When leading conservatives and liberals agree on what’s wrong in the country, it’s worth paying attention. The American Enterprise Institute, which produces conservative policy proposals, and the Center for American Progress, which plays the same role for liberals, announce they “disagree vigorously” on policy, but have agreed on a jointly published report on American society. […]

In his timely book “The Common Good,” Robert Reich claims that we as a people have lost our collective commitment to the common good. “We often honor people who haven’t advanced the common good but have merely achieved notoriety or celebrity, or amassed great wealth or power.” In the concluding pages, he writes, “If we […]

On the first 70-degree day of this o-so-slow spring, I began to think of buds, which turned my mind to trees. I pay attention to trees in all seasons, but leafing out draws my eye up into what seems a limeshot light. After a season of hard edges and clattering light, the slightly furred light […]

Barely out of high school, Robert Tyzik spent six weeks at Brunswick Naval Air Station for survival training after enlisting in the Navy. That was in 1967. Fifty-one years later, Tyzik is back — this time as a Southern Maine Community College student at the age of 70. After putting three children through college, he’s […]

McCreight’s compassion for constituents Congratulations to State Representative Joyce “Jay” McCreight for being honored with the Maine Public Health Association’s Champion Award on May 31. She is the first person to receive the new MPHA award. Jay is a tireless worker for every Maine citizen. She chaired a special task force on Maine’s opioid crisis. […]

In 1953, Jacqueline Cochran, 47, became the first woman to break the sound barrier as she piloted a Canadair F-86 Sabre jet over Rogers Dry Lake, California. In 1967, Tennessee Gov. Buford Ellington signed a measure repealing the law against teaching evolution that was used to prosecute John T. Scopes in 1925. The Associated Press

The U.S. Constitution has been reduced to a scrap of parchment, rendered irrelevant by the profiteer in-chief. President Trump relentlessly railed against China on the campaign trail (“It’s the greatest theft in the history of the world, what they’ve done to the United States, they’ve taken our jobs!”), but days ago he suddenly tweeted his […]