The White House is receiving a sound trashing at the hands of Congress for the roll-out of the Affordable Care Act’s website. It has been an embarrassing disappointment, and we have said so ourselves. So what’s next? Move on? Hardly. House Republicans will continue to investigate the site’s failings until it either works or until […]
Our View
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Awareness by the month, week and day
On Monday, we received a news release raising concern about the growing number of “awareness” months in this country. According to the release, “October is well-known for its pink ribbons and November is coming to be known for its mustaches, but what about the health campaigns that don’t have fun gimmicks or pretty pink products?” […]
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Talk about gun safety at your own risk
The rules: Handle any gun as if it’s loaded. Never point a gun at another person. Never treat a gun like a toy. Those are basic lessons taught to young hunters around the country, lessons that can stick with a person for life. But lessons apparently unlearned by a 31-year-old Waterville man who last week […]
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Lesson learned in cemetery cleanup glitch
A good deed led to some bad feelings in Monmouth this week, and that’s a shame. A group of 15 teens, led by Monmouth Academy social studies teacher Jocelyn Gray, probably didn’t expect to get scolded and told not to come back when they staged a cleanup day in a local cemetery, but that’s what […]
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Social problems too often rooted in fractured families
We understand the tendency of newspaper readers to skip over unusually long stories. That sea of gray words on a big, white page can intimidate even the most diligent reader. That’s why we fear many people might have skipped over an excellent column in Sunday’s Sun Journal titled, “How to raise a dangerous criminal.” It […]
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The disaster that is HealthCare.gov
President Barack Obama is having a President George W. Bush moment. Or is Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius having a FEMA Director Michael Brown moment? Actually, it’s both. Days after Hurricane Katrina hit the southern United States in 2005, and well after the world was aware of the scope of the storm’s destruction […]
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Many children won’t confront an elder driver
In 2012, the Sun Journal examined the difficult question of elderly drivers and how their accident rates increase as they age. The story pointed out that drivers over 65 account for 8 percent of all miles driven, yet they are involved in 17 percent of all fatal traffic accidents. It reported how Maine drivers over […]
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Group behind welfare study no liberal lot
We’ve all heard it before. Maine’s welfare benefits are so over-the-top generous that the needy are coming here from around the country to take advantage of our largess. Except, apparently, they aren’t that high. In fact, according a story that appeared on the front page of Sunday’s Sun Journal, in a recent study comparing the […]
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Approve all five Nov. 5
Maine — like most other states — bonds a great many projects not funded through the state’s regular budget process. We borrow, through bonds, to pay for upgrades to our bridges and roads, for building projects at our colleges and universities, for upgrades to water and sewer systems, and for other large public capital improvement […]
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Our literacy is society’s shared legacy
The United States, as a whole, can be exceptionally proud of its literacy rate. We are, according to The World Factbook, among the most literate people in the world. A whopping 99 percent of the entire population of this country has learned to read by the age of 15. That’s not quite as good as […]