We can think of a lot of good reasons why Portland shouldn’t bring an aircraft carrier into its harbor to serve as a floating museum and convention center. But we can’t think of a better one than was expressed this week by City Councilor Dory Waxman.

“It’s just too big,” she said.

With a mast as tall as the top of Munjoy Hill, as long as 10 football fields and enough deck space to build an apartment complex, the decommissioned aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy would dwarf anything in the harbor, blocking views of the city from the water and the water from the land.

A system of rigid and unenforced rules will be replaced by a problem-solving approach.

The only way family expectations get passed on is when they are presented and discussed.

A national good news story did not come with a Maine edition: Although traffic deaths plummeted overall throughout the country last year to levels not seen in 50 years, Maine’s road fatalities actually increased slightly.

some standards, Maine’s numbers were also low — 159, up four deaths from the 155 deaths in 2008. But that means people are still dying at a rate of more than three per week, which is not something we can feel good about.

If a virus killed that many Mainers, we would beef up our public health budget. If it was a criminal gang, we would call for more police.

An editorial should have just praised Augusta without slamming other cities and towns.

Everyone should know “good enough” when they see it. The deep water pier project scheduled to be started in Portland this month fits the description.

Portland has wanted a large pier, sometimes called a “mega-berth,” for a decade so it can accommodate more than one large cruise ship at a time.

This was the driving force behind the state financed Ocean Gateway project, and it remained on the port’s to-do list after construction bids came in too high to build it back in 2005.

In recent years it has become fashionable to say that we had entered the post-9/11 era — that the terrorist attacks that took place nine years ago today wwere just another milestone in our nation’s history.

No one is saying that today. Just as a previous generation drew its lessons from the appeasement in Munich, or the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, what we know about the world in 21st century America is still shaped by the image of hijacked planes crashing into buildings.

Recent events show that we are still coming to terms with what the attacks have meant to our nation. A proposed Islamic cultural center in New York City, just blocks from where the World Trade Center once stood, has led to a bitter dispute between those who say it would be a symbol of America’s tolerance of religious freedom against those who say it would be an insult to those who died at the hands of terrorists acting in the name of Islam.