Challengeto reduceemissionsOnce again, Maine does it first.The Pine Tree State is the first to adopt a law setting goals for the reduction of global warming emissions.When signing the law, Gov. Baldacci said it “paves the way for others to join us in a responsible approach to address the risks of global warming.”It paves the way, […]

Stories of infants abandoned by their mothers have haunted us ever since Yocheved placed her baby in a basket on the River Nile to escape a royal decree that the little boy be killed. We wish every baby Moses would be so generously rescued. We wish for the happy ending.So it’s understandable that, when faced […]

Allow me to share an old song I’ve always liked.It’s called “Glasshouse,” it was released by the Temptations in 1975 and it says in part, “I don’t care what goes on in your house when you close your door. If you stop looking in my bedroom window, I’ll stop looking in yours.”If you understand that […]

America celebrates its 227th birthday today and there’s plenty to prompt a party, even during these difficult times. The economy is still struggling along, a lot of people can’t find work, men and women are dying in far off lands under our banner, and haters are waiting for a chance to draw our blood.But there […]

Has the end of the world arrived because the Supreme Court ruled no state may prohibit private, consensual homosexual conduct? No, the end of the world is being handled by the Supreme Judge. But the end of the Constitution has arrived, and that is something about which everyone in this temporal world should be concerned.Writing […]

The appearance of safety; the presence of danger As any auto racing fan will tell you, one of the reasons there are not more serious accidents on the track is because most of the cars are traveling in the same direction at about the same speed.Since both logic and common sense adorn this observation, please […]

PHOENIX – As the airplane – having left wind wakes high over Kansas, Oklahoma and New Mexico – slides into Arizona’s baked air, I’m thinking about America, which soon will celebrate its 227th birthday.I haven’t yet seen all of our impossibly huge, pasted-together country, but I haven’t missed much of it. Just this year I’ve […]

Tough education standards and even tougher financial constraints have come together in Lewiston to ring the bell on recess.Students in grades four, five and six will lose a 15-minute recess in the morning. The time will be reallocated to classroom instruction. Students in grades one, two and three will also lose the recess, but only […]

AmeriCorps is in trouble, and it needs to be saved.We often hear politicians exalt the work of volunteers who reach out a hand to their neighbors in need. Service to others is invoked on countless daises, praised by public figures and offered as an example of the fabric of America’s social contract with its less […]

Race matters.Boil it down, and that’s what Monday’s milestone Supreme Court rulings in the University of Michigan case reduce to, an acknowledgement of the obvious.Not that the rulings were one-sided. As you surely know by now, justices struck down a formula that awarded a certain number of points toward undergraduate admission to applicants based upon […]