So let me see if I’ve got this straight.We are at war. We are under a heightened terror alert. Washington being a prime target for attack, security there is especially high. Concrete barricades. Stepped-up patrols. Public buildings closed. The city has been secured to within an inch of its life.And one farmer on a tractor […]

They’re back. The single-payer advocates are out in full force, again, calling for universal health insurance for all Americans. This time they’re backed by a bipartisan coalition including Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. Some of the current proposals are as coercive as Hillary Clinton’s infamous national health plan. The new push carries the same […]

In November, voters overwhelmingly rejected issuing a $25 million bond for a new prison in Machias and for repairs to the Maine Correctional Center in South Windham.The signal, Augusta could assume, is that Mainers don’t want to build a new prison so soon after a facility was constructed in Warren, especially since Warren was billed […]

If the war to liberate Iraq continues to go well; if there are relatively few coalition and civilian casualties; if an “environmental disaster” does not occur with the mass torching of oil wells; if chemical and biological weapons are not used either because American threats of severe consequences have been heard or coalition forces have […]

– John F. Kennedy Spinning the media marketInformation is a powerful tool. A noble protector. A foundation of democracy.In an age where information is all around us, pelting us 24 hours a day, democracy benefits only if information originates from independent sources.The Federal Communications Commission is considering tinkering with the rules for media ownership, permitting […]

“Lord knows there’s got to be a better way.” – Edwin Starr, from the song “War”And so it begins.A surgical strike against a “target of opportunity” as these words are written. Perhaps more by the time they are read. We stand upon the very doorstep of war.And, just as critically, upon the doorstep of change.Because […]

‘My country, right or wrong’ is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying ‘My mother, drunk or sober.’– G.K. Chesterton If you oppose this war in Iraq, brace yourself for some nasty insults.Some us have learned we are “chicken,” in addition to being “unpatriotic,” […]

Thousands of Americans are busy crafting care packages for troops overseas, gathering donations of food, toilet paper and other comforts of home.On Sunday, the Pentagon asked the nation to stop sending unsolicited mail to the troops, requesting mail be limited to immediate family and friends.Although the care packages of cloth wipes and Girl Scout cookies […]

The outlook for Forster Inc. employees last week: not good. Federal aid for retraining appears to have eluded them.Assistance under the Trade Act is assistance of the best sort, to retrain workers whose jobs have gone south, gone elsewhere in the all-too-familiar shift of manufacturing beyond U.S. shores.If we’re going to do business beyond our […]

American culture is undergoing a sex change. Or make that sex changes, plural. The sexual revolution that liberated women from kitchen sinks and broom closets has revived the sleeping male chauvinist, and just when we thought it was safe to go back into the bedroom, here come new psychological crises of sexual identity.It’s a fashionable […]