The Maine Department of Environmental Protection and the Legislature, which last spring led the nation toward tougher mercury-emission standards, found regional allies recently in the fight for cleaner air. The signing last week of action plans to reduce mercury and acid rain in New England and Eastern Canada… Read More
When Congress took up legislation this session to combat a free-spending nation’s shameful surge in personal bankruptcy, it looked as though it also was setting up an unfair fight between child support and credit-card banks. Surprisingly, at least in the House version, the kids have held their own. Read More
Diplomats from dozens of countries begin meeting in Rome today to try to eliminate an almost endless list of problems associated with forming a permanent international criminal court. They have five weeks and 1,700 disputed items in the text of the court agreement. It would not be surprising… Read More
And they’re off. The five-way 1998 Maine gubernatorial race has begun. Somebody tell the favorites. All five ballot candidates — Gov. Angus King, Republican James Longley Jr., Democrat Tom Connolly, independent/Green Pat LaMarche and independent/Taxpayer Bill Clarke — were invited to a live Maine Public… Read More
President Clinton committed a well-meaning, inadvertent but foreseeable blunder the other day when he asked a United Nations General Assembly special session on illegal drugs to stop “pointing fingers of blame” at each other. He should know as well as anyone that finger pointing is likely to be… Read More
Southern Baptists, 16 million strong, have adopted a new credo instructing wives to “graciously submit” to their husbands in the same way all church members submit to Christ. Like all mortals, Southern Baptist husbands may have their flaws, but a lack of self-esteem certainly isn’t one of them. Read More
An iceberg directly ahead of the good ship Maine is a lawsuit over its plan to help restore the Atlantic salmon in seven rivers Down East. Maine will crash into it only if it refuses to begin maneuvering now. Maine wanted to avoid the probable… Read More
Instead of just passing anti-smoking legislation, senators who had opposed the deal this week decided they needed more time to wean themselves away from devotion to the tobacco industry and so slapped on some amendments to delay the bill. Consider this nicotine-patch legislation. Sen. John… Read More
Congratulations to Republican Jim Longley and to Democrat Tom Connolly for well-deserved victories in Tuesday’s primary. Each campaigned with energy and civility. Each discussed important issues and took definite positions. Each overcame significant hurdles to capture his party’s nomination for governor. Longley beat two worthy,… Read More
The recent Time/CNN report that the United States used nerve gas in Laos against defectors during the Vietnam War is a shocking indictment of the U.S. government. Given the particular emotions here attached to that war, Defense Secretary William Cohen was correct to demand a full investigation of… Read More
Maybe the Department of Commerce finding last week that some Chilean salmon producers are dumping their product on the U.S. market was a modest victory for American fish farmers. Or maybe the DOC finding that the Chilean government is not subsidizing its producers and that not all producers… Read More
The experts are calling this election the stealth primary. Pundits, the primary about nothing. The potential turnout is so low, Secretary of State Dan Gwadosky isn’t even taking a stab at a projection. The stage is set, then, for the contrarians who inhabit this state… Read More
A legislative meeting last week on a toxic gasoline additive that has been showing up in drinking-water supplies began to sort out the problem from the conspiracy theories around it. Let’s hope the state keeps moving in that direction. The presence of methyl tertiary-butyl ether… Read More
If Robert Noland has struggled to get his musical career off the ground, the struggle should be over. Thanks to Orono police, he now has a resume no booking agent could resist: Juilliard graduate; studies at the Royal College of Music; State Department touring artist, Carnegie Hall recitalist;… Read More
For a pot of money that was supposed to be spread across the country to help everyone, the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund sure has caused a lot of unhappiness, mostly because Congress has found more interesting items to spend it on than its intended purpose. The… Read More
The Maine Democratic Party sorely needs a state leader grounded in the traditions of the party and upbeat about its future, someone with plenty of energy to get the party moving again and an absolute commitment to putting the welfare of Maine people ahead of personal gain. Fortunately,… Read More
Maine Republicans are blessed with three strong candidates for governor, each well-informed, each with a commendable record of public service, each an able representative for the party. Former Education Commissioner Leo Martin of Kennebunk is the moderate. Thoughtful and soft-spoken, he is a nationally recognized… Read More
With its recent flip-flopping from liberal to conservative and back to liberal, the 1st Congressional District is the conundrum of Maine politics, the proverbial enigma wrapped in a riddle. If Republicans are to get this puzzling House seat back on the right side of the… Read More
Do you favor a $5,000,000 bond issue for capital expenses for vocational high schools? Because vocational schools generally do not ask for much, it is easy to overlook their important role in preparing Maine students for the workforce. But a generation and 500,000 students after… Read More
Do you favor a $6,000,000 bond issue to construct water pollution control facilities, to close and clean up municipal solid waste landfills and to mitigate storm water pollution through a comprehensive watershed protection program? Consider this bond question Part II of a clean-water package. googletag.cmd.push(function… Read More
Do you favor a $36,985,000 bond issue for improvements to municipal and state roads, airports, state ferry vessels and terminals, transit facilities and equipment and rail and marine facilities that makes the State eligible for over $60,000,000 in matching federal, local and private funds? This,… Read More
Monday was independents day in Maine, the day for candidates without party to get their names on the ballot and their campaigns rolling. For those interested in expanding the political debate beyond Republican and Democrat, it was a day of no surprises and a few disappointments. Read More
Months of discussions on the Allagash Wilderness Waterway, give and take among participants in the group creating its management plan, debates on historical use, development zones and allowable watercraft come down to a question raised repeatedly at the public hearings: So, are you going to open John’s Bridge… Read More
Two and a half years of serving as President Clinton’s secretary of energy put Hazel O’Leary at the center of several controversial decisions. Testimony she gave recently for a suit brought by a Department of Energy whistle-blower, however, suggests that her most important work for the government may… Read More
Now that Democrats and Republicans have had their state conventions, voters in search of a home this election season cannot help but notice this: While things are dark and uninviting on Donkey Street, the elephant party has the lights on, the music playing and something cooking. Read More
No-nos in the news: Astute readers, of which this newspaper has plenty, commented at length on our front page photo last Tuesday of Gov. Angus King, Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and Department of Commerce Assistant Secretary Terry Garcia navigating the Kennebec in a small open boat without benefit… Read More
If there’s a tougher job in Maine than being the state’s marine resources commissioner, we shudder to think of it. Given the pressures of dealing with every manner of marine creature from the ferocious federal fishcrat to the crusty old buster on the town dock, the successful candidate… Read More
Back in those comfy days of the First Nuclear Age, the United States and the Soviet Union kept each other at bay with a policy known as Mutual Assured Destruction — you bury us, we’ll bury you. Now that India and Pakistan have launched the Second, this crazy… Read More
Mistakes are made, plans go awry, balls get dropped. Flubs are a fact of life; it’s the admitting and fixing part that’s less common. Maine’s Land Use Regulation Commission got caught in a foozle a month or so ago when notices soliciting public input on… Read More
Harvey Prager, the brilliant Harvey Prager, is back in the news. And Portland Police Chief Michael Chitwood, the dogged Michael Chitwood, is still on his case. Any Mainer with a halfway decent memory and a strong sense of outrage remembers Prager. He’s the brilliant (his… Read More
Back in 1992, Candidate Clinton made great sport of President Bush’s China policy. Too soft, too cozy, too soon after the massacre at Tiananmen Square. What a difference six years and the responsibility of office can make. Not to mention charges that American security has… Read More
Springfield, Ore., buried the last of its dead children early Tuesday afternoon. TV crews packed up their gear, reporters signed off, a sensation-seeking, fickle nation turned its attention elsewhere. The town that bled in public joined the sorrowful list of towns that now must heal on their own. Read More
The Senate left its tobacco bill hanging last week on the question of what level of liability the industry should accept as states press their health care cases against cigarettes. Before Senate leaders allow the two ends of this debate to beat up the middle, they should examine… Read More
The results of Friday’s referendum are stunning: 71 percent of voters in Northern Ireland and 94 percent in the Republic of Ireland want political solutions, not bloodshed. But ending war is one thing — building peace will be quite another. The people of Northern Ireland… Read More
The bipartisan National Commission on Retirement Policy recently described the future of Social Security in a way that many people assumed but leaders were reluctant to describe. The commission gives Congress the cover it needs to start looking at the retirement system more seriously than ever. Read More
Of the two chambers of Congress, the Senate is considered the more deliberative, orderly and polite; the House as rambunctious and rowdy. That view of these legislative siblings certainly is supported by their chosen methods of killing campaign finance reform. The Senate divided itself into… Read More
Note to gubernatorial candidates trying to gain points on incumbent Angus King. Stick to the Two Maines problem; the gasoline-additive conspiracy theory isn’t working. Not that the conspiracy sounds bad. The Department of Environmental Protection, the theory goes, hid from lawmakers the fact that during… Read More
Long before department store sales and the Indianapolis 500 diluted Memorial Day’s significance, there was Gen. John Alexander Logan, a man of the hour destined to make history. Turning grim Civil War battle experiences into something lasting and positive, Gen. Logan set aside May 30,… Read More
They grieve today in Springfield. Just as they’ve grieved in Jonesboro, in West Paducah, in Pearl and in the seven other scenes of schoolhouse massacres in the last five years. It’s in the copycat stage now, but this isn’t just a matter of one disturbed… Read More
When the Food and Drug Administration announced in December that its Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point regime was being applied to the seafood industry, it sounded like a pretty good deal. The old way — confrontational spot checks of nervous processors by grouchy government… Read More
Encouraging news from a recent Canadian study on prostate cancer is met in the United States with a hole in health care coverage that could prove fatal to some men. The lack of coverage for cancer screenings is likely to be the next big question for insurers, and… Read More
For more than a week now, President Clinton has been standing tall for nuclear nonproliferation, warning India of dire consequences, urging Pakistan to exercise restraint. How ironic if it turns out the blasts that punched five holes in India’s Thar desert were detonated by the White House’s lust… Read More
Even as the amount of imported food to the United States has increased 50 percent in the last decade, the number of federal food inspectors making sure that food is safe has fallen. The situation exposes U.S. consumers to an unnecessary risk, and the government that has so… Read More
Seeing the need for a federal standard for drunken driving should be as easy as following the double yellow lines on the highway. Alcohol plays a part in more than 40 percent of traffic fatalities, producing unlimited amounts of misery, pain and death. A tough OUI law reduces… Read More
If Microsoft, as one plaintiff so tritely put it, is an “800-pound gorilla” stomping on competition and innovation, the Justice Department now has to prove it isn’t just a rapacious big-game hunter intent on killing something, anything. And the attorneys general of the 20 states… Read More
Combine the report of a legislative task force on teaching very young children and the conclusions from the Kids Count Data Book and the path for parents is clear. They and others who care for children need access to better information about the crucial learning years of early… Read More
When Congress recessed last fall, Republican leadership promised to come back this spring with a major reform of bankruptcy law that would get tough with the nation’s swelling legion of chiselers. They said nothing about getting tough with the chiselers’ children. Yet that is exactly… Read More
Somebody misread the EPA directive about the use of an additive in reformulated gasoline. It is supposed to go in the gas tank, but keeps getting put in Maine’s drinking-water supplies. The problem, however, is larger than simply finding this unpleasant tasting, smelly toxin where it does not… Read More
Last week, struggling Maine Times cadged enough alms from a couple of benefactors to keep the presses rolling a little while longer. This week, the journal for the Southern Maine smart set declares in its cover story that the east-west highway is a boondoggle that will not boost… Read More
The International Whaling Commission begins its week-long annual meeting today in Muscat, Oman. At the top of the agenda for the 40 member nations gathered on the Arabian Peninsula will be the same item that’s been there for 12 years — the moratorium on commercial whaling. Read More
Whoopi Goldberg, Meryl Streep, Newt Gingrich and Barbara Bush all have taken their turns — and their fees — as commencement speakers over the years at some of America’s most prestigious colleges and universities. Although marching along with the other graduates clad in black robes… Read More
This, ironically, was to have been the week the Senate Foreign Relations Committee got a feel-good update from the State Department on the new level of friendship and understanding between this nation and India. What a difference a few nuclear holes in the desert can make. Read More
Enthusiastic debates over whether men or women receive better medical care have been going on for more than a decade: Why have medical studies so often used only men? Why does breast cancer research get more funding than prostate cancer research? Rarely is there a clean, clear comparison… Read More
The world comes to an end tonight at 9 p.m. (8 p.m. Central). Well, not exactly an end, but when TV Guide takes on the heft of War and Peace, when a level of hype makes the Super Bowl look shy and retiring, when a… Read More
One would think the most daunting challenges facing the 16 nations building the International Space Station would be in the realm of technology and engineering. Synchronizing the ultrasonic cyclotrons. Fitting tab A precisely into slot B. Ensuring adequate stores of Tang. One would be wrong. Read More
An estimated 1 million people last year got slammed — that is, they had their phone carrier switched without giving their permission. Coincidentally, the Federal Communications Commission issued approximately $1 million in fines for the practice. At a mere $1 a slam, is it any wonder that this… Read More
Antique maps and the latest numbers from the U.S. Commerce Department are unlikely allies. But, in fixing Maine’s true geographic location and the price the state pays for ignoring it, they may prove to be the best friends an east-west highway could have. The maps… Read More
Two hundred thousand letters, the large majority saying more or less the same thing, informed Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman that his proposed regulations on organic food struck the writers like so much insecticide on an aphid. The secretary is to be commended for recognizing their disgust and promising… Read More
Crusading Reporter exposes evil in Big Business. Large Media Conglomerate, under thumb of Big Business, buys out her tiny weekly, muzzles her, squashes story. Truth and Justice rides to rescue, honors Crusading Reporter, shames Large Media Conglomerate. Roll credits. If the saga of former Bucksport… Read More
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt’s announcement the other day that more than two dozen imperiled plants and animals now can be removed from the endangered species list is a stunning triumph in this nation’s selfless effort to live in harmony with the rest of creation. Either… Read More
Bangor Police Chief Randy Harriman has done his homework on community notification for sex offenders. He has provided a plan, to be considered tonight by the City Council, that is thorough and, for the most part, cautious. No one knows what to do about sex… Read More
The current crisis in Maine’s elver fishery is partly about science, partly about sociology and, ultimately, hardly a crisis at all. Yes, the number of nets — nearly 3,800 — trapping the transparent, finger-length baby eels as they swim upstream is nearly twice that of… Read More
For parents without the luxury of deciding whether to work or stay home with young children — that is, almost all parents — day care can become a nerve-wracking, guilt-ridden, all-consuming issue. The ad hoc, loosely regulated system of day-care providers in Maine and elsewhere stands in uncomfortable… Read More
Back when members of Congress waited until they were elected to the White House before taking on presidential duties, Sen. Slade Gorton of Washington would have hesitated before making appointments to the U.S. Court of Appeals. Not now; he got a Republican choice a spot on the Ninth… Read More
Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman discovered what happens when the government tries to write rules that please everyone: All sides are unhappy, the rules are mush and interested parties begin to have their doubts about the person in charge. To his credit, Secretary Glickman reviewed his department’s proposed mushy… Read More
If Ronald Reagan was the Teflon President, Bill Clinton, with his uncanny ability to slip past disasters of his own creation, must be the Teflon II, Banana Peel, WD 40 President. Either that, or he’s just plain lucky. Lucky to have foes more flawed than… Read More
Legislators had a great idea back in 1987: Enclose the roughly 650 exposed municipal and state road salt and sand piles within 10 years, share the costs with locals and protect precious ground water from contamination. Eleven years later, barely 200 sheds have been built. Read More
Now that the Senate and Clinton administration have committed sending U.S. troops, as needed, to the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary, the public may wonder what made these nations deserving enough for inclusion in the NATO club. The answer should come next year. Five more… Read More
First came Viagra, the anti-impotence drug middle-aged males are gobbling like candy to rekindle the fires of youth. Now there’s Propecia, a hair restorer that would complete the makeover were it not for one unfotunate side effect — impotence. Who says Science doesn’t have a sense of humor?… Read More
The glacier of campaign-finance reform scraping along in the House may pick up momentum now that Rep. Gerry Solomon of New York has signed on to the freshman’s version, drafted in part by Maine Rep. Tom Allen. Building support for this important bill is essential in the two… Read More
No doubt HoltraChem Manufacturing Co. had all sorts of good reasons for operating a train last November with inadequate brakes. But after listening to its many and various explanations for its series of spills, leaks, collisions and accidential emissions, those reasons aren’t very interesting anymore. Read More
This time last year, the National Marine Fisheries Service had Maine lobstermen in a stranglehold with ruinous proposed rules to protect endangered whales. After subjecting the industry to unnecessary anguish for months, NMFS finally listened to Maine and produced a plan whales and fishermen could live with. Read More
If anti-abortion groups are successful in gathering enough signatures to qualify a petition to ban partial-birth abortions in Maine; if they persuade the Legislature to send the question to the public; and if they wage a successful political campaign next fall and get the question passed, they will… Read More
The UMaine students who took to the streets Tuesday morning for a protest march demanding greater diversity on the Orono campus have an unassailably good cause. It’s their timing that’s questionable. With only 346 minority students in a student body of 9,213, UMO is pretty… Read More
Today marks yet another proud chapter in the 115-year history of the Bangor Public Library. Staff members will open their doors for a three-day celebration of the newly renovated landmark, beginning with a Friday open house, highlighted by guided tours and a talk for young arists, to be… Read More
Partnerships for Healthy Communities has done its homework in working to create a children’s museum in Bangor. A new feasibility study shows the project to be highly feasible. The business plan is realistic. The newly hired exhibit designer is brimming with exciting ideas. Start-up fund-raising exceeded expectations. A… Read More
Rather than penalize home health care agencies that have been careful with Medicare dollars, as a federal payment plan currently does, a bill gaining support in Congress would reimburse the agencies at a rate that more fairly reflects costs. It is a solid improvement to a poorly assembled… Read More
Two Maine judges have irritated some environmentalists around Maine because the judges accepted free trips to a seminar/vacation in Montana sponsored by conservative organizations. Given how easy it would have been to avoid the potential for a conflict of interest, the judges behavior, hardly the outrage that some… Read More
James Earl Ray murdered Dr. Martin Luther King with a single rifle shot fired across a Memphis street on April 4, 1968. He was arrested in London two months later and confessed to the crime, ducking trial and almost certain execution. He immediately recanted, claimed coersion, and spent… Read More
Late at night, in the closing moments of the last legislative session, lawmakers bounced $1 million-programs back and forth, trading on the remaining scraps of the Appropriations Committee table. A little bill — worth $20,000 — bobbed in the sea of paper, disappearing momentarily before emerging again, eventually… Read More
The Senate opens a new round of hearings today on alleged misconduct by the Internal Revenue Service. That makes the White House’s pre-emptive announcement yesterday that it will conduct its own inquiry into the tax agency the second most cynical maneuver in what should be a matter of… Read More
Before fans of campaign finance reform bring out the horns and party hats over last week’s announcement of a House vote on this issue, they ought to be clear on what Speaker Newt Gingrich actually did. Faced with the certain prospect that reform advocates had… Read More
The Bangor City Council tonight will consider limiting nude-dancing establishments through regulation or ban them altogether. The choice is clear, the council should do both. It should do both because even in banning these operations, the council has discussed allowing a phase-out period in which… Read More
Lucille Soper of Orland has tried every official she could think of to change the choice that she and her husband, Charles, have faced since his kidney transplant. As of now, the two still must decide between his autoimmune suppression medicine and destitution, but finally there may be… Read More
Motorists tooling through Piscataquis County in the coming months are in for a surprise. Guilford’s Masonic block and the Blethen House in Dover-Foxcroft, venerable county landmarks, are being razed to make way for two more Rite Aid pharmacies. The brick Masonic building, also known as… Read More
Two things voters might want to know about state Sen. Jeffrey Butland’s pledged citizen-veto campaign to stop the Maine Governmental Facilities Authority from borrowing $138 million to repair public buildings and construct prisons. The campaign hasn’t a prayer of getting the necessary 52,000 signatures because… Read More
For once it may pay to have a Congress chock full of lawyers acutely sensitive to the arts of obfuscation and misrepresentation. Their presence means that the tobacco industry will be unable to shift the terms of the debate over cigarette costs without someone noticing. Read More
Give till it tingles: Notoriously generous as a feeler of pain, Vice President Al Gore apparently is quite the little tightwad when it comes to actually doing something about it — his 1997 tax return shows an income of nearly $200,000 with charitible contributions of a paltry $350. Read More
What do you get when you make home care an efficient, effective and humane way to treat Medicare patients? Penalized, according to Congress, which used the event of a balanced budget to roll back home-care expenditures. Maine, and the rest of New England, pay an unfair price for… Read More
When the Supreme Court ruled more than four years ago that money need not be a motive for bringing the weight of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law against abortion protesters, it presaged a devastating loss for the protesters. The question that remains is what also has… Read More
Whatever glamour there was in the crusade for the environment at the time of the first Earth Day in 1970 has long since yielded to the inevitable: What once was a protest against obvious insults to the earth is now a lengthy legislative debate about sewage discharge. Instead… Read More
Follow closely, this gets confusing: For more than a year, Canadian sawmills have been skirting a trade agreement designed to stem the flow of cut-rate unfinished lumber into this country by drilling holes in their 2X4s and calling them finished. Now, Canada — aided and… Read More
American long-distance runners are sick and tired of losing to the Kenyans. They’ve had it with pounding the pavement for 15 kilometers and collapsing across the finish line only to find a dozen or so of the fleet Africans already have showered and changed into street clothes. Read More
A bill to encourage small-business owners to offer health care to children of employees became law this week as a start to what should be more incentives to help businesses with this cost. Here’s a slipperly slope that Maine might want to start sliding on. Read More
Thirty-eight physicians meeting last summer at the New York Academy of Sciences agreed with the majority of Americans that the War on Drugs was a failure and that the country needed a fundamental shift in its ilicit-drug policy. They formed a group called Physician Leadership on National Drug… Read More
Charles O. Rossotti is buoyed. In an April 15 speech to the National Press Club, the IRS commissioner bragged that a new Harris Poll showed a mere 21 percent of Americans are irate at the way this nation assesses and collects its taxes. A scant one-fifth of the… Read More
It’s hard to say which is more depressing about a recent survey on smoking: the fact that Maine’s anti-tobacco programs for teen-agers produce the worst results in the nation, or the number of teens who have tried to quit the habit only to discover they already were addicted. Read More
The Land Use Regulation Commission is contemplating some serious changes to its building rules for structures near water. And though the hearings have been well-attended, many landowners who closed their camps last fall and went back to their home states are going to be surprised to learn that… Read More
It’s not exactly a civil war, but the disagreement between the Midwest and the Northeast over which is responsible for the dirty air in this region has both a way of life and regional identity at stake. It also is a good example of why Maine was right… Read More
The Maine Human Rights Commission roots out discrimination based upon race, religion, age, disability or gender. While it can levy no fines, while it sends no one to jail, the board’s nonbinding rulings have great impact upon both litigation and reputation and thus are of great importance to… Read More