited the… Read More
A little history can help sort out the current dispute over how far to go and how soon to go in investigating the intelligence failure that allowed radical Islamic hijackers to crash passenger jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The nation went through it once… Read More
In Lewiston, high school students are attending heroin parties the way high school students used to attend beer bashes. Police in that city are investigating the overdose deaths of about a dozen young adults; in Portland, the number is 14. The overdose death in Standish Sunday of a… Read More
Plenty of Maine people who advocate for more state spending know that the last two decades of increases in the tax burden cannot be sustained. Yet they have not slowed their requests because no one in elected leadership has made the case, specifically or persuasively, for any group… Read More
In 2000, Democratic state Sen. Mark Lawrence ran a mostly polite, issues-oriented campaign against Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe. He was pounded at the polls. This year, former Democratic state Sen. Chellie Pingree is running a less polite, more personal campaign against Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins. Read More