If the trial balloon floated by Democrats gains altitude and Joe Biden withdraws from participation in the three scheduled presidential debates, it will surely go down as one of the most egregious blunders in presidential election history. For someone who for months has fought off rumors and speculation about his declining mental nimbleness, Biden’s withdrawal […]

The tragically unnecessary death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May, coupled with the COVID-19 pandemic, has forced us to come to a long-delayed reckoning of inequities in almost every sector of American life. From schools and healthcare to policing and criminal justice outcomes, no quadrant of our public debate has been off limits. So […]

“Mixed reaction to Topsham-area school district reopening plan,” (The Times Record, Aug. 9) by Darcie Moore contained a startling observation from a Mount Ararat social studies teacher that, “a dozen graduates refused to wear masks during the June ceremony….” This speaks to the handcuffed state of public education today. It is not new. I experienced […]

It’s a waste of time to write or read speculative stories about who’s trending up or down in a veep hunt. I’m old enough to remember 1968, when barrels of ink were expended on Richard Nixon’s vice presidential search, yet nobody had Spiro Agnew on their bingo card. And as a political reporter in 2000, […]

It’s very easy to take a snapshot of the day’s headlines and feel overwhelmed. Many of us experienced it before the pandemic, and even more of us have done so over the past six months.  What we’re dealing with isn’t normal, and sometimes it’s frightening. But none of the difficulties we’ve faced so far have […]

Thursday, a Republican candidate wrote a column on the importance of bipartisanship (“What does it mean to be bipartisan?” by Holly JP Kopp, The Times Record, Aug. 6). I agree on its importance and think that on the state level it goes on more than we know. However, bipartisanship is limited, in my humble opinion, […]

In the year 1974, it took seven months for the dam to break and flood the presidency of Richard Milhous Nixon. In January 1974, many Republican senators and representatives became well aware of the mounting evidence of abuse of office and the disintegrating stonewall that Nixon and his minions had erected around the 37th president. […]

In the early 1960s, U.S. Sen. Ed Muskie often lamented his responsibility to recommend postmasters for presidential appointment – as senators had done since the dawn of the Republic. Perhaps Maine’s master legislator, Muskie – author of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts – nonetheless disliked these postmaster choices, saying, “I make one friend […]