“As Maine goes, so goes the nation” was Maine’s mantra for being a bellwether state for predicting the outcome of Presidential Elections early in our country’s history. It went beyond picking our president to how we conduct elections. While we all may want to forget about the 2020 election cycle, there are some very real […]

Maine’s municipal revenue sharing program is in bad shape. Former Gov. Paul LePage tried to get rid of it, and succeeded in reducing it to just 40% of its original size as part of his unrelenting drive to cut state spending. While little known to the public, revenue sharing has an interesting history. It’s considered […]

With state legislative bodies back in session for the year, many policymakers are scrambling to form new voter suppression laws. After a highly divisive election year when our democratic values were tested as a nation, it is important now more than ever to pass the federal For the People Act (also known as H.R. 1) […]

Shakespeare’s Hamlet addresses the players who will later perform a play before his uncle, the usurper and murderer of his father the King. He exhorts them in their performance “to suit the word to the action and the action to the word,” reckoning that the unity of word and deed is a rarity in the […]

As the U.S. grapples with domestic extremism in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, warnings about more violence are coming from the FBI Director Chris Wray and others. The Conversation asked Matthew Valasik, a sociologist at Louisiana State University, and Shannon E. Reid, a criminologist at the University of North […]