At this week’s coffee shop seminar, the noted proctologist, Lucius Flatley, offered an imaginative resolution to the political bewilderment and hostility in Washington. He suggested a division of the United States along the Mason-Dixon line extending from the Atlantic all the way to California that would create two new governments – north and south. These […]

Despite the old saying, desperate times do not always call for desperate measures. It is certainly within reason to characterize the crisis in state education funding – the loss of $38 million this year to local school districts, with hints of more severe cuts in coming years – as desperate times. But the subsequent reactions […]

As debate in the U.S. Senate finally got under way last week (over the unanimous objection of Republicans, who see this issue as a weapon with which they may hack their way back into the glorious land of committee chairmanships and lobbyist-love – perhaps even to the White House in three years), health care is […]

As temperatures reached into the mid-60s last week on a December date by which temperatures usually have descended into the 30s and 40s, more than a few people remarked at how nice it is to have global warming. It’s become a common response to any unseasonably warm day, and while it’s usually said at least […]

For all the talk about health-care reform during the last few months, little has been said about oral health. This is not new, as dental care is often ignored, both by policymakers and the general public. But it has quietly become one of the nation’s, and Maine’s, most urgent and costly health needs. According to […]

Vote no on Question 1 At the heart of the issue of same-sex marriage, past all the very public rhetoric of faith, morality and tradition, is the very private love and commitment between two adults, and society’s duty to recognize that. Same-sex couples feel the same love, the same connection to another person, that defines […]