We must focus on maintaining a first-class military, winning the high-tech race with China, and reducing our vulnerabilities in the event of a war that disrupts supply chains and our access to key strategic materials and goods.

The Freedom of Access Act requires that agencies respond to requests within five days and produce records within a reasonable period of time. Compared to public record laws in other states, these are very lenient requirements. There is no excuse for not responding. There is no excuse for not taking the time — especially when broadly defined as “reasonable” — to gather records. There is no excuse for the secrecy.

Maine people are struggling to pay for their basic necessities in the face of crippling inflation, and in a rural state like ours, gasoline is absolutely a necessity. We need to provide relief for Maine families now, rather than waiting for the federal government to do so. Suspending Maine’s gas tax will provide immediate relief for families and businesses alike, and is the right thing to do.

If fossil fuels are to be replaced, or our reliance on them reduced, technology must precede politics and wish lists. Otherwise — and without a change in policies that return us to what as recently as 2016 produced energy independence — prices will continue to rise.

LGBTQ kids and their allies can only put their heads down, work for change and take such satisfaction as they may find in the fact that, where social evolution is concerned, conservatives lost the 20th century.

Now they’re about to lose the 21st.

Set aside the moral and human catastrophe of Russia’s savaging a peaceful country. Ukrainians are suffering to preserve not only their democracy but ours. And so paying more for gas is the least Americans can do to help them. To our credit, most Americans are OK with it.

Right after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt went on radio to call Dec. 7, 1941, “a date which will live in infamy.” The stupidity behind calling Vladimir Putin a “genius” with good reasons to launch an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine will also live in infamy.

I won’t repeat the litany of loss in rural Maine, but we have renewable resources here, and we have people who know how to use the resources. We need ideas to make those resources work for rural Maine.