The Gospels according to the Cheney apostles

 

So we may soon have ourselves a conservative Bible. Besides Fox News, I mean.

This new Bible is from Conservapedia, a Web site that bills itself as a conservative alternative to the perceived liberal bias of Wikipedia, the user-edited online reference.

Our illogical governments

Over the last couple of months, a series of events in Western Maine has provided strong evidence that this state's structure of government is often not only inefficient, but illogical. Fortunately, as has been well documented in our history, times of adversity and challenge also bring forth new opportunities.

While we could likely select any region of Maine and paint a similar picture, the towns of Jay and Livermore Falls have been through such a unique period it is worth highlighting and asking some important questions.

Approval of gay, lesbian lifestyle part of liberal agenda

I am sympathetic to the story told by Joseph Rocha, who claims in a Washington Post opinion column that he was discharged from the Navy because he is gay, though he says he never told anyone. Rocha says his male colleagues concluded he was gay when he wouldn't laugh at their dirty jokes about women or visit prostitutes with them.

New schools, wishful thinking

The proposals brought before Auburn's school committee on Oct. 7 to either rebuild, or renovate and expand, Edward Little High School have an Alice in Wonderland quality to them. With a price of $48 million (for renovation and expansion) or $60 million (for new construction), they seem do-able only to those who sip tea with the Mad Hatter.

A committed marriage is a worthy aspiration

At every juncture of the conversation and debate about protecting same-sex marriage in Maine, we must remind ourselves that we are talking about heart and soul, flesh and blood human beings. We are dealing with people's lives: people who are in love.

We are all wired for relationship, and that includes intimate relationship. When any person finds that special someone, we aspire to marriage. It is a noble and honorable way to live out our lives. It breaks my heart to deny any loving couple the opportunity to experience married life.

Limbaugh's choice as official may well doom Miss America

Miss America officials have decided to kill off their beauty pageant.

That's not what they're saying, but you tell me what it means when a beauty pageant that professes to champion America's young women issues a news release with "Rush" and "thrilled" in the same sentence:

What kind of action justifies a Nobel Peace Prize?

Action in the world ought to trump worlds evoked by words, especially when awarding a global prize allegedly recognizing sustained, courageous effort on behalf of peace in our world's deeply conflicted corners.

We live in an age when the farce of history precedes the tragedy, however, and even a few left-wing media and academic elites realize giving President Barack Obama a Nobel Peace Prize is utter, rollicking balderdash.

Prize is for a vision of a better America

So I guess now he's a socialist-terrorist-secret-Muslim-radical-Christian-Hitler-clone and Nobel Prize winner?

Forgive me for laughing, but half the fun of Friday's surprise news that President Obama had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize lay in anticipating how his political adversaries would react. They did not disappoint.

Rush Limbaugh pronounced the award "a greater embarrassment" than Chicago's failure to land the Olympics.

Titular GOP leader Michael Steele said the honor reflected only the president's "star power."

Nobel Peace Prize should go to those who defeat evil

"War will continue until the end..." (Daniel 9:26)

Like the Pulitzer Prize for journalism, along with the Oscar and Emmy for film and television, the Nobel Peace Prize is an inside job in which liberal, wishful-thinking humanists give awards to each other.

For all I care, the Nobel Committee could have given their useless (except for the money) prize to Homer Simpson. Like President Obama, Homer has done nothing to earn it, though he may be the only character who has been on TV more than the president.

Zombie zeitgeist reflects public's apocalyptic anxiety

What's with all the zombies lately?

Restraint on the road to budgetary Armageddon

Sen. Max Baucus is the David Blaine of the Senate. In a world-class act of contortion, he stuffed his version of ObamaCare beneath $1 trillion over 10 years and twisted it into a deficit-reduction measure.

They compromise too much

My last "Political Animals" article stated my opinion on the viability of the "public option" and its similarity with Dirigo Health. The next assignment is to grade our senators, Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, regarding their stances on health reform, as well as TARP, cap and trade and their legacy in the Senate. I do this at a risk of breaking the Republican Eleventh Commandment, as stated by President Ronald Reagan:

"Thou shall not criticize fellow Republicans in public."

Keys to growing a healthy city

Unless you were hiding under a rock last week, you noticed Patrick Dempsey, the television icon, right here in Lewiston-Auburn. His presence, as part of the inaugural Dempsey Challenge bike race and run to support the Dempsey Center for Cancer Hope and Healing at Central Maine Medical Center, drew 3,500 participants and thousands of spectators to downtown.

Legal argument, common sense cross in court

Christmas is probably unconstitutional.

I'm no lawyer, but the logic seems unassailable to me. Consider: Santa Claus aside, Christmas is an explicitly Christian holiday and the only holiday of any religion to be observed by the federal government. Which would seem to violate the First Amendment edict that Congress "shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." Yet to the best of my admittedly-limited knowledge, no one has ever sued Christmas before the Supreme Court.

Obama's agenda will bankrupt our country

"Neither a borrower nor a lender be." — William Shakespeare, "Hamlet"

Why won't we listen to what used to be called sage advice before the Internet made too many of us think we are re-inventing the world and nothing we think or try has ever been thought or tried before?

Reform on the cheap is not effective

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) scored the Senate Finance Committee's health care reform proposal and, to no one's surprise, the proposal comes in under that of other committee bills. But at what cost?

Don't trust the labels

Centralist and moderate — both words often used to describe Maine's two Republican senators.

When we throw out words like centralist & moderate, conservative or liberal, we're actually comparing the tendencies of one person (or group of people) to another person or group. If our senators are truly moderate, who are we comparing them to?

Health cares about domestic violence

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and Oct. 14 is Health Cares About Domestic Violence Day, a day for the medical community to take a stand against domestic abuse. Along with domestic violence advocates and law enforcement, health care providers are among the first to see and respond to domestic abuse. While the Maine Center for Disease Control notes that crime in Maine is declining, our state's rate of domestic violence has increased.

One soldier dies; another soldier's mother prays

Whenever she reads an online notice that another American has died in Iraq or Afghanistan, Donna Faye Caudill posts the same response:

"Praying for the soldier's family."

Every time I read her response, I know that she is thinking about her son Army Spc. Ben Caudill.

This ritual began soon after I signed up for the Department of Defense "casualty" alerts. I did this to force myself to be mindful of the sacrifices of the men and women serving in the Middle East and their families left behind.

TABOR is not the answer for Maine

Moms tend to know best, and it's generally because of the lessons they have learned from experience. Wisdom my Mom instilled in me that I have since passed to my four children says this: that many times, things aren't what they seem and what looks like a good deal can end up costing you in the end.

Double standard exists for the rich and famous

Somebody please help me with this. Obviously, I'm missing something.

So we've got a 43-year-old man who takes a 13-year-old girl into a hot tub. According to the girl, this is what follows: He gives her part of a Quaalude and some champagne. He gets into the hot tub, naked. She flees to a bedroom. He follows. He puts his mouth to her vagina. He removes her panties. He asks if she is on the pill. She is not, and he asks if she wants him to penetrate her anally instead. She says no. He does anyway. During all this, she's begging him to stop.

TV personalities contribute to unraveling moral fiber

In olden days when "a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking" there was a morals clause written into an actor's film contract. The purpose was to restrain an actor from engaging in public behavior that might offend the audience and harm ticket sales.

Today, lewd and crude behavior can boost ticket sales and TV ratings and what passes for a morals clause deals with sexual harassment in the workplace.

Takes only one to deny First Amendment rights

We call them school librarians, but in these contentious times, I'm inclined to call them heroes.

Take Karin Perry, for example. That's "Mrs. Perry" to you middle schoolers. She cast the winning bid in an auction to bring best-selling author Ellen Hopkins to speak to her students at Whittier Middle School in Norman, Okla.

Polanski a fine example of Hollywood's perverse moralism

"Rosemary's Baby" ("outdoes Hitchcock" — Roger Ebert), "Chinatown" ("outstanding" — Variety) and "The Pianist" ("definitive" — The New York Times) are fine films. They have been rightly honored and praised. The question is whether their excellence justifies criminal acts.

College bill needs second look

The Maine Heritage Policy Center, a conservative think tank, issued a report last week well-timed to start a debate on government spending. The report, coined the "Maine Piglet Book," tabulated around $2 billion in what the MHPC sees as wasteful pork.