In ancient Rome, the Senate was comprised of esteemed, respected leaders, who by virtue of birth, training and experience were expected to act in the best interest of the Republic.It rarely worked as this ideal, but the system still survived for millennia.The British Parliament has the House of Lords, a distant descendant of the Roman […]

Gov. John Baldacci’s wood-to-energy task force deserves credit for releasing an insightful final report about the state’s forestry reserves and industry, absent of the potential biases that marred the initial drafts.The report relaxed its pellet-heat rhetoric – which with Les Otten, a pellet stove importer, serving as task force chairman, raised concerns about conflict of […]

Olympia Gaming, the Las Vegas-based company seeking a casino in Oxford County, owns the majority of the outfit that got this referenda campaign rolling: Evergreen Mountain Enterprises.Some nine other partners are minority owners in Evergreen Mountain, which if it earns voter approval, promises to open a $100 million to $150 million resort casino somewhere in […]

Congress has shown tremendous restraint in fighting calls for rapid action in the proposed $700 billion bailout of shaky banks. Its patience should be rewarded, by taking time to consider the global impact of its actions.Although different in scope, the “credit crisis” that’s undermined Wall Street has steadily infected institutions elsewhere. The Benelux nations – […]

Helen Poulin, an Androscoggin County Commissioner, moved to Auburn in August.She represents Lewiston. Elected officials live in their district and usually resign if they move.She wouldn’t. Her reading of statute, announced Sept. 3, is that county commissioners must only live in the county, not necessarily their district, even though Maine law says, “Members of each […]

Maine can take hold of policy, or let policy take hold.Neither way is foolproof, but efforts by a fellow New England state should prove – about offshore wind power – which method is more fruitful in the long-term.This week, the state of Rhode Island selected a New Jersey-based company, Deepwater Wind, to finance and construct […]

Cheers and jeers from around the news:• So, collaboration is dead, huh? Stick a fork in it, some say? Pshaw!Just ask the Lewiston and Auburn public libraries how it’s done. Cheers to them for introducing a Twin Cities library card; a press conference about it is scheduled for Oct. 1.(Full disclosure: the Sun Journal did […]

Now that the verdicts – or lack thereof – in the Robert LaPointe trial are known, momentum from the two-week trial should flow through lawmakers into a new review of Maine’s boating laws.A hung jury in the LaPointe case failed to settle whether he is guilty or innocent of manslaughter.Conversely, a divided Legislature has failed […]

The story of Omer Morin, related in Tuesday’s newspaper, is an object lesson for the end-of-life plans too many of us either put off, or take for granted.Morin, 90, executed a trust with his daughters in 1999. He neither read the trust document nor hired his own attorney to negotiate it. He, and his late […]

In this country’s fiscal meltdown, there’s no room for ideologues, for the action required by Congress necessitates throwing pure ideology – both political and financial – out the nearest window.Neither political party, for example, has a monopoly on wisdom. Stubborn adherence to free market doctrine by Republicans and complicity in deregulation and populist policymaking by […]