Soon, April 1 will be upon us, and readers will associate it with April Fools’ Day. Many readers will not remember that one of the greatest battles in the Pacific was held on April 1, 1945: the invasion of Okinawa. John McLeod Portland

I read, with interest, the March 22 article about state Rep. Larry Lockman’s recent sponsorship of a bill titled “An Act To Protect Political Speech and Prevent Climate Change Policy Profiling.” If I understand the intent of the bill correctly, a more fitting name would be “An Act To Protect Political Speech and Prevent Scientific […]

It’s school budget time and we hear, once again, the drumbeat of complaints over how the Legislature continues to shortchange education by failing to come up with their 55 percent of public K-12 school funding. In my view, this 55 percent mandate is fundamentally flawed. No right-minded business would, and no public entity should, commit […]

My 4-year-old nephew is learning how to write, and I was at first amused when he recently wrote, unprompted, “The end is here.” After I stopped laughing, though, I remembered how concerned I’ve been since the election, thinking about what kind of world he’ll grow up in. I started to worry that his words might […]

House Speaker Paul Ryan has said that the Affordable Care Act needs to be repealed. He wants Americans to have the “freedom” to decide whether or not to have health insurance rather than to be forced to buy insurance by the federal government. However, lack of health insurance results in loss of freedom to obtain […]

I did not vote for the 3 percent educational tax surcharge last November. I strongly support the efforts to force the state to fully fund its 55 percent commitment to education, but after a lot of consideration, I felt that the microtargeting of the income tax, in both its collection and expenditure, was the wrong […]