The 11 deaths in New York and Colorado last week in random acts of violence were both dizzying and a slap in the face. My son recently started a job not far from the site of the terrorist attack in lower Manhattan, and my daughter goes to school near Thornton, Colorado, where a gunman shot three people in Walmart. The unrelenting and unabashed look at how our fleeting and fragile lives are at the mercy of madmen has had a small and surprising effect on my psyche. The imminence of death by sociopath is not reassuring, but it has adjusted my focus on life.
Read MoreSure, we could have a people’s veto of the law overturning the ranked-choice voting referendum, but that seems like a lot of work. If the goal of ranked-choice voting is to shake up a system that keeps sending guys to the Blaine House who can’t muster a majority of the vote, maybe there’s a simpler solution. Maybe the 370,000 so-called independents could show up and vote in the primaries so the people elected to govern the masses are better qualified and committed to doing so.
Read MoreDemocrats should feel no remorse egging on President Trump’s taunting of Kim Jong Un. It was a Republican senator who said in 1947 that “we must stop partisan politics at the water’s edge,” and the trigger-happy North Korean bully terrorizing the world deserves to be publicly dressed down. In the current bizarre and banal war of words, we have a champion. Public shaming is in Mr. Trump’s wheelhouse.
Read MoreHere’s a public service announcement to Gov. Paul LePage and the good ol’ boys he’s palling around with in the latest ideological lawsuit to deny civil rights: It’s not transgender women us girls are afraid of - it’s you.
Read MoreThe president is free to deal with others, and I hope he does. The last card played by President Trump in the high-stakes game of repealing and replacing Obamacare was the defunding of Planned Parenthood. But his gamble failed, and now’s the time for him to cut a new deal.
Read MoreWho decided that America would be the only industrialized country that does not offer paid leave for the birth of a child? Surely the 84 percent of members of Congress and 95 percent of the CEO’s who sponsor them — who are men — had something to do with it.
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